Volume 13, Issue 2

Choosing the type of electoral system in new democracies has become a contested issue for social scientists as well as for political actors. Contrary to the state of the public debate on the issue, the article advances the position from a multidisciplinary standpoint (political science, historical sociology, economics) that proportional representation with large districts and closed lists performs better on a variety of key indicators. We review recent literature on the performance of electoral systems especially in post-communist and Latin American democracies. The article identifies the centripetal theory of democracy as a normative basis for our institutional prescriptions and discusses how distinct types of political representation relate to the debate on electoral systems. We focus especially on four main concerns commonly associated with proportional representation (the rise of “extremist” parties, government instability, party system deconsolidation, and corruption and clientelism). Contrary to much of the public debate on electoral systems, we conclude that further steps towards personalization (by opening lists or reducing district magnitude) are not advisable.

Corporations, as institutions that participate in the creation and perpetuation of gender-based injustices, have been neglected by feminist political philosophers and egalitarians in general. However, since gender-based inequalities within the family, the market, and in democratic participation are interconnected, critically scrutinizing institutions such as corporate organizations appears to be essential in order to achieve gender justice. This is our goal in this paper. In the first part, we look at the (surprising) domination of the ethics of care in the feminist literature on corporations. Since it focuses essentially on the goal of developing virtuous managers, we conclude that this ethics of care is misleading when it comes to thinking about the kinds of relations that characterize corporations and their much needed organizational transformation. In the second part, we attempt to highlight and articulate more explicitly the need for a critical analysis of corporations from the point of view of gender justice. Finally, having shown how purely “distributive” approaches of gender justice are unsatisfactory, we finish by outlining a multidimensional approach to gender (in)justice within and by corporate organizations. We do so by drawing on the insights of distributive, participatory, and relational accounts of equality.

In our study, we wish to give an overview of integration mechanisms in Hungarian society. We focus on system integration, that is, on the political processes and interactions that re-establish social mechanisms of co-existence in society. We approach system integration from the dimension of action. Three hypotheses are tested on the database of Integration and Disintegration Processes within the Hungarian Society project. We present what explanatory factors influence the electoral, traditional and direct forms of political activity. We also discuss the relationship between cohorts, life events and participation, as well as the link between clients and participation.

The article presents an empirical analysis of the Italian Youth Guarantee (YG) based on the approach of the new policy design. After having reviewed the most recent literature concerning this analytical approach, it examines the rationales, actors, aims, and contextual factors, as well as the political dynamics, that characterised the design of the YG national plan and its first implementation at the local level. The article argues that the Youth Guarantee offered the opportunity to think about the reorganisation of responsibilities and operational governance mechanisms in the domain of active labour market policy. Although some innovations and discontinuities are evident, the path of reform is still largely incomplete.

The article aims to describe the fundamental principles of the postmodern concepts of public life viewed from the perspective of neuroscience and cognitive science. Considering the fact that both systems of theories are focused on the psychobiological aspects of human mind and body, and in consequence they both endeavor to understand and explain the relations between brain, mind, and social environment (sphere), I decided to use this particular assumption as a starting point to analyse categories such as: public man, public sphere, space of life, modern and postmodern normative patterns, and heuristic paradigms of relationships between Nature, Society, and Culture. As a leading cognitive and interpretative approach I selected the theory of mental and cultural markers, based on somatic marker hypothesis presented by Antonio R. Damasio and the first-person ontology developed by John R. Searle. Ultimately, both concepts support a more extensive and complex approach in explaining direction of contemporary public debate and associated with it expectations to reorganize people’s life in terms of their physical and spiritual needs. The crucial role of the aforementioned changes has the embodied self – a source of unique and everyday experiences that stimulate the thoughts and emotions of men.

What has remained of Israel’s tent encampments protest; what mark has it left on Israeli society and politics? This paper seeks to answer these two questions and to reflect on the “post-protest” protest. In reviewing the different accounts of the 2011 protest I propose to identify two political actors – the “hegemonic” and the “subaltern” – taking part in an agonic game which destabilized the neoliberal order. Central to the analysis is an activist group – The Not Nice Trans.: The Not Nice invokes an utterance attributed to the then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir labeling the Mizrahi social protest leaders of the early 1970s as “Not Nice.” There is however a distinction in the Hebrew language between Female and Male voice and the activist group here was self-labeled Lo Nekhmadim-Lo Nekhmadot , i.e. The Not Nice (m) – The Not Nice (f). To distinguish between the two we will use hereafter ‘Not-Nice’ to refer to the female-led splinter group and ‘ The Not Nice ’ to the group as a whole. (I am using The Not Nice and Not-Nice in their chronological content; Not-Nice became more prevalent since the split in the group leading to greater female predominance). – studied in consideration of its relations to the mainstream of the protest movement. The group’s activities and position challenge the conventional patterns of Israeli political discourse and its boundaries. It thus offers an opportunity to extend the discussion on citizenship and democracy beyond the liberal discourse and adopt the Radical Democracy theory as a conceptual framework to grasp present-day political reality.

Performance management systems that include goal setting have become a widespread instrument in public management, intended to ensure that the entire organization is working to meet the same goals. One key question, however, is how public managers can ensure their employees’ commitment to the goals that management has chosen to prioritize. This article examines the importance of “co-determination” for the relationship between managers’ goal prioritization and the goal commitment of the employees in upper secondary schools in Denmark. Co-determination has the potential to create a common direction and committed employees, thereby rendering it a valuable tool for public managers in goal setting processes. Analysis of ten qualitative interviews with teachers and principals provides rich insight into the concept of co-determination in the context of Danish education, and a quantitative analysis of two parallel questionnaires with 73 principals and 1353 teachers reveals how co-determination has a positive impact on the association between a school principal’s prioritization of the goal of achieving a high completion rate and the teachers’ commitment to the goal.

This paper analyses the systemic framework of the operation of the Intelligence and Security Service – ISS, and the parliamentary supervision of its operations. It takes as its focus a case that occurred last year and was related to the Defence Minister’s commissioning of working materials from the Service on the effects that the privatization of the national telecommunications provider – Telekom Slovenije would have on the operation of the Service in the light of Slovenia’s defence interests. This work also presents a linguostylistic analysis of the media reports covering this case. The findings show that while after 25 years as an independent state Slovenia has established the institutional framework for the operation of the ISS and regulated parliamentary supervision of its work, it has not as yet managed to achieve the harmonized operation of all state policies in the field of national security. Rather than contributing to the solution of certain dilemmas regarding the legal, political and professional aspects of the operation of this civil intelligence and security service in the context of Slovenian national defence, the media reporting used a selection of foregrounded (marked) linguistic means in headlines to characterize the event as a scandal, and designate the ISS as a military intelligence service.