Serbia and Changes in the Concept of Citizenship in the Era of the First World War

This article examines changes in the concept of citizenship that occurred during and after the First World War resulting from Serbia's enlargement and unification with other South Slav nations in the Yugoslav state. As the consequence of unification with former Habsburg territories and the stipulations of peace treaties with Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria, Serbia's liberal concept of citizenship was changed by the introduction of Heimatrecht or pertinenza and by the creation of a certain hierarchy among ethnicities that gave preference to South Slavs and Slavs in general. With the passing of the 1928 Law on Citizenship it became clear that the Yugoslav concept of citizenship had become more regressive relative to the notion of citizenship that had existed in the pre-war Serbian Kingdom.

Ideologies of Corporate Responsibility: From Neoliberalism to “Varieties of Liberalism”

Critical scholarship often presents corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a reflection or embodiment of neoliberalism. Against this sort of sweeping political characterization we argue that CSR can indeed be considered a liberal concept but that it embodies a “varieties of liberalism.” Building theoretically on the work of Michael Freeden on liberal languages, John Ruggie and Karl Polanyi on embedded forms of liberalism, and Michel Foucault on the distinction between classical liberalism and neoliberalism, we provide a conceptual treatment and mapping of the ideological positions that constitute the bulk of modern scholarly CSR debate. Thus, we distinguish between embedded liberalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, and re-embedded liberalism. We develop these four orientations in turn and show how they are engaged in “battles of ideas” over the meaning and scope of corporate responsibilities—and how they all remain relevant for an understanding of contemporary debates and developments in the field of CSR and corporate sustainability.

Comprehensive evaluation of the efficiency of investment projects under concession agreements in the Russian regions with mineral and raw materials specialization

The purpose of the research is to substantiate the methodology for a comprehensive evaluation of the efficiency of investment projects in the format of concession agreements implemented in Russia’s regions specializing in mineral and raw materials development by considering the direct economic results of investment and indirect ones aimed at assessing the social and environmental indicators of industry production. Author’s results. The current state of the methodology for a comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of investment projects based on PPP principles in the Russian Federation and abroad was analyzed reflecting the economic aspects of the liberal concept of development, the provisions of the theory of stakeholders and based on the principles of public-private partnership. Methodological approaches were developed for evaluating comprehensively the efficiency of investment projects in the format of concession agreements implemented in the Russian regions of mineral and raw materials specialization, which considers both direct investment results and indirect, environmental and social ones.

An anarchical society (of fascist states): Theorising illiberal solidarism

While scholars within the English School have increasingly approached the traditionally liberal concept of solidarism in a normatively agnostic fashion, the idea of an ‘illiberal solidarism’ and historical manifestations thereof remain underexplored. One notable case in point surrounds the peculiar body of Italian interwar international thought, herein referred to as ‘international Fascism’. By discerning a synchronic outline of international Fascism, alongside the manner by which this project mutated and ultimately failed as it transformed from a vision theorised in the abstract to a practical initiative under the auspices of the Fascist regime, this article offers historical and theoretical insights into the realisability of illiberal forms of solidarism. Combining this historical account with theoretical insights derived from Reus-Smit's study on international order under conditions of cultural diversity, this article argues that the realisation of some form of solidarism necessitates the acceptance of a substantive pluralist component. Yet messianic illiberal visions that endeavour to retain the states-system, while simultaneously asserting the superiority of one community or a highly exclusionary vision of the ‘good life’, ostensibly lack the capacity to reconcile the contradictions inherent in efforts to universalise such projects.

The Understanding of Human Rights in the Neo-Eurasianist Doctrine

Neo-Eurasianism as a political doctrine is a descendant of the Eurasianist thought in the interwar period and L.N. Gumilev’s ethnological speculations during the Soviet era. Similarly to the oldest generation, Neo-Eurasianists, respond to the trauma of the lost empire in their thought: denying the leading position of the victorious competitor, they also deny the Western understanding of human rights. The polemic is conducted by a group of Russian visionaries, such as A. Panarin, A. Dugin, V. Korovin, as well as by much more pragmatic Kazakh theoreticians of law led by Z. Busurmanov. The Neo-Eurasianist narrative generally rejects the Lockean absolutization of inalienable individual’s rights and emphasizes the communitarian aspect instead. Russian Neo-Eurasianists blame the Western ideologists for treating human rights as a diplomatic weapon against foreign independent powers and try to present the liberal concept as a speculative idea. However, contrary to the Russian tradition, the idea of individual rights is not rejected in the Kazakh legal theory; it is presented in the light of a necessity to protect the right to cultivate one’s identity in the realities of a multiethnic state.

Glasnost in the Mailroom: The Soviet Subject in Gorbachev’s Perestroika, 1985–1988

This article examines letters on glasnost sent to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1987 and compiled by the Central Committee’s Letter Department in a booklet for the Politburo in 1988. Contextualized by other sources from the archive of this Letter Department and others, these sources begin to illuminate how the Central Committee’s Letter Department functioned and how it evolved during Perestroika. These letters also allow us to begin to incorporate more ordinary citizens’ conceptions of glasnost into the history of this concept. These sources show at least four definitions of glasnost that circulated in the first years of reform. None of these definitions coincided with the liberal concept of “freedom of speech”. The conversation about glasnost in these letters challenges the common liberal teleology of studies of Perestroika, highlighting the distinctly Soviet nature of those who wrote letters and the concepts they wrote about.

THE LIBERAL CONCEPT OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Historical science in Russia was formed and developed under the influence of European socio-political thought, in which liberalism was understood as an ideology, socio-political movement, a set of democratic institutions, procedures and principles of governance. Liberal historians searched for interrelations between socio-political and economic aspects of historical development, and paid attention to the need to study state, political and cultural history. In line with the liberal paradigm, the stages of human history are considered from the position of priority of personal development, ensuring its individual freedoms, and Russia, as a potentially European country, with a catch-up type of development. A liberal view of history presupposes the presence of intellectual polyphony, competition of conceptual explanations. To represent the liberal version of Russian history, the article uses the cognitive capabilities of several concepts existing in the modern historiographic space: «patrimonial state», «totalitarianism», «socio-cultural split», «Russian system», «distribution economy», «catching up development, backwardness», «servile and contractual Russia», «non-modern country». Based on them, a liberal interpretation of the content of various stages of Russian history is presented.

Direct Actions in the Czech Environmental Movement

Direct actions constitute an important repertoire of action for environmental movements in Western countries. This article differentiates two ideal types of this repertoire of action: the anarchist concept, which understands direct action in terms of values and as a preferred way of doing things; and the liberal concept, which uses direct action in an instrumental way. Based on my empirical research in post-socialist Czech Republic, the article focuses on debates over environmentalism and, to be more precise, on uses of direct actions by environmental organizations. It explains why the liberal concept was very limited and why direct action as a preferred way of doing things has not become a part of the repertoire of collective action. The article argues that the movement was politically moderate due to a combination of reasons: the very specific historical experience of the Czech environmental movement, which inclines it to use dialogue rather than confrontations with power; the fear of political hostility and marginalization by the state; and the internal dynamics of the environmental milieu.

Taking as giving, appropriation as access: transfers of land development rights and China’s recent experiments

Economic development at both the domestic and global levels is associated with increasing tensions which are inextricably linked to the meaning and allocation of property rights, which has a great impact on appropriation of resources and may lead to different paths of development. ‘Taking’ – the appropriation of private land for public needs – is a typical example that exhibits those tensions, posing a challenge to the conventional conception of property as individualistic and exclusive rights of possession, use and disposition and to the associated neoliberal model of development. Should the individual landowner be left to bear the cost of a regulatory intervention which endures to the wider benefit of the whole community? How can the tensions between private ownership and public regulation be mitigated? If we take the liberal concept of property, then private property seems to be in constant conflict with public interests and wider social concerns. Meanwhile, community, situating between the state and the individuals, and community’s relationship to development rights have not provoked enough discussion. The paper explores the different ways land development rights might be seen both in Western, essentially common law, systems and in China, especially now and in view of two case studies. An empirical example in Wugang, China, reveals the importance of integrating the ‘community lens’ proposed by Roger Cotterrell into studies of the transfer of land development rights. Reading through the community lens, taking could be giving and appropriation could also be access. This approach provides a new perspective to re-evaluate the relationship between legal appropriation and development.

Second-Order Arguments, or Do We Still Need Tolerance in the Public Sphere?

A number of widely discussed court decisions on cases of insults against religious feelings in Russia, such as the relatively recent “Pokemon Go” case of blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky or the lawsuit filed against an Orthodox priest by Nikolai Ryabchevsky in Yekaterinburg for comparing Lenin with Hitler, make pertinent the question of why toleration becomes so difficult in matters concerning religion. In this paper, I revise the classical liberal concept of toleration (David Heyd, Peter Nicholson, and John Horton), arguing that it is challenged by contemporary philosophers, who see no room for applying this concept in the “domain of identities”. The most prominent case of “primordial” identity, that is, the notion of identity as a given, is the claim of devoted believers for recognition. Should we replace the principle of toleration by the principle of recognition since the latter better corresponds to identity claims? To address this question, in the first part of the article I describe the mechanism of tolerant attitude (Nicholson, Heyd) and in the second part, I analyze the debates about the possibility or impossibility of inner religious toleration (Avishai Margalit, Cary Nederman, and Maxim Khomyakov) and further compare toleration and recognition as normative principles. In the light of the debates I took part in the conference hosted by the University of Southern Denmark in October 2019 as part of the project “Religious Majority/Minority in Public Space in Russia and Northern Europe: Historical-Cultural Analysis”, I come to the conclusion that the principle of toleration is preferable to the principle of recognition because the “second-order” arguments for toleration in a secular state will be universally acceptable (pragmatic argument) and, therefore, the principle of toleration is more logical (analytical argument). Following Peter John’s thesis about minimal recognition embedded in toleration, it may also be concluded that we need a normatively charged idea of citizenship, which could provide us with universal “second-order” foundation.