Interdisciplinary Social SciencesDoina Gavrilov’s Shares
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Coalition of states for influence in the European Council. Brexit - a step towards decisional balance in the European Council?
The EU decision-making process is one that has changed over time with the Treaties, with the extension, modification of EU policies and the areas where the EU is acting. In addition to the above, in 2016 we have one more reason to add to the changing of the decisional process “-Brexit”- a political turnaround that stimulates new changes at the decision-making level and raises questions about the future of the European Union. Federalists claim that these events will lead to a strengthening of the Union, and euro-skeptics claim that this is a step towards breaking the Union. Two years after the Brexit started, the European Union continues to remain a prominent actor in the international arena, but another question is being raised: “Will EU institutions act on the same principles? Or will there be changes in the decision-making process?”. In this article, we will analyse the state coalitions in the decision-making process, and the role of Brexit in forming coalitions for establishing a decisional balance in the European Council. Following the analysis of the power rapport in the European Council, we refer to small and medium-sized states that work together closely to counterbalance the decisions of the big states, and the new coalitions to achieve their goals in the new political context.
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The Spillover Effect of the EU Economy on the Culture
The Economy has always been considered an essential pillar of the development. This is why, when the European Union appeared, the idea of a community based on economic relations with the purpose of empowering the common economy seemed to be an attractive idea to the outside states of the European Economic Community. Even at first, the idea of empowering the Economy was a very good one, after politics, culture, agriculture, science, and other domains were directly linked to the economic development, the Economy was seen as the nucleus of development of all. Giving its role, we are asking ourselves: Is the Economy role only a positive one in the development of other domains To understand the role that the fall of the Economy can have on other domains, we focus on Economy- culture relation. Assuming the role of the spillover effect of the Economic crises on the culture we conclude that the Economy should not be the only basis of development, but we should enlarge our possibilities of independence of other domains.
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Europeanization of Turkey and the Long Way to EU Membership
For a few decades, Europe watches Turkey evolution in a matter of politics, policy, policies, human rights and so on. Everything begins in 1959 when Turkey applies to associate membership to the European Economic Community. But unfortunately for Turkey, the accession to the Community was not to accomplish. In time, the European Economic Community became the European Union. The organization pass through the enlargement process multiple times that today it is the Union of the 28 countries, but still without Turkey as a member. After all this time, a question is raised: what drags Turkey from achieving the membership status in all this time In this paper, we try to answer the above question through the Europeanization spectrum.
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COMPETITION POLICY AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY
The competition policy gets in the center of international relations in the last decades. One of the main reasons why competition is considered more and more is because of the European common market. We understand that the competition policy is very important in managing the market, but also we are interested to see how much importance it has in assuring social welfare. To see if the competition policy influences social welfare, first of all, we analyze the impact of it on the consumer and its behavior. Then we focus on the consumer behavior influence on the social welfare. After analyzing multiple papers, we get to the conclusion that the competition policy as a cumulus of rules and laws bring advantages to the consumer as a part of the society and that social welfare, understood as happiness and contentment of the society is influenced by the consumer behaviour.
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POSITIVISM - FROM WEAKNESSES TO NEW OPENINGS
Time emphasizes periods of glory and decay for different lines of thought. For the positivist approach, the XIX century has been the period in which it flourished. Its way of seeing the world, inspired from science, represented that newness the society needed for a general social change. Although it impressed and was borrowed by many scientists all over the world, in the XX century positivism stepped into an era of the unknown. The constructivisms have taken its place of fame. It has fallen so much that some authors considered it dead. Intrigued by this change, we started our journey in finding why the positivism failed and if there is a resurrection way for it. We analyze the basic ideas of positivism and with the help of critical analysis we indicate the reasons for its decline. After understanding its weaknesses, we follow the recent scientific discoveries, seeking to reinforce the basic principles of positivism and we highlight a new positivist law through which we can study and understand the world. We conclude the paper by proposing new research directions that can be analyzed through the positivism lenses: ongoing processes like globalization, Europeanization or Americanization, and economic, environmental or health problems.
