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2019 Strategy for Development Of
Мај 2Ju020 July 2019 Strategy for Development of the “One Society For All” Concept and Interculturalism VERSION 2 – JULY 2019 Table of contents 1. INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................ 3 Why do we need a Strategy for One Society and Interculturalism? ............................................................... 3 Vision ............................................................................................................................................................... 6 The drafting process and structure of the Strategy ........................................................................................ 6 2. Strategic areas ............................................................................................................................................. 7 2.1 Legal framework ....................................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.1. State of play ....................................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.2 Кey priorities and objectives ............................................................................................................ 11 2.2 Education................................................................................................................................................. 12 2.2.1. State of play .................................................................................................................................... -
Ukraine: Thinking Together Kyiv, 15-19 May Manifesto This Is An
Ukraine: Thinking Together Kyiv, 15-19 May Manifesto This is an encounter between those who care about freedom and a country where freedom is dearly won. This year Ukraine has seen protests, revolution, and a counter-revolution from abroad. When millions of people gathered to press for the rule of law and closer ties to Europe, the Yanukovych regime answered with violence. Vladimir Putin offered the Ukrainian government money to clear the streets and join Russia in a Eurasian project. Yanukovych criminalized civil society, which only broadened the protests. Then the police began to kill the protestors in large numbers. This brought revolution, a shift of political power to parliament, and the promise of free elections. Russian authorities reacted by invading Crimea, sending provocateurs into eastern Ukraine, threatening to dismember the country, and suppressing Russian civil society. Ukraine today, like Czechoslovakia in 1938, is a pluralist society amidst authoritarian regimes, a fascinating and troubled country poorly understood by its neighbors. It is also home to an extraordinary tradition of civil society, and to gifted writers, thinkers, and artists, many of whom, reflecting on the Maidan, have raised in new ways fundamental questions about political representation and the role of ideas in politics. In the middle of May, an international group of intellectuals will come to Kyiv to demonstrate solidarity, meet their Ukrainian counterparts, and carry out a broad public discussion about the meaning of Ukrainian pluralism for the future of Europe, Russia, and the world. The Maidan and reactions to it, in Ukraine and abroad, raise classical and contemporary questions of politics and ethics. -
Press Release Latvian Political Party Representatives Running for EP Support Increasing National Contributions to the EU Budget
15 May, 2019 Press release Latvian political party representatives running for EP support increasing national contributions to the EU budget In the European Parliament pre-election debate that took place 14 May at the Riga Graduate School of Law top-level representatives from six Latvian political parties running for election in the European Parliament elections shared their views and outlook towards the main challenges currently faced by the European Union (EU) and their possible solutions. The MEP candidates also emphasized the critical need for Latvian citizens to participate in upcoming elections to ensure effective representation of Latvia's interests at this institution. Six party representatives participated in the EP pre-election debate on May 14, which was organized by seven foreign chambers of commerce in Latvia and which was probably the only debate in the run-up to the elections that took place in the English language. Among the debate participants were Baiba Rubesa (Attīstībai / Par! ), Dana Reizniece - Ozola (Union of Greens and Farmers), Gatis Eglītis (New Conservative Party), Roberts Putnis (The Progressives), Roberts Zile (National Alliance) and Valdis Dombrovskis (New Unity). It has to be noted, that an invitation to participate in the pre-election debates were sent to all political parties in Latvia whose rating according to SKDS sociological survey, released on April 18, exceeded 2%. Neither the social democratic party “Harmony”, nor the Latvian Russian Union responded to the invitation to participate in the debate. The pre-election debate was moderated by the acting Rector of the Riga Graduate School of Law Dr. Jānis Ikstens, who in his introductory remarks highlighted the increasing role of the European Parliament within the EU decision-making framework. -
Sport and Nationalism: the Shifting Meanings of Soccer in Slovenia
Sport and Nationalism: The Shifting Meanings of Soccer in Slovenia The shifting meanings of soccer in Slovenia Peter Stankovic 12 March 2003 The different meanings attributed to the game of soccer in the recent decades in Slovenia are more than a reflection of the variable fortunes of Slovenian clubs and its national team. From this point of departure the author scrutinizes the most important shifts in the meaning of soccer in the country, arguing that these have more to do with existing relations of power between Slovenia's ethnic majority and minorities, rather than with the game itself. The radical devaluation of soccer in the period between the late 1960s and late 1990s, for instance, could be interpreted as a means of saving the emerging Slovenian nationalist discourse from its threatening inconsistencies,whilst also legitimizing the existing ethnic cleavages in the Slovenian society. By now, its implications for inter-ethnic relations in Slovenia are no less important: Although the national team was to a significant extent comprised of first - or second generation immigrants, the Slovenian nationalist discourse almost completely disregarded this fact, and appropriated their success as a sign of typically "Slovenian" vitality. Sociology has undergone so many transformations in recent decades that it would be certainly quite difficult to find a common denominator of all these. And yet, it is hard not to notice that many of these transformations are in one way or another linked to sociologists’ growing interest in the part of human society, which is basically related to the sphere of private life, leisure, consumption, popular culture, in short, to everything outside of the sphere of production. -
ESS9 Appendix A3 Political Parties Ed
APPENDIX A3 POLITICAL PARTIES, ESS9 - 2018 ed. 3.0 Austria 2 Belgium 4 Bulgaria 7 Croatia 8 Cyprus 10 Czechia 12 Denmark 14 Estonia 15 Finland 17 France 19 Germany 20 Hungary 21 Iceland 23 Ireland 25 Italy 26 Latvia 28 Lithuania 31 Montenegro 34 Netherlands 36 Norway 38 Poland 40 Portugal 44 Serbia 47 Slovakia 52 Slovenia 53 Spain 54 Sweden 57 Switzerland 58 United Kingdom 61 Version Notes, ESS9 Appendix A3 POLITICAL PARTIES ESS9 edition 3.0 (published 10.12.20): Changes from previous edition: Additional countries: Denmark, Iceland. ESS9 edition 2.0 (published 15.06.20): Changes from previous edition: Additional countries: Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden. Austria 1. Political parties Language used in data file: German Year of last election: 2017 Official party names, English 1. Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) - Social Democratic Party of Austria - 26.9 % names/translation, and size in last 2. Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) - Austrian People's Party - 31.5 % election: 3. Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) - Freedom Party of Austria - 26.0 % 4. Liste Peter Pilz (PILZ) - PILZ - 4.4 % 5. Die Grünen – Die Grüne Alternative (Grüne) - The Greens – The Green Alternative - 3.8 % 6. Kommunistische Partei Österreichs (KPÖ) - Communist Party of Austria - 0.8 % 7. NEOS – Das Neue Österreich und Liberales Forum (NEOS) - NEOS – The New Austria and Liberal Forum - 5.3 % 8. G!LT - Verein zur Förderung der Offenen Demokratie (GILT) - My Vote Counts! - 1.0 % Description of political parties listed 1. The Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, or SPÖ) is a social above democratic/center-left political party that was founded in 1888 as the Social Democratic Worker's Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei, or SDAP), when Victor Adler managed to unite the various opposing factions. -
Latvia's 'Russian Left': Trapped Between Ethnic, Socialist, and Social-Democratic Identities
Cheskin, A., and March, L. (2016) Latvia’s ‘Russian left’: trapped between ethnic, socialist, and social-democratic identities. In: March, L. and Keith, D. (eds.) Europe's Radical Left: From Marginality to the Mainstream? Rowman & Littlefield: London, pp. 231-252. ISBN 9781783485352. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/133777/ Deposited on: 11 January 2017 Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk This is an author’s final draft. The article has been published as: Cheskin, A. & March, L. (2016) ‘Latvia’s ‘Russian left’: Trapped between ethnic, socialist, and social-democratic identities’ in, L. March & D. Keith (eds.) Europe’s radical left: From marginality to the mainstream? Rowman and Littlefield: London, pp. 231-252. Latvia’s ‘Russian left’: trapped between ethnic, socialist, and social- democratic identities Ammon Cheskin and Luke March Following the 2008 economic crisis, Latvia suffered the worst loss of output in the world, with GDP collapsing 25 percent.1 Yet Latvia’s radical left has shown no notable ideological or strategic response. Existing RLPs did not secure significant political gains from the crisis, nor have new challengers benefitted. Indeed, Latvia has been heralded as a ‘poster child’ for austerity as the right has continued to dominate government policy.2 This chapter explores this puzzle. Although the economic crisis was economically destructive, we argue that the political responses have been consistently ethnicised in Latvia. Additionally, the Latvian left has been equally challenged intellectually and strategically by the ethnically-framed Ukrainian crisis of 2014. -
Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse
Auers, Daunis, and Andres Kasekamp. "Comparing Radical-Right Populism in Estonia and Latvia." Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse. Ed. Ruth Wodak, Majid KhosraviNik and Brigitte Mral. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 235–248. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472544940.ch-016>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 14:25 UTC. Copyright © Ruth Wodak, Majid KhosraviNik and Brigitte Mral and the contributors 2013. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 16 Comparing Radical-Right Populism in Estonia and Latvia Daunis Auers and Andres Kasekamp Introduction 2011 saw sharply contrasting parliamentary elections in neighbouring Estonia and Latvia. The 6 March 2011 poll in Estonia was the first election in post-communist Europe to feature an unchanged line-up of competing political parties, indicating a high level of political stability despite the financial and political turmoil that marked much of Europe in 2011 (Pettai et al. 2011). In contrast, the same year Latvia experienced its first early election, triggered by a referendum, on the recall of Parliament, called by the Latvian president in protest to a perceived ‘privatization of democracy in Latvia’ (Zatlers 2011). Moreover, the radical-right populist Visu Latvijai!/Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK (National Alliance of All for Latvia!/For Fatherland and Freedom/ Latvian National Independence Movement) almost doubled its share of the votes it won in the October 2010 regular election, and then subsequently took up government office in a new three-party coalition. -
Thinking Europe Without Thinking
Thinking Europe without thinking Neo-colonial discourse on and in the western Balkans Nikola Petrovič 22 September 2011 EU member states draw upon a reservoir of colonial discourse to assert superiority over the extra-European Other; western Balkan states compensate by turning the same discourse against neighbours lower down the ladder of EU accession, writes Tanja Petrovic. “The so-called unification of Europe appears to be carried out with little thought,” wrote Jelica Sumic Riha and Tomaz Mastnak in the journal Filozofski vestnik in 1993. [1] Their critical attitude was primarily determined by the bloody events in former Yugoslavia, which Europe had failed to prevent by, among other things, not supporting efforts to democratize Yugoslavia. In the years that followed, it was primarily academic circles that were critical of EU institutions and EU-related discourses created at the national and supra-national levels. By contrast, the two most “vociferous” EU-related discourses – the political and media discourses – have continued to demonstrate a serious lack of reflection. Today, “Europe” as notion or idea has been almost completely equated with the EU; membership of the EU is the main tool for shaping the new symbolic geography of the continent. Those countries already within the EU can include or exclude, while those who are “on their way to Europe”, or those who do not have the option of membership at all, are excluded. Mitja Velikonja has called this discursive practice in which the notions of Europe and European are equated with the EU “the original sin” of the new Eurocentrism: “Under the pretence of simplification, abbreviation or eloquence (euloquence?), the two terms are simply equated – the political and economic unit appropriates the geographical and historical name of the entire continent.” [2] In this process, “the very process of accession to the EU actually shows how non-European countries may be transformed into European ones”. -
The Netmagazine
Anna Loutfi Feminism, biography and cheshire cat stories A geopolitical journey through a biographical dictionary Anna Loutfi reflects on the use of the nation−state as an organizing principle for central and eastern European feminist history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She detects what she calls feminism's "imperial ironies": feminists in central and eastern Europe acted within international feminist networks, while at the same time were confronted with emerging nationalism in territories that had been parts of former empires. This paper was first presented in June 2007 at the international L'Homme−conference "Imaginary borders in Europe from the perspective of women's and gender history"1. I was invited to participate as one of the co−editors of A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms, Central, East and South Eastern Europe, nineteenth and twentieth Centuries −− hereafter referred to as the Biographical Dictionary2. The initial aim of my paper was to clarify the dictionary's concept of Central, South and South Eastern Europe, but, in the end, I decided that the difficulty of developing any coherent criteria for such a definition would make for more interesting discussion −− especially with respect to the fascinating, dynamic interplay of geography and what I call "geopolitics', biography/biographical narrative, and gender identity that one can trace through the Biographical Dictionary as a whole. This paper, then, has been developed −− from an original intention to clarify geographical borders, and justify points of geographical exclusions/inclusions regarding the selection criteria of the Biographical Dictionary −− into an exploration of the ways in which the biographical genre (particularly vis−à−vis feminist experience) exposes the political instability of the nation state and its borders as an interpretive framework for personal identity. -
Riga City Council Election Report
RESULTS OF THE EXTRAORDINARY ELECTIONS TO THE RIGA CITY COUNCIL August 29, was the official date of the extraordinary elections to the Riga City On February 13, 2020, the Parliament Council, where the elligable inhabitants of Riga could choose one of the 15 adopted the Law on Dissolution of the submitted lists of candidates to give their vote to. Based on the results from Riga City Council, which entered into all 156 polling stations, the joined list of Development/For! and the force on February 25 after Progressives had a clear win, gathering 26.16% of the votes in that way promulgation by the President of breaking the long lasting pro-russian party Harmony being in power in the Latvia Egils Levits. The election, Riga City Council. originally scheduled for April 25, was first put off until June 6, but due to the state of emergency declared in Latvia and the security measures eligible residents voted in the Riga City Council extraordinary introduced to prevent the spread of 40.58% elections, and this was the historically lowest turnout in the Covid-19 the election took place on municipal elections in Riga since 1997 August 29. LEADER OF THE All together, seven out of 15 lists of candidates reached the 5% threshold gaining the seat in the Council. From all the WINNING LIST elected members of the Council, only 21 members of the 26.16% previous term were elected, but 39 will be newly elected members.. s e v i s 16.89% s n e 15.24% a r i v g t o a r L P s n e n o & i h o a ! i n s T r / g g e 9.64% ī U o e e v R i F c n / t R 7.72% t n e a f a i v a n 6.52% 6.39% v o s r i r l e s l e n e y u S A s y t o m i i l R n n o t p n a t o o n a o i n r l U C a c i o o e m i v o r v t w n w t s e a e e a o s a MĀRTIŅŠ STAĶIS H N N N A D H L (DEVELOPMENT/FOR! AND THE PROGRESSIVES) Member of Parliament and a former Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Defence. -
New Asian Migration to Eastern Europe
New Asian Migration to Eastern Europe The Case of the Chinese in Hungary Pal Nyiri 18 October 1999 When migration in post-“socialist” Eastern Europe is mentioned, the first thing that comes to one’s mind is forced and voluntary ethnic migrations within the region and labour migration from east to west. At this forum we are likely to speak more about the migration of the so-called highly skilled, from west to east, which is not only significant in its cultural impact but also much larger in its numbers than it is commonly thought to be. (Over a hundred thousand highly skilled Germans, for example, are employed in Poland.) What I would like to consider is another significant flow of people that entered the re- opened migration space of Eastern Europe: migrants from Asia. I shall not attempt to review the heterogeneous mix of groups that could be classed as Asian migrants, from Indian engineers to Afghan refugees, from Arab students to Chinese traders. Instead, I shall turn to a single example: that of the Chinese, one of the largest, fastest-growing, most important, and most mobile groups in the region. The discussion will centre on Hungary, which has emerged as the main entrepôt of Chinese migration and entrepreneurship in the region; but what is said about Chinese in Hungary can arguably be applied to Chinese in Central Eastern Europe in general. Although I will exclude from my discussion the very particular and complex migration picture of the former Soviet Union, the Chinese are a very important group of migrants in the post- Soviet states as well, a point that I shall return to in some more detail. -
Group Cohesion and Minority Bargaining: the Case Of
GROUP COHESION AND MINORITY BARGAINING: THE CASE OF ESTONIAN AND LATVIAN RUSSIAN-SPEAKERS AFTER 2004 By Kristiina Silvan Submitted to Central European University Department of International Relations and European Studies In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Béla Greskovits Word count: 17,230 CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2015 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the repertoire of bargaining measures employed by the Estonian and Latvian Russian-speaking minorities to improve their position in the post-2004 era. Ever since the re-establishment of Estonia and Latvia as independent states, Russophone minorities have suffered from restrictive policy measures stemming from the majority elites' monoethnic state and nation building projects. According to the literature on minority mobilisation and ethnic bargaining, Russia's interest in promoting the causes of its compatriots abroad that has been clearly pronounced in recent years should translate into increased bargaining leverage and radicalisation of the minorities that suffer from the policies of the "nationalising" state. However, as the cases of Estonia and Latvia demonstrate, group cohesion among both the minority and majority is an important variable affecting claim-making efforts. In the case of a fragmented minority, competing interpretations of bargaining opportunity that emerge within different sub-groups can decisively hamper effective claim-making – especially if the minority is trying to challenge a majority that is united in opposition to the minority's demands. Drawing from both theoretical frameworks of ethnic bargaining and political opportunity structure as well as descriptive quantitative data and elite statements, this thesis demonstrates that external support does not thus automatically translate into intensifying minority claim-making.