Financial Management Development in Spain: Who is Playing Sancho Panza?

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza. “Those thou seest there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.” “Look, your worship,” said Sancho, “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.” “It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou are not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.” So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of Sancho nor perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting.     

The Western Balkans and the EU budget: the effects of enlargement

ABSTRACT

The Western Balkan region needs credible European development prospects to break the cycle of enlargement and accession fatigue and to speed up regional adjustment to the EU. Post-accession EU budget flows can provide the necessary funding for such prospects. This article assesses the expected changes in the size and composition of EU budget flows to the Western Balkan countries after their EU accession. Our results show a sudden and substantial increase in gross and net flows, which gradually intensifies over several years before levelling off. EU budget flows are economically important relative to the size of the Western Balkan economies, and their composition is strongly biased towards development policies. We also find that Western Balkan enlargement comes at a minimal budgetary cost for the remaining EU member states. Our findings can help reduce scepticism behind the Western Balkan countries’ accession fatigue and the EU’s enlargement fatigue.     

The chameleon of mens rea and the shifting guises of culture-specific genocidal intent in international criminal proceedings

This article examines the significance of the mens rea-related evidence present in the specific language and discourse identified in the records of the International Military Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The author argues that international proceedings have seen the emergence of a new type of evidence: a cognitive, linguistic, culturally determined plural of genocidal mens rea. As a result, the mental element of genocidal intent can neither be interpreted nor understood without an advanced forensic approach to the language used by the network of génocidaires. Based on a combination of cognitive and social science research with the humanities, the article applies a hybrid method of analysis to some of the genocide cases in international criminal justice and demonstrates how and why this approach ought to be introduced into the process of identification of the guilty minds of the architects of genocide.     

Are regulatory agencies independent in practice? Evidence from board members in Spain

Are the board members of regulatory agencies (regulators), taken as a particular cluster within the public sphere, independent of elected politicians and tenured bureaucrats? How can we assess their independence in practice, beyond formal rules? To address these questions, this paper delves into two key dimensions: board members' social connections and their security of tenure in office. Firstly, we focus on regulators' identity as policy adjudicators and examine their political and administrative relations. In doing so, we expect to understand better how regulators' social and political situations may influence their behavior. Secondly, we assess their political vulnerability through political cycles in order to measure their de facto independence over time. Additionally, variations in these two dimensions are compared with respect to the effect of different de jure appointment rules. We contrast these expectations with the empirical evaluation of board members of regulatory agencies in Spain (1979–2010). Thus, we confirm that regulators who have an administrative profile are more vulnerable to political changes than those with political ties, while appointment rules have an influence on their political vulnerability.     

Socio-economic differentiation in the post-communist rural Baltics: the case of three kolkhozes

This paper uses longitudinal quantitative data to examine socio-economic differentiation in the rural Baltic areas after decollectivization. It argues that the rural social structure in the post-Soviet Baltics is best determined by two criteria: source of income (income from farming entrepreneurship or income from salaries) and land holdings. Four rural groups are identified: people getting their main income from farming can be differentiated into large landowners engaged in the commercial production of agricultural goods and people with small or medium-sized farms; and people earning their main income from wages can be separated into people with no farming activities and people who are still keeping small or medium-sized farms. The paper also finds that the importance of farming activities in the countryside decreases while importance of wage income tends to increase.     

中国与东盟:加强未来关系

2009年10月17～18日,由中国社会科学院国际研究学部、广西社会科学院、东盟智库网络、广西国际博览事务局共同主办的第二届“中国-东盟智库战略对话2009”在广西南宁举行。会议主题是“全球环境变化中的中国与东南亚”,来自文莱、柬埔寨、印度尼西亚、老挝、马来西亚、菲律宾、新加坡、泰国、越南、中国、美国、韩国等国家的100多位专家学者在论坛上展开对话,专家学者就中国与东盟关系和东亚地区合作等问题进行深入探讨,形成了许多具有战略性的意见和建议。现将论坛部分专家的论文和会议报告刊登,以飨读者。     

Three Modes of Thinking and Policy Orientation of Cultural Security

Three types of relations are entangled nowadays in dealing with issues concerning national cultural security on both the theoretical and practical levels: (1) the relation between one’s own culture and that of other ethnic groups; (2) the relation between advanced and underdeveloped parts of culture; (3) the relation between one’s ethnic culture and so-called foreign advanced culture as related to the previous two. Accordingly, three modes of thinking are likely adopted in handling issues concerning national cultural security: to antagonize one’s own culture with that of other ethnic groups, that is, taking the “me or you” attitude; to dualize cultures as the “advanced” and the “underdeveloped”, that is, believing things to be good if not bad, or vice versa; and to assert that the ethnic are the advanced, that is, taking the “only-megood” stance. It is a very demanding job to maintain national culture and to pursue cultural development at the same time. Only when cultures are grouped into those without distinction between the advanced and the underdeveloped and those with such distinction can the relation between the ethnic and the advanced be properly handled. With the former, it is essential to maintain the ethnicity of one’s own culture before the cultural security is safeguarded. With the latter, however, the pursuit of advanced cultures and the advocacy of the advanced part of a particular culture is a key to ensuring and safeguarding the national cultural security. Hence, it is important to enhance the public awareness of cultural security, and more essentially for the government to offer scientifi cally appropriate orientation towards cultural security and to frame related policies.     

A matter of timing: The religious factor and morality policies

The question of whether or not religion accounts for variance in the governance of moral issues, between and within countries over time, has long been debated but never conclusively answered. A novel data set encompassing innovative measurements of state regulation of “life‐and‐death” issues and of the religious stratification of society enables us to answer why previous studies reached contradictory results. The time‐series cross‐sectional analysis of 26 countries over 50 years reveals that dominant religious denominations in society indeed influence state governance approaches regarding the issues of abortion and euthanasia. This denominational effect is shown to be contingent on the religiosity of a country's population, but independent from the formal state–church relationship. Lastly, it is shown that the religious effect has an inverse U‐shaped relationship with time, exposing the timeframe of analysis as decisive for inferences drawn in the study of morality policy.     

“Islamic cafés” and “Sharia dating:” Muslim youth,spaces of sociability,and partner relationships in Bosnia-Herzegovina

The paper explores forms of sociability and partner relationships among pious young Muslims in Sarajevo with a focus on the emic concepts of Islamic cafés (hospitality establishments perceived to operate according to Islamic moral principles) and Sharia dating (premarital relationships perceived to be sanctioned by Sharia). It draws on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in different spaces of Islamic worship, learning, and sociability. This paper places the renewed interest in Islam within the context of a post-Dayton Bosnia characterized by complex and impractical government structures, lingering post-war grievances, and a brutal transition to a neoliberal capitalist economy. Although it acknowledges the continuing relevance of Islam as a resource for Bosniak nation building, it suggests treating the Muslim faith community as overlapping but distinct from the Bosniak community. By focusing on gendered interaction and partner-seeking strategies, this paper explores how young members of this faith community contextually negotiate their Islamic beliefs with mainstream local expectations of conventional behavior. The paper argues that believers’ varying responses to this predicament can be observed as an example of the localization of Islam, but they do not constitute a return to local, traditional gender roles and marriage practices, nor are they an introduction of foreign cultural patterns.