Politik

The Roma issue is generally treated as a European matter. Indeed, the Roma are the largest European minority¿their presence outside of Europe is a result of various waves of migration over the past four hundred years. Likewise, the stereotypes associated with the Romäthe problematized, stigmatized status of a ¿Gypsy¿ as well as the historical and contemporary manifestations of antigypsyism¿are also of European origin. This book claims, however, that the perception of Roma being strictly a European issue is flawed, and that re-connecting the Roma issue globally represents an important learning experience and an added value.The book offers a critical exploration of Romani political activism in Colombia and Argentina, and compares it to that in Spain, narrated from the intimate perspective of Romani actors themselves. By outlining parallel lineages of Romani activism in three countries and on two continents, the author arrives at broad conclusions regarding the nature of ethnic mobilization. Mirga-Kruszelnicka proposes a new synergetic conceptualization of this multidirectional concept as an interplay between political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and frames of identity. Contributing to the vivid debate about the relationship between the researcher and the researched, the book also includes an original discussion of the positionality of scholars of Romani background.

The Lower Danube¿the stretch of Europe¿s second longest river between the Romanian-Serbian border and the confluence to the Black Seäwas effectively transformed during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In describing this lengthy undertaking, Luminita Gatejel proposes that remaking two key stretches¿the Iron Gates and the deltänot only physically altered the river but also redefined it in a legal and political sense. Since the late eighteenth century, military conflicts and peace treaties changed the nature of sovereignty over the area, as the expansionist tendencies of the Habsburg and British Empires encountered rival Ottoman and Russian imperial plans. The inconvenience that the river¿s physical shape obstructed free navigation and the growth of commercial traffic, was an increasing concern to all parties. This book shows that alongside imperial aspirations, transnational actors like engineers, commissioners and entrepreneurs were the driving force behind the river regulation. In this highly original, deeply researched, and carefully crafted study, Gatejel explores the formation of international cooperation, the emergence of technical expertise and the emergence of engineering as a profession. This constellation turned the Lower Danube into a laboratory for experimenting with new forms of international cooperation, economic integration, and nature transformation.

In this book, six researchers from different professional backgrounds examine the dynamics of the development and reproduction of an authoritarian system. The chapters empirically show how the authoritarian system gradually captures -- and diffuses into -- the society's and the economy's subsystems; describe how it captures the national, intermediate, and micro level sub-structures and reproduces itself as it expands. It empirically analyzes the mechanisms, instruments, and institutions of political capture. The authors distinguish between and explore welfare, development, and recombinant projects and their interrelationships. They study the existence of political favoritism in the case the politically connected enterprises based on an analysis of the corruption risk of 242,183 public tenders. They detail the crony system's functioning and political connections' network aspects in the rapid enrichment of politically connected enterprises. The book exemplifies the vulnerability of democratic institutions to authoritarian and populist regimes, including the tendency for institutionalized corruption to develop systemically, its destructive power in the public and business sectors, and the built and natural environment.

One of the goals of Russiäs Eastern policy was to turn Moldavia and Wallachia, the two Romanian principalities north of the Danube, from Ottoman vassals into a controllable buffer zone and a springboard for future military operations against Constantinople. Russia on the Danube describes the divergent interests and uneasy cooperation between the Russian officials and the Moldavian and Wallachian nobility in a key period between 1812 and 1834. Victor Taki¿s meticulous examination of the plans and memoranda composed by Russian administrators and the Romanian elite underlines the crucial consequences of this encounter. The Moldavian and Wallachian nobility used the Russian-Ottoman rivalry in order to preserve and expand their traditional autonomy. The comprehensive institutional reforms born out of their interaction with the tsar¿s officials consolidated territorial statehood on the lower Danube, providing the building blocks of a nation state. The main conclusion of the book is that although Russian policy was driven by self-interest, and despite the Russophobia among a great part of the Romanian intellectuals, this turbulent period significantly contributed to the emergence, several decades later, of modern Romania.

Examines the impact of the Czechoslovak and East German uranium industries on local politics and on societies. This book contains an introduction that discusses the silver-mining industries in the Erzgebirge region and outlines the fate of this region, including the various political pressures and medical problems its inhabitants came under.

Describes Dan Bar-On's method of using storytelling as both a qualitative biographical research method and as an intervention, to bring people from opposite sides of an abyss to a dialogue. Such work needs slow pace and long-term commitment, with a special combination of a scientific rigorous analysis with a sensitive approach toward the people one approaches.

Three portraits of men who were at the very center of governance in thirteenth-century France.

Secrets and Truth offers a rare insider's look into Secret Police's actions in Romania.

Explores and illustrates how domestic and international factors shape the direction of democratization process with special reference to constitution making process in Turkey. This book describes how all five Turkish constitutions were, by and large, the products of indigenous effort, although borrowing could be felt in certain limited areas.

This book examines constitutional adjudication in the Visegrad Four: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The creation of constitutional courts was one of major milestones in the re-creation of the democratic system in these countries.

Ludwik Rajchman, an exponent of humanitarian intervention and a defender of colonized people, inspired the creation of WHO and UNICEF. This biography, written by his great-granddaughter, uses family archives and documentary sources to tell the story of his life.

This is an analysis of the processes by which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are being incorporated into a restrictive refugee regime established among the EU member states. It highlights the complex entanglement of domestic policies, European integration and international relations.