Search results for "Polity"
showing 10 items of 577 documents
Hate Speech as an Indicator for the State of the Society
2022
Abstract. Previous research indicates that user comments serve as exemplars and thus have an effect on perceived public opinion. Moreover, they also shape the attitudes of their readers. However, studies almost exclusively focus on controversial issues if they explore the consequences of user comments for attitudes and perceived public opinion. The current study wants to find out if hate speech attacking social groups due to characteristics such as religion or sexual orientation also has an effect on the way people think about these groups and how they think society perceives them. Moreover, we also investigated the effects of hate speech on prejudiced attitudes. To explore the hypotheses a…
Econometric Study on the Financial Sustainability of Public Pension Systems
2021
This chapter aims the econometric study regarding the financial sustainability of public pension systems in CEE countries, by establishing correlations between the level of state social insurance budget revenues and expenditures, and the socioeconomic indicators specific to pension systems.
On the ontology of social pathologies
2019
The recent years have seen a rehabilitation of the concept of social pathology in the critical social theory. However, several pertinent questions about how to understand social pathologies remain. One of the big issues is, who is actually ill when a society is ill? Is it certain individuals, a large proportion of the population, groups, institutions, or the society as a whole? And what does it mean for these entities to be in a pathological state?This short presentation introduces four conceptions of social pathology that can be divided into roughly two camps. The “thin sense” of social pathology is more metaphorical and focuses on the socially caused and pervasive suffering of individuals…
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
2018
In this chapter, the author discusses some of the intellectual tools that sociology can mobilize in the analysis of European Union (EU) politics, and then follows with a closer investigation of some sociological research. To illustrate EU politics, this chapter concentrates on the European Parliament, the most democratic European institution. The author contrasts the sociological approach and its advantages with more traditional research in political science and international relations. European integration has provided new objects of analysis for sociologists. Some focus on the EU as a new polity. Others have developed a more specific approach that has been labeled structural constructivis…
Country images and identities in times of populism: Swiss media discourses on the ‘stop mass immigration’ initiative
2020
The construction of certain country images and identities is traditionally studied in relation to public diplomacy, strategic communication and nation branding practices of state and non-state actors. However, we notice the increased instrumentalization of country images and identities in debates on issues beyond strategic promotional practices, such as those articulated around elections, referendums or migration. We analyse how Swiss media constructed Switzerland's image and identity in the debate following the 2014 referendum on ‘stop mass immigration’ initiative, in times of populism, a communication phenomenon and ideology discursively articulated by political and media actors. Thus, w…
El Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea como garante de derechos constitucionales en los Estados: la doctrina Taricco
2021
In which scenario can the Court of Justice of the European Union appear as guarantor of the fundamental rights contained in the Constitution of a State of the Union? The analysis of the CJEU in the M.A.S. and M.B., in a preliminary ruling raised by the Italian Corte costituzionale, following the previous Taricco case, gives the CJEU the opportunity to draw this scenario, in a matter related to the criminal prescription in relation to value-added tax.Summary:I. Consecutive processes. II. Ivo Taricco case: principle of primacy. 1. Conformity with Union Law 2. Consequences of the incompatibility with the Law of the Union 3. Fundamental rights. III. M.A.S. and M.B. case: constitutional rights. …
Algunas propuestas graduales de democratización del procedimiento de reforma constitucional
2020
AbstractIn recent years, a part of the Spanish constitutional doctrine has focused its attention on the procedure of constitutional reform of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 suggesting diverse reform proposals. Practically all of the researchers who have dedicated efforts to this issue start their analysis from a conception of the Constitution according to which the constitution-making process is considered secondary, if not irrelevant, or playing down the possibility of direct citizen participation. The goal of this article is to present a series of gradual proposals for democratizing the constitutional reform procedure from a differentiated approach of the one commonly defended by the ma…
Economic and fiscal policy coordination after the crisis: is the European Semester promoting more or less state intervention?
2020
The European Union (EU) – and its Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in particular – is often criticized as a predominantly marketoriented project. We analyse to what extent such claims can be substantiated by focusing on one key aspect of the EU’s post-crisis framework for economic governance: the country-specific recom- 15 mendations (CSRs) that the EU has been issuing annually since 2011. Based on an original dataset, we analyse more than 1300 CSRs, which show that the EU does not push uniformly for less state intervention. Rather, the CSRs tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously 20 promoting measures that benefit vulnerable gr…
El área de conocimiento de sociología en las universidades españolas. Locus institucional e identidad académica
2016
This contribution seeks to offer a broad descriptive overview of the current state of the field of Sociology in Spain’s tertiary education. It pays particular attention to the locus of Sociology within University Departments and Faculties and to the staff with teaching and research responsibilities as well as to the place of the discipline in graduate and postgraduate studies. The information has been drawn from both primary and secondary sources. The result evidences the heterogeneity of Sociology within the organizational structures of the University while it points to the need to face and overcome a series of problems concerning its academic status and corporate identity in order to be g…
Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking, and Politicization
2003
There is just one noun corresponding to the adjective political in French, German, Swedish, Finnish and so on, while the English language has three: policy, polity, and politics. Here, I shall take the tripartite division of the English polit-vocabulary as a point of departure for rethinking politics in a "de-centering" mode. The English vocabulary provides us with a glimpse into the linguistic possibilities for the formation of different perspectives from which to conceptualize politics. I have modified the tripartite division by taking into account two linguistic novelties, politicking and politicization.1 My intention is to take each of these nouns as an allusion to four aspects of conce…