This article reviews the relationship between the Bolshevik revolution and that of Fascism. The central claim is that initially both revolutions were animated by Marxist inspiration. Both V. I. Lenin and Benito Mussolini were learned and committed Marxists. Both revolutions were a response to conditions that arose out of the Great War that between 1914...
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Max Weber has had a huge influence upon the enquiry into civilisations and their differences. Books and articles keep coming out on Western rationality and the Occidental form of capitalism, what he called modern capitalism. But things have changed since 1904, when he started publishing on world religions and their social consequences, especially for the...
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Xi Jinping, a “princeling” scion of China’s revolutionary aristocracy, rose from a blameless but unprepossessing background as a provincial official as blank as a Rorschach inkblot, prudently keeping his political agenda under wraps. Belying early expectations of political reform, Xi has instead since his ascension prioritized the monopolization of political power and implementation of a...
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This paper tries to point out that the three consecutive crises (the triple crisis) in the New Member States (NMS) have claimed the heavy social price that has been responsible for the drastic “backsliding of the new democracies”. These countries underwent a transformation recession in the early nineties and, once members of the EU, they...
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Abstract This article represents a viewpoint from the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of Hungary on the constitutional challenges and novelties experienced by this country, in particular on the relations between the Ombudsman and the Constitutional Court. It covers the practice involving these two institutions and offers some justifications for the substantial changes introduced in recent years,...
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The drive towards Europe has been part of Romanian and Bulgarian political agenda, the syncope of communism apart, since the early days of state building and nation-building in the nineteenth century. This “’geocultural Bovarism,’ a disposition to leap frog” into Europe, was motivated by the “fear … that the country would fall right off the...
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Introduction The era of globalization witnessed concerted anti-corruption efforts to promote political reforms by reducing the costs of corruption, which has become a major governance issue nowadays. This effort has been particularly directed at developing countries like Bangladesh undergoing economic restructuring and democratic change. In recent years particularly since 1990s, political corruption – the misuse...
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Romania and Bulgaria encounter today problems in joining the visa-free Schengen area. The main one in the public eye is corruption. Both countries pledged to improve their rule of law when signing their accession treaties in 2005, yet little progress is perceived by observers or captured with governance measurements relying on perception, such as CPI and World Bank Governance indicators. This paper explores real policy, with fact-based indicators, to trace progress in the area – or lack of it – since 2004 to the...
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The paper focuses on a lesser known political phenomenon seen in Slovenia since the country gained its independence in 1991. At every local election since 1994 so-called independent candidates and non-partisan lists 1 have been gaining ever more votes and increasing support . For various reasons, this phenomenon does not exist at the national level...
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The paper looks into the main successes and failures in policy responses to the financial crisis in Central and Eastern Europe at global, EU and domestic levels. The paper argues that despite the failure to prevent the crisis at all levels, coordination of regulatory actions at global and EU levels and high discipline of the...
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