The article presents the characteristics of the language used in the prison employees and inmates. There is a nonverbal language, gesture that is learned by imitation two social categories in the everyday interaction. And there are two types of verbal language - one official and one secret slang. In the universe of prison three languages intertwine not possible without each other. To understand the functioning of an institution's total language understanding is essential, for it is vital for human interaction flow, understanding and functioning of formal and informal rules for the two categories internalization of social values.
In Romania, as wel as in all Member States, the judicial cooperation in criminal matters regarding the execution of the european arrest warrant and the surrender of the sought persons in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was affected and was assesed on a case-by-case basis. Generally, the non compliance with the surrender deadlines or the postponing of the surrender based on serious humanitarian reasons lead to the release of the sought persons without taking alternative measures in order to prevent absconding, giving the fact that there are no national legal basis to take such measures in this type of situations.
Such famous jurists as H. Kelsen, J. Chevallier, Giorgio del Vecchio, A. Hauriou, Mircea Djuvara, François Rigaux, Ion Deleanu, Tudor Drăganu etc. expressed their views on the principles of the rule of law, which persisted for several centuries. The rule of law is never a perfect reality and no country can claim to have achieved perfection, because the rule of law is not obtained easily, it is the joint effort of the state authorities, civil society, and all the citizens. José Manuel Durão Barroso stated that "The rule of law is the cornerstone of the European Union, there is no true democracy without the rule of law and without democracy the rule of law is just an instrument in the hand of the rulers". While the European Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding stated that "In parallel to the economic and financial crisis, we also have been confronted on several occasions with a true "rule of law" crisis. At the beginning of April 2014, in Innsbruck (Austria), was held the academic conference entitled "Strengthening the rule of law in Europe - from a common concept to mechanisms of implementation". On April 21, 2014, the European Parliament noted, according to Article 49 of the EU Treaty, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia, as any European country can apply to become a member of the European Union, given that they realize the principles of democracy, the fundamentals of freedom, human and minority rights and ensure the rule of law. Thus, achieving the rule of law in Moldova was and will be a permanent and current task in the coming years.
Political behavior research starts from the assumption that democracy cannot function properly without citizens' political involvement. In general, studies of political activism aim to understand democratic processes, focusing on the nature of the relationship between citizens and public authorities. Despite a relatively large number of studies devoted to this research topic, many controversies remain regarding political participation in contemporary democracies. What is the optimal level of political engagement in a democracy and the consequences, how do citizens get involved in political processes, and what factors best explain the differences between participants and non-participants, respectively? These questions guide the study of the relationship between political participation and democracy in the present book.
In: Analele Universității București: Annals of the University of Bucharest = Les Annales de l'Université de Bucarest. Științe politice = Political science series = Série Sciences politiques, Band 10, S. 87-101
During the first half of the 19th century, social public care was organized along two directions: commitment of professional beggars, without a family, in specialized institutions, and home assistance of beggars with families (by a monthly pension and by an annual change of clothes). The article relies on archive documents, such as potential beneficiaries' help requests, administrative documents issued by the authorities, lists of help beneficiaries, inquiries, etc. It presents aspects related to the practical functioning of the social assistance: types of beneficiaries, pension distribution procedures, abuses and frauds. The legal limitations of the administrative rigidity of the pension system were strictly defined, even before the assessment of the real needs in society. This is the reason the efficiency of the pension system was lower than expected both by the authorities and the beneficiaries.
This article discusses the case of Ion Grigorescu, and of his ambiguous relationship with the communist regime, which he registered through a form of "documentary realism". Through his "realgrams" Grigorescu documented real life experiences in an innovatory approach to the majority of Romanian artists of the time using photographs of his everyday environment, and being inspired by his social and political context. Grigorescu is thus an artist committed to the public space and assuming a critical stance without it being discursive, pedant or moralizing. The approach of this study is descriptive, based on the artists' artworks and self-descriptions, and seeking to situate Grigorescu's approach in the context of the communist regime and its transformation after 1990 into a democratic regime. The conclusions show that Grigorescu's artworks are anti-system, criticizing any establishment, no matter in which regime he finds himself. His contestation is specific to a committed artist that chooses to express his freedom of expression beyond his own studio.
The purpose of the monograph is to investigate the territorial organization of the local collectivities of the Republic of Moldova based on the paradigm of the territorial organization of the public power. The monograph aim is the reconfiguration of the framework for the analysis of the phenomenon of the territorial organization of local power by deliberately opting for the territorial organization approach of the public power from the perspective of social sciences, in general, and of political science, in particular, as well as the rigors imposed by the principles of the contemporary democracies relative to the realities of the Republic of Moldova. The fundamental idea of the monograph is that the existing territorial organization of the local power, being established without taking into account the needs and interests of the local collectivities, does not provide the premises for the development of the society, in general, and of the local collectivities, in particular. Identification and implementation of an optimal territorial organization system of the local power will create the necessary conditions for the affirmation of the local democracy and ensure the prosperous development of the Republic of Moldova.
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.
This article examines the influence of the soft power on the process of ensuring the national interests of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Moldova. The author determines soft power as an important mean of securing national interests, an essential component of the process of realizing relations between states, deducting that soft power contributes to the foundation and promotion of national interests, the consolidation of stability, of order and peace and the creation of a positive image of the state on the international arena. Taking into consideration that the concept of soft power has developed, gaining a legal foundation in the Russian Federation quite recently, the importance of research on the subject is growing to follow how this concept has been defined and how its own action plan is developed and materialized without adapting the Western templates to Russian realities. The research of the soft power role in promoting the national interests of the Republic of Moldova stems from the fact that our state requires a clarification of the foreign policy objectives and their means of realization, a determination of the role of soft power, its specificity and its efficiency in the transmission of values by a democratic and modern state to other actors of the international process.
Our study, as we intend it, upon the vulnerability when confronted with death and death rate is structured as a research which is closed to classical historical demography but without neglecting the particularities and individualities of this phenomenon. We are interested both in the general tendencies and in the specific ones. This being our intention, we will try to catch both the phenomenon of regional mortality and the event of death in the many families we have studied during this research work. The profound economic crisis of this period in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy together with the epidemics (we have in view especially the 1872-1873 cholera and its prolongation) exercise a strong demographic pressure that brings to our attention mainly the vulnerability of these communities. Towards the end of the analyzed period we can notice a certain decrease in the rate of mortality in the two counties, values that are close to the average ones in the counties of Transylvania. These tendencies may be caused by the remarkable progress in the field of medical assistance, progress that indicates more and more rare strong zones of high mortality. The diminishing of the death rate in the two counties was due to a clear progress recorded by the urban communities of Oradea and Satu Mare.
The Church-State relationships in EU Member States are in a process of a radical transformation. This is the result of a rapid political integration and also of the major transformations of the modernity. Religion is still part of the European public space even if, according to modernity premises, it should be only a private matter. According to Max Weber and other authors, secularization diminishes the role of the religion in society. However, these theories are being contested in recent years, due to the interpretation of statistical data and to the emergence of fundamentalist religious movements spreading around the world. Consequently, secularization is a tendency and not an "iron law". As regards the current role of the religion, Silvio Ferrari developed the theory according to which there is a common European model. This model does not exist yet, but certainly we live in an era defined by the continuous searching of such a model. There is no European identity without common values. Some of these values, like toleration, do have a profound religious foundation. European integration is based on the action of different actors, including interest groups located in Brussels. The Churches and the religious organizations are also part of this category of actors and they try to be part of a process by which a common space for consultation will emerge.
The theoretical and pragmatic potential of the constitutional regulations and the comparative analysis of the peculiarities related to the normative fixing and the ways of implementing the local public power in the CIS countries, which have a common historical past and similar trends on building national sovereign states, can serve as a confirmation of the institutionalization and the need for a specific form of public power called local power in a democratic society. The rationale for recognizing the local autonomy in the constitutions of the states is determined by the following circumstance, namely, the recognition of the local autonomy principle in the fundamental law of the states constitutes a guarantee that it will be developed and deepened into the national law. Without such a constitutional basis, the local autonomy cannot be successful. From this perspective, it is important to conduct a comparative study of the constitutional texts of the states because the national legislative systems governing this phenomenon are designed under the constitutional provisions. The modalities of placing the local power in the supreme laws differ from state to state. The comparative study of the constitutional texts was carried out based on the following criteria: a) the inclusion and ensuring the local autonomy in the constitutional text; b) the interpretation of the concept of local autonomy in the constitutional text; and c) the approach and recognition of local autonomy.
In the conservative imaginary, at least in the cases of Constantin N. Brăiloiu and Alexandru N. Lahovary, France was not deemed a functioning political model (i.e., a political or constitutional regime) that Romania should have followed. Compared with the English political model (or rather with the Anglo-Saxon one, since the reference sometimes included the United States of America) and with the Belgian regime, France was certainly a less favoured option. However, without exception and despite all discursive artifice, in the perspective of these two politicians, who were evidently Francophile, both by education and by cultural affinities, France undeniably remained a landmark of civilization or administrative and economic efficiency, and sometimes a beacon of legal inspiration. It must be said that the latter perception was in no way related to Constantin N. Brăiloiu and Alexandru N. Lahovary's conservative convictions. It was commonplace in the local cultural imaginary, which, regardless of one's political, social or cultural affiliation, repeated the encomiastic mantra dedicated to imperial France, to whom the Romanians were convinced that they owed the existence of their nation. In fact, one should not overlook another typical belief of this political imaginary, which is illustrated in our case by Alexandru N. Lahovary: the Romanian politicians were persuaded that the ideals included in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen were exclusively due to the France of 1789.
Any reflection on the relationship between religion and politics in the Catholic thought cannot do without reminding the Augustinian distinction between the civitas Dei and civitas terrena. The goal and foundation of any just political community should be the orientation to wards the common good. In the contemporary catholic thought, Johann Baptist Metz proposes a political theology revolving around the concepts of the value of the human person, the necessary refusal, on the part of the Church, of any mundane ideology and the necessary use of the socially critical potential of theological thought. Hans Küng criticizes any politicization of theology. He insists on the development of an internal pluralism within the Church and advocates a self-limitation of the magisterial intervention in the world in the name of a necessary "eschato logical reserve". Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict the XVIth , invested with the magisterial authority, relies heavily on official documents of the Catholic social doctrine. He emphasizes the necessity of founding the state on the central value of justice and its acting according to the principle of subsidiarity. In this context, the Christian faith and the Church in particular may have a pedagogical role, as it may guide reason to follow the right priorities. All three thinkers agree on the public significance of the Christian vision of society and on the fact that it may help society both by its critical and by its constructive dimension.
The positive, unifying ideological resources of liberal and progressive Islamic interpretations deserve more than ever to be exploited in the contemporary socio-political context. Their conceptual tools, principles and theses could solve the conflictual cleavage, politically manipulated, between Islam and Western modernity, without repudiating the references to an Islamic paradigm. Therefore, liberal and progressive Islamic understandings could avoid the recent superficial oscillation between two ideological -artificially constructed- extremes, namely either confining the discussions to the secular, colonialist or postcolonialist perspectives, or promoting the defensive opportunist neotraditionalist Islamic approaches, specific to the nationalist movements of the last century so-called Islamic revival. Liberal Islam does not fully adopt all liberal theses and does not obediently imitate Western philosophy. Liberal Islamic understandings are defined by the opposition against teocracy and by supporting the democracy. Women, minorities and non-Muslims' rights in Muslim-majority countries, freedom of thought and trust in human progress, are other essential tenets that are fundamented on contemporary understandings of the major Islamic sources. Trying to correct some excesses that the liberal Muslims were accused of, but maintaining the reformist tendencies, progressive Muslims' approach is centered on a "multiple critiqueˮ ‒ a simultaneous critique of the diverse discourses and communities in which Muslims are situated. Not only the authoritarian constructions of literalist, puritanist Muslims, the violation of human rights, freedom of expression and of religion, the oppression of women in some Muslim countries are condemned and deconstructed, but also some political, economic, intellectual hegemonic Western aspects of modernity. In Romania these contemporary tendencies of interpreting Islam are not yet represented at a community level.