The Present and Future Meaning of the State and the role of the Federal Constitutional Court — Interview

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Udo Di Fabio

In this exclusive interview with Federal Constitutional Court Justice, Professor Udo Di Fabio, GLJ looks forward to some of the challenges the Court will face in next fifty years, especially the meaning for the Court of domestic (privatization) and international (europeanization) changes to the role of the nation state. The interview begins with an exploration of the nature and role of the Federal Constitutional Court in light of radical changes in the law as well as the social sciences. Justice Di Fabio also addresses the Court's narrow role as an interpreter of legal texts, noting that the Court performs this function while also exercising broader, quasi-legislative authority within a pluralistic and post-traditional society. The interview then turns to questions related to the role of the state and the traditional public structuring of societal authority as set against the general turn to societal self-structuring, especially in the context of the debate over the nature of the European Union's authority.

1986 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietrich Rueschemeyer

Legal occupations vary dramatically from country to country—in scope of activity, education, organization, and institutional setting. This essay proposes to study legal occupations focusing on their relations to the state rather than on their character as “professions.” It builds on the recent renaissance of state-centered approaches in the social sciences. A review of the diversity of law work and legal occupations in different countries leads to state-centered conceptualizations that identify institutionally comparable features of law work. A sketch of the European historical background of modern legal professions yields theoretical principles that can inform the proposed approach. Variations in the role of the state and in the relation of lawyers to the state apparatus are then shown to be related to differences between national legal professions. Even where the law is primarily seen as a profession, the character of law work is better understood when related to the state.


Author(s):  
Frédéric Lesemann

AbstractThis article is an essay, based on the attempted assessment ofresearch in the social sciences on aging in Canada and in Quebec during the last 20 years. It endeavours o t understand this area as based on institutional factors, including linguistic, cultural and political divisions between English Canada and Quebec, and the role of some major forces. Canadian research on aging is profoundly based on a social democratic vision of the role of the State that establishes the basic concept of citizenship, rights, liberties, justice and equality. It consequently contributes to maintaining the protective, redistributive, regulatory andcorrection ofinequalities that the State carries out through its social and fiscal policies. In the space of 20 years, the social sciences of aging in Canada have gone from a representation of aging characterized by decline, unavoidable physical and often psychic deterioration of capacities, impoverishment, and exclusion to a much more qualified vision of aging distinguished by the search for autonomy, adaptation, and growth in which seniors do not succumb passively to their condition but rather become responsible for their own development. At the same time, researchers, as well as experts and decision makers in the area ofaging, have turned progressively from an analysis of aging centred on social problems and the programs aimed to meet these problems, which encouraged the development of the state as provider, to an analysis of the forces and resources which seniors have or could obtain to rekindle family or community solidarities with the goal of maximum promotion of the autonomy of older persons.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 422
Author(s):  
Izzatin Kamala

The Decision of Constitutional Court No.85/PUU-XI/2013 (The Decision of CC 2013) has canceled Law No. 7 Year 2004 on Water Resources (Law on WR 2014). The cancellation is a new hope for improving the management of water resources. During the implementation of Law WR 2004, there is mismanagement in the provision of drinking water. This paper has two focus issues, namely: first, how the low responsibility of the state for managing water resources impacts the fulfillment of drinking water for the citizens? Second, how are the improvements of water resources management expected to be realized through the Decision of CC 2013? From the discussion, the author has two conclusions. First, the negligence of the state caused that the role of the state in providing drinking water for the citizens was  lost by the role of private sector. For example, a year before judicial review (2012), the number of consumers of drinking water supplied by the national sector in in the counting unit of household level is only the part of 11.79 percent. The number was lost by the supply of private sector covering 38.85 percent of households nationally. Second, the Decision of CC 2013 brings a new hope. Some basic thought are the improvement of state’s responsibility for managing water resources, termination  on the private’s monopoly and termination on commercialization of water value.


Author(s):  
Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste

This chapter proposes the practice of nation branding as a political technology, as an example of neoliberalism in which the definition of national identity, previously assessed primarily by the social sciences and humanities, becomes the domain of business managers and advertising executives, thanks to technologies associated with social media. It explains how the redefinition of social goods, the role of the state, and the role of experts entail the replacement of a more socially driven understanding of identity with an act of commercial prestidigitation by way of nation branding; the pertinent state entities are replaced by advertising and image consultancy firms; and, lastly, scholars of various disciplines are replaced by advertising and PR executives. In short, following neoliberalism, identity is reinterpreted as brand. Identity no longer results from the never-ending and instantaneous negotiation between a multiplicity of parties, representative of myriad aspects relevant to the configuration of individuals and communities, but is rendered instead as the quantifiable, concrete result of a variety of transactions. Through this reformulation, a new relationship is suggested between the idea of nation as imagined community and the reality of the state as a material expression of the concept of nation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 213-241
Author(s):  
M. Erdem Kabadayi

AbstractIn most cases, and particularly in the cases of Greece and Turkey, political transformation from multinational empire to nation state has been experienced to a great extent in urban centres. In Ankara, Bursa, and Salonica, the cities selected for this article, the consequences of state-making were drastic for all their inhabitants; Ankara and Bursa had strong Greek communities, while in the 1840s Salonica was the Jewish metropolis of the eastern Mediterranean, with a lively Muslim community. However, by the 1940s, Ankara and Bursa had lost almost all their non-Muslim inhabitants and Salonica had lost almost all its Muslims. This article analyses the occupational structures of those three cities in the mid-nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, tracing the role of the state as an employer and the effects of radical political change on the city-level historical dynamics of labour relations.


Author(s):  
Viktor Nyzhnyk ◽  
Oleh Rudyk

The study is devoted to the substantiation of the basic components of the mechanism of regulation of social and labor relations in the united territorial communities of Ukraine. The article analyzes the research on the role of the state and local governments in regulating and developing social and labor relations at the local level. The leading world concepts in regulating social and labor relations have been characterized. The purpose and role of local self- government bodies in regulating social and labor relations have been defined. The basic scientific approaches to the concept of “community development” have been investigated. Based on the research, the basic components of the mechanisms of regulation of social and labor relations in the united territorial communities have been identified and their characteristics have been given.


Author(s):  
О. О. Nikogosyan

The article defines the priorities of the social policy of Ukraine at the present stage. The socio-economic problems of Ukraine are analyzed, their causes and solutions are identified. It is shown that the main reason for the failures of the socio-economic policy of independent Ukraine is the uncritical attitude of Ukrainian reformers to the consequences of neoliberal policies in other countries, as a result of which foreign experience of socio-economic reforms began to be introduced without taking into account domestic specifics. The decline in the role of the state in socio-economic policy, the increase in the role of private business, the privatization of "everything and everyone" led to a sharp social stratification, an economic crisis, which became a trigger for crises in all spheres of Ukrainian society. One of the fundamental principles of neoliberal economics, deregulation, has also collapsed. It turned out that the market is not efficient in areas in which the business cannot make quick and large profits. The so-called "market failures" demonstrated the need for state regulation in the spheres of education, health care, ecology, etc. Conclusions of the study and prospects for further research in this direction. Thus, if the new government really wants to build a successful country of happy people, it must make social and economic policy its top priority. Its primary tasks at the present stage should be: reduction of tariffs for utilities by eliminating from them the corruption component and excess profits of suppliers; revision of the principles of granting subsidies for utility bills. Exclusion from the number of subsidies of those who do not need state aid, but have a formal right to receive it (they work unofficially); the fight against the shadow economy, with the concealment of income from taxation; reforming the system of wages and pensions; creation of jobs with decent wages; establishing interaction between the state and private business in order to increase the social responsibility of the latter.


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