scholarly journals On the question of federalism in Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 366-377
Author(s):  
S. M. Gavrilova

The Kingdom of Belgium is a Federation in terms of its territorial and administrative structure. Federalism in Belgium has a number of specific features, since it is based on the principles of division not only on the national and administrative principle, but also on linguistic. The main contradictions within the nation-state are related to the interaction of Walloon (French-speaking) and Flemish (speaking Dutch and its dialects) communities. The current situation in the country has developed as a result of a number of state reforms carried out in the second half of the XX — early XXI century. At present, the crisis in Belgium remains unresolved, primarily due to the imbalance in the economic development of the regions and the growing conflicts in this regard and the special status of bilingual Brussels. The situation is complicated by the presence of a German-speaking community in the state. The article assesses the prospects for the development of the situation in Belgium in terms of the transformation of the system of federalism in the country.

1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (4II) ◽  
pp. 619-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Titus

Because of its potential to disrupt economic development, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of ethnic conflict in the contemporary world. A prevalent trend in the study of ethnicity is to focus on the creation and/or maintenance of ethnic identities and mobilisation on the basis of those identities as groups compete for resources, opportunities, or political power in the context of the nation-state [Barth (1969); Brass (1985); Comaroff (1987); Mumtaz (1990)]. In this approach, an ethnic group's distinguishing markers-language, custom, dress, etc.-are treated less as manifestations of tradition which define or create the group and more as arenas of negotiation and contestation in which people strive to realise their practical and symbolic interests. This happens as individuals or families, pursuing their livelihoods with the skills and resources available to them, find (or create) opportunities or obstacles which appear to be based on' ethnic criteria. The state can intensify this process as it uses positive or negative discrimination in order to achieve some desired distribution of wealth and opportunity. In turn, political leadership becomes a key in realising the experience of shared ethnic interests. Leadership develops as a kind of dual legitimation process, i.e., as individuals or organisations seek to be accepted as spokesmen both by members of the group itself and by outsiders.


2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-342
Author(s):  
Michel Quévit

The article maintains that, with its long tradition of an open economy the State could not play the role of guiding the economic development of the country. The investment of foreign MNE in the Belgian economy has had major destabilizing effects in the regional structure: foreign direct investment was almost entirely done in Flanders. Simultaneously, the Belgian MNE disinvest in order to flee to the fiscal heaven of the neighbour Luxembourg. If the nation-state has played any role toward both foreign and local MNE, it has promoted multinationalization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-25
Author(s):  
Tran Hoang Khai

As a multi-ethnic country, the Party and the State of Vietnam have always determined that ethnic affairs and national solidarity have a huge significant position. Building a contingent of ethnic minority staff in the political system remains one of the solutions to realize equality and solidarity among ethnic groups. The recent building of ethnic minority staff has been paid special attention and achieved certain remarkable results. The quality of ethnic minority staff has been increasingly improved. This importantly contributes to the socio-economic development of Vietnam in the upcoming years.  


Author(s):  
Neha Deopa ◽  
Piergiuseppe Fortunato

AbstractSocial distancing measures help contain the spread of COVID-19, but actual compliance has varied substantially across space and time. We ask whether cultural differences underlie this heterogeneity using mobility data across Switzerland between February and December 2020. We find that German-speaking cantons decreased their mobility for non-essential activities significantly less than French-speaking cantons. However, we find no such significant differences for bilingual cantons. Contrary to the evidence in the literature, we find that within the Swiss context, high trusting areas exhibited a smaller decline in mobility. Additionally, cantons supporting a limited role of the state in matters of welfare also experienced a smaller reduction in mobility.


2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25
Author(s):  
Jean Philippe Décieux ◽  
Philipp Emanuel Sischka ◽  
Anette Schumacher ◽  
Helmut Willems

Abstract. General self-efficacy is a central personality trait often evaluated in surveys as context variable. It can be interpreted as a personal coping resource reflecting individual belief in one’s overall competence to perform across a variety of situations. The German-language Allgemeine-Selbstwirksamkeit-Kurzskala (ASKU) is a reliable and valid instrument to assess this disposition in the German-speaking countries based on a three-item equation. This study develops a French version of the ASKU and tests this French version for measurement invariance compared to the original ASKU. A reliable and valid French instrument would make it easy to collect data in the French-speaking countries and allow comparisons between the French and German results. Data were collected on a sample of 1,716 adolescents. Confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a good fit for a single-factor model of the data (in total, French, and German version). Additionally, construct validity was assessed by elucidating intercorrelations between the ASKU and different factors that should theoretically be related to ASKU. Furthermore, we confirmed configural and metric as well as scalar invariance between the different language versions, meaning that all forms of statistical comparison between the developed French version and the original German version are allowed.


Liquidity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-152
Author(s):  
Mukhaer Pakkanna

Political democracy should be equivalent to the economic development of the quality of democracy, economic democracy if not upright, even the owner of the ruling power and money, which is parallel to force global corporatocracy. Consequently, the economic oligarchy preservation reinforces control of production and distribution from upstream to downstream and power monopoly of the market. The implication, increasingly sharp economic disparities, exclusive owner of the money and power become fertile, and the end could jeopardize the harmony of the national economy. The loss of national economic identity that makes people feel lost the “pilot of the state”. What happens then is the autopilot state. Viewing unclear direction of the economy, the national economy should clarify the true figure.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen

This article considers the politics and aesthetics of the colonial Bildungsroman by reading George Moore's often-overlooked novel A Drama in Muslin (1886). It argues that the colonial Bildungsroman does not simply register difference from the metropolitan novel of development or express tension between the core and periphery, as Jed Esty suggests, but rather can imagine a heterogeneous historical time that does not find its end in the nation-state. A Drama in Muslin combines naturalist and realist modes, and moves between Ireland and England to construct a form of untimely development that emphasises political processes (dissent, negotiation) rather than political forms (the state, the nation). Ultimately, the messy, discordant history represented in the novel shows the political potential of anachronism as it celebrates the untimeliness of everyday life.


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37
Author(s):  
Lidia Mierzejewska ◽  
Jerzy Parysek

Abstract The complexity of the reality studied by geographical research requires applying such methods which allow describing the state of affairs and ongoing changes in the best possible way. This study aims to present a model of research on selected aspects of the dynamics and structure of socio-economic development. The idea was to determine whether we deal with the process of reducing or widening the differences in terms of individual features. The article primarily pursues a methodological goal, and to a lesser extent an empirical one. The methodological objective of the paper was to propose and verify a multi-aspect approach to the study of development processes. The analyses carried out reveal that in terms of the features taken into account in the set of 24 of the largest Polish cities the dominating processes are those increasing differences between cities, which are unfavourable in the context of the adopted development policies aiming at reducing the existing disparities. In relation to the methodological objective, the results of the conducted research confirm the rationale of the application of the measures of dynamics and the feature variance to determine the character (dynamics and structure) of the socio-economic development process of cities. Comparatively less effective, especially for interpretation, is the application of principal component analysis and a multivariate classification, which is mainly the result of differences in the variance of particular features.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Trong Vinh ◽  
Nguyen Cam Nhung

This research evaluates the efficiency of the state budget allocation in Vietnam in the period 2007-2016 by using econometric models of OLS, FEM, REM and FGLS. The estimated results from the model, together with the evaluation of the state budget allocation show that the budget allocation has achieved positive results, but the efficiency of budget allocation is still not high. Following this, the article gives some policy implications for Vietnam to effectively allocate the state budget in the near future.


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