Studia Politica, vol. X, no. 1, 2010

Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review, vol. X, No. 1, 2010 

ARGUMENTUM 

CAMIL-ALEXANDRU PÂRVU, The Avatars of Virtual Representation. An Assessment of the Burkean Notion’s Contemporary Relevance (pp. 9-25) 

Kewords 

political representation, virtual representation, Burke, trustee, elections, consensus

Abstract

This article examines the way in which contemporary recent research on virtual representation has taken up both Edmund Burke’s original articulation of the concept, and its important complications. The conceptual structure of virtual representation cannot by itself edify us on its potential, and its normative and institutional implications are best understood within two distinct approaches to democracy and representation: an adversarial democracy account, or a tradition of unitary representation.

ARTICULI 

MICHAEL DOBBINS, CHRISTOPH KNILL, Les politiques d'enseignement supérieur en Europe Centrale et de l'Est: convergence vers un modèle commun? (pp. 29-60)

Keywords

higher education, governance, central and eastern Europe, Bologna Process, isomorphism

Abstract

In contrast to many other areas, international and European influences on national higher education policies remained limited for a long time. This picture changed fundamentally in the late 1990s with the establishment of the so-called Bologna Process which has the objective of setting up a common European higher education area. So far, however, we have limited knowledge about the extent to which this development actually led to the convergence of national higher education policies. Are national policies moving towards a common model, or are domestic reforms rather characterized by the specific conditions given at the domestic level? In this article these questions are addressed with regard to Central and Eastern European countries which are characterized by different pre-communist and communist patterns of higher education policy

CAROLINE GUIBET-LAFAYE, Diversité sociale et tolérance à l’école (pp. 61-77) 

Keywords 

education, tolerance, minorities, religion, compromise

Abstract

In contemporary pluralistic societies, tolerance is today a crucial value and a cardinal virtue. Tolerance regarding choices of identity and choices of cultural belonging seems to call for a duty of tolerance toward identities and individual choices. Nevertheless some communities refuse to let their children confronted with divergent ways of living. This fact therefore raises the question of the limit for respect of pluralism at school. We’ll demonstrate that the conflicts analysed in the paper could be solved by a ”logic of compromise” rather than a ”logic of consensus” and by an ”institutionalization of disagreement” which can offer an effective expression to moral and reasonable conflicts.

PETRU NEGURĂ, Educaţia ca violenţă. Învăţământul primar rural din Basarabia interbelică: de la pedeapsă corporală la violenţă simbolică (pp. 79-101) 

Keywords 

Bessarabia, primary education, corporal punishment, social history, inter-war period

Abstract

This article aims to follow up the institutionalization process of the primary education in the rural areas of Bessarabia (today Republic of Moldova), during the inter-war period (1918-1940), from the perspective of the application of the corporal punishment in the public schools. The application of the corporal punishment also interacted with certain matters related to the everyday process of the primary education in the villages, such as the teachers’ relationships with the local community, the school attendance, or the internal group dynamics within the pedagogical collectives in the rural schools. The corporal punishment was codified and became increasingly scarce in the inter-war years, correspondingly with the change of the attitudes both of the teachers and the pupils’ parents towards the primary school.

CÉCILE FOLSCHWEILLER, Eminescu et l’État: un pacte social sur des fondements schopenhaueriens(pp. 103-121) 

Keywords

Romania, Eminescu, political philosophy, State, social contract

Abstract

Part of Eminescu’s political thought still needs to be elucidated. In this paper, I strongly qualify the (received) opposition between his theory of ”the natural State” and the concept of ”the social contract”, which he rejects. While Eminescu does not subscribe to the contract’s democratic and liberal premises, the notion of ”a social pact” – if not the word itself – is definitely one he resorts to when expounding his theory of the ”social compensation”. He combines recent theoretical developments in economy with philosophical theories taken from the works of Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, and last but not least, Schopenhauer. A comparative reading of his writings shows that Eminescu borrows whole passages from the German philosopher, whose influence on Eminescu's political philosophy should be strongly reassessed. The metaphysics of ”the will to live” provided him with the foundation for his own original version of the social pact which he developed within the evolutionary framework of Junimea, after Maiorescu encouraged him to move in this direction.

IONELA BĂLUŢĂ, Le Parlement roumain à l’épreuve du genre. Les femmes politiques dans la législature 2004-2008 (pp. 123-151) 

Keywords

gender, women, political representation, political elite recuitement

Abstract

Women’s low rate of participation at the highest levels of politics is a recurrent topic in the gender studies literature. Romanian historiography is not very generous in this regard. The present study proposes an introduction to a survey on the women politicians during the 2004-2008 legislature in Romania. In order to understand the complexity of structural, economic, political, and ideological factors, it is necessary to start with an analysis of the trajectories that allowed women to reach a high political position: a seat in the national Parliament. For this purpose, the article examines several types of sources (official CVs, personal blogs, as well as fragments from interviews conducted with 11 women members of Parliament during the 2004-2008 legislature) in order to address the following questions: Who are the women politicians during the 2004-2008 legislature? Which are the efficient resources for a successful political career? What is women politicians' subjective perspective on their access to politics and on their political success? This first inquiry, part of a larger research, intends to identify the explanatory reasons regarding women politicians’role and status; the functioning of the selection procedures within political parties; and the practices related to political ”power”.

GRIGORIOS D. PAPATHOMAS, Les rapports entre l’Église et l’État au sein des Églises orthodoxes «établies localement» (pp. 153-165)

Keywords 

Church-State relationships, institutional alterity (otherness), ontological communion, political and ecclesial diaconia, political spirituality

Abstract

This paper applies the Church’s understanding of the dual nature – in one person – of Christ, human and divine, to the issue of the strained between the Church and the State, within the Creation and the History. This question is approached and analysed through two theological, ecclesiological and canonical categories, alterity (otherness) and communion, which are based on the antinomical conciliar formula of a (comm)union ”without confusion and without division”. With the help of the systematic and canonical theology of the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), it has investigated the Christological question, according to the author, of the relationships between the Church and the State on a global level, in the name of the a double and symmetrical divergence: occurs: on the one hand, the autonomisation of otherness leading to the minorisation of communion, in other words, division and separation between Church and State arising from turning otherness into absolute autonomy (without any communion and relationship); and on the other hand, the alienation of communion causing confusion, and leading to the absorption of otherness, in other words, absorption of the weak locally established Church by the powerful State leading to ”confusion” (in the Chalcedonian sense) – without any alterity. In the first case, priority is given to being ”without confusion” at the detriment of being ”without division” (communion), whereas in the second, we observe the predominance of ”without division” and the total abolition of ”without confusion” (otherness-autonomy). The author enshrines in Church, Body of Christ, its very nature a combination of alterity (otherness) and communion. He argues that these characteristics are undermined by the twin distortions of State infliction and untamed separation, which are marred the relations between these two entities, the Church and the State. For fifteen centuries now, this conception of relationships between the Church and the State has placed a burden at an ecumenical level. More precisely, the ecclesiological vision of the Council of Chalcedon was the simultaneous coexistence of otherness and communion between State and Church as a clearly paradoxical or antinomial feature of the christological mode of coexistence of the two natures of Christ: the human nature and the divine one. It naturally emerges that the coexistence of Church and State in a given state territory is realised through the acceptance of their ontological and institutional otherness and the preservation of communi(cati)on and relationship among them. Special reference is made to the case of the Political Dimension of the Church Eschatology.

RECENSIONES

GEORGE M. FREDRICKSON, Racism. A Short History, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2002 (LETIŢIA POP), pp. 169-173. 

OMER BARTOV, The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath, Routledge, London & New York, 2000 (DIANA ONCIOIU), pp. 174-178. 

GARY STEINER, Anthropocentrism and its Discontents. The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2005 (ANA-MARIA TANAŞOCA), pp. 178-183. 

LUCIAN LEUŞTEAN, Orthodoxy and the Cold War. Religion and Political Power in Romania, 1947-65, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke & New York, 2009 (IULIANA CONOVICI), pp. 183-186. 

EDWARD LUCAS, The New Cold War. How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West, Blooomsbury, London, 2009 (ION ENACHE), pp. 187-191. 

ŞTEFAN GHENCIULESCU, CONSTANTIN GOAGEA, KAI VÖCKLER (eds.), Magic Blocks. Scenarii pentru blocurile din perioada socialistă în Bucureşti, Ed. Zeppelin, Bucureşti, 2009 (SIMONA ROTA), pp. 191-195. 

GABRIEL A. ALMOND, G. BINGHAM POWELL, JR., KAARE STROM, RUSSEL J. DALTON, Politica comparată astăzi, Romanian transl. by Camelia Coca, Institutul European, Iaşi, 2009 (DAN-ALEXANDRU CHIŢĂ), pp. 196-200. 

RADU CARP, Religia în tranziţie. Ipostaze ale României creştine, Eikon, Cluj-Napoca, 2009 (CĂTĂLIN-VALENTIN RAIU), pp. 201-204. 

REMUS GABRIEL ANGHEL, ISTVÁN HORVÁTH (eds.), Sociologia migraţiei. Teorii şi studii de caz româneşti, afterword by SORIN ANTOHI, Polirom, Iaşi, 2009 (MARINA ELENA TĂTĂRÂM), pp. 204-211.