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ARGUMENTUM
ARGUMENTUM
Abstract
Twenty years since the beginning of the democratization process and four years since the accession to the European Union, the debates taking place in the Romanian public space are dominated by the rhetoric of the crisis. Based on the frame analysis, this article analyses the discourses of the main Romanian political parties, held during the 2009 European election’s campaign, in order to examine the links between the images of Europe and the perceptions of the state of the Romanian democracy. The paper argues that for the Romanian political elite the European Union is a structure of economic, normative and identity opportunity. This image of Europe is shaped by their perceptions on the functioning of the Romanian democracy.
Keywords
Images/Frames of the European Union, European elections 2009, state of democracy, crisis, Romania.
ARTICULI
ARTICULI
Abstract
For three decades now, all OECD countries have adopted vast programmes of public administration reform and modernization inspired by the New Public Management doctrine. True to their inspiration, one of the major objectives of these constitutive policies was to put all ongoing public policies, old and new, under scrutiny in order to measure their utility and performance. However and paradoxically enough, none of those policies became itself the object of a clear evaluation in terms of mid and long-term costs and benefits. This article is a step toward a critical assessment of the various hidden costs generated by these reform policies in OECD countries. After stating their common persuasion, it ascertains the inevitable diversity of national situations, for uncovering eventually the logics active behind all these administrative reforms, animated by the quest for a new cohesion and a renewed legitimacy of the contemporary post-modern states.
Keywords
New Public Management, administrative reforms, OECD countries.
Abstract
Due to the tremendous ideological stakes of the issue both before and after 1989, the impact of the October Revolution on the Romanian socialist movement was either exaggerated or minimized. If communist literature naturally emphasized the influence of the events in Russia among Romanian socialists, the anticommunist narrative limited its hold to a few radical leaders and to their immediate followers. This article goes beyond these biased perspectives by restoring the topic in its historical environment. Eventually, it tends to corroborate the communist ”side of the truth”: the changes underwent by the Romanian ”proletarian milieu” back in the early 1920s, i.e. the radicalization of the socialist discourse, the mobility of the socialist leadership or the reorganization of the Socialist Party, confirm the significant weight of the October Revolution in the economy of Romanian socialism.
Keywords
October Revolution, Romanian socialism, trade-unionism, social protest, communism.
Abstract
The article examines the political activity and thought of George Grigorovici, one of the most prominent leaders of the social-democrats in Bukovina, former province of the Austrian-Hungarian empire which became part of the Romanian nation-state after the First World War. Romanian historiography of the last two decades paid a fair attention to the role and views of this social-democrat. However, certain aspects of his work have not been sufficiently explored: the connection between the Marxist social and international outlook and his national sensibility; his prospect for a federal Greater Romania. The latter unravel the complexity of Grigorovici’ ideas, while opening the way for a discussion on Bukovina’s regional socialism.
Keywords
socialism, nationalism, regionalism, federalism, Bucovina.
Abstract
John Nott, former UK Defence Secretary, described France as Britain’s greatest ally during the Falklands crisis in 1982. The present study investigates the manner in which French diplomat Emmanuel Jacquin de Margerie contemplated this short unpredicted war. The article follows the diplomatic analysis of the British policymaking process focusing particularly on the interaction between foreign and domestic politics. Thus, events are examined in the light of the conflict causes and the British respective reaction in such a way as to determine how a woman’s war got to be constrained by an unavoidable military logic. Overall, the study endeavors to point out the emblematic difference between diplomatic and political conflict management. Thirty years after the war, this article exploits unpublished sources obtained through derogation procedures: sixty five diplomatic telegrams from April 2 till June 11, 1982, signed by ”de Margerie” and conserved at the National Archives of France.
Keywords
Thatcher, diplomacy, compromise, Task Force, decision.
Abstract
The EU-Russia relations have never been neither smooth nor too predictable; however, the Georgian war was a shock for the West. The August 2008 events made European diplomats question the reliability of the Kremlin in the international arena, while the scholars brought again into discussion the Brezhnev Doctrine. How did the EU and Russia overpass the deadlock and how has their relationship evolved? Using qualitative research methods: elite semi-structured interviews with the EU officials and Russian scholars, document analysis, discourse analysis and press coverage, the present article tries to answer to the above questions, presenting the main challenges of the EU-Russia relations and explaining the difficulties of negotiations between the two actors.
Keywords
EU-Russia, asymmetric interdependence, common neighborhood, modernization, energodiplomacy.
Abstract
By the end of 1970s, transitology, or the study of the transformations following the breakdown of dictatorial regimes, became a sub-discipline of political science. Various theoretical perspectives oriented the analysis toward different factors that could decisively influence political change and transition: the economic and cultural prerequisites, the weight of the recent past, the extrication-path from dictatorship or the international setting. This article examines critically the main currents of transitology in order to re-evaluate their heuristic capacity, their interpretative limits and their methodological difficulties. It stands for rethinking the paradigms of political transition, towards a multidimensional model of analysis of political change, more sensitive to the local specificities and to the dynamic of transformations on the long term.
Keywords
transitology, political transition, political transformation, post-dictatorial regimes, democratization.
SERGIU MIŞCOIU, Au pouvoir par le «peuple». Le populisme saisi par la théorie du discours, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2012 (CODRIN TĂUT), pp. 507-508
JEAN-FRANÇOIS KERVÉGAN, Que faire de Carl Schmitt?, Gallimard (collection «Tel»), Paris, 2011 (MATEI DEMETRESCU), pp. 509-514
MIRCEA COMŞA, ANDREI GHEORGHIŢĂ, CLAUDIU D. TUFIŞ (coord.), Alegerile prezidenţiale din România, 2009, Presa Universitară Clujeană, Cluj-Napoca, 2012 (CIPRIAN NEGOIŢĂ), pp. 514-517
BENJAMIN TALTON, Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, US, 2010 (DANIEL KWAME OFFIN), pp. 518-521
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