Search results for "Economy"

Erratum to: State and Politics in Religious Peacebuilding

2017

“Lack of interest in politics”: a result of non-democratic experiences or of the non-existence of the Kantian republican state in the 21st century?

2019

This essay examines the appearance of distrust, disinterest and aversion to politics and political participation in today’s democracies by taking the Kantian concept of a republican state into account. The goal is to find out reasons for the lack of interest in politics by investigating certain aspects in today’s democracies that might be not in compliance with the Kantian understanding of republicanism. The essay will start with an examination of the republican state and why it is mostly referred to as being much as the parliamentary democracy we know today. Then, these results will be compared with modern democracies (USA, Switzerland and Germany) in order to find the underlying reasons f…

From US Colony to Independent Country: The Construction of a State

2017

This chapter covers the twentieth century, when the Philippines were changed by the US colonization after a brutal war of conquest. Progress in education, medicine, urbanization and transportation was obvious, while the Americans fostered the development of a Filipino political class that was called to govern the country alongside American political ideals, as was hoped with the implementation of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935 under president Quezon. The difficult years of the Japanese occupation gave place to an independent nation in 1946, which had to deal with the presence of US military bases during the Cold War, profound social inequalities inherited from the Spanish period, and a…

Professional Role Requirements and Universal Morals

2013

The enduring commercial and financial crisis that originated in the US and flashed over to Europe in 2008 raises a lot of serious questions not only about economic interrelations between nations but also on the behavior of political actors and financial managers in banks, hedge funds and other comparable enterprises.

Parliamentary Reform at Westminster

2015

As a concept, reform has been associated with British parliamentary politics for a very long time. In the nineteenth century, it became a political idea connected with the creation of new instituti...

The EU, the Nation-State, and the Perennial Challenge to European Integration

2020

This introductory chapter sheds new light on the increasingly complex relationship between the European Union and the nation-state—in its capacity as EU member state—at a time when its fundamental values are being called into question by prominent political currents. The chapter explores the concept of the nation-state in a contemporary European context and shows that tensions between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism are since long a defining feature of European integration. The chapter then introduces the book’s interdisciplinary approach which offers different disciplinary perspectives on how the return of the nation-state impacts the EU’s ability to meet the multifaceted challen…

Journalists’ Associations as Political Instruments in Central and Eastern Europe

2017

This editorial provides the overall context for the five cases—three national and two international—covered in this thematic issue. While the cases are from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), they highlight fundamental questions of journalism everywhere, including contradictions between freedom and control, professionalism and politics, individual and collective. The associations of journalists serve as very useful platforms to study these questions, especially at historical turning points when the whole political system changed, as happened twice in CEE after World War II.

A model for evaluating the environmental and functional benefits of “innovative” roundabouts

2015

This study looks at the singling out of a multi-parameter criterion for choosing conventional or innovative roundabout layouts, by taking functional, environmental and economic aspects into consideration. The performances of three conventional roundabouts (with different lane number at entries and through the ring), turbo-roundabouts and roundabouts with right-turn bypass lane on all the arms (flower roundabouts) have been compared in terms of vehicle delays and pollutant (carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particle pollution (PM10 and PM2.5)) emissions. By means of closed-form capacity models and with the help of COPERT IV© software, several traffic simulations have been carried out, referre…

An infinite-horizon model of dynamic membership of international environmental agreements

2007

Abstract Much of the literature on international environmental agreements (IEAs) uses static models, although most important transboundary pollution problems involve stock pollutants. The few papers that study IEAs using models of stock pollutants do not allow for the possibility that membership of the IEA may change endogenously over time. In this paper we analyse a simple infinite-horizon version of the static model of self-enforcing IEAs, in which damage costs increase with the stock of pollution, and countries decide each period whether to join an IEA. Using a quadratic approximation of the value function of the representative country we show that there exists a steady-state stock of po…

Solution to Urban Air Pollution – Carbon Free Transport

2016

Abstract The analysis of the results of long-term air quality monitoring in Riga is presented, which shows that in city centre throughout the measurement time (2004-2014) according to the guidelines defined by the European Union directives and Latvian laws the limits of small particles PM10 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are exceeded. From the nature of appearance of pollution and from the research of morphology and composition of fine dust particles it was concluded that in the city centre where the monitoring was performed the main air pollutants are caused by internal combustion engine vehicles. The measures to reduce air pollution performed by two Action Programs (2004-2009; 2011-2015) of t…