La moralizzazione della politica nella Bulgaria post-comunista: i registri di denuncia della corruzione

2009 ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Nadčge Ragaru
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequalities ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Advocacy Networks ◽  
The Public ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Key Word ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
Post Communism

- The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it aims to investigate the conditions under which questions of political ethics and corruption have been promoted to the agenda in post-socialist Bulgaria. A particular stress is here placed on the interactions between external pressures (international financial organizations, the European Union…) and domestic players (various NGOs, media and other advocacy networks). Second, the political uses of anti-corruption are analyzed. Far from contributing to a more transparent way of doing politics, since the end of the 1990s the denunciation of corrupt behaviour has indeed turned into one of the most powerful ploys used by ruling elites against their political opponents. Finally, attention is brought to the public receptions of calls for morality in politics. "Corruption" has not become a key word solely because of the widespread existence of corrupt practices in Bulgaria. The notion also gained currency as it became incorporated into private narratives of post-communism. To many average citizens, this terminology offered ways of depicting and denunciating growing social inequalities, the disruption of social ties as well as the increased monetarization of social status associated with the transition to market democracy.

scholarly journals Review of "Uniunea Europeană – un trend în derivă? O analiză a discursului mediatic și a perspectivei tinerilor" (The European Union – a Drifting Trend? An Analysis of Media Discourse and Youth Perspectives) by Oana Ștefăniță, Comunicare.ro, 2017

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Georgiana Udrea
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Future ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Eu

In recent times, the European Union has been confronted with huge challenges and crises, which, in the absence of prompt and effective measures, call into question the future of the European project itself. The political incongruities, the disintegrating tendencies culminating with Brexit, the divisions between northern and southern states over economic crisis and austerity measures, the refugee waves and their poor integration into society, the rise of populist and extremist currents, etc. have caused anger, confusion and fear among Europeans, influencing the relations between member states and public perceptions. In this unstable context, studying people’s opinion on the EU and its subtle mechanisms becomes an important and pragmatic effort, as the public has the means to pursue action based on its feelings of support or opposition towards the community block. Oana Ștefăniță’s book, Uniunea Europeană – un trend în derivă? proposes such an insight into the world of young European citizens, investigating their interest in European issues, the EU’s place on the agenda of interpersonal conversations, the way they understand and experience the feeling of European belonging, and their perspectives on the future of the Union.

scholarly journals Theoretical Aspects of the Communication Interaction of Political Institutions and Media (Illustrated by the Republic of Bulgaria)

2019 ◽  
pp. 260-270
Author(s):  
Ruslana Klym
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Communication Interaction ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
The Republic

The article defines that political institutions are integral elements of the political system of society, important subjects of politics and carriers of the political process, that regulate the political organization of society, ensuring its stable and long-term functioning. It is stated that the main scientific approaches to understanding the phenomenon of political communication is positivism, behaviorism, structural functionalism, institutionalism and the attention is drawn to the fact that the mass media perform several functions in modern society – communicative, informational, relay, through the implementation of which, media affects all spheres of society and play an important role in the process of interaction between the government and the public. It was noted that the authorities of the Republic of Bulgaria took advantage of the historical moment when the European Union member states were interested in cooperation and were able to convince the Bulgarian society that membership in the EU is a way to solve economic problems, which will further contribute to the economic well-being of the country. The article mentions that an important role in the European integration process of interaction between the authorities and the public was played by Bulgarian journalists, who conducted an extremely intensive and important information campaign, which resulted in 76% of support for the Republic’s membership in this international organization by the Bulgarian society The experience of the Republic of Bulgaria shows that effective work of the mass media is extremely important for establishing communication interaction between government and civil society at a crucial moment for the country. However, the modern Bulgarian media environment is subject to intense criticism for the poor quality of the media product, the media’s dependence on oligarchs, and corruption.

scholarly journals Europe, Blurred: Migration, Margins and the Museum

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Poehls
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
City Region ◽  
The Public ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Consequent Effect ◽  
Public Museum

More and more museums all over Europe are discovering migration as a topic for exhibitions. These exhibitions on migration question notions of objectivity or of European universalism. This article looks at a broad range of recent exhibitions and museums that address the topic of migration. Taking into consideration their varying scope and institutional context, this text argues that exhibitions on migration tell several stories at once: Firstly, they present stories of migration in a certain city, region or nation, and within a particular period of time. For this purpose, curators make extensive use of maps – with the peculiar effect that these maps blur what seems to be the clear-cut entity of reference of the museum itself or the exhibition. To a stronger degree than other phenomena that turn into museal topics, ’migration’ unveils the constructed character of geographic or political entities such as the nation or the European Union. It shows how, hidden below the norm of settledness, mobilities are and have always been omnipresent in and fundamental for European societies. Secondly and related to this, exhibitions on migration add a new chapter to the meta-narrative of museums: implicitly, they challenge the relevance of the nation - specifically, of both the historical idea that initiated the invention of the public museum (cf. e.g. Bennett 1999) and the political fundament of European integration today. They provoke questions of settledness, citizenship, or contemporary globalisation phenomena that are equally implicitly put on display. The consequent effect is a blurring of the concept of the nationstate. Finally, migration as a museal topic conveys a view on how the institution of the ’museum’ relates to such a fuzzy thing as mobility, thus provoking questions for further research.

scholarly journals Invitación, desde el realismo, al estudio de la construcción política de Europa = Invitation from the realism, to the study of the political construction of Europe

2013 ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Óscar Alzaga Villaamil
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Financial Policy ◽  
Housing Bubble ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Eu

La crisis económica española, evidenciada tras el estallido de la gran burbuja inmobiliaria ha dejado sobre la mesa toda una serie de preguntas, que el autor enuncia a los efectos de entender la hondura del problema que llevó a que Europa empujase a España a la reforma en 2011 de su constitucionalismo económico. Esta reforma siguió el camino trazado por las previas revisiones de los textos constitucionales afrontadas en Polonia, Suiza y Alemania. Pero las cuentas públicas de ciertos estados del sur de la Unión Europea han pasado a constituir un problema para la política económica y financiera de toda la UE, cuya solución se ha convertido en una oportunidad para avanzar en su construcción política, trance en que los constitucionalistas deben aportar sus mejores esfuerzos.The Spanish economic crisis, evidenced after the outbreak of the great housing bubble has left on the table a series of questions, which the author states the purpose of understanding the depth of the problem that led Europe push Spain to the reform in 2011 of its economic constitutionalism. This reform followed the path set by the previous reviews the constitutions faced in Poland, Switzerland and Germany. But the public accounts of certain southern states of the European Union have come to constitute a problem for the economic and financial policy across the EU, whose solution has become an opportunity to advance their political construction, situation in which the Constitutionalists should make their best efforts.

scholarly journals Gender and Political Violence

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public

Feminist studies have rejected the assumption according to which gender violence is an individual or private issue that has to be primarily approached from a psychological perspective. They have underscored the link between gender violence and other factors of social inequalities. Feminists contend that men use violence as a means to exercise power over women. They have defended the idea according to which violence against women is a form of political violence. Marxist/materialist feminisms have argued that the dichotomy between the private and the public spheres structures power relations between women and men. They have shown that the private/public distinction depoliticizes the private sphere. Simultaneously, they have demonstrated that the private sphere—as much as the public domain—is a political construction which serves to reinforce women’s subordination and their social, political and economic exploitation. Women’s relegation to domestic tasks and their responsibility for care work reinforce the norm of political participation and economic resources as a male privilege. The concept of political violence locates politics in the public domain, and links violence with armed conflicts, social movements, and wars. By contrast, feminist studies situate the production of political violence within domains of life which were previously dismissed as irrelevant for politics: the home, the neighborhood, the intimate space, interpersonal relations and everyday life. Feminist theories make visible the political nature of violence against women. They consider that violence against women takes various forms, occurs in all social spaces, and is closely intertwined with gender hierarchies. Violence against women is an instrument for maintaining women’s oppression and men’s privileges in societies. The political economy of patriarchy and gendered inequalities makes women more vulnerable and fuels violence against women. Furthermore, women of color and queer feminists have highlighted the importance of other categories of identity such as race, class, and sexuality in the way gender violence is deployed. A focus on gender, instead of women, enables to bring nuances to monolithic representations of masculinity and femininity by demonstrating how the masculine and the feminine constitute socially constructed sets of attributes, behaviors, and roles that are constantly negotiated and changing over time and history. An intersectional approach to gender is therefore necessary to understand how violence differently targets and affects women of color and queer people.

Why Was the Monarchy Not Restored in Post-Communist Bulgaria?

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossen Vassilev
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Crisis

The controversy over bringing back Bulgaria’s abolished monarchy reflects in a large measure the prolonged agony the country has been undergoing ever since it launched on a course of painful post-communist reforms. Against the background of a deep economic crisis, mass poverty, the breakdown of law and order, and political chaos that have traumatized the population, the attempts to reinstate the monarchy have failed only because of its low historical legitimacy. While the ex-king’s triumph in the June 2001 election initially seemed to improve the chances for bringing back the monarchy, such a restoration has been rendered less likely now by the numerous failures and blunders of his time in office, particularly his inability to rebuild the ailing national state and economy. In spite of some notable foreign policy successes such as Bulgaria’s entry into NATO and the European Union, ex—Prime Minister Simeon did not live up to the naïvely overoptimistic expectations of Bulgarians who had hoped that he would save their country from the profound economic, social, political, institutional, and even moral crisis into which it has descended. The precipitous fall of the political fortunes of Simeon, especially as a result of the public relations disaster involving the scandalous “restitution” of his family’s properties that turned the ex-monarch into a multimillionaire, does not bode well for the prospect of reintroducing the monarchy. In the eyes of many ordinary Bulgarians, the former king has now turned into a liability and an embarrassing disappointment.

scholarly journals The EU budget and UK contribution

2016 ◽  
Vol 236 ◽  
pp. 39-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Begg
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Fiscal Federalism ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Limited Range ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Range Of Functions ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

The European Union budget is small and fulfils only a limited range of functions, yet it provokes regular disputes among the Member States and institutions of the Union. This paper describes the structure of the budget and shows that standard theories, such as fiscal federalism, are not well-suited to analysing how the EU budget operates or the political economy behind it. The paper then looks at how much the UK contributes towards the EU budget and explains why some of the claims made about it in the public discourse are inaccurate.

Political Development of Lithuania: A Comparative Analysis of Second Post-communist Decade

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zenonas Norkus
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Stress Tests ◽  
Post Communism ◽  
As Stress

AbstractThe goal of this paper is to put into focus and explain distinctive features of the political developments in Lithuania during second post-communist decade, comparing them with other Baltic States (Latvia and Estonia) and those Central European countries with political systems which resembled most closely Lithuania (Poland and Hungary) by the end of the first post-communist decade. In all these countries, second post-communist decade witnessed the rise of the new successful populist parties. The author argues that this populist rise is the proper context for understanding of Rolandas Paksas’ impeachment in Lithuania in 2003–2004. His Order and Justice Party has to be classified together with the Kaczynski twins Law and Justice Party and its even more radical allies in Poland, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and Gábor Vona’s Jobbik in Hungary, Juhan Part’s Res Publica in Estonia and Einars Repše’s New Era in Latvia. They all were right-wing populist parties, proclaiming in their anti-establishment rhetoric the war on corruption of the (ex-communist) elite and the coming of new politics. While the rise of right-wing populism did not change the political system in Estonia and Latvia, its outcome in Hungary and Poland was the breakup of the ex-communist and anti-communist elites pact which was the foundation of the political stability during first post-communist decade. The Kaczynski twins founded Rzecz Pospolita IV (4th Republic of Poland), grounded in the thorough and comprehensive lustration of the ex-communist cadres. Fidesz leader Orban used the two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament to promulgate a new constitution. Lithuania is unique in that the ex-communist and anti-communist elites pact was not abolished, but preserved and consolidated thanks to the collaboration of all, by this time, established and left-of-center populist parties during the impeachment proceedings. The impeachment of Paksas can be considered as the stress test of the young Lithuanian liberal democracy just on the eve of the accession of Lithuania to the European Union and NATO. An unhappy peculiarity of the stress tests is that they sometimes break or damage the items tested. Preventing the transformation of liberal post-communism into populist post-communism in Lithuania, the impeachment as stress test was a success. However, against the expectation of many observers, it did not enhance the quality of democracy of Lithuania. The legacy of impeachment are disequilibrium of the balance of power between government branches in favor of the Constitutional Court, strengthening of the left-of-centre populist political forces and the interference of secret services into Lithuanian politics with the self-assumed mission to safeguard Lithuanian democracy from the perils of populism.

Belgium's Adaptation to the EU : Does Federalism Constrain Europeanisation ?

Res Publica ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-597
Author(s):  
Peter Bursens
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
General Public ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Federal System ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Dominant Focus ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Eu

This article starts from the observation that the Belgian level of adaptation to the requirements posed by its membership of the European Union is surprisingly low. Following an institutionalist line of thinking, it is argued that the impact of the European Union is seriously constrained by the characteristics of the Belgian federal system. This results into defining both cultural (1) and structural (2) indicators for the degree of Europeanisation: (1) European opinions and awareness of political elites and the general public and (2) the Belgian domestic organisation of European co-ordination mechanisms. The article more concretely argues that the European opinions and European awareness of the political elites and the public opinion are coloured by an inwards-looking mentality that stems from the dominant focus on the ongoing federalisation process. In addition, it is also found that the limited Europeanised installation and outcomes ofthe European co-ordination mechanisms are at least partly shaped by hard and soft federal elements

The Political Commissioner

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Mérand
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Tax Evasion ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Finance Minister ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Character

Based on four years of embedded observation in the cabinet of a European Commissioner, this book develops a sociology of international political work. Empirically, it offers an insider’s chronicle of the European Union between 2015 and 2019. The analysis traces the successes and failures of Commissioner Pierre Moscovici and his team on five issues that defined European politics between 2015 and 2019: the Greek crisis, budgetary disputes with Spain and Portugal, the rise of populism in Italy, the reform of the eurozone, and the fight against tax evasion. The aim is not to ascertain whether the Commission’s policy was good or bad, but to understand how political work is done in a European Union where the “spectacle of power” is blurred by twenty-four official languages, twenty-eight national histories, a powerful technocracy, and sometimes opaque institutions. As a life-long socialist politician and former French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici was perhaps the most intensely political character in Jean-Claude Juncker’s self-styled “Political Commission.” Brandishing his leftist identity, rejecting technocratic talk, he surrounded himself with staffers sharing his ambition—but also critical of his actions. Shadowing them from the corridors of the Berlaymont, the seat of the European Commission, to Washington and Athens, The Political Commissioner throws light on the partisan struggles that shaped the Juncker Commission, tensions with the Eurogroup and the Parliament, and recurring conflicts with the Member States. It also shows how political staffers operate informally and in their interaction with the media and civil servants, as they craft and sell public policies to the public.

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