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National Traditions (national + tradition)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	83%

Selected Abstracts

Between EU Requirements, Competitive Politics, and National Traditions: Re,creating Regions in the Accession Countries of Central and Eastern Europe

GOVERNANCE, Issue 4 2002
Martin Brusis
The article studies the impact of the European Union (EU) on the reforms of regional administration in Central and East European (CEE) accession countries. It analyzes the motives, process and outcomes of regional, or mesolevel administrative reforms in five countries,Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia,considering whether the EU has shaped these reforms to a higher degree than in relation to its incumbent member states. The article finds that the EU Commission's interest in regional self,governments with a substantial fiscal and legal autonomy has provided an additional rationale and an incentive to re,create regional self,governments. Advocates of regional self,government and an institutionalization of regions in the accession countries have referred to European trends and (perceived) EU expectations of regionalization. Thus, the Commission and the preaccession framework have become catalysts for a process in which most CEE regions have already enhanced and will further increase their political salience. However, the trajectories and outcomes of regional,level reforms can be better explained by a combination of domestic institutional legacies, policy approaches of reformers and their adversaries, and the influence of ethnic/historical regionalism. [source]

Vladimir Putin on Raising Russia's Birth Rate

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 2 2006
Article first published online: 26 JUN 200
The total fertility rate in what is now the Russian Federation has been below replacement level during much of the last 40 years. By the late 1990s it was barely above 1.2 children per woman. There may have been some recovery since: the United Nations estimate for 2000,05 is 1.33. Other reports set the 2004 rate at 1.17. Countries elsewhere in Europe have fertility levels that are equally low or even lower, but the Russian demographic predicament is aggravated by mortality that is exceptionally high by modern standards. Thus, despite large-scale net immigration (mostly due to return of ethnic Russians from other republics of the former Soviet Union), the population in the last decade-and-a-half has been shrinking: of late by some 700,000 persons per year. The United Nations medium estimate assumes a steady recovery of the total fertility rate to reach a level of 1.85 by 2050 and a considerable improvement in survival rates during that period,notably an increase in male life expectancy at birth of more than ten years. It also assumes further modest net immigration at a steady rate, amounting to a total of somewhat over 2 million by midcentury. Under these stipulations the projected population of Russia in 2050 would be 112 million,some 31 million below its present size. By that time, 23 percent of the population would be aged 65 and older. The government's concern with the demographic situation of the country and its intent to improve it have been manifest in various official statements, notably in the annual State of the Nation Address given by the president to the Federal Assembly (or State Duma). Formerly a subordinate theme (see the Documents item in the June 2005 issue of PDR), the issue constituted the centerpiece of the 2006 Address, delivered on 10 May in the Kremlin by President Vladimir Putin. Policies regarding health and mortality were given short shrift in the speech,road safety, bootleg alcohol, and cardiovascular diseases being singled out as areas of special concern. The president's remarks on immigration are of greater interest: immigration of skilled persons is to be encouraged. They must be educated and law-abiding and must treat the country's culture and national tradition with respect. The main focus of the address, however, was on the birth rate and policies to be introduced to raise it. (The need for an "effective demographic policy" as seen from the Kremlin was of course also voiced in the later stages of the Soviet era. See, for example, the excerpts from the addresses delivered by then Party Chairman Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Nikolai Tikhonov to the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1981 that appear in the Documents item in the June 1981 issue of PDR.) In detail and specificity, and also in terms of the economic cost of the measures envisaged, Putin's speech is without parallel in addressing population policy matters by a head of state in Europe. The demo graphically relevant portion of the address is reproduced below in the English translation provided by the website of the president's office «http://www.kremlin.ru/eng». Calling Russia's demographic situation "the most acute problem facing our country today," Putin terms its causes as "well known," but lists only economic factors, presumably because these, at least in principle, lend themselves to remedial measures that the Russian government, its coffers now swollen with petrodollars, should be able to provide. His starkly economic interpretation of the problem of low fertility (in Russia apparently taking the form of convergence to a single-child pattern) may be overly optimistic. Causes of electing to have only one child may lie deeper than those Putin names: low incomes, inadequate housing, poor-quality health care and inadequate educational opportunities for children, and even lack of food. Putin's proposed policies to attack these problems in part consist of a major upgrading of existing child care benefits: to 1,500 roubles a month for the first child and 3,000 roubles for the second. The latter amount is roughly equivalent to US$113, a significant sum given Russian income levels. Maternity leave for 18 months at 40 percent of the mother's previous wage (subject to a ceiling) and compensation for the cost of preschool childcare round out the basic package proposed. Benefits are to be parity-dependent, highlighting the pronatalist intent of the measures. Thus the child benefit for the second child is to be twice as large as for the first, and payment for preschool childcare is to cover 20 percent of parental costs for the first, 50 percent for the second, and 70 percent for the third child. Putin mentions "young families" as recipients, but the payments are clearly directed to mothers. (Even the usually obligatory reference to western European,style paternity leave is missing.) The most innovative element of the proposed measures, however, is support for women who have a second birth. The state should provide such women (not the child, as called for in some European precedents) "with an initial maternity capital that will raise their social status and help resolve future problems." Citing expert opinion, Putin says that such support "should total at least 250,000 roubles [about $9,300] indexed to annual inflation." Evidently assuming, optimistically, that there will be many takers, Putin says that carrying out all these plans will require not only a lot of work but also "an immense amount of money." The measures are to be launched starting January 2007. [source]

Ideology, Semiotics, and Clifford Geertz: Some Russian Reflections

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2001
Andrey Zorin
This article, written by a Russian cultural historian, analyzes the concept of "ideology" in the work of Clifford Geertz and his role in understanding the figurative nature of ideology as a cultural system. The author compares Geertz's semiotic approach to culture with the semiotics of culture developed by Russian theorists, particularly Yuri Lotman, showing the convergence and divergence of the two different national traditions. This understanding of the nature and functions of ideology opens new possibilities for discussing the tortured relations of ideology and literature, showing the way fiction can affect the formation of ideological systems and influence practical politics. The analysis is illustrated by examples from Russian political life of the 1990s,when revolutionary changes demanded new sets of ideological metaphors that in their turn shaped the direction of events. [source]

New social risks in postindustrial society: Some evidence on responses to active labour market policies from Eurobarometer

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
Peter Taylor-Gooby
One result of the complex economic and social changes currently impacting on state welfare is the emergence of what may be termed "new social risks" as part of the shift to a postindustrial society. These concern access to adequately paid employment, particularly for lower-skilled young people, in an increasingly flexible labour market, and managing work-life balance for women with family responsibilities engaged in full-time careers. They coexist with the old social risks that traditional welfare states developed to meet, which typically concern retirement from or interruption to paid work, in most cases for a male "breadwinner". New social risks offer policymakers the opportunity to transform vice into virtue by replacing costly passive benefits with policies which mobilize the workforce, arguably enhancing economic competitiveness, and reduce poverty among vulnerable groups. However, the political constituencies to support such policies are weak, since the risks affect people most strongly at particular life stages and among specific groups. This paper examines attitudes to new social risk labour market policies in four contrasting European countries. It shows that attitudes in this area are strongly embedded in overall beliefs about the appropriate scale, direction and role of state welfare interventions, so that the weakness of new social risk constituencies does not necessarily undermine the possibility of attracting support for such policies, provided they are developed in ways that do not contradict national traditions of welfare state values. [source]

Beyond Comfort: German and English Military Chaplains and the Memory of the Great War, 1919,1929

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 3 2005
PATRICK PORTER
How did German and English military chaplains commemorate the Great War? The established historiography broadly interprets war commemoration in the post-war period in two ways. One approach presents commemoration as a ritual of healing that soothed the bereft. The other emphasizes the political function of commemoration, interpreting it as a way of reshaping the war in collective memory to legitimize the status quo , by venerating sacrifices made for the nation, it put the nation beyond question to strengthen allegiance to the established order. Both interpretations treat the language of war commemoration as one of consolation and comfort. Military chaplains, however, espoused a more ambitious mission. For them, the purpose of war commemoration was to inculcate dissatisfaction, guilt, and discomfort. This was because they remembered the war as a contest of ideas embodied in the clash of nations, a contest that was still unsettled. Their purpose was therefore the antithesis to consolation and conventional patriotism: to mobilize the living to honour their "blood debt" to the dead through the language of agitation. They themselves had participated in a war regarded by the churches as a campaign of regeneration through blood, in which sacrifice and suffering would revitalize their nations by bringing them to repentance, piety, and social cohesion. Because they were implicated personally in that incomplete crusade, they were especially anxious to realize the mission and complete the sacrifices of the dead. Anglican ex-chaplains predominantly implored their congregations to ensure a permanent peace that had been purchased by blood, whereas German Protestants invoked a resurrected Volk reclaiming its status as a chosen people. Each articulated a politics of remembrance, one formed on the vision of a war to end all wars, the other on a vision of a war to resurrect the Reich as the Kingdom of God. While the political content of their memories was different, they shared an attitude to the function of remembrance, as a ritual to mobilize and arouse rather than console. Both groups preached that the peace was a continuation of an unfinished moral and spiritual struggle. Furthermore, while always honouring the dead, they stressed that the worth of their sacrifices was no longer guaranteed but contingent upon the conduct of living and future generations. Despite the divergences that emerged from their different confessional and national traditions, and from their respective circumstances, they shared a common moral language. [source]