Suchergebnisse

The recognition of the local collectivities and the essential role of democratic
society require the clear definition of the term "local collectivity", which would allow the
avoiding of ambiguities in its usage.
The defining element of the local territorial collectivities is the population, which
includes all inhabitants permanently living in the territorial perimeter of the local
collectivity.
There are identified criteria that allow the establishment of the individuals' belonging
to a specific local collectivity. This is very important because the individual's ability to be
part of a particular local collectivity gives him the opportunity to take part in local selfgovernment.
I insisted on the recognition of the local population as a subject of the local autonomy,
and not of the local public authorities elected by the population who are representatives of
the local territorial collectivities, while also examining the causes of the population's nonparticipation
in local public life.

The ethnic structure of this region has been strongly influenced by the evolution of different historical-geographical, and political factors, but also by the evolution of the confessional structure. Ethnicity, from this point of view, is closely related to religion. What is typical and important to note is that the ethnic structure is very diverse. In addition to Romanians and Hungarians, also Gypsies, Germans, Slovaks, Jews, Ruthenians, and Serbs are present; other ethnic groups are numerically insignificant. For this period we identified two important categories of documents relating to ethnic identity of Transylvanians: 1. records made by the Austrian state authorities; 2. Church documents. They must be viewed and analyzed with great care because they do not correspond directly to the necessity to establish ethnic identities. The documents that are available to us do not allow for an accurate determination of a person's ethnicity. Given the lack of a variable on nationality from the few censuses conducted by the Hungarian State, we propose based on analysis of other documents (particularly those of ecclesiastical origin) to: a) check the mother tongue, b) establish religious identity and c) run an onomastic study.

By analyzing the parliamentary debates of 1866-1867 on foreigners' (notably Jews) requests for naturalization and property rights, this article tries to identify the parliamentarians' answers to the following questions: On what grounds were foreigners accepted as Romanian citizens? How did the parliamentarians define the foreigner? What was required from a foreigner in order to become a citizen? The overall objective is to identify some major themes that preoccupied the representatives of the nation, circumscribed around the primordial character of the "union" and of "nationality", with a special focus on the solutions proposed by the liberals. The argument is that the Parliament, by its vote, instead of granting citizenship rights, merely established the conditions according to which one could become a Romanian. In other words, the Romanian legislators considered it to be of outmost importance to recognize the quality of being a Romanian, that is, a member of an ethnic body, and not to define citizenship as a legal membership. "To be a Romanian" was more of an ethnic belonging, a "given", than citizenship or civic loyalty, defined through political and civic rights. It seems that citizenship was crushed by the primordial character of ethnic loyalty and by the weight of the state as expression and guarantor of the Romanian nation. In engaging the parliamentary debates about naturalization, the article attempts, first, to draw more nuanced conclusions about the lately much-debated character of citizenship in Romania and Eastern Europe during the mid-19th century. And second, such an analysis may provide a better understanding of the nature of political representation during the same period.

The image of the European culture is given by the association of the concepts people – culture – history – territory, which provides certain local features. From this relation, we identify a cultural area with local, regional and national features beyond a certain European culture. Thus, we identify at least two cultural identity constructions on the European level: a culture of cultures, that is a cultural area with a particular, local, regional and national strong identity, or a cultural archipelago, that is a common yet disrupted cultural area. Whatever the perspective, the existence of a European cultural area cannot be denied, although one may speak of diversity or of "disrupted continuity".
The paper is a survey on the European cultural space in two aspects: 1. Europe with internal cultural border areas; 2. Europe as external cultural-identity border area. From a methodological point of view, we have to point out that despite the two-levelled approach the two conceptual constructions do not exclude each other: the concept of "culture of cultures" designs both a particular and a general identity area. The specific of the European culture is provided precisely by diversity and multiculturalism as means of expression on local, regional, or national levels. Consequently, the European cultural area is an area with a strong identity on both particular and general levels.

The implementation of the principles of local democracy has proven to be one of the most complicated tasks of the political and administrative reform in the Republic of Moldova. To overcome this situation, it is important to develop and substantiate theoretically such concepts as "local power", "the subject of local power", "local territorial collectivity". A clear scientific definition of those notions would serve as a foundation for developing an appropriate legal framework and public policy in the field. In order to elucidate the notions mentioned above, the existing essential approaches in the contemporary social sciences regarding the public territorial collectivities have been analyzed. The factors affecting the formation and existence of the local territorial collectivities have also been emphasized. Two types of authorities: private and public have been briefly considered. This paper analyzes the concept of "local authority" in contrast to the term "territorial administrative unit" with which the legislator operates in the Republic of Moldova. It was concluded that the concept "local collectivity" is more acceptable because it is the appropriate expression of the phenomenon of the territorial organization of public power in general, as opposed to the concept "administrative unit" which refers only to the territorial organization of state public power. So, from this point of view, the territorial administrative units and the local territorial collectivities are two different phenomena. In a strictly legal sense, the territorial-administrative unit is an inhabited territory which has no heritage (in the territory there is the state property or another kind of heritage) and it is administered by an official appointed by the state. The local collectivity has its own heritage that is managed on its own account and in order to solve local problems. The issues belonging to state power can be delegated to local authorities by sending financial and material resources needed to achieve them. A territorial community of the residents becomes local authority if it possesses and uses democratic institutions, creates bodies of self administration on the basis of the elective principle, takes binding decisions for the community, and has its own financial and material resources in order to regulate the internal life. These indicators make public territorial collectivities to be different from the territorial administrative units, in which only administrative methods of management are used. The defining elements of the identity of a local collectivity, such as: a) name, b) territory, c) population, d) the public authority of the eligible authorities, e) the Statute, f) the distinctive insignia of the local collectivity, have been identified. These elements make the local territorial collectivity to be distinguished from other similar collectivities.

This study aims to answer the question whether Christian Orthodoxy can inspire political movements. In so doing we start from the political theories of modernity where the link between Christianity and democracy is central. Our result sounds unexpected: interaction between Orthodoxy and democracy seems to not have a perspective. It is too late for it since most political movements in post-communism do not have the religious identity of their members as criterion. The situation was not different before. As an example the effort of the orthodox theologians and laymen in Romania before the outbreak of the Second World War is quoted here. Almost without an exception all focused and restricted their interest on the question of the nation. Therein we see the principal reason for the above postulated perspective of an orthodox political doctrine until now. On the European level the situation looks also no better. Even the parties, which attribute themselves the Christian values, have at present large difficulties to convey their message. It remains only to hope that the political actors rediscover the social and actively support the Christian ethics in the public area. Only so can democracy be regarded as one of the most important binding forces also under the Christians.

Cinematography was deliberately organized, financed and oriented towards the purposes of the system and consequently became the most effective element of political and cultural pedagogy. The synchronic correlation between word and image, the power of visual suggestibility, empathy as an emotional response to the actors' performance - all these had immediate effects on the collective imaginary, on the perception of reality as a social and identity-forging project determined by the emergence of the ideological discourse. The Romanian socialist cinematography from the time of Ceauşescu synthesized and systemized a coherent and explicit system of values wherein it integrated the message of literary and other artistic works, of variegated forms of cultural expression, so that Romanian cultural axiology could find new possibilities to stand out in strict dependence to the institutional and optional structures of mass culture. The cinema per se thus became a sort of pedagogy for universal use, rendering the past heroic, as it exacerbated the national ego via the instruments of entertainment. Highly permeated ideologically and quasi entirely subordinated to the Communist cultural policies, the cinema production, carried out because of the appeal to emotions and collective memory, thus became part of the official discourse and orientated its issues, especially after the 11th Congress of RCP, according with the political and ideological interests of the national Communist project. The analysis focuses on the Romanian historical films with subjects and episodes relevant for the ancient and mediaeval history, in relation with the efforts of identity reconstruction, coordinated during the Communist regime in relationship with the project of the socialist nation's building and, after 1989, in relationship with the attempt of reconsolidating, sometimes from a radical perspective, the nationalist mythologies. Socialist patriotism thus incorporated many stereotypes drawn out from the ante-bellum, as well as from the inter-bellum Romanian spirit: the lyric of self-identification expressed by the film soundtrack and by the majestic character of the heroic gestures, the heroic epic obvious in the popular ballad pattern of pre-modern nature, the activist pedagogy specific to all forms of identitarianism. Despite all this ideological infusion, the mythology of Romanian historical films during the Communist nationalist times remains one of a sadistic-masochistic nature, cultivating the fear towards the Other, fatalism, expectation and obedience, all chronic and historicized.

his paper aims to illustrate how institutionalized education has been a significant identity management strategy for an ethnic group in Romania. After its foundation in 1872, the University of Kolozsvár (Cluj) was regarded as a provincial higher education establishment within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, meant to satisfy merely regional demands. Although legally the two Hungarian universities (in Budapest and Kolozsvar) were considered equal in rank, government and society gave priority to the first one. It is only over time that the University of Kolozsvár proved its utility. This change of image resulted in a leading position, especially at the start of the twentieth century. After the outbreak of the World War I, the activity of the University witnessed disruptions due to the drafting of many professors and students into the Army. The end of the the war not only meant the achievement of 'national unity' for Romania, but also generated significant changes for Ferenc József University, beginning with the process of dismissing minorities from the public sector and replacing them with Romanians. After the Second Vienna Award, the University of Cluj became Hungarian once again. The historical lesson of the inter-war period on the treatment of minorities had to be prevented from repeating itself, and within the new geopolitical context the USSR seemed the guarantor for the final resolution of the ethnic rivalries and resentments. In this ideological context, on 29 May 1945 two royal decrees sanctioned the functioning of two distinct universities in Cluj; the Hungarian university János Bolyai officially opened its doors. The preservation of a representative higher education institution for the Hungarian minority in Cluj, adapted to the new political realities, was achieved. But after Stalin's death in 1953 the feelings of 'national specificity' resurged, and national histories were re-individualized and reconstructed. The events in Budapest in the autumn of 1956 offered further reasons for central authorities to rethink the 'national domain'. In the years to come, propaganda insisted on the futility of institutional separation between the Romanian and Hungarian students in Cluj. Hence, a meeting of the unification commissions, held in 1959 led to the fusion of the two universities. This evolution of the University of Cluj shows the constraints, openings, compromises, and 'avatars' of the most important institution of higher education in Transylvania, which continues to function as a source of symbolic prestige and social capital for both Hungarians and Romanians.