Academicus International Scientific Journal

9-25

Authors: Raphael Cohen-Almagor

The politicization of ethnocultural diversity and the demands posed by minority cultures for greater public recognition of their distinctive identities, and greater freedom and opportunity to retain and develop their distinctive cultural practices challenge liberal democracies. In response to these demands, new and creative mechanisms are being adopted in many countries for accommodating difference. This paper discusses some of the issues raised by these demands, focusing in particular on the difficulties that arise when the minority seeking accommodation is illiberal.

34-41

Authors: Joseph P. Garske

The principle of human trust works in both the Anglophone and Civilian legal cultures, but does so in two opposite ways. Although not explicitly stated in either legal tradition, the element of trust is of central importance in both. The two traditions began in the medieval period, but in very different circumstances. They had entirely different understandings of what law was and the purposes for which it worked. Their modern incarnations, together with implicit attitudes toward human trust, took shape during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--in ways that reinforced their original differences. Their contradictory ideas of trust derived from opposing concepts of human nature: a Humanist confidence in the capacity of men as compared with a Calvinist belief in the depravity of men. Eighteenth century Continental jurists rejected religion as the educative basis of rule. Instead, they embraced an Optimistic philosophic view of human nature, expressed in the Sensus Communis. During the same period England retained a deeply established Puritan ethos. It separated Church and State but, unlike the more secular Continent, it retained an amorphous religiosity as the legitimizing basis of its rule. In Continental legal culture, the ideological and educative half of governance was emphasized. Public cultivation and learning, and the faculty of human reason, were relied on as the ultimate basis of order. By contrast, Anglophone legality, resting on an assumption of human turpitude, promised freedom—but within enforced limits. Its hierarchical Rule of Law was founded on public faith in judicial authority. The project to construct a global law brings these traditions into confrontation. A resolution reached by them will determine the meaning and importance of human trust in the global age.

53-62

Authors: Ilda Jeha,Ylli Çabiri

While there is a clear tendency to address research of the ratio between change and development for very specific cases in comparison with the level of various countries, we think that we should go beyond such situation and focus rather on analysing and studying transition in former Communist countries. Such analysis could even lead to finding out the reasons for more attention being paid to change instead of development, but the influence of the tendency of the international partners in Albania and the entire region of the Western Balkan in favour of change and to the detriment of development has had its adverse and irreparable consequences.

73-82

Authors: Masoumeh Qarakhani, Seyyed Ayatollah Mirzaie

The ethic of education is a set of professional rules and regulations agreed upon by the scientific community that obliges actors to comply with codes of conduct in the science education process. This article is asking about levels and types of academic dishonesty and recognizing factors affecting it in Iran’s social sciences education. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with Ph.D. students of public Universities in Tehran were analyzed with qualitative content analysis. Research findings show that academic dishonesty and factors affecting it are evident in the education of social science at two levels of micro and macro. At the micro or actor’s level, individual characteristics and personality traits of students and professors impact on the occurrence of academic dishonesty. Moreover, at the macro or structural level, the way of distribution of resources and rules in the education paves the way for and facilitates the occurrence of academic dishonesty. Consequently, dishonesty in the education of Iran’ssocial sciences and factors affecting it can be explained in the light of a structuration approach.

100-105

Authors: Olga Elena Ramírez Poggi, Roberto Veraldi, María Belén Medicina Leuzzi, Mayra Alejandra Delgado Mondragón

On June 23, 2016, Britain marked the exit from the European Union. The result led to a permanent closure to the EU, always marked by not joining the Euro by Great Britain itself, with political, social and economic consequences, although England still an important country in Europe. The intent of this paper is to analyse the socio-economic and political implications of this Exit from the Euro zone.

114-132

Authors: Hanna Fedosieieva

The article examines the role of countries in the development of the world market of agrarian products. At the same time, the world production and exports of agrarian products are considered not only in terms of countries, but also in terms of the most consumed species. The main tendencies of international trade of agrarian products are described. At the same time, we discuss only those agrarian products which are raw materials or have undergone the primary processing. The author of the research wants to confirm or refute the existing opinion that the active position of the country in the world agrarian market is a kind of evidence of the underdevelopment level of its economy.

9-35

Authors: Franco Ferrarotti

In a situation in which the market economy is regarded as so important and decisive as to induce the emergence of a market society, the notion of the «sacred» becomes essential. The market is perfectly legitimate as a forum of negotiations, but it has a purely instrumental value. A market society is a contradiction in terminis. Only the concept of the Sacred, despite its ambiguity, can preserve and enhance the final values on which a society is built (justice, love, human recognition, interpersonal dialogue).

46-53

Authors: Michele Marsonet

A pragmatist conception of logic rejects any kind of logical constructionism, based on the appeal to privileged ontological and epistemological items and to a perfect language supposedly provided by mathematical logic. Even in logic, “pluralism” must be the key-word if one does not want to be locked in the cage of conceptions that become rapidly outdated. Dealing with the dichotomy Absolutism/Relativism in logic, it may be observed that the enterprise of logic can be considered in several - and substantially different - perspectives, among which we find (1) the psychologistic, (2) the Platonistic, and (3) the instrumentalistic viewpoints. According to (1) logic is viewed as fundamentally descriptive, and its task is taken to be that of outlining a “theory of reasoning,” i.e. a systematic account of how we humans proceed when reasoning successufully. According to (3), instead, logic’s task is that of constructing rigorous systems codifying not only actual, but also possible instrumentalities for conducting valid inferences, and these would be available (should someone want to avail himself to them) for adoption as an organon of reasoning, but no empirical claims are made that anyone has (or will) avail himself of this opportunity. The logician devises a tool or instrument for correct reasoning, but does not concern himself about the uses of this instrument. Philosophy and logic cannot be linked so closely, and today the idea that the analytic style of philosophizing is just one style among many others, and not the only possible one, is gaining increasing acceptance.

62-81

Authors: Enrico Gandolfi

The article focuses on an empirical procedure aimed to harness digital games in exploring sensible issues in social research. By merging qualitative and creative methods and taking into account suggestions from Sociology, Media Studies, and Game Studies, the suggested approach combines single interviews, focus groups and participative design exercises according to a creative learning path. In order to put its effectiveness to the test, four groups of players (N: 20) with different attitudes toward play were recruited for addressing the theme of sustainability. The digital games Crusader Kings 2 and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri were selected as facilitating tools due to the related pertinence. Results show an increment of consciousness and awareness about the topic and a noteworthy potential in engaging subjects and stimulating their feedback in empirical investigations. In turn, some limits emerged to the extent that further interventions are required to stress and relativize the proposal.

94-110

Authors: Arlinda Memetaj

The private persons in any democratic state should have a right to dispute the administrative decisions affecting their rights, freedoms or interests before (among others) competent independent courts. It is the key precondition for the principle of transparent and responsible public administration as an integral part of democratic governance. In addition to the “judiciary control of the administrative decisions”, the private persons` human rights against the public administration may be also protected through the Ombudsman office. The increasing importance of the afore mentioned issues relating public administration and the various types of control of the administrative acts been long time ago reflected in the mandate of almost all of the key international inter-governmental organizations, especially the European ones including the Council of Europe, the European Union and the OSCE. The establishment of both effective public administration and administrative justice system has been for a long period of time among the most “important and urgent” final strategic objectives of almost any country in the Balkans region, including Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo. This process included (among others) establishing European-like Ombudsman offices in these countries. Against the above background the present paper firstly explains why the administration action must be controlled by the public, and it then outlines the European Right of Good Administration, the Ombudsman Office`s mandate. This is then followed by presenting the concept of European Administrative Space in terms of the Role of the OECD-SIGMA in Developing the Standards of Good Administration. Against the preceding sub-sections the paper further presents the basic legislative framework for action of the National Ombudsman Offices in Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo, which is then followed by a short review of the actual state of play of the Principle No.2 of the SIGMA European Principles for Public Administration (as specifically related to the accountability) in the three countries, on the basis of the relevant international monitoring reports, including the most recent EU Commission`s Progress Report on those countries. The paper finally concludes that Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo all have already established the basic legislative framework for establishing their national administrative judiciary system alongside which there is the one related to their own national Ombudsman office as well, while all of them are still more or less far from being fully in line with the principle No.2 of the SIGMA European Principles for Public Administration (as specifically related to the accountability). As to later, the paper particularly stresses that Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo have (more or less) adopted rules on independent status, functioning and powers of their own ombudsman office and other oversight institutions in line with the relevant international standards, but their administrations are still too far of being ready and willing to fully implementing the ombudsman institutions` recommendations. The fully implementation of the above Principle No.2 is therefore one of the most important and serious present challenges for Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo on their individual road towards the EU membership, in terms of building up their individual European administrative capacity.

122-145

Authors: Wei-Bin Zhang

This paper proposes a dynamic economic model with health, human capital and wealth accumulation with elastic labor supply. The economic system consists of one industrial, one health, and one education sector. Our model is a synthesis of four main models in economic theory: Solow’s one-sector neoclassical growth mode, the Uzawa-Lucas two sector model, Arrow’s learning by doing model, and Grossman’s growth model with health. The model also includes Zhang’s idea about creative leisure or learning by consuming. Demand and supply of health service and education are determined by market mechanism. The model describes dynamic interdependence among wealth, health, human capital, economic structure, and time distribution among work, health caring, and education under perfect competition. We simulate the model and examine effects of changes in the propensity to consume health caring, the efficiency of producing health caring, the propensity to receive education, and the propensity to save.