Search results for " Public Administratio"

Borders on the old maps of Jizera Mountain

2019

Abstract Old maps, mainly from the period between 1890 and 1940, have been collected in the framework of the project “Old Maps of the Jizera Mountains”. These maps provide us with a complex picture, mainly of tourism, in this currently Czech–Polish territory. The territory of the Jizera Mountains was inhabited mainly by a German-speaking population on both sides of the border until 1945. Yet it is interesting to examine how the border between the two states – in those times Czechoslovakia and Germany, now Czechia and Poland – was illustrated on these old maps. This article argues that the border was not perceived as a barrier as such until later on, mainly due to the ethnic change in the bo…

Territorial fragmentation in post-communist Romania: the not so curious case of a de-amalgamation reform

2021

Abstract The efficiency-driven trend towards amalgamation characterising local government reforms in Europe seems to have escaped Romania, which displays a significant increase in the number of local governments post-1989. This is the result of rural first-tier local governments splitting into smaller units. The paper examines objective factors and subjective motivations that have shaped the behaviour of both national and local actors in dealing with territorial reform. First, it explores the rationale and rationality of a central government initiative to facilitate municipal splits against a set of criteria derived from the literature. Second, it examines the municipal splits occurring bet…

The Global Spread of Gated Communities

2002

Between Strategic Cooperation and Distrustful Neighbourhood. Polish-German relations in the agendas of Polish governments, 1990–2019

2019

Since 1989 the building of new Polish-German relations has been carried out in the dimensions of both time (historical reconciliation) and space (reintegration eastern and western parts of Europe). This determines their fundamental importance for contemporary Europe. This article presents an analysis of Polish-German relations from the perspective of issue salience. The source base of this paper comprises Addresses by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs (AMFAs), i.e. annual speeches given by foreign ministers presenting the major goals of Poland’s foreign policy. It makes it possible to adopt a long-term perspective (1990-2018). The quantitative analysis was based on the rules of the Comparati…

The globalisation divide in the public mind: belief systems on globalisation and their electoral consequences

2019

Many studies describe how globalisation—the global integration of the economic, political, and cultural domains of society—transforms party competition in Western Europe. At the citizen level, however, our knowledge about globalisation attitudes and their electoral consequences remains limited. Using data from a large-scale panel survey of the German public, we show that, first, citizens hold stable rather than fluid attitudes towards the concept of globalisation. Second, these attitudes are rather closely related to positions on specific economic, cultural, and political issues that social scientists understand as facets of globalisation but unrelated to positions on traditional redistribu…

Foreign policy and de-Europeanization under the M5S–League government: exploring the Italian behavior in the UN General Assembly

2021

This article explores the first declaredly populist and Eurosceptical Italian government’s role as a potential driver of de-Europeanization dynamics in Italian foreign policy. After describing the M5S–League government’s discursive de-Europeanization on core substantive EU values, the article focuses on multilateralism, a critical pillar of Italian foreign policy and a substantive norm of the European Union, and investigates the actual foreign policy conduct in the UN General Assembly. By analyzing the voting and sponsoring behavior of the M5S-League government, the article systematically assesses variations in de-Europeanization’s critical dimensions (culture of cooperation, repudiation of…

Beyond Remittances

2016

Young, tertiary-educated emigrants see themselves, and are seen by their home country's government, as agents of economic and social change, especially if they can be incentivized to return home. In this paper we examine the barriers that prevent this positive impact from being fully realized, taking the case of Latvia, formerly part of the Soviet Union but since 2004 a member state of the European Union. We build our analysis on data from an online questionnaire (N = 307) and from narrative interviews (N = 30) with foreign-educated Latvian students and graduates. In moving beyond remittances, we examine knowledge transfer to the home country as a form of “social remittance” and break down …

Questioning Human Rights: The Case of Education for Children and Youth with Disabilities in Ethiopia

2016

This chapter focuses on the politics of education as a basic human right. We analyze the challenges and opportunities implied in realizing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and operationalizing the human rightsbased approach to disability (HRBAD) with a case study on the inclusion of children and youth with disabilities in the regular education system of Ethiopia. The existing situation is highlighted with lived experiences of persons with disabilities and comments by organisations of persons with disabilities, education professionals, and government officials who were interviewed between August and October 2013 in Ethiopia. When successful, the HRBAD and its critica…

Social Media as Public Sphere: A Stakeholder Perspective

2016

Purpose This paper aims to examine major stakeholders’ communication preferences in eParticipation initiatives and discuss how this affects the public sphere. Despite the potential of social media, it has proven difficult to get people actively involved in the decision-making processes. There is a need for more research on how stakeholders manage and use social media to communicate. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted as a qualitative case study. Data sources include interviews, social media content, document analysis and field notes. Findings Communication preferences of stakeholders vary according to their salience level. Stakeholders with higher salience are less likely …

2019

This paper contributes to e-government research by presenting a review and discussion on how digitalization of public services has affected the interaction between citizens and government. We argue ...