Journal articles on the topic 'Representative government and representation – Europe, Western'

THE POLISH REASON OF STATE AND THE LEGALIZATION OF THE MAY 1926 COUP D’ÉTAT BY JÓZEF PIŁSUDSKI Having unconstitutionally seized power in the military coup of May 1926, Józef Piłsudski lacked an immediate legal framework that legitimized his rule. This crisis of state not only raised the specter of civil war, but also raised doubts among the countries of Western Europe that Poland could continue as a bulwark of Western civilization and a barrier against Russia. In these circumstances, Józef Piłsudski launched a wide-ranging campaign that included high-ranking government ministers to convince the people of Poland and Western European governments of the legality of the new regime. The campaign was broadly successful. Having rejected the possibility of direct dictatorship in favor of representative government, Józef Piłsudski recognized the marshal of the Parliament, Maciej Rataj, as the interim president of Poland, rejected the idea of imposing military commissioners, and worked with Parliament to establish a new government, at the head of which sat Prime Minister Kazimierz Bartel. Józef Piłsudski himself assumed the portfolio of minister of military affairs after rejecting the National Assembly’s efforts to elect him president. All these steps convinced Polish society and many foreign governments that the regime established as a result of the coup of 1926 was legitimate.

An analysis of the motivations behind the present revival of referendum ballots in liberal democracies shows that referendums launched by governments, often politically motivated, and those launched by popular initiatives are linked to a demand for new legislation, and both illustrate the crisis of representative governments that is currently affecting these democracies. The pursuit of the increase of referendums will depend however on whether popular initiatives will or will not be introduced in the Constitutions of countries, since the great majority do not provide for it. In spite of similarities between the present political situation in Western Europe and the contexts in which popular initiatives were introduced in some countries, there is no serious ground to predict that such institutional reforms will take place in the near future. The directness of democracy is maybe more likely to increase under the effect not of referendums, but of other factors like the growing interference of polls, or the decline of intermediaries, especially parties, in the daily practice of government.

The Anyoto leopard-men, a society from eastern Congo, operated between approximately 1890 and 1935. Until now the history of the leopard-men has inspired representations of Central Africa as a barbaric and disorderly place, and the idea that a secret association of men attacked innocent people and ate their limbs remains dominant in western culture. Since the early 20th century this image has been rather faithfully perpetuated in colonial ethnography and official reports and in popular representations of Africa. The Anyoto costumes in the collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa have in particular inspired leopard-men iconography in western sources until today. There are certain striking similarities between western fictional literature on the Anyoto society and the factual sources, such as eyewitness reports from colonists and missionaries. Both share the historically rooted and culturally-specific representation of people from outside their own areas. In Europe there has been a long tradition of representing heathens and non-Europeans as being half man, half beast and behaving like animals, including eating their own species. Such cultural predispositions have stood in the way of understanding the real purposes of this society. Anyoto men’s activities were a way of maintaining local power relations, performing indigenous justice in secret and circumventing colonial government control.

Precedents in European Union member states for the negative referenda in France and The Netherlands on the Constitution for Europe. Evolution of the investiture of the Commission: parallel with France under Third and Fourth Republic. Double headed executive (President of the European Council and President of the Commission) and ‘double hats’ (Union Minister for Foreign Affairs) in line of the European constitutional tradition. The unborn ‘Legislative Council’ and its Austrian and German counterparts. The aborted ‘Congress of the Peoples of Europe’: forum for ‘State of the Union’ speech, not a electoral body. Protection of minority rights in the Constitution for Europe due to insistence of the Hungarian government; foreign to the dominant Western constitutional concepts. Representative democracy and the formal concept of law: European Laws and Framework Laws as ‘Acts of Parliament’. Strict limits on the possibility to delegate legislation: German, Italian, French roots. European Laws and Regulations: unachieved hierarchy and French precedent. Judiciary as a relative minor branch of government as in the British and French traditions. No German Verfassungsbeschwerde or Spanish recurso de amparo, but probably more annulment procedures and preliminary questions on legality and constitutionality than before. Parallels with German federal concepts: Union Law über Alles; no rigid Kompetenzkatolog and joint competences; distribution of competences not limited to law-making. More than lip service to decentralisation. Constitutional ping-pong and intertwined constitutionalism: territories d'outre- mer and outermost regions.

The US government established contact in Western Europe with anti-Communist refugees following World War II and covertly supported a variety of groups. Initially in the 1940s cooperation between the OSS/CIA and émigré groups provided support for the parachuting of couriers to contact underground organizations in ethnic homelands and over the next four decades until the late 1980s through support for non-violent methods against Soviet power. One of the organisations supported by the US government was Prolog Research and Publishing Corporation that existed from 1952 to 1992. Prolog was established by zpUHVR (external representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council), the political umbrella of Ukrainian nationalist, anti-Soviet partisans who fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet state until the early 1950s. US government support facilitated a democratic alternative to nationalist émigrés who dominated the Ukrainian diaspora as well as a different strategy towards the pursuit of the liberation of Ukraine. Prolog proved to be more successful in its liberation strategy of providing large volumes of technical, publishing and financial support to dissidents and opposition currents within the Communist Party of Ukraine. The alternative nationalist strategy of building underground structures in Soviet Ukraine routinely came under threat from infiltration by the KGB. US government support enabled Prolog to publish books and journals, including the only Russian-language journal published by a Ukrainian émigré organization, across the political spectrum and to closely work with opposition movements in central-eastern Europe, especially Poland.

Jean Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian religion, wrote that ‘there is a twofold government of man; one aspect is spiritual…the second is political…. There are in man, so to speak, two worlds, over which different kings and different laws have authority’. He emphasised this further by stating that ‘we must keep in mind that distinction which we previously laid down so that we do not (as commonly happens) unwisely mingle these two, which have a completely different nature’. The idea of the separation of spiritual and temporal jurisdictions was, of course, no post-Reformation innovation but had been a theme over centuries of conflict between popes and secular princes throughout Europe. With the fragmentation of western Christendom in the sixteenth century, the issue came to prominence within individual states, not least Scotland. As early as 1559, during the civil war which led to the Reformation, a letter to the regent, Mary of Guise, from ‘the professouris of Christis ewangell’ mentioned two ‘kingdomes’. It asserted that there was ‘ane kingdome temporall’ and ‘Christis kingdome’, the Kirk, and that the former ought to be ruled by ‘mortell men’ and the latter by Christ alone. The regent was described as ‘ane servand and na quein havand na preheminence nor authoritie above the kyrk’.

The Republic of Korea (Korea hereinafter) has been widely regarded as one of the most vigorous and analytically interesting third-wave democracies (Diamond and Shin, 2000: 1). During the first decade of democratic rule, Korea has successfully carried out a large number of electoral and other reforms to transform the institutions and procedures of military-authoritarian rule into those of a representative democracy. Unlike many of its counterparts in Latin America and elsewhere, Korea has fully restored civilian rule by extricating the military from power. As is the case in established democracies of North America and Western Europe, free and competitive elections have been regularly held at all the different levels of the government. In the most recent presidential election, held in December 1997, Korea also established itself as a mature electoral democracy by elevating an opposition party to political power. In Korea today, there is general agreement that electoral politics has become the only possible political game in town.

The article analyzes the provisions of regulatory legal acts that ensure the enforcement of women's rights in Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, etc. The paper shows the effectiveness of the Northern European approach to overcoming obstacles to gender equality through the establishment of special state agencies and government authorities. As generally recognized leaders in the field of women's rights this group of states effectively implements national mechanisms of gender equality. It is worth remembering that progress in achieving gender equality in Western countries is due to the intensity of the women's movement itself and the growth of women's representation in governments, parliaments and public organizations. Besides we should mention a broad anti-discrimination legislative framework and a system of state agencies implementing gender equality strategies in Europe. The systematic development of the concepts of equal opportunities has allowed women in these countries to take a secure place in the labor market on equal terms with men. The article shows that gender equality can be defined to a certain extent as a kind of "sameness" of men and women. However, this sameness should not be equated with identity. Alas, it is impossible to equate a woman and a man, at least the reason for this is mental and physiological differences, plus the obvious difference in their biological functions. It has proved that despite numerous benefits, women continue to face various forms of discrimination. Finally, as the experience of Western countries shows, to achieve equality de facto it is necessary to significantly increase the activity of women themselves, civil society institutions, to strengthen the role of state authorities in the implementation of true gender equality.

The article makes focus on the rise of Western Europe’s far-right parties which act with anti-immigrant agenda amid 2010s European migrant crisis. Massive influxes of refugees and migrants have accumulated huge political significance and triggered off a wide range of conflicts (both on international and national levels). The migrant crisis has indicated many social-political challenges for European countries. The crisis has been synchronous with a rise of popularity of right populist political movements (old ones as well as new ones), which promote restrictions of immigration etc. At the same time it cannot be ignored that West European right-wing populist political movements achieved some success in previous decades, well ahead of the current migrant crisis. Immigration issue has been a centerpiece of political discourses of West European right-wing parties (National Front in France, for instance) since late 1970s – early 1980s. But it is quite obvious that the 2010s migrant crisis became a trigger for revitalization of the far-right movements which are outspoken critics of the European Union as “a supra- national body” dictating its conditions to the member countries. Besides, the crisis gave a boost to a rise of new populist movements (for example, “Alternative for Germany”). In 2017 the populist right-wing parties in Europe won the largest support over the three past decades. Recently the right populist forces appeared in elections in a number of European countries (Germany, Austria, France etc.) as tough competitor of traditional mainstream political parties and won parliamentary representation and/or representation in the government coalitions. Furthermore, these movements demonstrate attempts to change their image to shift to political mainstream. However, in the foreseeable future, any cardinal breakthrough and far-right anti- immigrant parties’ coming to the power in Western Europe’s coutrnies is hardly possible.

The Global Trust Inventory (GTI), conceptually assessing trust in others ranging from close interpersonal relationships to relationships with government and financial institutions as a whole, was administered to representative online samples in 11 democratic states ( N = 11,917 from Europe, the Americas, and New Zealand). A seven-factor solution had configural, metric, and reasonable scalar invariance in multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. Using latent profile analysis, individual-level measures of trust were derived that complement existing measures of social capital in their impact and implications. Western societies had proportionately more people with high propensity to trust, Catholic/European intermediate, and Latin American societies the least. A High Trust Profile had virtues associated with social capital: greater participation in political discussion, greater elaboration of political thinking, more community engagement, less prejudice, and greater participation in elections. A Low Trust Profile exhibited opposite tendencies. Demographically, high trust was associated with higher self-reported social status, home ownership, older age, and political conservatism. A more complex set of relationships differentiated two intermediate profiles, dubbed Moderate and Low Institutional Trust. Conceptually, the GTI operationalizes a holistic view of trust as a “synthetic force” that holds various aspects of society together, ranging from interpersonal to institutionalized relationships.

This article seeks to contribute to the burgeoning literature on how parties assign salience to their issue stances. With regard to European integration, recent research has pointed not only to growing public Euro-scepticism but also to an increase in the importance that the public assigns to European issues. But are parties matching this shift with appropriate salience shifts of their own? The existing literature points to important constraints on parties achieving such salience representation that arise from the nature of inherited issue ownership and the nature of political cleavages. There are also reasons to expect important differences between Western European and Central European parties in the extent to which such constraints apply. We investigate these issues using data from expert surveys conducted in twenty-four European countries at two time points, 2007–2008 and 2013, that provide measures of the salience of European integration to parties along with other indicators that are used as predictors of salience. The results do not suggest that CEE parties assign salience in ways that differ substantially from their counterparts in Western Europe. What matters most in both regions is the position that parties adopt on the issues, with parties at the extremes on the European dimension being the ones to make the issue most salient in their appeals. We also note that some predicted determinants of issue salience, such as government status, electoral support and time spent in office, and party organization, are dogs that do not bark in both regions.

This study is devoted to psychologically mediating the social structuring of health. According to theoretical views, which have not yet received a convincing justification, the decline in the social status of an individual is accompanied by the loss of the psychological resources necessary to overcome the difficulties of life and the stresses caused by them, which leads to deteriorating health in the lower social strata. The verification of this assumption was carried out using data from the European Social Survey — representative surveys of the population of 27 countries conducted in 2012–2013. Studying indirect psychological effects has demonstrated that in many of these countries such a psychological characteristic as self-efficacy is indeed a mediator of the social structuring of health, especially prominent in many post-communist societies, but not in the most developed western countries where mediating effects turned out to be weak or completely absent. A two-level analysis of psychological mediation, depending on the factors of the economic well-being of countries, the development of a social state and cultural identity, does not support the assumption of the importance of an individualistic culture for the manifestation of mediation, and convincingly demonstrates that indirect effects are related to the social and economic context. In countries with a strong economy and social state, the distribution of psychological resources is barely related to the social structure — the relative well-being of the lower social strata, due to the developed system of state social guarantees, allows for many of them to maintain self-respect and optimism. Psychological resources, the distribution of which does not reflect social stratification, lose the role of a mediator. In the less developed part of Europe, where the lower strata cannot rely on comprehensive government assistance, the hardships of life and the stresses they generate lead to a loss of faith in themselves and in the possibility of changes for the better among people with low status, resulting in psychological resources acting as a mediator of health social structuring.

This article outlines the results of study among main migrant groups of Cabo Verde, nationals of Africa. Ethnographic expedition for studying contemporary ethnic processes worked on the archipelago in December 2019 - January 2020. A comprehensive research method was used, along with examination of written and statistical sources. Interviews with informants and experts and mass-survey of African migrants using representative sample was carried out.It turned out that before XX century there were no African migrants on the archipelago, and up to 98-99% of the population were Cabo Verdeans(creole) - descendants of African slaves that were brought on the islands up to the middle of XIX century. Modern migration from African countries started only in the beginning of XXI century, but migrants viewed Cabo Verde as a staging point for further resettling into Western Europe and Northern America. In 2010, total number of African settlers achieved 10 thousand people. In the mid-2010s, government passed new laws that heavily restricted migration and the stream of new people from Africa drastically declined. Now African immigrants make up less than 2% of the total population. This study allowed to find out the age and gender composition of immigrants, language processes, degree of adaptation to local culture, social and educational level of migrants, the degree of development of integration and assimilatory processes and other questions allowing to draw conclusion about the subsequent development of immigrant groups in the country.

Romanticism is often misunderstood as something genuine love and merely about romance. In fact, romanticism is an understanding of great ideas that also be delivered great ideas. The development of Romanticism delivered a new orientation that called National Romanticism by maintaining the freedom of individual, sovereignty, and independent of human rights. This study took data from three Walt Whitman poems; Patriotic, War Democracy, and Poem of America. Researcher was using the concept of interpretation to explore the meaning of poetry and the influence of romanticism in Whitman poetry. Researchers use Isaiah's theory in his book “the root of romanticism” to explore the influence of the romanticism idea on Whitman's poems. From the three samples of poetry, it is found that romanticism is very influential in Whitman poetry, especially the idea of romantic nationalism. Patriotic themes, nationalities and egalitarian concepts are reflected in Whitman's collection of "Leaves of grass" poems. Patriotic themes and nationalities are seen from the struggle for the right of individual freedom in opposing slavery and aristocratic government. The egalitarian concept is seen from the struggle to promote equality, as well as the democracy system that promotes people's sovereignty. The role of the idea of romanticism has evolved in American territory because it shares the same pattern and state of affairs as revolutions against noble, social, and political norms and rationalization of nature. Thus, the representation of romantic ideas originating from Western Europe of the 18th century has penetrated into the 19th century America which is reflected in the works that carried Whitman.

The cinemas of Arab and Muslim societies encompass a substantial number of film genres produced locally or in the diaspora. Arab and Muslim filmmakers experiment with different cinematic narratives, styles, and hybrid forms: auteur, documentary, diasporic, migrant, Third Cinema, and transnational productions. Their richness, diverse thematic foci, creative stylistic characteristics, and ability to reach global audiences recently motivated film scholars and other academics in Europe and the United States to consider designating a category called “Muslim Cinema” and defining its contours. The influence of these rich cinemas in contesting Hollywood’s demonization of Muslims, the conflation of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam, and the proliferation of anti-Muslim racism in Western discourse, however, remains very limited. Therefore, this article argues that the idea of such a category, if one were to be created, should explore venues to address Hollywood’s evolving forms of racializing Muslims and their relationship with the current institutionalization of anti-Muslim racism in the United States. Through a brief survey of Hollywood’s contemporary productions about Muslims, this article analyzes the impact of moving images on representation, particularly the fossilized characterization of Muslims as evil, and identifies three areas in American cinema and political discourse that could belong to this category: the first is Hollywood’s uninterrupted flow of making essentializing and essentialized narratives that conflate Arabs, Muslims, and Islam, and normalizes violence against them; the second deals with the transition from Islamophobia to anti-Muslim racism and explains its sanctioning by the US government; the third addresses the morphing of Islam into a race.

The article presents a cultural and political analysis of the activities of the Belgrade International Theater Festival (BITEF) - a significant theatrical, general cultural and social phenomenon in Serbia, the Balkans / South-Eastern Europe, and throughout Europe as a whole. Before the collapse of the SFRY (1991-1992), being the official showcase of self-government socialism, the festival was at the same time one of the most representative shows of new theatrical trends in Europe. It was attended by troupes from the countries of the East and West - Western and Eastern Europe, the USSR, the USA, Latin America, China, Japan. Not being by definition a festival of political theater, thanks to the moral and civic position of its founders and leaders M. Trailovich and Y. Chirilov, BITEF has become a space of aesthetic and social free-thinking in the SFRY and in neighbouring socialist countries. The organizers of BITEF found an opportunity to provide a platform for theatrical «dissidents» with their performances dedicated to rethinking modernity and the recent past in any genre. During the existence of the FRY (1992-2003), BITEF became an annual cultural manifestation in opposition to the regimes in power in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with their ideology of chauvinism and isolation from the outside world. At this time, the compilers of the festival programs began to attach special importance to performances of a political and social orientation. Many theaters from Serbia, as well as from the former neighbours of the Yugoslavian federation, and now the newly independent states, in their productions offered not so much a political, as a moral and ideological alternative to ethnic nationalism, militarism and political intolerance. Since 2006, in the independent Republic of Serbia, BITEF has strived not only to revive the traditions of Serbian theater, but also to preserve the best traditions of the theatrical art of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, placing them in the context of the common European and global development of theater and culture, ideology and philosophy, literature, aesthetics, ethics. In principle opposing nationalism and militarism from the standpoint of humanism, BITEF plays an outstanding role in shaping public attitudes in Serbia, in weakening and overcoming conflicts, in normalizing relations between the peoples of the disintegrated Yugoslavia, in creating an atmosphere of freedom and tolerance.

The article deals with the views of the largest Russian Slavist Vladimir Ivanovich Lamansky (1833–1914) on the Eastern Question. Both his published works and manuscripts are used as sources. It is noted that Lamansky, on the base of the ideas of Slavophiles, formulated an original civilizational and political-geographical doctrine, which was developed in the concept of Eurasians. It is pointed out that the specific feature of Lamansky’s approach was a broad philosophical-historical and global-historical view at the Eastern Question. He showed that the significance of the Oriental Question was not limited to the rivalry with Turkey, liberation of the Southern Slavs, capture of Constantinople, and control over the Straits. According to Lamansky, the Eastern Question is an issue of civilizational rifts in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor that lead to the confrontation of two civilizational worlds: the Germanic-Romanic and the Greco-Slavic or the Middle World. The main boundaries of Greco-Slavic civilisation coincide with the borders of the Russian Empire, but the western boundary of this distinctive world remains unstable. Its definition constitutes the main content of the Eastern Question. The political configuration of the Greco-Slavic civilisation corresponds best to the idea of a unified Christian Empire, allowing for different forms of government on different territories. However, the Russian state, as the largest representative of the Middle World, realized a different type of empire - a Europeanizing state, which does not correspond to its global-historical task. The Eastern Question, therefore, was aquestion issue of mutual relations between the Germanic-Romanic and the Middle Worlds. Lamansky argued that its solution could not be purely military. A favourable resolution of the Eastern Question for the Middle World would be a consequence of its successful internal development.

Self-reported data collected independently by the UK-based Control Group Cooperative between September 2021 and February 2022, inclusive, from a self-selected international COVID-19 “unvaccinated” population are discussed. Data come from a cohort of 18,497 participants who provided questionnaire responses monthly. The largest numbers are from Europe, North America, and Australasia. Data were skewed towards the 40-69y age range and included 60% female respondents. Reasons for avoiding COVID-19 “vaccines” were: a preference for natural medicine, distrust of pharma, distrust of government information, poor/limited trial data, and fear of long-term adverse reactions. During the survey period, the greatest incidence of COVID-19 disease was reported in the 50-69y range, peaking at 12.3%, in January 2022. Persons at 70y and above were least affected (1.3%), with 10.7% and 3.8% in the 20 to 49y band, and in the 1 to 19y group, respectively. Most rated their symptoms as “mild” (14.4%), with 2% reporting “severe” disease. Fatigue, cough, muscle/body aches, and fever were the four most common. Just 0.4% of the cohort reported hospitalization (as in- or out-patients). Nearly two-thirds reported taking vitamin D, C, zinc, quercetin, or a combination, for prevention, with 71% using vitamin D, C, and zinc for treatment. Nearly 45% reported “moderate” to “severe” mental health issues (depression) during the survey period. Menstrual abnormalities were reported by 36% of women in the 20-49y age band. Reported job losses were greatest in Australia and New Zealand at 29%, followed by 13% in North America. Between 20% and 50% reported being personal targets of hate because of their vaccination status. Between 57% and 61% of respondents in Southern Europe and Western Europe, Australia/New Zealand and South America, reported being targets of governmental victimization. The cohort may not be representative of wider populations given its reliance on self-care. The findings suggest that opting out of the world’s largest medical experiment, relying on natural immunity, self-care with supplements, and/or ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, appeared to contribute to low incidences of severe disease, hospitalization, or death. The results imply the urgent need for prospective studies of “unvaccinated”, “partially vaccinated”, and “fully vaccinated” persons investigating long-term outcomes, behaviors, choices, and discriminatory responses by the state, institutions, or employers based on “vaccination” status. Public dialogue about the touted “safety and effectiveness” of vaccines, contrasted with strategies to enhance immune resilience, all in the context of authoritarianism versus autonomy, self-care, personal responsibility, and freedom of choice is needed.

In the geopolitical area of Eastern and Central Europe 20th century was a period of unwilling and un- planned migration of huge numbers of individuals, groups of people, societies or even whole nations, and the displace- ment of borders and states. Two destructive wars, two totalitarian systems fighting against each other forced millions of human beings to change the place of living. Especially the experience of the World War II settled the fate of many people in the region and caused several waves of political emigration. The author uses the term ‘old literature’ in broad sense, including also 19th century literary output, as for the big number of young researchers this period of history seems to be a very old one. Among the Polish refugees fleeing the country in various times and circumstances there were also politicians, soldiers, artist, writers, people of culture and scholars. The article presents and reminds of some Polish researchers of literature who had to change their country of living by political reasons, but did not abandon their research. The first group of emigrants formed those who left Poland short before or during the world war II. Some of them worked as professors at west European universities, an decided not to returned into the country occupied by Germans or emigrated with Polish Government, others get in Western Europe leaving Soviet Union with the Polish army formed by general Anders. They continued scholar work abroad and took part in formation of several new generations of researchers in Slavonic litera- ture. Another wave of emigration took place after the war, in late 40. and included mainly Polish citizens of Jewish origin who in spite of surviving the holocaust and returning home decided to leave Poland for fear of communism. A numerous emigration of Polish Jews was also provoked by communist government of Poland in march 1968. The author presents briefly the silhouettes of such scholars as Stanisław Kot, Wacław Lednicki, Józef Trypućko, Wiktor Weintraub, Jadwiga Maurer, Rachmiel Brandwajn and Jan Kott. The situation of 20th century Polish emigrants seems very similar to that of 19th and also represents the common experience of many Eastern and Central European countries and societies. Losing the homeland scholars of these countries also lost the close contact with their cultural roots, but on the other hand they gained a wider glance, distanced outlook of national literature and art and common platform of dialog and confrontation. Many times the foreign Universities, where they found the possibility to provide their research and meet the representative émigrés of other nations, became for them such places as Collège de France for Adam Mickiewicz and constitute the space where they all could meet together without mutual distrust and give lectures about Slavonic literature and culture for German, British of American students, inspiring them to pursue studies in Slavonic philology.

Within the framework of this publication, an attempt is made to show the strategies and structuresof the state policy of gender equality in the countries of Western Europe. The study is mainly based on ahermeneutic analysis of the normative acts of European states, which fix the main conceptual approachesto ensuring gender equality. It is the European experience of public policy, according to the authors, that isclearly visible through the system of constituent acts.The authors emphasize that the reasons for the effective development and implementation of genderequality policies in Europe lie in historical and economic conditions, and also depend on political, culturaland legal traditions. It has been established that success in the implementation of gender equality policiesin Western countries is due to the activity of the women’s socio-political movement itself and the growthof women’s representation in governments, parliaments and public organizations. To this should be addeda broad anti-discrimination legislative framework and a system of state bodies implementing strategies forgender equality in Europe.

Berlin was the location in which most of the intelligence operations in Europe have taken place in the first twenty years of the conquest and the Cold War. In November 27, 1958, Khrushchev issued a formal letter to the Allies, demanding that the western Allies evacuate Berlin and enable the establishment of an independent political unit, a free city. He threatened that if the West would not comply with this, the soviets would hand over to the East Germany’s government the control over the roads to Berlin. In the coming months Moscow conducted a war of nerves as the last date of the end of the ultimatum, May 27, 1959, came close. Finally the Soviets retreated as a result of the determination of the West. This event reconfirmed the claims of the West that “the US, Britain and France have legal rights to stay in Berlin.” According to Halle: “These rights derive from the fact that Germany surrendered as a result of our common struggle against Nazi Germany.” (Note 2) The Russians have done many attempts to change Berlin’s status. In 1961 Berlin Wall was constructed, almost without response on the part of the West, and by so doing, the Soviets perpetuated the status quo that had been since 1948. In July 25, 1961 Kennedy addressed the Americans on television, saying that “West Berlin is not as it had ever been, the location of the biggest test of the courage and the will power of the West.” (Note 3) On June 26, 1963, Kennedy went out to Berlin, which was divided by the wall, torn between east and west, in order to announce his message. In his speech outside the city council of West Berlin, Kennedy won the hearts of the Berliners as well as those of the world when he said: “Ich bin ein Berliner”, I’m a Berliner. The sixties were years of heating of the conflict with the Soviet Block. In 1961 the Berlin Wall was constructed. Then Kennedy came into power, there was the movement for human rights and the political tension between whites and blacks in America. The conflict increase as the Korean War started, and afterwards when America intervened in Vietnam. There was also the crisis in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, which almost pushed the whole world into a nuclear war and catastrophe. During the 28 years of the Berlin Wall, 13.8.61-9.11.89, this was notorious as an example of a political border that marked the seclusion and freezing more than freedom of movement, communication and change. At the same time there was the most obvious sign of the division of Germany after WWII and the division of Europe to East and West by the Iron Curtain. The wall was the background of stories by writers from east and west. The writers of espionage thrillers were fascinated by the global conflict between east and west and the Cold War with Berlin as the setting of the divided city. Berlin presented a permanent conflict that was perceived as endless, or as Mews defined it: “Berlin is perfect, a romantic past, tragic present, secluded in the heart of East Germany.” (Note 4) The city presented the writers with a situation that demanded a reassessment of the genres and the ideological and aesthetic perceptions of this type of writing. This was the reason that the genre of espionage books blossomed in the sixties, mainly those with the wall. The wall was not just a symbol of a political failure, as East Germany could not stop the flow of people escaping from it. The city was ugly, dirty, and full of wires and lit by a yellow light, like a concentration camp. A West German policeman says: “If the Allies were not here, there would not have been a wall. He expressed the acknowledgment that the Western powers had also an interest in the wall as a tool for preventing the unification of Germany. But his colleague answers: If they were not here, the wall would not have been, but the same applies for Berlin. (Note 5) Berlin was the world capital of the Cold War. The wall threatened and created risks and was known as one of the big justifications for the mentality of the Cold War. The construction of the wall in August 1961 strengthened Berlin’s status as the frontline of the Cold War and as a political microcosmos, which reflected topographical as well as the ideological global struggle between east and west. It made Berlin a focus of interest, and this focus in turn caused an incentive for the espionage literature with the rise of neorealism with the anti-hero, as it also ended the era of romanticism. (Note 6) The works of le Carré and Deighton are the best examples of this change in literature. Both of them use the wall as the arena of events and a symbol in their works. Only at the end of the fifties, upon the final withdrawal of McCarthyism and the relative weakening of the Cold War, there started have to appear films with new images about the position and nature of the Germans and the representations of Nazism in the new history. The films of the Cold War presented the communists as enemies or saboteurs. Together with this view about the Soviets, developed the rehabilitation of the German image. Each part of the German society was rehabilitated and become a victim instead of an assistant of the Nazis. The critic Dwight MacDonald was impressed by the way in which the German population” has changed from a fearful assistant of one totalitarian regime to the hero opponent of another totalitarian regime”. (Note 7) This approach has to be examined, and how it influenced the development of the German representation, since many films I have investigated demonstrate a different approach of the German representation.

After the proclamation of martial law in Poland in December 1981, a Solidarność Coordinating Office Abroad was set up. Led by Jerzy Milewski, the organization eliminated any internal opposition and succeeded in being recognized by most Western partners as the foreign representative of Solidarność. The Coordinating Office received most of its financial aid from trade union internationals and from the United States. Initially, the Coordinating Office was active mainly within international institutions such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the International Labor Organization. From 1984 onward, the organization sought to influence senior politicians and governments and became an important reminder to the Western world of the Polish crisis, as well as providing financial and material aid to the banned Polish trade union. However, it did not have a definitive impact on policymaking and remained largely dependent on its allied organizations.

With the expanding representation of the regions and the emergence of new resources for the electoral struggle within political processes in the EU, the number of political parties is multiplying, and regionalist parties are no exception. Earlier most regionalisms had one historically established regionalist party as a representative (for example, SNP in Scotland or Sardinia Action Party in Sardinia). Now, however, the number of regionalist parties within the region may reach up to 10 or higher (Valley D'Aosta, Sardinia). That said, this trend is not obvious: in some cases, there is no fragmentation of regionalism, and regionalism is still represented by one party (for example, Bayernpartei in Bavaria). What is the reason behind the fragmentation of regionalist parties in some cases and absence of it in others? What are the conditions for the emergence of a "second" regionalist party? The research is devoted to answer these questions. Based on 24 cases of Western European regionalism, an attempt was made to explain the factors of regionalist parties fragmentation using the QCA methodology. The structural parameters of the institutional, identity and party orders were used as factors. The study found that structural factors do not directly determine the presence or absence of fragmentation of regionalist parties.

The ascendancy of proportional representation as the electoral system of choice, and pervasive concerns with the demographic representativeness of parliaments, both testify to the importance that is attached to ‘descriptive’ or ‘microcosmic’ representation in politics, despite persistent doubts about its desirability. This paper makes three points. First, representation as representativeness presupposes the existence of stable and meaningful social or political collectivities, which can be reflected in the composition of parliament, and this condition is undermined by the general trend towards individualization, which can be observed throughout Western Europe. Second, this trend necessitates a conceptualization of political representation not as a state, but as a dynamic relationship between the citizen and the representative. This relationship can be characterized both by its direction (from below or from above), and by the moment at which popular control is exercised (before or after the representative's period in office). Third, it is argued that both growing uncertainty about citizen preferences and the transformation of political parties into para-statal agencies push towards representation from above; and that both growing unpredictability of the political agenda and European integration push towards ex-post popular control. These developments call for greater attention to mechanisms of accountability in representative democracies.

Does their need for greater tax revenue force governments to democratize? Most research on contemporary democratization says little about the effects of taxation. Yet there are good reasons to believe that taxation led to representation in the past: representative government first came about in early modern Europe when monarchs were compelled to relinquish some of their authority to parliamentary institutions, in exchange for the ability to raise new taxes; similarly, the war for independence in the United States began as a rebellion against British taxes. Some scholars argue that a comparable process is occurring today: the need to raise taxes forces authoritarian governments to democratize. These claims have never been carefully tested. In this article, the ‘taxation leads to representation’ argument is explored and tested using pooled time-series cross-national data from 113 countries between 1971 and 1997. One version of the argument appears to be valid, while another does not. These findings are important both for scholars who wish to understand the causes of democracy, and for policy makers who wish to promote it.

Over the summer month of August 2008, Georgia launched a large-scale military offensive against South Ossetia in an attempt of reconquering the territory. Four years later, on October 1, 2012, Georgia is holding its first Parliamentary Elections after the conflict that caused so much harm. The Parliamentary Elections constitute the 7th legislative elections held since Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. It is however the first time for Georgia to elect an alternative party from the ruling party solely based on principle of democratic vote. The article examines the almost ten years of President Saakashvili’s Administration. During this decade, Saakashvili’s United National Movement government realized many positive works. Works like the successful reform of police forces and the determined force-back of corruption. These liberating works were all eagerly welcomed by Europe and other western nations. However, in the apparent loss of sense of reality towards the end of its reign, Georgia’s United National Movement government turned to dictating and ordering as a main style of governing. This in turn pushed citizens away from Saakashvili’s politics into voting for the opposition. Unforeseen by even the most experienced Southern Caucasus and Georgia experts, Georgia’s 2012 Parliamentary Elections gave way to the opposition coalition Georgian Dream to sweep to victory, leaving President Saakashvili to ceded defeat. Despite President Saakashvili’s statement that he would go into opposition there has not been a complete paradigm shift in Georgia’s domestic politics. With the Georgian Dream’s failure to gain a constitutional majority and questions over the ideological compatibility of the coalition – along with the fact that United National Movement still has the greatest representation in Parliament relative to the other parties, Saakashvili and his supporters keep hold to substantial political leverage. Also, Saakashvili will remain President until the October 2013 election. His opponent, Prime Minister Ivanishvili is expected to manifest himself, bringing in a less contentious, more pragmatic approach to relations with the country’s giant neighbour to the north. Overall, it can be said that Georgia’s unrivalled ballot-box transfer of power elevated the country to a category fundamentally higher in terms of democratic development than virtually all other post-Soviet states. This has been the more remarkable even since Georgia had been widely cited as an example case of a failed state, with a destroyed infrastructure and economy, dysfunctional state institutions and something approaching anarchy as its governance model. The impact of the ongoing reform of Georgia’s constitution and electoral law has lead to major shifts in Georgia’s political landscape. However, opinions vary as to whether the farsighted amendments made to the Georgian constitution on the initiative of the United National Movement are a genuine attempt to improve the country’s system of governance or that they rather are an effort by the incumbent president to cling on to power. The adoption of the amendments and the timing of their entry into force strongly suggest that the latter might be the case. Meanwhile, as a result of the changes to the Georgian constitution, a system of dual power has come in place. These and other factors suggest that Georgia’s political landscape is set to become more predictable. The article examines the degree to which this can be held true. In the streets of Tbilisi, hundred days into the reign of the new government, there is an air of optimism amongst the people. This holds especially true when it comes to youth. The hope is that the Georgian Dream becomes a Georgian reality. The disappointment otherwise might be shattering. In spring 2013, the new leadership offers new opportunities for Georgia. It can improve its democratic system and economic growth and establish a dialogue with Russia and the breakaway districts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This would alleviate the frozen conflict and tense security dilemma’ on the Administrative Boundary Lines. Yet, if the transition of power does not go well, there will be prolonged power struggles that could cripple the policy making and cast Georgia back to pre-Saakashvili times. The article addresses the overall question whether the smooth transfer of power Georgia achieved after October’s election sets a standard for democracy in the region depending on whether the new government can strengthen the independence and accountability of state institutions in what remains a fragile, even potentially explosive political climate. The victory of the Georgian Dream Coalition over the United National Movement has brought pluralism into Georgian policymaking. However this political pluralism also includes that awkward dual powers; Georgia’s good cop and bad cop.

Abstract Ten years on since the Arab uprisings we are in a position to assess how the nexus between knowledge, discourse and practice had a bearing on the trajectory of the protests. They represented hope and change for millions of Arabs in the region, but to what extent was that the case for onlookers in Europe and the US, and did western discourse on events in the Middle East matter? While the toppling of longstanding dictators was met with jubilation by Arab populations, it conversely created anxiety and fear in many western governments. This was reflected in the shift from an initially celebratory discourse in western commentary to disappointment, pessimism and disavowal of the uprisings. Within a year, op-eds and academic articles were asking whether the ‘Arab Spring’ had turned into an ‘Islamist winter’, reverting to Orientalist narratives about the inevitability of conflict, bloodshed and sectarianism in the Middle East. I argue this discourse had implications for the outcome of the uprisings as ‘latent Orientalism’ translated into ‘manifest Orientalism’ and western states hesitated to support opposition groups they initially encouraged and emboldened. I begin the article with a study of western discourse in the first year of the uprisings, which I then situate within a long durée history of western policy and representation of the Middle East. In the final sections I consider the role of scholarship and think tanks as mediators of Orientalist discourse.

AbstractMost of the countries of South America experienced two notable institutional phenomena during the 1990s: the reform or rewriting of constitutions and the emergence of direct democracy mechanisms. This paper examines the latter process through a cross-national comparison. The introduction of direct democracy mechanisms is typically driven by traditionally excluded political interests. It takes two forms, both involving the failure of representative democratic institutions. In most cases, these traditionally excluded interests win control over the constitutional reform and rewriting process, although this is not a necessary condition for the emergence of direct democracy. Drawing illustrations from 12 cases of constitutional reform, this paper links arguments about direct democracy in the United States and Western Europe, institutional change, neopopulism, and the decline of the party system in Latin America.

The Pre-Kyoto period and the outcome of the Kyoto conference demonstrated significant differences between the climate change policy in the United States and that in Western Europe. Although scientific methods and knowledge are universal and globally available, the scientific results on climate change are taken up differently by the political systems on each side of the Atlantic. Different preferences for the results of economic modelling may be due to differences in the expectations of the average American/European of the government's responsibility, different reactions in cases of uncertainty, in the political system, the openness of public controversial discussions, and in the lobbyist intensity of interest groups. Both industrialized regions, however, face the problem of the short-term orientation of market economies and of the voters of representative national democracies versus the very long-term necessities of climate change policy. The different views and traditions on each side of the Atlantic could be used for a very fruitful process of global climate change policy.

Is the traditional logic by which violent conflict fosters long-run political development universal? To help address this question, this article compares Europe with China. While historical warfare was very common across both units, representative government flourished only in Europe. We suggest that the relationship between violent conflict and political development depends on the underlying political geography context. In Europe, political fragmentation was rampant. Thus, conflict tended to be external (i.e., interstate), and attack threats were multidirectional. Furthermore, exit ability was high in this context. Elites were therefore in a strong bargaining position to demand political representation in return for new tax revenue. China, by contrast, was politically centralized. Here, conflict tended to be internal, attack threats were unidirectional, and exit ability was low. The emperor was thus powerful enough to extract tax funds without surrendering political control. In this context, violent conflict promoted autocratic re-entrenchment. We conclude by briefly analyzing the relationships between political geography, historical conflict, and political development in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

The article presents the views of the representative of Krakow conservative – Henryk Lisicki on the subject of nineteenth-century socio-political changes in Western Europe. His reflections focused on the search for stability of the internal order of those countries, conducted from a moderately conservative position. This meant criticizing the extreme models of socio-political orders that he believed the experience of personal monarchs, an egalitarian republic or authoritarian military dictatorships had brought. In the context of his reflections, the "should" political model was the constitutional monarchy, ensuring the balance of society (even within a strongly diversified one, under the influence of contemporary economic changes), guarantees of civil rights as well as centers of power: the monarch and the representation of the general public, i.e. parliament.

This article answers the question, "is the use of the words inclusion and diversity an expression of institutional racism?" In almost all Western countries, immigrants and refugees barely penetrate all levels of organizations. Immigrants and refugees are mostly found in the lower echelons of an organization. To put it irreverently: the dirtier and heavier the work, the more immigrants and refugees are found there. Also in governments and parliaments immigrants (not even the second, third and fourth generation) are hardly to be found. So the good example is lacking. This article starts with an etymological examination of inclusion and diversity. The outcome is briefly summarized: " we want YOU -immigrant and/or refugee- to come and work for us because we are not allowed to hire only natives". That human rights are violated in this way does not seem to be an issue. Furthermore, we argue that it is precisely the words inclusion and diversity that prevent the recruitment of immigrants and refugees, as well as expats who have lost their jobs, from being given a high priority. This article proposes two new terms as just and equitable alternatives to inclusion and diversity. First, the statistical concept of representative and second, in support of the static concept of representative, the concept of wanting to be a mirror of the population from the neighbourhood, city or country that the leadership of the company or institution believes should be part of the work organization and from low to high. To further support this argument to replace the concepts of inclusion and diversity, Moscovici's (2001) concept of social representation is used. This article also looks at existing toolboxes and toolkits that Western countries have developed to ensure that organizations of governments, institutions independent of government, and businesses are representative of neighbourhoods, cities, and countries. Companies in particular are committed to this because they understand better than anyone that their paying customers are also immigrants, refugees and expats. This knowledge of toolboxes and toolkits was helpful in developing a guideline for organizations of governments, institutions independent of government and companies and therefore also parliaments and governments. The guideline also addresses violations of this guideline. To address violations, it proposes a self-learning model for teams in organizations that is also consistent with enforcing the Working Conditions Act in Western countries.

The main purpose of this article is to understand the use and abuse of the notion of democracy and its operation as a political system throughout the classical Greek period to modernity. The article will show how the development and understanding of democracy from the modern Western Europe completely differs from its classical conception. The analytical starting point is the assumption that the political system of Western democracy is presented as an indirect representation and creates a gap between policy and society such that the latter lacks its physical role as a mandator of the political system. By extending the above-mentioned syllogism to the modern Greek State in accordance with George Contogeorgis’ assumption that the modern political system is neither democratic nor representative, the article is then able to describe the roots of Greece’s current sociopolitical and economic impasse. Thus by questioning the absence of a coordinated political proposal from its executive branch for dealing with major sociopolitical and economic problems, the article searches for the misapplication of democracy in policy formation and implementation.

This article aims to present a critical and reflective analysis of modern practices of the student representation bodies that have institutional influence on decision-making of universities or the government. The article first describes different traditions of understanding student representation in the context of student politics and its links with student activism, political socialization, elections. Then we consider different approaches to understanding of student representation as a part of a higher education system (types and forms of interaction between students, on the one hand, and universities and governments, on the other hand). Finally, traditions of researching the practices of student representative bodies in different groups of countries (Anglo-Saxon countries, developing countries of Global South, and continental Europe) are discussed. The following section contains a critical analysis of the current research of student representation, its advantages (developed conceptual framework and limited geographic traditions of qualitative research as well as connection with political science in the electoral context) and disadvantages (insufficient empirical, positivistic focus; uneven geographical prevalence; lack of research focus on the «frontier» of the concepts of student representation and student activism). Then potential future areas of research are outlined, including the diversification of methodology (empirical quantitative methods) and geographical coverage (the post-Soviet space and key countries of East Asia) as well as refinements of the theoretical apparatus and a more detailed consideration of the connection between the practices of student representation and student activism. The originality and value of the article lies in the fact that despite the gradual increase in the popularity of student representation as a research topic in the last two decades, this topic remains largely underexplored in Russia, and the novel conceptual and methodological approaches proposed in this article should spur further studies.

The article attempts to analyse the historical event that was the process of normalisation of Ukrainian-Polish relations in the mid-1930s. It analyses the rationale that led to the conclusion of a normalisation agreement in 1935 between the Ukrainian National Democratic Union (UNDO) - the most influential social representative in the Ukrainian community in the western territories of Ukraine at the time - and the Polish government represented by representatives of the Sanation. In addition, the reasons that favoured the normalisation policy are discussed. The conclusion of the agreement was a landmark step. In exchange for a declaration of loyalty and the UNDO's recognition of the Polish raison d'état, the government was to implement many Ukrainian demands. For the UNDO, it was an opportunity to create parliamentary representation and ensure that Ukrainian NGOs were able to function, while for the Sanation, it was a chance to gain a political ally among Ukrainians in the region and the Polish parliament. In this way, the civic equality of Ukrainians was marked. At the same time, convergence of views on many issues was emphasised, but also issues that should be resolved and put in order were pointed out.

Political Islam has become an important factor of the international politics nowadays. By the beginning of the 21st century Islamist political groups have turned to be a matter of concern not only of the Middle East main stakeholders, but also the European and American ones. This circumstance has been aggravated even more, considering the fact, that, being a former metropolis, Europe had come to be a kind of cradle for the spread of Islam. The proportion of the Islamic population has been growing here year by year. Moreover, the migration waves following the 2011 Arab spring provoked even more tough migration crisis and posed a complicated challenge to the European society expressed in conciliation of freedom of religion within its Muslim community along with the preserving European values of secular democracy. The Society of the Muslim Brotherhood has always been considered to be a leading Islamist force not only in Arabic world but in the West as well. Indeed, if in the Middle East they position themselves rather as a political force, even though with wide representation, in Europe the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood claims to be a representative of the Muslim population of the region as a whole. Taking into account the growing Islamic presence in the continent, a certain anxiety in the European society cannot but exist, concerning the risk of conscious Islamic expansion. In this circumstances the question, whether this process is really taking place as well as which role the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood plays in it, came to the fore. This article tries to answer this question, analysing the different stages of the group’s ideological transformation and its influence on the group’s activity in Europe. The author comes to the conclusion, that being a movement, that has undergone substantial ideological transformation, the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood has followed a similar scenario in Europe. Since the organisation itself has made a long way from a militant organisation with anti-Western discourse to a moderate movement, claiming to be democratically oriented and tolerant to the West, their European branch has transformed from a small Islamist group in temporary exile in the enemy camp, to the organisation, considering itself a representative of the European Muslim community, as well as accepting Europe as a motherland.

The Western Australian Rangeland Monitoring System (WARMS) consists of a set of ~1620 permanent sites distributed across the pastoral rangelands of Western Australia used for commercial livestock grazing. The system is designed to provide information to government and the general community on changes in Western Australia’s rangelands, rather than to individual landholders. It is designed to report at the regional or vegetation type level by selectively sampling representative areas of the rangelands, with representation occurring at several levels. The system was fully implemented by 1999 and all sites, except a small number of ongoing replacements, have now been re-assessed at least once. Two site types are used. In grassland areas, the frequency of all perennial species is assessed, and an estimate made of crown cover of woody perennials. In shrubland areas, a direct census technique is used, with the demography and maximum canopy dimensions of all shrubs recorded. Changes in soil surface condition and patch distribution are also assessed using standard Landscape Function Analysis (LFA) techniques. The vegetation and soil surface information is used to indicate rangeland change. The system is not fixed within any single model of range dynamics and the outputs of WARMS can be interpreted in various ways, depending on the specific requirements of the end-user. The paper includes discussion of the institutional requirements for WARMS, the site stratification and selection criteria, description of the field methods used and the rationale behind its design. It also considers the implications of the site stratification and selection criteria in terms of the caveats that need to accompany reporting.

The study deals with features of the procedure of the nomination of candidates for workers' deputies during the election campaigns to the Supreme Soviets of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and local governments in the Ukrainian SSR of the post-war period. Legislative, organizational, and propaganda aspects of the process of running for power are analyzed. The procedure did not comply with constitutional norms, as, contrary to the Constitution, only one non-alternative candidate was nominated from each constituency, using non-legal buttons of their selection. Pre-election meetings were defined as one of the fundamental steps of the electoral process and as a ritual element of Soviet ostensible democracy. Pre-election events were controlled by party bodies, which neutralized the democratic principles of forming a representative branch of government and made it impossible to create a truly popular representation. The author defines the criteria that the authorities used for forming the deputy corps of different levels and describes the ideal version of the Soviet representative of the people. Describing officials' difficulties in nominating candidates for deputies to local councils, the author gives statistics and reasons for the rejection of nominees at this level at the election meeting. Difficulties in the organization and conduct of the nomination procedure in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR due to the prevalence of anti-Soviet sentiment in the region and the activities of the nationalist underground were noted. It has been observed that every year citizens showed a more and more indifferent attitude to the elections due to the formality and politicization of the election procedure. Moreover, the parliamentary representation formed under party control did not correlate with society's political and social stratification. Keywords: Ukrainian SSR, postwar period, Soviet election campaigns, election meetings, candidates for workers' deputies.

<p>The electoral system embodied in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Cth) is notable for its startling unfairness to voters who support minor parties. This article argues that the disparity between voter preferences and the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives means that the electoral system cannot be said to provide for the election of members ‘directly chosen by the people’, as required by s 24 of the Constitution, and is therefore open to challenge. Although challenges to the electoral system in Attorney General (Cth); Ex rel McKinlay v Commonwealth and McGinty v Western Australia were unsuccessful, dicta by majorities in both cases support the argument that at some point – albeit unstated by the courts in those cases - an electoral system will be so unrepresentative as not to be consistent with s 24. Subsequent decisions in Roach v Electoral Commissioner and Rowe v Electoral Commissioner, to the effect that franchise laws must be appropriate and adapted to the system of representative government, also provide grounds for a constitutional challenge to the current electoral system. The article ends with a discussion of the criteria to be used to determine what system would be consistent with direct representation of the people, and argues that the Single Transferrable Vote system satisfies the requirements of accurate reflection of voter sentiment and provision to voters of identifiable local representatives.</p>

In the scientific article based on a comparative study, it was traced how the economic potential of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, which was to become the basis of Ukrainian Statehood, was distributed and used in geopolitics by the world leaders. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the development and use of the economic potential of the Western Ukrainian lands to ensure the independence and unity of the Ukrainian state. The natural resources of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic did not contribute to the establishment of a united and independent Ukraine. Instead, they became statistics and grounds for the reasoning of independence of the Western Ukrainian lands in diplomatic documents at the Paris Peace Conference. The Unification Act between the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic did not become the basis for the final unification of two parts of Ukraine. Events of the Ukrainian-Polish war, the decision of Council of Ten at the Paris Peace Conference, Warsaw Treaty assisted intruding and claim of Polish power in East Galicia. Since it was to proceed in the dictator of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic Yevhen Petrushevych regardless of Western Ukrainian People's Republic, a diplomatic action, it is created 14 emergency diplomatic representations and legations, in separate countries strategic interests of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic presented the financially-trade representative offices of Western Ukrainian People's Republic. Fight of government Western Ukrainian People's Republic in exile and President of Ukrainian National Advice Yevhen Petrushevych during 1919 - 1924 were sent to proceeding in the independence of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. The effort of that time building the Ukrainian state system in different parts of Ukraine became a headstone for the revival of the newest Ukrainian state. Western Ukrainian People's Republic's natural resources were attractive in world geopolitics. The economic potential of Galicia allowed bringing ratings at the foreign market. That is why an international association interest was folded by resources, but not unity and independence of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. Including of Western Region to the Ukrainian People's Republic, which had considerable potential too, was pre-condition to the prosperity of the well-educated state. Fight for a claim of the own state system for the Western Ukrainian People's Republic (Western Region of Ukrainian People's Republic) quickly grew into a fight for survival. Statesmen of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic often were inconsistent in the decision of the "Galician question," and they were connected by a general fight for proceeding in the independence of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic. The diplomatic representations of the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Western Ukrainian People's Republic organized powerful activity for the maintenance of Ukrainian collegiality and independent status, though the international state of affairs was not on a benefit to the young state. The current Ukrainian collegiality and statehood have the durable historical tradition stopped up previous building the states, payment of every fighter for the Ukrainian statehood provided its revival and continued the persistence in the development of the newest Ukrainian state. Keywords legation, diplomatic representation, economic potential, natural resources, Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, Ukrainian statehood.

The title of this article is borrowed from anthropologist Katherine Verdery's 1996 study What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? In her book Verdery surveyed the recent changes in Eastern Europe, and specifically Romania, from her vantage point in the uncertain period following the momentous events from 1989 to 1991 in the former Soviet bloc. Similarly, this article explores how Shostakovich, widely perceived in 1975 as the musical representative of socialism, influenced what came after him. It details how Soviet composers from the younger generations, including Edison Denisov, Mieczysłław Weinberg, Boris Tishchenko, Alfred Schnittke, and Valentin Sil'vestrov, dealt with Shostakovich's legacy in their compositions written in his memory, including Denisov's DSCH, Weinberg's Symphony no.12, Tishchenko's Symphony no. 5, Schnittke's Prelude In Memoriam Dmitri Shostakovich and Third String Quartet, and Sil'vestrov's Postludium DSCH. In their memorial works, as they wrestled with the legacy of Shostakovich and his overwhelming influence, these composers also grappled with the shifting nature of the Soviet state, changing musical styles both foreign and domestic, and fundamental issues of aesthetic representation and identity associated with the move from modernism to postmodernism then affecting all composers in the Western art music tradition. The 1970s came at the heels of a decade of remarkable change in Soviet music and society, but at the time of Shostakovich's death, change in Soviet life began to seem increasingly unlikely. Despite recent interpretations by scholars such as anthropologist Alexei Yurchak that emphasize the fundamental immutability of the 1970s, however, these memorial compositions show that audible and significant developments were indeed occurring in the musical styles of the 1970s and early 1980s. Examining Shostakovich's legacy therefore also reveals the larger changes of the Soviet 1970s and early 1980s, both musical and otherwise.

AbstractWhen the Nahua woman known as La Malinche became the interpreter of Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, she was not only carving her name as one of history’s most influential translators, but was also rendered one of the most enduring symbols of the cultural intricacies of translation. Malinche’s knowledge of both Spanish and Nahuatl and the way it made her instrumental in the conquerors’ success took her role from the level of linguistic mediator to that of an active agent in cultural transformation, or rather cultural erosion. Having used her linguistic abilities to help the invaders against her people, Malinche has since the conquest been labeled a traitor. Becoming Cortés’s mistress served to further confirm this idea. Yet, being arguably the bearer of the first “mestizo,” Malinche came to be perceived as the mother of the Mexican people and the progenitor of the new race. In both cases, La Malinche has till this moment been emblematic of the complexities of cultural representation.Laura Esquivel’s novel Malinche (2007) explores the heroine’s position at the crossroads between two cultures where the demarcations between the target and source languages are blurred as her allegiance is put into question. The act of translation is rendered ambivalent with the translator, being a slave to the Spaniards, lacking the free will for such a vocation, thus unable to choose sides or determine who she represents. She, however, could have played a major role in preserving the memory of her pre-Colombian world just before its eradication. Daoud Hari’s The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memory of Darfur (2008) offers a different perspective of the role of the translator. Hari, who belongs to the Zaghawa tribe in Western Sudan, acts as a mediator between his people, who are being subjected to systematic genocide by the government-backed Janjaweed militia, and the outside world. Through making the conscious decision to go back to Darfur, Hari turns his knowledge of English into the tool through which he can make the voice of his people heard, hence choosing to be their representative and taking upon himself the task of documenting their trauma.This paper tackles the nature of translation through comparing the role of the translators in both works and exploring the different levels of representation associated with the process of translation. This will be done through examining the loyalty-treason paradigm and how far it affects, positively and/or negatively, the role of the translator as the bearer of his/her people’s memory. The paper will, therefore, deal with the relation between translation and testimony and will investigate how far translation can, in this sense, complement storytelling as a means of chronicling and resistance.

Austrian federalism is closely associated with political historical events during the period 1918-1920. The union of Länder relied on the recognition of their autonomy, adoption of state constitu-tions, and the possibility of establishing the representative bodies. Many historians of law and lawyers maintain that a new Republic would have been established as a centralised unitary state. Programs of political parties and the first constitutional drafts reflected the ideas of a federal state in which states had extensive powers and expanded representation in the federation. Political parties had repeatedly voiced their support for the Swiss federal model. Hans Kelsen’s constitutional drafts to be developed on behalf of the Secretary of State Karl Renner provided a solid foundation aimed to introduce federal constitutional principles and create a parliamentary republic. Constitution, system of federal institutions, as well as forms of government were widely discussed at the Länder conferences in Salzburg and Linz. Michael Mayr, Secretary of State, made a significant progress in overcoming disagreements. Mayr’s draft constitution focused primarily on achieving consensus with conflicting political parties. After the collapse of the coalition on June 10, 1920, political parties prepared and presented their constitutional drafts covering a broad range of issues: federal constitution, the Land par-liaments, and powers of states. From July 11 to September 23 1920 constitutional issues had been discussed by special subcommittee of the Constitutional National Constitutional Assembly composed of representa-tives of political parties, the state chancellery and Hans Kelsen as its scientific advisor. Delimitation of powers between the federation and the states, composition of the Federal Council, supremacy of federal law, indirect federal government were the most important issues of constitutional debates. Principle of equity and equality between the federation and the states was the key to overcoming most disagreements. Austria’s Federal Constitutional Law was passed on October 1, 1920. Despite the fact that the states did not participate in debates of the Constitutional National Assembly, they sent their representatives to the Federal Council in November 1920. However, the western Länder expressed their objections to the procedure for the adoption of the federal constitution. Efforts of the main social forces, their willingness to compromise resulted into a unique constitutional draft of the First Republic. The 1920 Constitution was a compromise solution between a centralized unitary state and a federation.

Abstract Background: PTCLs are a rare, heterogeneous group of neoplasms that account for 12% of non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL) in Europe and USA and >20-25% in Asia. There is no consensus on optimal treatment and 5-year survival rates remain <20-30%. NCCN guidelines recommend that newly diagnosed patients enroll in a clinical trial as first-line therapy. The canine represents an excellent model to study human cancers in part as they share our environment, have an intact immune system, have cancers that occur spontaneously, and are phylogenetically closer to humans than rodents. Additionally, canines have a high frequency of NHL. There is also a need in the canine for improved therapies as the majority of dogs respond to cytotoxic chemotherapy (i.e., CHOP-based), but more than 95% will relapse with chemotherapy-refractory disease. Utilizing a comparative genomic analysis approach, the focus of this investigation was to determine whether PTCL tumors in the companion canine is an appropriate representation of human NHL and if the canine PTCL model could be utilized in accelerating clinical drug trials in humans. Methods: For comparative genomic analyses, differential gene expression with RNA seq data from canine PTCLs were compared with normal canine lymph node. Samples associated with canine TCL (SRR606334 and SRR606341) were compared with normal canine lymph node samples (SRR606343, SRR606344, and SRR606901) using Fastq files from (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/) and (http://sra.dnanexus.com/). For gene annotations, RNA sequencing files were mapped to ENSEMBL canine genome reference CanFam3.1, with Bowtie v2.1.0, Tophat v2.0.10, and Samtools v0.1.19 using standard settings. Mapped read files were then analyzed for differential gene expression using the Cuffdiff command from Cufflinks v2.1.1 also with standard settings. Differentially expressed significant genes were selected based on p value < 0.0001 and analyzed using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) software to determine potential biomarkers and genes/biological pathway overlap in human PTCL. In addition, protein lysates were prepared from primary canine PTCL tumor biopsies, canine diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) tumor biopsies, and human PTCL cell lines and analyzed by Western Blot for comparison and assessment of potential pathway/biomarker overlap. Results: For RNA seq analyses comparing canine PTCL with normal canine lymph node, we identified 118 differentially expressed genes. These differentially expressed genes were interrogated using IPA and Biomarker filter. ANAX1, ANAX2, CACNAD2, GATA3, IGF2, LIFR, LYVE1, POSTN, PPARG, SAT1 and SPARCL1 were identified as candidate biomarker genes that are commonly associated with human T-cell malignancies. Furthermore, canonical pathway and network analyses identified a subset of an interactive network of genes, which included PI3K, GATA3, GRB2 and PPARG. Based on previous studies, GATA3 and TBX21 were reported as major classifiers of human PTCL (Iqbal J et al, Blood 2014; 123:2915-23). Therefore, we chose to examine GATA3 and TBX21 and their dependent genes in canine PTCL. Results from Western Blot showed that both GATA3 and TBX21 were strongly expressed in 4/8 canine TCL primary samples as well as in Jurkat and HH human TCL cell lines, but they were absent in canine DLBCL. Furthermore, GATA3-dependent P-Akt (PI3K/Akt) protein was detected in all GATA3 expressing canine PTCL samples, and sporadic C-Myc expression was also observed within this group. In addition, TBX21-related NFκB (p65) expression was detected in 7/8 canine PTCL with comparable constitutive activation in Jurkat and HH human TCL cell lines, while it was absent in canine DLBCL samples. Conclusion: These analyses based on comparative genomic and protein studies demonstrated that PTCL in canine NHL is a valid representative of human PTCL. Further genomic and proteomic studies are warranted to develop clinically relevant translational protocols. Collectively, the canine model appears to be particularly attractive model for studying TCL that may be leveraged for the study of lymphomagenesis and to answer a highly unmet need towards the identification of rational and novel targets for the treatment of T-cell malignancies. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

Representation of Aboriginality in National Geographic In trafficking images of cultural difference, National Geographic has an unrivalled worldwide reach to over 37 million people per issue. Over the past 25 years, 48 photographs of Aboriginal Australians have appeared in 11 articles in the magazine. This article first examines how the magazine has exoticised, naturalised and sexualised Aboriginal Australians. By deploying the standard evolutionary model, National Geographic typically represents Aboriginal Australians as Black savages relegated to the Stone Age. In the remote outback "Arnhem Land Aboriginals Cling to the Dreamtime" (Scollay & Tweedie 645). In "Journey into Dreamtime" (Arden & Abell 8) an Aboriginal man is "triumphant with his kill of a wild turkey [and] leads a small group of Aborigines who have returned to some of the old ways of their nomadic ancestors in the Great Sandy Desert". The article concludes that the Stone Age encounter with modernity depicted in the magazine became a journey through time from location past to location present. Exoticisation The world of the Aboriginal Australians is male through the eyes of National Geographic. This stems from the Western cultural pattern that assigns things masculine to the cultural and things feminine to the natural realm (Ortner). The male Aboriginal performer of an initiation ritual in "Leapingin tribute" (Scollay & Tweedie 656-7) is represented as rooted in tradition and living in a sacred yet superstitious world. Portraits abound of men with painted faces, as in "Surging energy" (Scollay & Tweedie 648). Male finery and self-display become salient markers, Aboriginal "Boys summon courage" in male initiation focussing on bloodletting (Scollay & Tweedie 656). Such images convey the impression that the region is one of nature, taboo, danger and adventure and that it is a land out of time. The enchantment with ritual stems from it being a key to the past and indicative of photographer and writer having travelled through space to travel through time, similar to the connection made by Victorian evolutionary anthropologists last century (see Fabian). Naturalisation The naturalised Aboriginal Australians appearing in National Geographic are characterised by having timeless societies and personalities, what Wolf identifies as people without history. Routine location narratives naturalise Aboriginal Australians through their remote landscapes and seascapes ("blazing bushfire", Scollay & Tweedie 652-3; "conjuring an image as old as his ancestors", "scorched in one season, sodden in the next" Newman & Abell 3-9). In the West the cultural appropriation of nature is the object of labour, whereas for Aboriginal Australians it is the subject of labour. Aboriginal men are hunters ("triumphant with his kill", Arden & Abell 9; "the earth and sea of their own accord furnish them with all the things necessary for life", Newman & Abell 14-5). Thus, in National Geographic the productive world of work further naturalises the Aboriginal 'Other'. Sexualisation Naked Black women provide the hallmark National Geographic imagery of the sexualized 'Other'. By purveying the nude Aboriginal female, the magazine develops Western ideas about race, gender and sexuality, subcategorised in each case as black, female and unrepressed (Lutz & Collins 115). Women are white, men are Black and Black women are invisible in popular visual representations of motherhood in Western culture. In trafficking in photographs of Black women for an overwhelmingly white readership, National Geographic is clearly linking narrative threads of gender and race (Lutz & Collins166). As the readers' gaze focusses on the Aboriginal child they become the site for dealing with racial anxieties through creating the Black love object ("an appetite for learning", Scollay & Tweedie 654; "mud mates", Ellis & Austen 8-9). National Geographic's nickname for mother-child photos is 'tits and tots' (Meltzer) and they are a romantic staple in the magazine. Aboriginal mothering in "marriages of diplomacy" is idealised as the foundation of human social life (Scollay & Tweedie 650-1). However, with "seven of Johnny Bungawuy's 11 wives and a handful of his 52 children" this marriage is exotic enough to make cultural difference an issue because it depicts the unusually large number of plural marriage partners available to Aboriginal men in their practice of polygyny. The attribution of erotic qualities and sexual license to Aboriginal women is a result of displaying their bodies for close examination. The naked Aboriginal women in "marriages of diplomacy" represent the nude stylised as ethnographic fact (Scollay & Tweedie 650-1). The addition of a woman in the "marriages of diplomacy" photograph commoditises the practice of polygyny and illustrates that women have traditionally been seen as objects to be possessed, owned and adornments to the lives of men (Pollack). Location Past to Location Present Idealisation of the Aboriginal 'Other' allows for detemporalisation to be played out in alluring images of a simpler, natural Aboriginal world only now tentatively facing the throes of modernisation. Social Darwinism counterpoises superstition/ritual with science/technology and darker skin/exotic clothes with lighter skin/Western clothes. The Aboriginal guide bearing a "striking resemblance to his counterpart on the Burke-Wills journey" facilitates a form of ancestor worship that relates to what Rosaldo calls imperialist nostalgia for the passing of what we ourselves have destroyed (Judge & Scherschel 165). Photographs of the Aboriginal Australians are organised into a story about cultural evolution couched in normative discourse of modernisation and development as progress. In photographs contrasting the premodern with the modern the commodity stands for the future: "soda, soap, and spears in the arms of an [Aboriginal] father and daughter demonstrate their coexistence with white society" (Scollay & Tweedie 662). While for the Aboriginal father in "keeping faith with past and future" his "son enters an era that will inevitably propel his people into modern society" (MacLeish & Nebbia 171). Commodities in these contrasting representations are to be seen simply as a stage on the way to Westernisation. Dynamism, change and agency are apportioned to the Western centre, while Aboriginal Australians are just responding to the onslaught of modernisation on the periphery. Aboriginal masculinisation of modernity is situated in a series of photographs depicting the expansive frontier outback where Aboriginal stockmen are content to muster the cattle of white station owners. In "boiling the red dust" the Aboriginal stockman strums his guitar but sometimes "lapses into tradition and roams on walkabout" (Walker & Scherschel 457). Another Aboriginal stockman, in "saga of beef or bust", "uses his tracking ability to run down strays and cleanskins -- unbranded beasts" (MacLeish & Nebbia 161). "Other than his boots and a jug of water all he owns is rolled into the swag", the Aboriginal stockman must compete with the modern helicopter ("pesky as a giant fly", MacLeish & Stanfield 165); alternatively, "with a wager on the line, an Aboriginal stockman whoops it up at the annual Bedourie Race Meeting" (Ellis & Austen 3). The idealised image is one of the rugged yet happy lives of the Aboriginal stockman in transition to modernity. Social evolutionary theory "saw women in non-Western societies as oppressed and servile creatures, beasts of burden, chattels who could be bought and sold, eventually to be liberated by 'civilisation' or 'progress', thus attaining the enviable position of women in Western society" (Etienne & Leacock 1). Aboriginal feminisation of modernity is told through stories about the premodern helpmate to husband work of Aboriginal women. "Sharing a 'cuppa' at the start of their day" is gendered with vulnerability, primitivity, superstition and the constraints of tradition (Newman & Abell 24-5). The ambivalent message represented in "sharing a 'cuppa' at the start of their day" is complicated by the Aboriginal woman's stockman partner being white. Western ideological understanding of women's work has changed since WWII from helpmate to husband to self-realisation and independence (Chafe). However, images of Aboriginal women in modern work are conspicuously absent. Dispossessed Aboriginal prospectors earn money by 'yandying' ("Paddy Blair's no Irishman", MacLeish & Stanfield 166) -- "winnowing by tossing handfuls of ore into the wind to separate dirt from tin or gold" and 'noodling' -- "poking through rubble" ("selling water and renting bulldozers", Moore & Tweedie 569). Abject "down-and-outs addicted to cheap, poisonous wood alcohol" end up as dispossessed fringe-dwelling 'goomies' in Redfern ("matron saint", Starbird & Madden 224-5). Resistance through situationally motivated undertaking by Indigenous people against expropriation of land and resources is rarely represented in the media (see Drinnon), and National Geographic first attempts such a representation in the 1980s with "heads of several clans" (Scollay & Tweedie 653). Aboriginal men attempt to block a government mining survey crew. But the six Aboriginal men gaze off in different directions and only one is clearly focussed on something in the frame, thus the assembled men assume a disconnected, uncoordinated look. In the 1990s National Geographic story "The Uneasy Magic of Australia's Cape York Peninsula", Aboriginality is equated with caring for the land (Newman & Abell). Aboriginal peoples of Cape York Peninsula are portrayed as conservators valuable for their preservation of biocultural diversity ("the richlytextured landscape", Newman & Abell 17). Aboriginal "white sand people" of Cape York Peninsula are "on a sacred mission" when they "return an ancestor's skull to their homeland at Shelbourne Bay (Newman & Abell 32-3). After years of frustrated efforts to win back their lost domain, the peninsula's native people are at last gaining ground". Aboriginal Australian uses of land and resources are idealised as non-destructive and caring in contrast to rapacious postcolonial development aggression. National Geographic images of Aboriginal Australians have moved from the exoticised, naturalised and sexualised location past. Images in the location present of Cape York mirror the postcolonial transition from Aboriginal dispossession informed by terra nullius to their contemporary empowerment informed by native title. References Arden, H., and S. Abell. "Journey into Dreamtime: The Land of Northwest Australia." National Geographic 179 (Jan. 1991): 8-42. Chafe, W. "Social Change and the American Woman, 1940-70". A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America. Eds. W. Chafe and H. Sitkoff. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. 157-65. Drinnon, R. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1980. Ellis, W., and D. Austen. "Queensland: Broad Shoulder of Australia." National Geographic 169 (Jan. 1986): 2-39. Etienne, M. and E. Leacock, eds. Women and Colonisation: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1980. Fabian, J. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia UP, 1983. Judge, J., and J. Scherschel. "The Journey of Burke and Wills: First across Australia." National Geographic Feb. (1979): 52-91. Lutz, C., and J. Collins. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. MacLeish, K., and T. Nebbia. "The Top End Down Under." National Geographic Feb. (1993): 143-73. MacLeish, K. and J. Stanfield. "Western Australia: The Big Country." National Geographic Feb. (1975): 147-87. Meltzer, M. Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life. NewYork: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1978. Moore, K., and P. Tweedie. "Coober Pedy: Opal Capital of Australia's Outback." National Geographic Oct. (1976): 560-71. Newman, C., and S. Abell. "The Uneasy Magic of Australia's Cape York Peninsula." National Geographic June (1996 ): 2-33. Ortner, S. "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" Woman, Culture, and Society. Eds. M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1974. 67-88. Pollack, G. "What's Wrong with Images of Women?" Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and the Media. Ed. R. Betterton. London: Pandora, 1987. 40-8. Rosaldo, R. Culture and Truth. Boston: Beacon P, 1989. Scollay, C., and P. Tweedie. "Arnhem Land Aboriginals Cling to the Dreamtime." National Geographic Nov. (1980): 645-61. Starbird, E., and R. Madden. "Sydney: Big, Breezy, and a Bloomin' Good Show." National Geographic Feb. (1979): 211-36. Walker, H., and J. Scherschel. "South Australia, Gateway to the Great Outback." National Geographic April (1970): 441-81. Wolf, E. Europe and the People without History.Berkeley: U of California P, 1982. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Hyndman. "Postcolonial Representation of Aboriginal Australian Culture: Location Past to Location Present in National Geographic." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php>. Chicago style: David Hyndman, "Postcolonial Representation of Aboriginal Australian Culture: Location Past to Location Present in National Geographic," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Hyndman. (2000) Postcolonial representation of Aboriginal Australian culture: location past to location present in National Geographic. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php> ([your date of access]).

Background and objectiveTobacco tax evasion undermines the goal of tobacco taxes as a tobacco control measure to make tobacco products less affordable, increases the health risks for those who smoke and decreases the government revenue. This paper analyses the tobacco tax evasion in six Western Balkan (WB) countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. The aim of this research is to estimate the size of the illicit market and identify the main determinants of tax evasion activities in the Southeastern European region.Data and methodsData from 2019 Survey on Tobacco Consumption in Southeastern Europe (STC-SEE) are used. STC-SEE provides uniquely comparable nationally representative data on smoking behaviour for adult (18–85 years old) population for each country. Tax evasion is defined on the basis of available information on tax stamps, health warnings, price and the place of purchase, in accordance with the previous research on tax evasion. In order to estimate the determinants of illicit purchases we use binary choice model of tax evasion.ResultsThe study finds that 20.4% of all current smokers in WB countries evade taxes on tobacco products, with evasion being much more frequent for hand-rolled (HR) tobacco (86.7%) than for the manufactured cigarettes (MC) (8.6%). While HR is predominantly illicit in all six countries, MC evasion varies significantly, with evasion being significantly higher in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Results further suggest that tax evasion is higher in the statistical regions where institutional capacities to tackle illicit trade are lower, in municipalities bordering countries with high MC evasion, as well as among smokers with low income, women and elderly. We also provide evidence that higher tobacco taxes and prices do not increase illicit consumption.ConclusionThe findings from the research suggest that in order to decrease tax evasion, governments should put additional effort to strengthen institutional capacities to tackle illicit tobacco markets. Furthermore, improving regional coordination in development and implementation of tobacco control policies, including the prevention of illicit market, is essential in lowering evasion in all WB countries. Finally, WB countries should regulate and enforce excise tax stamp requirements on the HR tobacco market to a much higher degree.

Abstract: The takeover of Estonia from the German occupying authorities in November of 1918 Although the independent Republic of Estonia was declared on 24 February 1918, the German occupation that followed prevented the actual establishment of statehood. The chance for this did not come until November of that same year when Germany’s defeats on the Western Front and the November Revolution that broke out as the expression of worsening discontent brought an end to the First World War and German domination in Eastern Europe. The policy of the occupying authorities in Estonia was aimed at neutralising society, and in this way the Germans succeeded in preventing active resistance. Nevertheless, news of Germany’s military setbacks also reached Estonia and aroused some measure of hope for a better future. The cautious rebirth of political activity was noticeable in October of 1918. The way subsequent events took shape was nevertheless a surprise for both the German authorities and Estonian politicians. The breakthrough started with spontaneous riots that broke out in Tallinn on 7 November arising from food shortages. These rapidly snowballed into a city-wide strike. Political demands emerged alongside demands for improving the supply of food: demands for the withdrawal of German troops from Estonia and for transferring power to the institutions of local government that had been democratically elected in 1917. News of the November Revolution in Germany reached Tallinn at the same time, triggering unrest in the city garrison. Lieutenant General Adolf von Seckendorff, commander of the 68th Army Corps and the highest ranking local administrator, was forced to seek support from Estonian politicians. As a result of these events, the Estonian Provisional Government convened on 11 November and this date can be considered the starting point of the building of the independent Estonian state. The Provisional Government first had to take the reins of power into its own hands. This was accomplished quickly and smoothly in Tallinn and Northern Estonia, which were in the administrative area of the 68th Army Corps. General Seckendorff recognised the Estonian Provisional Government on 13 November. At the same time, Estonians took over the Provincial Government of Estonia, the Food Office, the judicial and prison systems, post offices, ports, etc. The Provisional Government appointed its proxies (deputies) in the counties and ordered the reconvening of the local county, municipal and rural municipal governments. The municipal police force (militia) that had been formed in 1917 was restored, to which the newly formed voluntary armed organisation known as the Kaitseliit [Defence League] was added. The representative popular assembly – the Maanõukogu – reconvened after an interval of a year on 20 November, and as fate would have it, Prime Minister Konstantin Päts arrived in Tallinn on the same day after being released from a camp for interned persons and took up his position at the head of the government. Yet in Southern Estonia in the territory occupied by the 60th Army Corps, the Germans refused to relinquish power, referring to the fact that they had not received orders to this effect. A particularly serious conflict appeared to be brewing in Tartu, where Estonians were preparing a large demonstration for pushing through their demands. The Provisional Government sent representatives to Riga, where August Winnig, Germany’s Minister Plenipotentiary to the Baltic Provinces, resided, to resolve the situation that had developed. According to the agreements concluded with him, the Germans committed themselves to relinquishing power to Estonians throughout Estonian territory starting on 21 November. Even though further attempts to delay this were made in some places, from that point on, power in Southern Estonia as well was transferred into the hands of the Provisional Government’s deputies and the local governments. This process proceeded with probably the greatest difficulty on the Western Estonian islands, where a drought of information prevailed since they were cut off from the mainland. Only the future Petseri County (Setomaa) was not taken over and shortly thereaft er was subjected to the control of the armed forces of Soviet Russia.

Abstract Background Most of North and Western European countries recognized long ago the importance of specialized ACHD programmes and have today well-established Centre of excellence for management of ACHD patients. In contrast, even though Central and South-eastern (CESE) European region geographically comprise almost half of the European continent, little is known about ACHD status in vast majority of its countries. Purpose We aim to provide for the first time contemporary comprehensive overview of ACHD situation in CESE Europe. Methods We obtained data regarding current national ACHD status from 19 CESE European countries. Over the country national cardiac society, the ESC Working Group on ACHD has identified physician/s actively involved in ACHD care in these countries. Country's representative/s filled out an extensive survey regarding the provision of care for the year 2017 or/and 2018 comprised from five main questionnaires: country and hospital ACHD information, clinical activity information, interventional, and surgical cardiac procedures, infrastructure and staffing, health care system including funding, and education. Results The majority of countries have specialized ACHD centre; 13 out of 19 countries have a national tertiary centre. The median number of adult cardiologists and cardiologists specifically involved in ACHD care per country is 400 and 3, respectively. The median number of ACHD centres per country was one; year of establishment was 2007. Six countries have no dedicated centre. With the exception of Albania, these countries were relatively young, all have significantly lower GDP/capita in comparison with other CESE countries with an established service (p=0.005). The median number of outpatient visits and hospital admission per year was 900 and 135, respectively; cardiac catheter interventions and cardiac operations yearly were 49 and 40. Thirteen countries have a public health care system funded by their government, while six have also a small portion of private reimbursement. However, all countries have a financial cap imposed on ACHD care per hospital, leading to a patient waiting list and a restriction in the number of procedures. Conclusion In the past decades, the CESE European region has made significant progress in the state-of-the art ACHD care. The majority of countries nowadays have established ACHD services with a substantial patient workload comparable to the rest of Europe. Moreover, most centres are equipped with the necessary infrastructure. Contemporary provisions of ACHD care in the CESE European region is nevertheless challenged by generally lower financial resources, lower staffing levels and de-facto caps on the possibility to perform certain necessary procedures in comparison with Western European countries. These government healthcare financial constraints also restrict the required expansion in terms of numbers and complexity of surgical and interventional procedures locally. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: None