Perspectives and Reality of Young People in Slovakia in the Dimensions of Selected Subsystems of Social Policy

Young people are often exposed to various life situations that gradually come during their lives. The quality of life of young people in Slovakia is conditioned by several areas of social policy therefore, these issues are very important for research. The aim of the paper is to point out the analysis of selected factors (areas) that affect the life situations of young people in Slovakia. We pay attention to the areas of support and protection of the establishment of young families and preparation for parenthood, support of employment of young people and support of housing policy of young people. In this paper we work with the analysis of secondary data, which relate to selected monitored areas focused on young people in Slovakia. The data we use in the article are of a quantitative character. We will use the method of analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction to achieve the set goals. Another key method that we use in the paper is descriptive statistics (Rimarčík, 2007; Chajdiak, 2010; Marek, 2015). In Slovakia, the issue of young people often appears only as a political issue. In scientific discourses, the issue of young people is addressed in isolation, as evidenced by several contributions from the authors. The authors of this paper present the problems of selected factors (areas) influencing the perspectives and reality of young people in Slovakia in an integrated manner.

Greece in the Eurozone: An Evaluation of the First Two Decades

On the 31st of December 2021, the euro celebrated its two decades in circulation. Initially, twelve countries adopted the euro as their new national currency, Greece being one of them. Starting in 2020, euro is the official currency of nineteen European Union countries. This paper aims to examine three issues. Firstly, the paper investigates Greek people’s perception about the euro, using data from the recent issue of the Eurobarometer (December 2021). Secondly, the economic performance of Greece is briefly examined by comparing the Greek Gross Domestic Product (GDP) two decades before and two decades after the introduction of euro. Finally, the Greek participation to the eurozone has been a controversial, political issue. The political developments in Greece during the first two decades of the euro are also studied, emphasizing the dramatic political events after the double elections of 2012. The period of the two decades ends with the detrimental impact of COVID-19. This issue is also mentioned by reviewing some recent publications. Keywords: Eurozone, Greece, GDP, per capita GDP, Eurobarometer, euro, elections, politics

House price revival may drag on Israel’s economy

Significance Short-term government policies have consistently failed to contain price increases, much less lower them. As a result, sharply rising housing prices over more than a decade have raised costs for many families. Impacts The growing need to meet climate change-related targets may slow the infrastructure development needed to expand housing supply. Housing affordability could re-emerge as a major political issue. The post-pandemic era may spur changes to the housing market, easing price pressures in urban areas that experienced the sharpest increases.

The Use of Faith in Legislative Decision-Making

In recent decades, same-sex marriage has emerged as a national political issue. As a result, state legislators have sponsored and passed statutes on an array of issues directly related to this topic. This chapter investigates how faith influences an individual legislator's political judgment in the early stages of decision-making related to sponsored bills. The findings suggest that even while legislators' partisanship and ideology largely structure decision-making, conservative Protestant legislators are more likely to respond to threats by sponsoring a bill when issues involve morality.

Thematic Patterns of Disinformation about COVID-19: The Framing of Checks in the Fato ou Fake and Lupa Agencies

This article, which integrates broader research, aims to identify the fake news patterns propagated in the process of disinformation about COVID-19 that were evaluated by the Brazilian fact-checking agencies Fato or Fake and Lupa. Aiming at this goal, we considered the strategies for spreading false information about the disease from January to September 2020. As a methodology, we used part of the procedures associated with media framing, focusing on the themes and labels of the checked information. Politics and death were the two main issues in misinformation assessed by the agencies, closely followed by themes related to cure and prevention. Personalities were particularly relevant at Lupa. The high frequency of the political issue reveals the ideological polarization that Brazil is experiencing, leading to global health crises such as the new coronavirus pandemic.

Depoliticizing And Humanizing Climate Change Through A Public Health Frame: A Case Study Of Ontario’s Climate Change Policy Discourse

The relevance of a public health frame in supporting the climate change impact awareness and consensus on actions is well recognized but largely underutilized. Overall, supporting public health’s capacity in climate change has focused on projecting and highlighting public health impacts due to climate change, identifying public health policy responses, and emphasizing public health role. The integration of the public health perspective in the discussion and communication of climate change ideas has remained elusive.<div>Climate change is also a complex social problem whose construction of meaning and actions is rooted in institutionalized language, discourse, and human interactions. Thus, understanding of the construction of the relevance of public health in climate change discourse is central to understanding the impediments of the public health frame application. Unfortunately, this has been a neglected area of research, and the dissertation responded to that gap. </div><div>To delineate the impediments of the public health frame, the study used the case study of the context of climate change policy discourse in the Province of Ontario (Canada) to examine the construction of public health relevance, the extent of public health frame application, and the systematic influences in the discourse.</div><div>The analysis of policy documents and key informant interviews revealed that the public health frame remained isolated from the primary focus of Ontario’s climate change policy discourse. Instead, Ontario’s historically and socially constructed climate change as an economic and political issue solved through market strategies and technological innovations forwarded by political, bureaucratic, and technological elites. The focus substantiated the types of structures and processes of policies and decisions, the relevant actors and knowledge, and the values supporting the discursive, normative, and strategic practices. Ontario’s focus also limited the utilization of the public health frame and the supporting capacities through the misalignment between public health and the provincial strategic actions, the lack of recognition and integration of public health roles, mandate and structures, and limited public health capacity building initiatives.</div><div>Therefore, public health framing as an endpoint of climate change discourse requires legitimation of public health in the underlying institutional structures for, and governance of, climate change. </div>

Depoliticizing And Humanizing Climate Change Through A Public Health Frame: A Case Study Of Ontario’s Climate Change Policy Discourse

The relevance of a public health frame in supporting the climate change impact awareness and consensus on actions is well recognized but largely underutilized. Overall, supporting public health’s capacity in climate change has focused on projecting and highlighting public health impacts due to climate change, identifying public health policy responses, and emphasizing public health role. The integration of the public health perspective in the discussion and communication of climate change ideas has remained elusive.<div>Climate change is also a complex social problem whose construction of meaning and actions is rooted in institutionalized language, discourse, and human interactions. Thus, understanding of the construction of the relevance of public health in climate change discourse is central to understanding the impediments of the public health frame application. Unfortunately, this has been a neglected area of research, and the dissertation responded to that gap. </div><div>To delineate the impediments of the public health frame, the study used the case study of the context of climate change policy discourse in the Province of Ontario (Canada) to examine the construction of public health relevance, the extent of public health frame application, and the systematic influences in the discourse.</div><div>The analysis of policy documents and key informant interviews revealed that the public health frame remained isolated from the primary focus of Ontario’s climate change policy discourse. Instead, Ontario’s historically and socially constructed climate change as an economic and political issue solved through market strategies and technological innovations forwarded by political, bureaucratic, and technological elites. The focus substantiated the types of structures and processes of policies and decisions, the relevant actors and knowledge, and the values supporting the discursive, normative, and strategic practices. Ontario’s focus also limited the utilization of the public health frame and the supporting capacities through the misalignment between public health and the provincial strategic actions, the lack of recognition and integration of public health roles, mandate and structures, and limited public health capacity building initiatives.</div><div>Therefore, public health framing as an endpoint of climate change discourse requires legitimation of public health in the underlying institutional structures for, and governance of, climate change. </div>

The bioeconomy, carbon sinks, and depoliticization in Finnish forest politics

The forest bioeconomy in Finland has emerged as a project that seeks to resolve emergent contradictions in the capitalist ecological regime and to reconfigure spatial, temporal, and economic relations. The bioeconomy rose to public consciousness during the 2010s, especially after its adoption as one of the spearhead projects of the 2015–2019 center-right coalition government. The forest industry's bioeconomic plans are also an attempt to hegemonize and depoliticize a particular political view of forests in the era of climate change. In this paper, the politics of the bioeconomy and carbon sinks are scrutinized in the context of the 2019 parliamentary election season, during which forest use was a central political issue due to investments in new biorefineries. A data set of 80 newspaper articles is analyzed through critical discourse analysis. The analysis identifies three key discursive frames that legitimize the political imaginary of the bioeconomy: 1) rural reinvigoration and the defense of the nation's peripheries through spatial populism; 2) a view of forests as high-throughput carbon conveyors that conform to the temporalities of capital; 3) the establishment of the bioeconomy as a high-value accumulation regime that can resolve the profitability crisis of the paper and pulp production model.

VAGUENESS AND DISSOCIATION IN ENGLISH POLITICAL NEWS DISCOURSE

The main goal of this paper is to indicate the importance of the issues of vagueness and dissociation in discourse interpretation. The discourse that is taken into consideration is the discourse of political news written in the English language. This particular discourse is widely available to readers and deals with important political issues, which is why the choice of words and phrases should ideally be unbiased and accurate. If not, the readers may misinterpret the discourse and have a wrong impression of the political issue. In this research, newspaper articles are taken as an example of political news discourse. All articles analyzed were written in online British and American broadsheet and tabloid newspapers and they all dealt with the migrant crisis and 2019 Hong Kong protests. By taking into consideration the political context and the theoretical framework used in this research, 44 instances considered to be examples of vagueness and dissociation were identified, which were found in 14 newspaper articles.

All Different, Yet All the Same? The Place of New Parties in Lithuanian Party System

One of the prominent feature of the Lithuanian party system is constant success of new parties. Based on political parties’ programmatic stances, this article investigates the place of these new parties in the Lithuanian party system. Using three different metrics (place in two-dimensional political spectrum, programmatic differences, nicheness), article aims at locating new parties in the party system as well as finding common denominators in party programmatic stances, which could let to assign new parties to the specific type of political parties. Analysis reveals that even though one cannot say, that all new parties are totally the same, there are common features that defines these parties (central position in the political spectrum, lack of clear programmatic niche, stressing common political issue, which separates them from traditional parties).