The normative interpretation of the concept of European citizen should be carried out on a utilitarian or pragmatic model rather than on the cultural one. However, the idea of European culture cannot be totally neglected. Ukoliko se upustamo u normativnu interpretaciju pojma evropskog gradjanina, onda nam je za te svrhe primereniji utilitaristicki ili pragmaticki model; kulturni model je u tom poduhvatu od manjeg znacaja, mada ne i potpuno beznacajan.

In the concept of European citizenship, public and international law intersect. The unity of the European polity results from the interplay between national and European loyalties. Citizens’ allegiance to the European polity depends on how much they see the polity’s identity as theirs. Foundational ideals that shaped the European project’s identity included social reconciliation and peaceful coexistence, economic reconstruction and widespread prosperity, and the creation of supranational structures to rein in nationalism. A broad cultural (...) consensus underlay the first impulse for integration. Europeans had little trouble giving explicit or tacit allegiance to such a project, which resulted in an unparalleled success. However, roughly 60 years and 20 Member States later, social integration is being challenged as immigrants with diverse cultural backgrounds arrive, while far-right political parties surge in reaction; economic integration is confronted with a faltering euro and countries struggling to meet financial commitments; and political integration weakens as the EU seems to fail the democratic test. Cultural assumptions are no longer shared by all. Allegiance to today’s EU is problematic for the ordinary European citizen. This paper submits that careful attention to the spirit of the foundational ideals sheds light on how the present problems as well as future integration could and should be approached. (shrink)

This article focuses on problematizing the harmonisation of higher education in Europe today. The overall aim is to analyse the construction of the European citizen and the rationality of governing related to such a construction. The specific focus will be on the rules and standards of reason in higher education reforms which inscribe continuums of values that exclude as they include. Who is and who is not constructed as a European citizen? Documents on the Bologna process produced in (...) Europe and in Sweden are analysed drawing on the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, showing a neoliberal rationality of governing. The European citizen needs to become flexible, autonomous and self‐regulating as a way of facing the threats of the constantly changing future. The technique of diversity is a condition of possibility for constructing such a citizen and for harmonising higher education in Europe. Further, the current power relations in the discourse define what is and what is not European, thus constructing ‘the other’, the one who is excluded. (shrink)

U radu se analizira institucionalizacija ideje evropskog gradjanina u promenama sadrzanim u Lisabonskom Ugovoru. Zakljucak je da promena ima u odnosu na vazece dokumente koji tvore EU, da se one najbolje mogu razumeti preko 'pragmatickog modela' analize individualnog i grupnog identiteta i da one impliciraju uvecanje demokratskog potencijala kategorije evropskog gradjanina.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 293-302.

This deliverable covers the various steps that have been undertaken to develop the path to creating and developing a European Citizen Science Academy (ECS Academy). It is an aggregation of documents and reports that have been elaborated throughout the first year of the ECS project, with a community of practice of citizen science educators and trainers, the European Citizen Science Association and the ECS consortium. They set the stage to the co-creation of the ECS Academy. The ECS Academy (...) is a work package within the European Citizen Science (ECS) project. It seeks to promote citizen science within various stakeholder spheres, countries, by being a point of reference for training material and by regrouping a community of practice around citizen science training and education to develop training needs. (shrink)

In the current media landscape, it is becoming increasingly difficult for citizens to rely on trustworthy information, not least because reliable facts are mixed with dubious claims, unsubstantiated opinions, or outright lies. The ability to distinguish factual from other types of mediated information is becoming increasingly crucial, but we know little about how well-equipped citizens are to make these distinctions. In an original survey study conducted in ten European countries, we asked respondents whether they considered six different (...) statements relating to the European Union to be factual or opinion statements. Our results show that citizens have considerable difficulties in correctly identifying both factual information and opinions. Next to pre-existing judgements, we identify media-related, political, and sociodemographic factors that influence categorisation accuracy. We discuss our findings in relation to citizens’ perceptions of journalistic credibility and their information literacy as well as ongoing debates about the effectiveness of fact-checkers on social media. (shrink)

This paper discusses the importance of informed medical consent through a case study examines the implications this case had for the medical rights of EU citizens. I start by describing a case of a Slovakian national of Roma origin against the Government of Slovakia, which appeared at the European Court of Human Rights in 2007-2012. The twenty-year old woman, who had been sterilized at a Slovakian hospital during the birth of her second child, claimed that the procedure took (...) place without her full and informed consent, and argued that the doctors’ decision was connected to the society’s long-standing negative attitude towards Roma people. After presenting the background of the case and the legal proceedings, I discuss the relevant national and European law in order to explain the positions of both sides and the rulings of the courts. I conclude by putting the case in a wider context of racial discrimination in the EU and providing a policy analysis regarding both the Slovakian and the European policies toward the Roma minority. (shrink)

Identity resides in doing, not in being; it is a conquest, not a pre- established possession. It is for this reason that literature plays a great...

This paper sheds new light on Putnam's hypothesis that watching television, particularly entertainment programs, contributes to an erosion of social trust. Previous studies have been unable to reach convincing evidence regarding this claim. It is argued that this is a consequence of the neglect of indirect, interpersonally mediated TV effects which supplement the influence of direct exposure, and extend even to those who do not watch television. Using data from the 2002 and 2004 waves of the European Social Survey (...) in combination with aggregate data from telemetric audience research, we conduct a multilevel analysis of TV's impact on social trust. Investigating this macro-micro relationship, we find that patterns of general TV use in 25 European societies exert substantial effects on individual social trust that by far exceed those of individual TV use. In line with Putnam's hypothesis, there is a negative impact of total TV time; however, high market shares of public TV increase social trust. (shrink)

This article aims at shedding light on how civic engagement matters for the emergence of a European public sphere. It investigates the citizen's role in constituting it and asks how citizens, being located in different cultural and political contexts, participate in and appropriate EU political communication. First, the article develops a pragmatic approach to the European public sphere emphasizing the importance of citizens' communicative participation and, moreover, considers the transnational and transcultural character of European political (...) communication. It is assumed that the constitution of public spheres – representing social constructions fulfilling democratic functions – ultimately relies on the citizen audience's perception of the impact of common problems and the EU's political decisions as well as on their subsequent participation in public discourses. The second part of the article presents the findings of empirical case studies conducted in France, Italy and Germany to explore citizens' engagement in and appropriation of the European constitutional debate. (shrink)

Debates about the EU show that the holy trinity of absolute, indivisible sovereignty, nationality/citizenship and national identity/loyalty should be replaced by multilayered, pluralist concepts for descriptive, explanatory and normative purposes. Democratic pluralism criticizes replacement‐strategies (of the nation‐state by a European state, citizenship‐rights by human rights, national obligations by European or global ones). It opts for productive complementarity guided by two principles: “proximity and accountability” and “correspondence of powers and democratic say” and for progressive transdomestic shifts. The inclusion of (...) the articles on citizenship in the EC Treaty has, unintendedly, contributed to such a shift though it missed historical chances to develop a more democratic and social EU living up to minimal global obligations. (shrink)

The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns (...) the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)

Questions of political identity and citizenship, raised by the creation of the `new Europe', pose new questions that political theorists need to consider. Reflection upon the circumstances of the new Europe could help them in their task of delineating conceptual structures and investigating the character of political argument.Does it make sense to use concepts as `citizenship' and `identity' beyond the borders of the nation-state? What does it mean when we speak about `European Citizenship' and `European Identity'? It is (...) argued that the pluralism that has led theorists to offer a conception of citizenship based upon principles of right, rather that the common good, applies even more strongly at the level of the European political order. Developing a contractarian theory of federation, an account of the basis of a European citizenship will be offered in which federalism emerges out of an overlapping consensus of European citizens on the terms of their political association. `European Citizenship' and `European Identity' are discussed in the context of the so-called `European Union', and not in the wider context of Europe `as a whole', or for that matter on an even broader `cosmopolitan' scale. However, the gist of the article is that arguments for concepts of `citizenship' and `identity' that go beyond borders of nation-states and that are applied to the `European Union', could have implications for an even wider application.Finally, and in conclusion, the context will be elaborated in which the normative concept of shared liberal citizenship identity should be realized on a pan-national, European level. (shrink)

The euro crisis has hit “Europe” (the European Union, or EU) at its root. Economic harshness, social unrest and political turmoil betray a deeper problem: a weak pan-European sense of belonging — a common political identity thanks to which European citizens may regard each other as equals, and therefore as deserving of recognition, trust, and solidarity. This paper explores interculturalism from an analogical perspective, looking at the harmonious interplay between human rights and cultural plurality, as a (...) possible source of trust and solidarity among European citizens. Only a common — even if analogical — political identity, whereby European citizens regard each other, if not as “siblings” at least as “cousins,” can make the sacrifices required to overcome the crisis meaningful — and therefore less unlikely to happen. (shrink)

Citizen participation, by now one of the main topics on the institutional agenda in many European countries, involves different fields of public action, mostly on a local level – social inclusion, urban renewal, development, the environment, health/social services, etc. It still remains, however, vague as a concept with a great variety of actors, procedures and powers involved in its practices. In this scenario, the present article asks two questions: what powers and what freedoms are involved in participation? How are (...) they constructed and increased? The article then goes on to argue how voice is relevant for understanding the many stories of participation, referring to the classic concept of voice formulated by Albert Hirschman and the elaborations offered by Amartya Sen and Arjun Appadurai in their dialogue over capabilities and capacities. (shrink)

The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns (...) the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)

The encounter of amateur science with synthetic biology has led to the formation of several amateur/do‐it‐yourself biology (DIYBio) groups worldwide. Although media outlets covered DIYBio events, most seemed only to highlight the hope, hype, and horror of what DIYBio would do in the future. Here, we analyze the European amateur biology movement to find out who they are, what they aim for and how they differ from US groups. We found that all groups are driven by a core leadership (...) of (semi‐)professional people who struggle with finding lab space and equipment. Regulations on genetic modification limit what groups can do. Differences between Europe and the US are found in the distinct regulatory environments and the European emphasis on bio‐art. We conclude that DIYBio Europe has so far been a responsible and transparent citizen science movement with a solid user base that will continue to grow irrespective of media attention. (shrink)

Climate change exposes ecological and socio-economic systems to risks. The identified disparities in knowledge about the social climate system are at the root of the difficulties in perceiving and understanding the diversity of risks related to climate change. The still huge gap between what science and technological innovation can contribute to mitigation and what is unmanageable by humans inevitably requires a continuous process of adaptation. This work is part of the research associated with the European project (under the ERA4CS) (...) 'Citizen Sensing - Urban climate resilience through participatory risk management systems', which proposes to develop a Participatory Climate Risk Management System, a two-way communication system where is part of a participatory risk management system, contributing to adaptive governance. These objectives will be achieved through the creation of a platform that will incorporate information gathered from four pilot studies: Norrköping (Sweden), Porto (Portugal), Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and Trondheim (Norway). Ultimately, the aim is to draw conclusions on how this application can contribute to improving citizens' literacy to cope with climate change adaptation and to raise awareness of this problem, as the involvement of citizens and stakeholders will only be improved if the perception of the risk of climate change is substantially increased. Awareness campaigns about the potential risks associated with extreme events are of great importance. Citizens tend to view climate change as a global phenomenon, ignoring and avoiding taking action until it is directly and seriously affected. (shrink)

Political integration has been part of the European project from its very beginnings. As far back as the early seventies there was already concern in Brussels that an ingredient was missing in the political integration process. ‘Output legitimacy’ – the permissive consensus citizens grant to a government that is ‘delivering’, even if they do not participate in setting its goals – could not sustain unification indefinitely. Such a lacking ingredient – or ‘soul’ – has been labelled ‘European (...) identity’ (EI) in an abundant and growing academic literature. According to Aristotle, a ‘city’ (polis) is a community composed of ‘citizens’ (politai). No polis can exist unless the politai form it and sustain it. But what will keep them united? They can be very diverse regarding their language, history, religion or economic activity. In absence of a motivation, diversity of itself will make each member of a community go their own way. What kind of bond is required among very diverse European citizens to keep their political community (the EU) together? In this paper I analyse several responses – culture, deliberation, welfare, power, openness. Then I suggest that elements of those responses could be combined in a single notion. Finally I mention issues regarding EI that require further study. (shrink)

The ‘European Green Deal’ (EGD) is a set of communications from the European Commission that outlines EU roadmap to climate neutrality by 2050. The policy envisions that, with the facilitation of speedy and just ‘green transition’, the goals of environmental protection and economic development can be reconciled. This article offers a language-focused critical study of the EGD. After giving an overview of neoliberal ‘discourses of sustainability’ and explaining the notion of ‘interdiscursivity’ in CDS, it presents the results of (...) a close thematic analysis supported by keyword and concordance analysis of representations of ‘environment’ and ‘climate’ on the one hand, and ‘economy’ and ‘transition’ on the other. This study attends to salient language patterns and reveals how interdiscursive crossovers are established to normalise ‘sustainability’ as the contingency between environmental and economic orders of discourse. Also, it identifies the discursive strategies of nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivisation and mitigation or intensification and shows how tensions between discourses are smoothened. This analysis of EGD’s ideological hybridity also sheds light onto how EU institutions are (self)authorised to lead actions on environmental challenges on behalf of European citizens. (shrink)

The ageing society poses significant challenges to Europe’s economy and society. In coming to grips with these issues, we must be aware of their ethical dimensions. Values are the heart of the European Union, as Article 1a of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear: “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity…”. The notion of Europe as a community of values has various important implications, including the development of inclusion policies. A special case of exclusion concerns (...) the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without access to it, the “digital divide”, which in Europe is chiefly age-related. Policies to overcome the digital divide and, more generally speaking, e-inclusion policies addressing the ageing population raise some ethical problems. Among younger senior citizens, say those between 65 and 80 years old, the main issues are likely to be universal access to ICT and e-participation. Among the older senior citizens, say those more than 80 years old, the main issues are mental and physical deterioration and assistive technology. An approach geared towards the protection of human rights could match the different needs of senior citizens and provide concrete guidance to evaluate information technologies for them. (shrink)

European citizenship is a nested membership in a multilevel polity that operates at member state and union levels. A normative theory of supranational citizenship will necessarily be informed by the EU as the only present case and will be addressed to the EU in most of its prescriptions, but should still develop a model sufficiently general to potentially apply to other regional unions as well. The Article first describes three basic characteristics of such a polity — democratic representation at (...) the supranational level, internal freedom of movement between member states, and regional limits to external geographic expansion — and argues that a multiplication of such regional unions would contribute to a more just and peaceful international order. Building on this modification of Kant’s model for a global confederation of republics, the contribution explores three alternative approaches for strengthening democratic citizenship in the European Union: a statist approach that aims at transforming the EU into a federal state, a unionist approach whose goal is to strengthen union citizenship vis-a`-vis member state nationality, and a pluralist one that specifies citizenship norms for each level and balances them with each other on the basis of the current state of federal integration. These approaches are then compared with regard to their implications for three policy questions: general status differences and inequality of rights amongst EU citizens living in their country of nationality, EU citizens residing in other member states, third-country nationals, and EU citizens residing outside the territory of the Union; voting rights in European, national, and local elections; and access to Union citizenship and to member state nationality. (shrink)

This article traces the association between the European overseas empires and the concept of sovereignty, arguing that, ever since the days of Cicero—if not earlier—Europeans had clung to the idea that there was a close association between a people and the territory it happened to occupy. This made it necessary to think of an “empire” as a unity—an “immense body,” to use Tacitus’s phrase—that would embrace all its subjects under a single sovereign. By the end of the eighteenth century (...) it had become possible, in this way, to speak of “empires of liberty” that would operate for the ultimate benefit of all their “citizens,” freeing them from previous tyrannical rulers and bringing them under the protection of more benign regimes. In such empires sovereignty could only ever be, as it had become in Europe, undivided. The collapse of Europe's “first” empires in the Americas, however, was followed rapidly by Napoleon’s attempt to create a new kind of Empire in Europe. The ultimate, and costly, failure of this project led many, Benjamin Constant among them, to believe that the age of empires was now over and had been replaced by the age of commerce. But what in fact succeeded Napoleon was the modern European state system, which attempted not to replace empire by trade, as Constant had hoped, but to create a new kind of empire, one that sought to minimize domination and settlement, and to make a sharp distinction between imperial ruler and imperial subject. In this kind of empire, sovereignty could only be “divided.” Various kinds of divided rule were thus devised in the nineteenth century. Far, however, from being an improvement on the past, this ultimately resulted in—or at least contributed greatly to—the emergence of the largely fictional and inevitably unstable societies that after the final collapse of the European empires became the new states of the “developing world.”. (shrink)

This article extends property-owning democracy to the digital realm and introduces “data-owning democracy,” a new political economic regime characterized by the wide distribution of data as capital among citizens. Drawing on republican theory and acknowledging data's unique role in the digital economy, it proposes a two-tier model that combines different modes of data ownership and corresponding rights. The first layer of “data-owning democracy” is characterized by a digital public infrastructure that enables citizens to collectively generate data and have (...) a say in how their citizen data are used. In the second layer, individuals automatically receive machine-readable copies of their data whenever they are generated—a slightly more advanced form of the European Union's existing right to data portability (Art. 20). With its focus on empowerment, data-owning democracy is designed to be complementary to existing data protection regulations. It also illustrates how political theory more broadly, and republican theory specifically, can be instructive for specifying the normative components of a new political economy dealing with questions of empowerment and digital rights. (shrink)

Although the gender composition of assemblies is slowly changing in order to include more women, very little is known about citizens’ attitudes towards women’s descriptive representation. Using data from a representative sample of the Portuguese population, this article aims to offer an explanation of citizens’ attitudes towards women in parliament. It demonstrates that the Portuguese population is willing to see the presence of women in political power increase, but only up to a certain point: although most people support (...) an increase in the number of female MPs, only a minority wish a substantial increase. This article makes a valuable contribution to the literature by demonstrating that, more than party identification or gender stereotypes, issues surrounding concerns with women’s interests and with the quality of democracy are strongly related to a desire for a gender equilibrated political environment. (shrink)

This paper examines the causes of prominent radical political options and behaviors that are already visible on a daily basis in the European Union. In public discourse there is a simplified belief that the primarily responsibility for this lies with the immigrants and fear caused by terrorist attacks carried out in Europe or the old European latent nationalism. Although these elements undoubtedly contribute to the development of radicalism, the author argues that the key sources for this issue should (...) be found in the difficulties encountered by the European national welfare states. This is the source of ever-greater mutual intolerance among the citizens of the European Union, which can take on various forms of political, cultural, ideological and physical conflict. On the basis of these arguments the author concludes that the European Union is indeed in a historic milestone but the real danger of the European Union?s disintegration is not primarily in cultural, civilization, confessional, security or geopolitical sources, but this source should first be sought through the prism of the European national social states and the expectations of citizens referring to them. nema. (shrink)

Introduction The paradigm shift to a knowledge‐based economy has incremented the use of personal information applied to health‐related activities, such as biomedical research, innovation, and commercial initiatives. The convergence of science, technology, communication and data technologies has given rise to the application of big data to health; for example through eHealth, human databases and biobanks. Methods In light of these changes, we enquire about the value of personal data and its appropriate use. In order to illustrate the complex ground on (...) which big data applied to health develops, we analyse the current situation of the European Union and two cases: the Catalan VISC+/PADRIS and the UK Biobank, as perspectives. Discussion and conclusions Personal health‐related data in the context of the European Union is being increasingly used for big data projects under diverse schemes. There, public and private sectors participate distinctively or jointly, pursuing very different goals which may conflict with individual rights, notably privacy. Given that, this paper advocates for stopping the unjustified accumulation and commercialisation of personal data, protecting the interests of citizens and building appropriate frameworks to govern big data projects for health. A core tool for achieving such goals is to develop consent mechanisms which allow truly informed but adaptable consent, conjugated with the engagement of donors, participants and society. (shrink)

It is widely thought that what finally characterizes American literary narratives is a preoccupation with Americanness. If the "great theme" of European fiction has been "man's life in society," Walter Allen writes in The Modern Novel, "the great theme of American fiction has been the exploration of what it means to be an American." The best American film narratives also seem to bear out this proposition, especially those of the great American naturals like Griffith and Ford and Hawks, and (...) most especially Orson Welles' Citizen Kane , regarded by many as the greatest American film. Welles' film belongs to that category of narratives which take a prominent figure from contemporary American life and use him to stand for what are conceived to be representative traits of the collective American character. Understandably, then, there are many general resemblances in the film to other well-known stories of American entrepreneurs, magnates, and tycoons. Long before the flourishing of tycoon biographies in the American sound film, well before F. Scott Fitzgerald or Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser, before even Henry James, certain conventions and associations had become well established in stories of this type. The up-and-coming young American was shrewd and practical, an image of compulsive energy, a man with his eye always on the future. His Americanness also consisted of such traits as enterprise, indomitable idealism, a certain naturalness and openness to experience, and a relentless will to succeed. His geographical origin could be made to carry moral force, and he or another character who equated American commercial noblesse oblige with universal morality could be a useful thematic touchstone. Robert L. Carringer is an assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches and writes on film, American literature, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature. This study is the first in a series of essays in progress on American films and American narrative tradition. He has also contributed "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This chapter first considers whether and to what extent the European Union labors under a democratic deficit. When considering the contending conceptions of democracy in Europe it is needed to keep in mind that there also are analysts who disagree that the European Union suffers from a democratic deficit. The chapter briefly assesses the European Union against the two criteria of autonomy and accountability, in order to get a clearer sense of the Union's democratic deficit, which then (...) appears as a representative‐democratic deficit. The chapter examines the effects of the crisis on the prospects of remedying the European Union's democratic deficit. Most citizens are still exhibiting restraint and there appear to be further crisis handling measures in the pipeline. Many of the proposals for further changes underline the need to strengthen democracy, including measures to reinforce interparliamentary coordination and cooperation. (shrink)

The idea of a cosmopolitan Europe continues to be central to contemporary debates within post-national citizenship. However, much of the writing in this area remains disconnected from the need to reinvent European social democracy that questions the centrality of work and racist nationalism. This article argues that a revived European Left would need to move beyond specifically liberal concerns with procedure to articulate a view of European futures that both deconstructed neo-liberalism and embraced more convivial collective futures. (...) This would entail the combination of a post-material politics that sought to critique the centrality of employment while granting citizens a basic income or forms of civic labour and a more concerted attempt to break with a racialized politics based upon the fear of the ‘Other’. In conclusion, it is argued that the urgent political task of the future is to reinvent a sense of Europeaness that has both a substantive content, but that does not become mobilized by an exclusive cultural politics. (shrink)

Beginning with the question of who constitutes the firm, this article seeks to explore the historical evolution of concepts such as corporate social responsibility, corporate accountability, corporate social responsiveness, corporate social performance, stakeholder theory, and corporate citizenship. In close parallel to these changes are differences in interpretation from Anglo—American and Continental European perspectives. The author defends that the ultimate reasons behind these differences are of a philosophical nature, affecting both the anthropology and the political theory dominant in each of (...) these cultures. Philosophically, anglo-american culture may be described as individualistic, legalistic, pragmatist and with an understanding of rights as freedom from state intervention. Continental European culture, on the other hand, is more community-oriented, more dependent on unwritten laws or customs, less results-driven or more appreciative of the intrinsic value of activities and with an understanding of rights as freedom to participate in social goods and decisions. In the end, a twist is introduced in the meaning of corporate citizenship: beyond referring to the firm as a citizen of the state, it now signifies and analyzes the rights and responsibilities of the different "citizens" comprising the corporate polity. This new proposal constitutes the author's normative response to the initial research query. (shrink)

If a state commits injustice, who is responsible for compensating its victims and safeguarding against future wrongdoing? Do the state’s citizens bear this responsibility? Do they all bear it equally? Avia Pasternak's and Holly Lawford-Smith's recent books address these pressing questions. Each book represents a thought-provoking attempt to derive an account of citizen responsibility for state wrongs from an account of state agency understood as group agency. Though the books demonstrate the promise of this approach to produce action-guiding advice (...) for real policymakers, they also demonstrate its limitations—in particular, its lack of attention to social structures. Here, I argue that Pasternak's and Lawford-Smith's views would be enriched by further engagement with the literature on structural injustice, which takes individuals’ perpetuation of social systems (not their implication in acts of group agency) as a central source of their remedial obligations. Through critical engagement with Pasternak and Lawford-Smith, I illustrate how a structural injustice framework could yield more attractive conclusions than a group agency framework in certain cases, better explain non-culpable forms of citizen responsibility, and allow us to theorize citizen responsibility for state action without making questionable claims about the metaphysics or social ontology of group agency. (shrink)

This article sheds light on the European Union’s policy on citizenship; on the collective dimension of this policy, its ‘we’. It is argued that the inclusive, identity-constituting forces prominent in EU policy on European citizenship serve as a basis for the exclusion of people, which is illustrated by the recent expulsion of Romani from France. Based on a reading of Derrida, the twofold aim of this article is to reformulate the concept of a European citizenship ‘we’ and (...) secondly, to outline some implications of this reframing as concerns the role of education in the formation of citizens. (shrink)

This contribution asks how to approach the question of whether the European Union should – replacing or supplementing member states – also be a locus of social justice‐based duties to provide welfare state services. The contribution scrutinizes two important theories of global justice (cosmopolitan and relational theories) and finds that their normative assumptions hinder them from adequately addressing this question. A new theory is proposed, inspired by Immanuel Kant's political philosophy. The core idea is that social justice requires public (...) authorities to protect citizens against private forms of coercion; and that the level (national, European, global) at which such authority needs to be exercised depends on which arrangement best protects citizens' rights to independence. The paper outlines several duties of global justice to give specificity to this general principle, and then applies them to the case of integrating European welfare states. (shrink)

In the Acts of the Apostles, Paul twice evokes his rights as a Roman citizen. When he crosses from the jurisdiction of the Jewish to that of the Roman court, Paul in effect completes his definitive mapping of Jewish law as a local affair whose peculiar practices must be subsumed and refigured by the universal order promised by the Messiah to all nations. Paul's real and epistolary journeys to Rome effect a symbolic translation westward of Jewish civic themes, linking the (...) destiny of the Jews to the European political tradition. Yet Paul does so by evacuating the central mark of membership in Israel, namely the covenant of circumcision, of its continued validity. Rather than either salvaging Paul's universalism as the basis of modern democracy or critiquing his cultural politics, I use the concept of citizenship to begin calculating the consequences of Paul's multiple memberships in three distinct juridical orders: the Hellenistic city‐state, the nation of Israel, and the Roman Empire. My goal is not to re‐localize or de‐legitimate Paul's universalism in the name of individual cultures, but rather to recall the integral dream of universalism to its dialogue with diverse citizenship protocols, including Jewish ones, as well as to disclose the universal dimension of seemingly local civic rituals and routines. (shrink)

Is the European Union a new Walden? Although a contrast in form and format, the Union is surprisingly close to the latter's underlying philosophy. One can read this proximity in the Treaties or the many facets of the European idea which mirrors in the Union's emerging legal system. Today there is no longer a Union of a limited number of Nation States desiring to end divisions among themselves, to acquire mutual respect and prosperity or a higher standard of (...) living and working conditions for its members. European citizenship shows a global orientation and is in continuous competition with the discourse of a globalizing economy and its Internet democracy. Analyses of concepts such as political geography, global, (supra)national and regional citizenship, democracy, learning society, native tongue and market lead to the insight that the Union's legal system wishes to ensure its citizens a legally engendered, formatted and protected global position for action. Walden's philosophy has a new face. (shrink)

There are several reasons, according to which it is worth analyzing European administrative law. First, this is a rather new branch of law. Second, the European administrative law is treated in different countries from different legal traditions positions, consequently, any effort to unify the approach to it can provide a basis for a unified European administrative law model. Third, there are no works dedicated to the analysis of the phenomenon of the European administrative law in Lithuania. (...) Therefore, this article deals with the concepts of the European administrative law. It is stated that the comprehensive image of the European administrative law reveals three European administrative law concepts. The first concept of the European administrative law characterizes it as the European Union (hereinafter – EU) administrative law, the validity of boundaries of which can be based on three aspects – functional, institutional and procedural. The second concept of the European administrative law identifies it as the law of administrative cooperation., whereas the third concept allows the European administrative law to be seen as the law common to various public administrations of European countries – ius commune. The article focuses on the analysis of the above-mentioned three approaches and the EU set of administrative procedures as an instrument to promote the development of the EU administrative law. The author comes to the conclusion that the concept of the ‘European Administrative Law’ is broader than the concept of the ‘EU Administrative Law’. The European administrative law can be perceived not only as a part of law that establishes the EU administration’s administrative legal status, its’ activity principles, forms and methods, but also as a law of administrative cooperation between states, governmental and non-governmental organizations and various corporations, based on a wide range of multilateral treaties or conventions, which cross the limits of the EU. Moreover, the European administrative law can be understood as a law with common concepts, general principles characteristic to different European countries’ public administrations as well as a science, with the help of which diverse administrative legal systems of various countries could be compared. Taking into account the content of various working documents, the author draws the conclusion that for the further development of the EU administrative law the establishment of uniform operating rules for the EU administration in its’ relations with the society is of exceptional importance. There are a number of important reasons to develop the Law on administrative procedure of the EU. First, it is generally recognized that the EU needs common binding legislation that sets out clear operating rules of the EU administration in its’ relations with legal and natural persons, and that would increase the transparency of the EU administration and its’ accessibility to citizens. Second, the drafting of the law on administrative procedure of the EU lies in the legal framework as well; the importance of the article 298 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union, the articles 41 and 42 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU as well as “soft” law (i.e. codes of good administrative behavior) are obvious here. (shrink)

Robin Douglass and Johan Olsthoorn’s edited critical guide grew from a European Hobbes Society meeting themed on Hobbes’s On the Citizen. Hobbes intended On the Citizen to be the final treatise of his tripartite Elements of Philosophy. Sociopolitical forces demanded that he publish On the Citizen first, and he only later completed the trilogy with two preceding volumes: On the Body and On Man. Despite On the Citizen’s significance, it is often overlooked in scholarly work and in classroom instruction (...) favoring Hobbes’s better-known Leviathan. Douglass and Olsthoorn augment the intellectual landscape by providing an engaging collection of articles that make an important and needed... (shrink)

The Eurozone Crisis is not just a monetary and economic challenge. It is as well the first tremendous challenge of the European Community and as well the national institutions and constitutions of the member states not only within the Eurozone. On one side the European Commission, the European Parliament and the ECB with its endeavours to safeguard and stabilize the single currency EURO within the Eurozone, to support the suffering countries in the south with its struggle against (...) speculative hedge funds, to render financial relief measures to those countries and its financial industry. Irrespective the fact governments and citizens within that countries, less appear to appreciate or honor that measures as efficient help to stabilize but condemn as form of European paternalism and patronage. On the other hand the countries and its citizenship especially in the north of the Eurozone to set a stop sign to the EU and the ECB. Therefore they stress the Maastricht criteria and cite the Art 125 of the TEU, which prohibits one nation to stand for or to be liable for the Government debts of another nation. Especially in the German perspective the demarcation line appears to run along between the European Commission, European Central Bank and European Court on the European side and the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the Bundesbank on the national German side. Each of the institutions feels to be bound to its origin functions and principles and save the respective constitution and the task rendered by that constitution. For a better understanding it is essential to get aware of and to reinforce the constitutional role which the Grundgesetz awarded to the Bundesverfassungsgericht and the Bundesbank and the German citizenship placing their confidence in these institutions. Es soll konkret das Verhältnis zur Nichtbeistandsklausel No-Bail-out Klausel Art 125 AEUVertrag, den Europäischen Fiskalpakt / dem ESFS, ESM / dem OMT-Programm der EZB, möglichen Entwicklung des EU zur Haftungs- und Transferunion mit einem zukünftigen Haftungsautomatismus der Mitglieder, der Unterscheidung von gemeinsamer Währungspolitik und nationaler Wirtschaftspolitik, der drohenden Vergemeinschaftung von Staatsschulden einzelner EU-Länder, die Budgethoheit des nationalen Parlaments als freie Entscheidung über die Verwendung des nationalen Haushaltes untersucht werden. Mit allen diesen Fragen mussten sich das höchste Deutsche und Europäische Gericht in jüngster Vergangenheit intensiv beschäftigen. (shrink)

The economic crisis in Europe exposes the European Union’s political fragility. How a polity made of very different states can live up to the motto “Europe united in diversity” is difficult to envisage in practice. In this paper I attempt an “exegesis”—a critical explanation or interpretation of a series of published pieces (“the Series”) which explores, first, if European unity is desirable at all. Second, it presents a new methodology—analogical hermeneutics—used throughout the Series to approach the problem of (...) unity. Third, it conceptualises the source of unity as political identity. Fourth, it advances that the vehicle to share such identity is an analogical language: the political culture of human rights. Fifth, it submits the conditions under which such political culture could ground political identity through an open public sphere. Finally, it presents a way in which solidarity can grow as the increasingly diverse citizens of the European Union interact with each other. Even though the economic crisis can be solved by means of sound economic strategy (which is not the main object of my work), any successful economic strategy requires—as a precondition—a certain degree of political unity (the central concern of my research). (shrink)

In the modern world, there is a growing interest in the problem of forming a person’s identity. The category of “identity,” despite the diversity of theoretical and empirical research, remains complex. The article is devoted to the study of transformations of the collective identity of Ukrainian citizens after the Revolution of Dignity, in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war in Eastern Ukraine. In the period from 2013 to 2019, there have been radical changes in many spheres of public life (...) in Ukraine. The Revolution of Dignity, the annexation of the Crimea, and the war in the Donbas all led to significant political, legal, and socio-economic and socio-cultural changes that contributed to the processes of the transformation of the collective identity of Ukrainian citizens. The aim of this article is to study the dynamics of the changes in the collective identity of Ukrainian citizens after the Revolution of Dignity through the prism of the integrative approach. (shrink)

Codes of ethics were drafted by participants in the European and North American Congresses of DIYbio, a single global organization of informal biotechnology practitioners, in 2011. In general, the existence of a code of ethics amongst a community is itself significant. Codes of professional ethics are common in scientific and engineering fields, as well as in DIY communities. It is also significant, and highly unusual, that DIYbio has maintained two separate codes of ethics years after their drafting. While agreement (...) was reached within the congress for each geographic region, with considerable commonality between the two codes drafted, they are far from identical. There are differences in the ordering of items, the wording of common items, and the presence/absence of items. I will argue that these differences are meaningful, and consider them with respect to cultural variation, ethics, and societal implications. Finally, I recommend that the entire DIYbio organization unite under a single code of ethics, and that one of the existing drafts is superior to the other for this purpose. (shrink)

The position of intellectuals in democracies is intrinsically problematic. They have to claim that what they say and do is true and reasonable. But within the democratic process their opinions have the same status as those of any other citizen. However, they can find a legitimate way to influence political decision-making as experts and interpreters of cultural contexts. Therefore, they have an important responsibility in defending open debate and open societies.

Political theorists aiming to articulate normative standards for the EU have almost entirely focused on whether or not the EU suffers from a ‘democratic deficit'. Almost nothing has been written, by contrast, on one of the central values underpinning European integration since at least the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), namely solidarity. What kinds of principles, policies, and ideals should an affirmation of solidarity commit us to? Put another way: what norms of socioeconomic justice ought to apply (...) to the EU? This is not an empirical or narrowly legal question. We are not trying to gauge the degree of attachment there currently is in the EU by, for example, citing the latest Eurobarometer poll. We are also not attempting to state the implicit rationale followed by the Court of Justice in its recent ‘solidarity’ jurisprudence, let alone trying to fix what the Commission might mean by it. In this article, I ask the more fundamental question underlying both the legal and the empirical questions: What principles of social solidarity ought to apply between states and citizens of the emerging European polity? This question has rarely been asked or answered by political theorists in an EU context, so we are entering largely uncharted territory. The article develops a tripartite model of EU solidarity in Section 2, and then applies it to the case of free movement of persons in Section 3. (shrink)

During the last decade Russian politics have aimed at stimulating the birth rate, most famously by the maternity capital program. This article provides results from the first extensive study of citizen use and attitudes to this benefit and concludes that Russian women and families harbor a deep distrust of the program and Russian social policy, as it sends contradictory messages combining paternalistic and liberal trends. Many eligible mothers have not activated their capital due to various bureaucratic obstacles they encounter. Contrary (...) to the expectations of economists and sociologists, the results indicate that middle-class families have more resources to use their capital. (shrink)

This inquiry analyzes the concept of ‘European public sphere’ within the European public discourse. In particular, it explores the European Communication Strategy for creating active European citizenship and European public sphere. The European Commission’s Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate failed, because it employed homogeneous and static concepts of public sphere and European values. In this way it reduced deliberation to a mere debate. The European Year of Citizens was not (...) sufficiently successful for the same reason. It involved citizens debated about EU rights, but it did not produce deliberation. The purpose of this inquiry is to show the dialectical relation between ideas of European values, European identity and European public sphere. This paper emphasizes performative nature of European public sphere, European identity and European values. These concepts may be perceived as grand narratives which aim at producing universal truths. (shrink)