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Following the constitutional and political reforms in Central and Eastern Europe of the last decade, the time has now come for the whole-scale reform of public administration and the creation of a professional civil service. What is needed is a clear sense of the objectives to be achieved by the administration; and the provision of adequate resources to perform the tasks of public administration. In addition, and perhaps most importantly of all, there must be a sound legal basis for public administration. Recognizing these realities, this book examines administrative law and administrative institutions in Central and Eastern Europe. In a series of case studies, discussing each country in the region in turn, it looks at the ways in which a range of administrative decisions are reached and at how the citizens affected by them are treated. The material for each of the fourteen chapters was collected by a person or persons native to the respective country.
Transforming the transformation? The East European Radical Right in the Political Process examines the significance of radical right parties, along with other organizations, in terms of their involvement in the political process of new democracies. This groundbreaking study highlights firstly the radical right’s interaction with other political actors, such as parties, governments and interest groups, in their respective countries. Secondly, the contributors analyze the effects of such interaction with regard to agenda setting and policies in "loaded" policy fields, namely minorities and immigration, law and order, religion, territorial issues and democratization. Through an examination of...
The relationship between criminal syndicates and politicians has a long history, including episodes even from the earliest years of America’s colonies. But while organized crime may not get the headlines it once did in North America, the resurgence of such criminal activity in Latin America, and in some European nations, has grabbed the public’s attention. In Dangerous Liaisons noted scholars describe and analyze the role of organized crime in the financing of politics in selected democracies in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico) and in Europe (Bulgaria and Italy). The book seeks to unravel the myths that have developed around crime in these locales, whil...
The accession of eight post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (and also of Malta and Cyprus) to the European Union in 2004 has been heralded as perhaps the most important development in the history of European integration so far. While the impact of the enlargement on the constitutional structures and practices of the EU has already generated a rich scholarly literature, the influence of the accession on constitutionalism, democracy, human rights and the rule of law among the new member states has been largely ignored. This book fills this gap, and addresses the question of the consequences of the "external force" of European enlargement upon the understanding and practice of democracy and the rule of law and among both the main legal-political actors and the general public in the new member-states. A number of leading legal scholars, sociologists and political scientists, both from Central and Eastern Europe and from outside, address these issues in a systematic and critical way. Taken together, these essays help answer a fundamental question: does the European Union have the potential of promoting and consolidate democracy and human rights?
This book is a comparative review of corruption during the transition from Communism. Based on two international conferences at Princeton University and the Central European University, it acts as a guide to the problem of corruption in transition countries. This book represents a realistic view.
From November 28 - 29, 2005, the Center for Human Rights of Central European University (CEU) organized a roundtable around the theme: Re-thinking Socio-Economic Rights in an Insecure World. The roundtable brought together scholars and human rights practitioners from different regions to reflect on the following questions relating to social and economic rights, particularly in the context of the global insecurity: If social rights are human rights, how does the failure to advance these rights undermine security? Are social rights human rights or do the claims they incorporate represent social needs? Are they moral or legal rights? Who has a duty to respect these rights? Is there a hierarchy ...
How have national identities changed, developed and reacted in the wake of transition from communism to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe? Central and Eastern Europe After Transition defines and examines new autonomous differences adopted at the state and the supranational level in the post-transitional phase of the post-Communist area, and considers their impact on constitutions, democracy and legal culture. With representative contributions from older and newer EU members, the book provides a broad set of cultural points for reference. Its comparative and interdisciplinary approach includes a useful selection of bibliographical resources specifically devoted to the Central Eastern European countries' transitions.
This volume explores the social and political forces behind constitution making from a global perspective. It combines leading theoretical perspectives on the social and political foundations of constitutions with a range of in-depth case studies on constitution making in nineteen countries. The result is an examination of constitutions as social phenomena and their interaction with other social phenomena, from various perspectives in the social sciences.
The volume demonstrates the suitability of the theory of social constructivism in portraying and analyzing the diversity of the phenomenon of corruption. The approach of social constructivism taken in this volume is able to reconstruct the 'construction of corruption' both from a societal perspective, by assessing it as generally accepted or tolerated behaviour in more or less standardized rule-governed social situations, and from the perspective of actors who perceive corrupt behaviour as problem solving in everyday life. The volume proves the usefulness of a social construction perspective for empirical research. It contains case studies of social definitions of corruption in eleven European countries that contribute in different ways to establishing a grounded theory of the phenomenon of corruption.
Embedded Autocracy: Hungary in the European Union considers the new Hungarian autocracy as a political regime that is deeply entrenched in the make-up of Hungarian society. The deterioration of the social conditions of democracy did not begin in 2010, when Viktor Orbán came to power, so it cannot be reduced to a leadership issue only. András Bozóki and Zoltán Fleck avoid the trap of historical determinism as well. The Orbán's regime is not based solely on the autocratic traits of the leader, nor on simply institutional failures, but on social contexts and cultural configurations. The analysis employed in this book is complex. Hungary's democratic future depends on our ability to underst...