The mechanics of democracy promotion tools: bridging the knowledge-to-practice gap

By drawing upon the literature that diagnoses the gap between academics and practitioners, this article categorises and describes the traditional democracy promotion tools developed by international governmental and non-governmental organisations to bridge the gap between knowledge and practice. Further, it examines the utility of ICTs in promoting and upholding democratic change. The findings inform considerations and specific recommendations offered to the tool developers on how to converge traditional and new democracy promotion tools. These are intended to assist in focusing tool design and development efforts, and promoting standardisation and innovation.     

Slovakia

European Journal of Political Research -     

Exporting EU integrated border management beyond EU borders: modernization and institutional transformation in exchange for more mobility?

The external dimension of European Union (EU) border management cooperation has recently been developed, in particular through the promotion of integrated border management (IBM). The European Commission has been keen to foster IBM, an attempt to reach EU standards in the absence of an EU common border service. Integrated border management is regulated under the Treaty of Lisbon, and the Stockholm Programme calls for its further development. This article analyses and compares the policy instruments promoting IBM standards beyond EU borders, namely the European Agency for Operational Cooperation at the External Border of the Member States of the EU (FRONTEX) (with the signature of Working Arrangements with the border services of third countries) and the activity of the EU Border Assistance Mission to the Republic of Moldova and to Ukraine (EUBAM) at the Ukrainian–Moldovan border. Moreover, it provides an empirical account of IBM activity carried out in the Eastern Partnership and Russia, and explains the reasons underlying the lack of IBM promotion in the southern Mediterranean countries.     

An historian writes Poetry

The territory of this new European state is crossed by strategically important passes, the lowest in the entire Alps, leading from the Danubian basin to the Mediterranean (Italy). Thus, the Slovenes had been under cultural, civilizational and political domination of centers from these two parts of Europe until 1918. Because the mountainous land forms, dissected also by valleys and basins, were prone to processes of diffusion rather than fusion, the Slovenes became a national and political subject of their own as late as the nineteenth century. From 1918 to 1990 they were joined to Yugoslavia, a South‐East European state, and learnt, to their cost, all the differences between the cultures of West and Central Europe on the one hand, and South‐East and Eastern Europe and the Near East on the other. Hence the plebiscite decision by the nation for an independent state.