The Municipal Map in Portugal

The municipality is the basic territorial organization for almost all the Member States of the European Union and has approximately the same attributions in all these. Even so, the territorial structure of municipalities differs in each of the Member States, and it is possible to group them into two large groups: those that have implemented reforms with a consequent reduction in the number of these entities and those with a high number of municipalities. Although Spain is a neighbor of Portugal and Portugal gets some influences from France, in fact the territorial organization of municipalities corresponds to very different realities. Through this research you can see that Portugal did reform its municipalities while France and Spain failed to do so. However, they all recognize that there is a need to reform the territorial structure of municipalities.

Impact of Social Networks in the Exercise of Citizenship in Portugal

In a society where access and presence in social networks is common to most of the population, it is essential to follow this form of access and sharing information, especially when it comes to publicizing the rights and duties of citizens. In this sense, the chapter focused on the analysis of the profile of Portuguese citizens that uses social networks to support the different themes that make up the concept of citizenship. Likewise, the results obtained allow to state that although most respondents do not use social networks to follow and/or support institutions, movements, or organizations associated with the exercise of citizenship, there is room for such. That is, the results suggest that it is possible to promote the exercise of citizenship through social networks in Portugal.

Bullying in the Work Environment and Human Dignity

This chapter deals with the dignity of the human person and moral harassment, bringing some specific considerations about Brazilian reality. The scientific objective is to demonstrate the concrete existence of an impact on the principle of human dignity when harassment occurs in the environmental work. It is a theme that is in the discussion guide mainly from the beginning of this century, although abuse and humiliation have always been practiced in labor relations, with the same current scope, which is a tool to achieve generally derogatory ends of the human condition and intensified by the action of globalization in the contemporary world. Besides impact directly on the person, moral harassment in the work environment results in consequences for society, for company (organization), and the state.

Dematerialization in Customs Taxation for Transparency in International Trade

Transparency is a quality that transcends many areas of law and is based on a fundamental principle that transcends the entire legal system and whose scope extends to all public and private actions to which legal relevance can be recognized. In the specific field of taxation in international trade, the importance of transparency has become proportional to the growing complexity of the terms in which cross-border trade in goods takes place. In deed, the more complex the exchanges are, the greater the level of control over them and the greater the degree of transparency required, both as regards the form of control and the specific terms in which transactions are performed. In any case, the requirements and effects of transparency are reflected in a digital context of dematerialization, but not, of course, of automation.

Problems Relating to the Right to Information in Turkey

Traditionally, public administration has always preferred to work behind closed doors. However, the concept of participatory democracy, which developed especially after the 1950s, encouraged citizens to participate more in the decision-making mechanisms of the state. Turkey experiences many problems in exercising the right to information, which was enacted in 2003, arising from the administration's attitudes and behaviors and also from the legislation. Foremost among these are the fact that citizens have not been made sufficiently aware of this right and that the administration is reluctant to share information. An analysis of the data and statistics in Turkey shows a rising trend in the exercise of this right by citizens between 2004-2015. However, considering the size of Turkey's population, the rate can still be deemed low. Post-2015 figures show a radical decline in citizens' exercising of the right to information. This situation may be explained by the painful process that Turkey experienced from 2015 onwards and the state of emergency implementations that followed.

Constitutional Knowledge, Rights-Based Development, and Citizenship in Zimbabwe

This chapter seeks to assess the trends in rights-based development (RBD) and citizenship in Zimbabwe based on constitutional knowledge to proffer options on how the public can become constitutionally knowledgeable towards developing the nation. The chapter is informed by constitutional knowledge gathered through qualitative data from document analysis and literature on this discourse. The chapter first discusses the provisions of RBD and citizenship in Zimbabwe in light of the constitution. It assesses the trends in RBD and citizenship in Zimbabwe past, present, and the future to analyze the trends in the changes in the development of the nation, based on constitutional knowledge. Lastly, it proffers policy options on ways to nurture constitutionally knowledgeable citizenry.

The Information Access Law as a Full Constitutional Citizenship Instrument

This chapter addresses the right of access to information, reinforced as a fundamental rule for citizens in the Brazilian constitutional norm of 1988, now regulated, more closely, from the enactment of the law on access to information in 2011. It represents an important legislative instrument of reinforcement of the principle of publicity, as well as the main infraconstitutional standard guaranteeing access to information. The requirement of a clear and transparent accountability environment by the public manager is a republican assumption of massive participation by society. This is because the right of access to information of a public nature provides a better control of public expenditures, while allowing, on the other hand, promotion of social control of a diffuse nature. It should be pointed out that, with greater knowledge of their own rights, the citizen goes through a faster inclusion process, either in the subjectivation of a minimal role of rights that he does not know, or in the clarification of his duties as a participant in the process of state maintenance.

The New Paths of Fundamental Rights in the 21st Century

The protection of fundamental rights is one of the essential elements of European identity. Thus, knowledge of the law is crucial for the realization and guarantee of fundamental rights: knowing the law must be the first of the fundamental rights that assist us. Despite the abundance of declarative texts, the lack of identification and visibility and the lack of knowledge about the gracious and contentious ways, continue to be barriers to the full affirmation of those rights. The authors present a review on the legal structure of this novel space in which we move: a common space without borders, a space of democracy, an area of freedom, security, and multiculturality. Elencare which rights to citizens and how to access them intends to give shape to a future portal of enlightenment. The approach will be tripartised by the portuguese constitutional system, the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Union.

Corruption and Human Development Index

Corruption is a human phenomenon that covers the whole world. It is a fact that public corruption gains more prominence than private corruption, because the state has the duty of accountability in a transparent way to taxpayers. As a result of this, the authors focus on the analysis of public corruption, which involves agents and public resources of the state. Therefore, this study has the main objective to verify if there is a relationship between IPC corruption (corruption perception index) and HDI (human development index), which posits the hypothesis that the greater the corruption, the lower the HDI indexes. In addition to the CPI and HDI variables, they also analyze the GDP of the countries in a secondary way. The global data analyzed indicate a high correlation between greater corruption and a lower index of human development, which may suggest problems of accountability.

Exercise of Citizenship in Network Society

The chapter is based on the understanding that the citizens' lack of awareness of the rights inherent to the very guarantee of human dignity, as well as of the whole historical process that gave rise to the guarantee of such rights, is one of the reflexes that the absence of a citizenship education and for citizenship provoke, even affecting the high rate of dissemination of false news in Brazil. There is a recurrent need to deal with this type of problem, especially aggravated by the presidential race of 2018, where there is an increase in the reproduction of news whose reliability of the source is not verified, although they are evidently false, exaggerated, and sensationalist. While analyzing this problem, the study seeks to examine the harm of this practice to the exercise of citizenship.