Studia Politica, vol. XIII, no. 3, 2013
ARTICULI
RADU CARP, On the Nature of the Romanian Political Regime. Reflections on the Recent Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, pp. 411-425
Abstract
The participation to the European Council, an issue that generated many debates in the framework of the cohabitation between the President and the Prime Minister, couldn’t be decided by an agreement between the two heads of the executive, but only by the decision of the Constitutional Court no. 683/2012. For the purpose of solving the case, the Constitutional Court has raised the issue of the nature of the Romanian political regime and has decided that it is semi-presidential. This decision has been followed by another one, no. 784/2012, where the Constitutional Court reiterated the same conclusion about the nature of the political regime. The public law and political science authors analyzed in this article could not agree about this issue. The main characteristics of the semi-presidential regime have been either partially implemented or modified in the Romanian Constitution and this leads to the opinion that this is an ”attenuate” or ”parliamentarized” version, or that is a parliamentarian regime, or even that it will transform itself into a presidential one. The Constitutional Court has solved the case but the debate about the nature of the Romanian political regime is not over yet.
Keywords
European Council, Constitutional Court, semi-presidential regime, President, Prime-Minister, Government, Parliament.
CRISTINA MANOLACHE, Post-Communist Romania: A Peculiar Case of Divided Government, pp. 427-440
Abstract
This paper sets out to explore the extent to which divided government and cohabitation have occurred on the post-communist Romanian political arena, while at the same time highlighting those regards in which it differs from other post-communist countries, such as Poland. Although the Romanian democratic experience does not allow for such an extensive evaluation of the presidential and legislative elections as would, for instance, be provided by the French case, a pattern for a peculiar form of cohabitation seems to be emerging in recent years. In essence, the conclusion of this paper is that the theoretical models and explanations on the emergence of divided government in semi-presidential regimes are not applicable to the Romanian case and that its consequences are highly significant to the political behavior of the heads of the public authorities in particular.
Keywords
Divided government, cohabitation, semi-presidential regimes, post-communist Romania.
AURELIAN GIUGĂL, ROBERTA-MANUELA OGARU, Dinamica voturilor invalide în Europa centrală şi de est (Invalid Votes Dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe), pp. 442-455
Abstract
This article tests if the democratization process in Central and Eastern Europe coincides with a decrease in number of invalid votes. Using descriptive statistics, we seek for evidence from 67 elections in ten countries from the regions during the period 1990-2012. By the beginning of the 2000s, ten years after the breakdown of communist regime, the percentages of invalid votes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe reached levels comparable to those of the Western European democracies. However, significant differences between regions and countries endure. This article adds to the literature by being the first to inquire into the subject of invalid votes in the Central and Eastern Europe.
Keywords
Central and Eastern Europe, democratization, invalid votes, elections.
JULIEN DANERO IGLESIAS, CRISTINA STĂNCULESCU, Identités nuancées à la frontière de l’Union européenne. Cahul, Moldavie (Nuanced Identities at the European Union’s Border. Cahul, Moldova), pp. 457-475
Abstract
The article explores the discourses on national identity of the inhabitants of Cahul city, situated at the border of the Republic of Moldova with Romania (and therefore the European Union). Since borders and identities are strongly connected, this research observes Moldovans citizens discourses of identification through the lens of their perspective on the border. The interviews and focus-groups show that two different discourses can be identified. At one hand, for a minority of Moldovans that have been interviewed, the border is an artificial delimitation, as Romanians and Moldovans resemble. On the other hand, for the large majority, the border is at the right place and it separates two different states and their citizens, even if there are some common characteristics that Romanians and Moldovans share. Therefore, this article underlines that a common and differentiated ”we” can be found in the everyday discourses and practices of Moldovan citizens living at the border.
Keywords
National identity, border, Republic of Moldova.
CORINA DOBOȘ, Între a preveni şi a pedepsi. Un nou tip de acţiune penală în România interbelică (Between Punishment and Prevention. A New Tipe of Penal Action in Interwar Romania), pp. 477-497
Abstract
This article deals with the emergence of a new type of crime prevention in interwar Romania. Inspired by the Italian school of criminal law and by the Italian Criminal Code ˮRocco” (1930), the Romanian Criminal Code ˮKing Carol II” (1936) formulates a new type of criminal sanctions, explicitly designed to address and combat the social dangerousness. Regarded as a major challenge to the classic criminal system based on free will and guilt, the ˮsecurity measures” were formalizing new types of offenders defined as such not by their criminal acts but by their criminal potential, redefining the scope and the goal of the criminal prevention. Major debates in the epoch reveal the possible threats this new type of criminal sanctions and of a criminal policy orientated towards risk prevention, seen as closely connected with authoritarian tendencies, carried for individual freedom and the rule of law. The legal issues discussed in the epoch prove significant for the current debates regarding the negative consequences the preventive War on Terror has for individual freedom and the rule of law.
Keywords
Prevention, ˮsecurity measures”, interwar Romania, Criminal Code.
IRINA NASTASĂ-MATEI, Cultură, politică și studenți străini în Republica de la Weimar (Culture, Politics and Foreign Students in the Weimar Republic), pp. 499-514
Abstract
At the end of World War I, Germany was neither politically, nor culturally ”attendable”, for most of the European countries. In this context, one of the main cultural aims of the Weimar Republic will be the resumption of the cultural and academic relations with other countries. The foreign students were invested with a major role in this respect. The Weimar Republic has taken institutional and financial steps in order to intensify the student migration and to repopulate its universities with foreign students, measures that have paid off in the mid 20s. In 1925, the percentage of foreign students in Germany reached again the pre-war level. The groups of foreign students best represented in the German universities were the Romanians, the Bulgarians and the Polish. The paper also takes a look at the evolution of the foreign students in Germany during 1918-1933, focusing on their country of origin, the preferred institutions of higher education and fields of study, as well as on the presence of female students from foreign countries in Germany.
Keywords
Cultural politics, academic exchanges, student migration, universities, Weimar Republic.
SILVIA ANTONIA ICĂ, Localized Final Solutions: Nazi Extermination Process(es) from a Micro to a Macro Scale of Action, pp. 515-539
Abstract
The present paper attempts to demonstrate that the decision for implementing a final solution and therefore begin the process of total physical extermination of the Jewish people didn’t necessarily come to the mind of the perpetrators until it was already implemented at a local level on the Eastern front in the summer of 1941. More to the point, the final inspiration for employing mass destruction techniques came from places like Ukraine and the Baltic Countries, which in the context of failing solutions such as deportation and ghettoization proved to be the only remaining alternative in order to get rid once and for all of the ”unwanted” populations in the Third Reich.
Keywords
Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Final Solution, Poland, Ukraine.
GIOVANNI PATRIARCA, Il caleidoscopio dell’Assabiya: analisi, rischi e prospettive. Attualità di Ibn Khaldun in un contesto di crisi (The Assabiya´s Kaleidoscope: Analysis, Risks and Perspectives. The Influence of Ibn Khaldun in a Context of Crisis), pp. 541-547
Abstract
In a context of geo-political changes, the Arab and Islamic world re-discovers, as usual in moments of crisis, the social and economic thought of Ibn Khaldun and his concept of assabiya to analyze the challenges and the risks of the present times. There is, also, a significant attempt to found an autonomous and autochthonous way of political approach in order to attribute a local philosophical origin and intellectual paternity to the recent revolts in contrast with any ˮwesternized” aspect or interpretation.
Keywords
Islamic philosophy, history of economic thought, comparative political philosophy.
ECATERINA CEPOI, The Rise of Islamism in Contemporary Syria. From Muslim Brotherhood to Salafi-Jihadi Rebels, pp. 549-560
Abstract
The world is currently witnessing a horrendous war in Bilad ash-Sham, that caused more than 110.000 victims. Bashar al-Assad is still in power after more than 2 years from the beginning of Syrian unrest, while the international community is divided on the form and legal basis of a possible foreign intervention. This paper is however focused on a different issue. Respectively, it deals with the rise of contemporary Islamism in Syria, as long as this country has become an attractive location for Salafists from different Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Besides, this paper aims to draw attention to the propagation’s speed of a very dangerous radical Islam represented by Salafist groups, whose evolution and directions in post-Assad period are difficult to predict.
Keywords
Salafi movements, Muslim Brotherhood, Jabhat an-Nusrah, Alawite minority.
CĂTĂLINA MIHALACHE, Didactica apartenenţei. Istorii de uz şcolar în România secolului XX, Editura Institutul European, Iași, 2012 (CRISTINA MANOLACHE), pp. 563-565
JON ABBINK, TIJO SALVERDA (eds.), The Anthropology of Elites: Power, Culture, and the Complexities of Distinction, Palgrave Macmillan, New York & Basingstoke (UK), 2013 (ROXANA MARIN), pp. 565-578