Development of fruit growing and fruit science in Latvia has always been closely linked to the development of the whole country. After the founding of the independent Latvia state in 1918, fruit growing developed rapidly. Although in the Soviet times the situation was not favourable for quality fruit growing, research and breeding continued with good results. After Latvia regained independence, private land property rights were restored, and interest in intensive orchard establishment and growing technologies increased rapidly, which demanded change in the research focus. At present, the Latvia State Institute of Fruit-Growing is the leading institution in this field, working in cooperation with Pūre Horticultural Research Centre, Latvian Plant Protection Research Centre, Institute of Agrobiotechology, and Faculty of Food Technology, Latvia University of Agriculture, Laboratory of Plant Mineral Nutrition, Institute of Biology, University of Latvia. Research is carried out in the following directions: breeding and cultivar evaluation; genetics and molecular biology; plant pathology and entomology; orchard management; experimental processing and storage.
Sacred values are moral foundations that may make public and political debates among groups hard to resolve. A taboo trade-off framework offers the opportunity of measuring the inviolability and the "sacralization" of moral foundations. In this study, moral foundations in a taboo trade-off framework were assessed in a convenience sample of Italians (N = 224) using a new measure to assess sacred values, the Omission as a Compromise on Moral Foundations scale (OC-MF). The OC-MF measures the willingness of individuals to omit moral foundations in exchange for money. It was predicted that Italian center and left-wing participants would be less willing to compromise individualizing moral foundations as opposed to binding ones, and that center and right-wing participants would be less willing to compromise on binding moral foundations than left-wing participants. Confirmatory Factor Analyses demonstrated the two-factor structure of the OC-MF: individualizing and binding. As predicted, Repeated Measures Anova showed that political orientation was related with differential adoptions of moral foundations as sacred values, with center and left-wing participants refusing to compromise more on individualizing than on binding moral foundations. Moreover, left-wing participants were more willing to compromise on binding moral foundations than center and right-wing participants. The OC-MF shows the hypothesized differences between Italian political groups and offers a new understanding of moral reasoning. These findings provide opportunities for improving ideological debates concerning sacred values. ; Peer reviewed
The logic behind a recent strain of Euroscepticism advocated by Brexiteers presents an empirical puzzle: how can voters from different economic positions publicly demand compliance with rules for fair market competition (Schmidt & Thatcher, 2014)—a key principle of neoliberal ideology—yet use nationalism to socially delegitimate the EU—whose market competition policy became increasingly neoliberal (Buch-Hansen & Wigger, 2010)? This puzzle is especially relevant given the power of nationalist and neoliberal rhetoric to mobilize popular opposition to the EU leading up Brexit (Andreouli & Nicholson, 2018). We dub this form of Euroscepticism 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE) and investigate it empirically. Research on Brexit builds on the Euroscepticism literature that traditionally measures opposition to the EU as an attitude at the individual level (for a summary see Hobolt and de Vries 2016; also Hobolt and Wratil 2015; de Vries 2018). For instance, Hobolt found that support for Brexit "was particularly common among less-educated, poorer and older voters, and those who expressed concerns about immigration and multi-culturalism (2016, p. 1259), while others found that ethnic, economic, and regional differences structured attitudinal support for the EU (e.g. Bonikowski 2017; Flemmen and Savage 2017; Gidron and Hall 2017; Laurence et al. 2019)(Carreras, Carreras, and Bowler 2019). However, both the Euroscepticism literature and these recent works investigate Euroscepticism from the perspective of individual citizens' privately held attitudes or voting behavior rather than by empirically analyzing the socially acceptable forms of Euroscepticism citizens encounter, use, and respond to in everyday life. In this article, we investigate socially acceptable—and thus normative—Euroscepticism. Responding to the aforementioned empirical puzzle, we analyze normative 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE). To do so, we must shift our focus from individual British citizens' surveyed pre-Brexit attitudes to social norms that are shared across economic divisions. In our analysis, we investigate this Euroscepticism as it manifests in a 'moral economy'— or popular consensus about moral principles of economic exchange that forms a normative basis of economic action, attitudes, and legitimacy (Thompson 1971; Mau 2003; Svallfors 2006; Sachweh 2012; Koos and Sachweh 2017; Taylor-Gooby et al. 2018). To conduct this analysis, we respond to an important gap in the contemporary literature concerning moral economy in terms of the evolution of normatively based popular outrage against market action. This type of analysis was central to foundational work on moral economy—which stressed the temporal element of moral economies as normative (see, Scott, 1977; Thompson, 1971). Returning to this diachronic comparative approach to moral economy, we study 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' longitudinally as a form of normative market outrage as it developed over time. Our investigation into whether the Euroscepticism of UK citizens can be explained because of the EU's infringement of the nationalist and neoliberal norms at the basis of British citizens' moral economy proceeds in three steps. First, using semi-structured interview data collected right after Brexit (2016 Qualitative Election Study of Britain) we identify popular outrage against the EU as nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism by analyzing how Brexit supporters and opponents socially legitimated their vote. Second, relying on focus group data that predates Brexit by a decade (2005-6 CITAE) we show how the deligitimation of the EU in 2016 can be traced back to shared 3 popular norms regarding EU market action that constitute a moral economy of nationalist neoliberal Euroscepticism. Third, based on our analysis of Celine Belot's semi-structured interview data (1995-6) collected just after the Maastricht Treaty, we identify the beginning stages of this normative anti-EU popular outrage. This final step does not find evidence of a nationalist neo-liberal moral economy, but instead finds what appears to be building blocks of such a moral economy. This three-step analysis then sets the stage for an investigation into this nationalist neo-liberal moral economy as 'normative policy feedback' (Rothstein 1998; Svallfors 2006; Koos and Sachweh 2017)—a perspective that sees moral economy as structured by institutionalized norms of economic exchange. Future work can then investigate this moral economy as a form of policy feedback in order to supplement work on Euroscepticism as structured by socio-economic or ethnic divisions. This paper falls into six sections dealing with the theoretical framework on moral economies, nationalism and neo-liberalism, methodology and data, the three-step analysis and discussion and conclusions.
The logic behind a recent strain of Euroscepticism advocated by Brexiteers presents an empirical puzzle: how can voters from different economic positions publicly demand compliance with rules for fair market competition (Schmidt & Thatcher, 2014)—a key principle of neoliberal ideology—yet use nationalism to socially delegitimate the EU—whose market competition policy became increasingly neoliberal (Buch-Hansen & Wigger, 2010)? This puzzle is especially relevant given the power of nationalist and neoliberal rhetoric to mobilize popular opposition to the EU leading up Brexit (Andreouli & Nicholson, 2018). We dub this form of Euroscepticism 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE) and investigate it empirically. Research on Brexit builds on the Euroscepticism literature that traditionally measures opposition to the EU as an attitude at the individual level (for a summary see Hobolt and de Vries 2016; also Hobolt and Wratil 2015; de Vries 2018). For instance, Hobolt found that support for Brexit "was particularly common among less-educated, poorer and older voters, and those who expressed concerns about immigration and multi-culturalism (2016, p. 1259), while others found that ethnic, economic, and regional differences structured attitudinal support for the EU (e.g. Bonikowski 2017; Flemmen and Savage 2017; Gidron and Hall 2017; Laurence et al. 2019)(Carreras, Carreras, and Bowler 2019). However, both the Euroscepticism literature and these recent works investigate Euroscepticism from the perspective of individual citizens' privately held attitudes or voting behavior rather than by empirically analyzing the socially acceptable forms of Euroscepticism citizens encounter, use, and respond to in everyday life. In this article, we investigate socially acceptable—and thus normative—Euroscepticism. Responding to the aforementioned empirical puzzle, we analyze normative 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' (NNLE). To do so, we must shift our focus from individual British citizens' surveyed pre-Brexit attitudes to social norms that are shared across economic divisions. In our analysis, we investigate this Euroscepticism as it manifests in a 'moral economy'— or popular consensus about moral principles of economic exchange that forms a normative basis of economic action, attitudes, and legitimacy (Thompson 1971; Mau 2003; Svallfors 2006; Sachweh 2012; Koos and Sachweh 2017; Taylor-Gooby et al. 2018). To conduct this analysis, we respond to an important gap in the contemporary literature concerning moral economy in terms of the evolution of normatively based popular outrage against market action. This type of analysis was central to foundational work on moral economy—which stressed the temporal element of moral economies as normative (see, Scott, 1977; Thompson, 1971). Returning to this diachronic comparative approach to moral economy, we study 'nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism' longitudinally as a form of normative market outrage as it developed over time. Our investigation into whether the Euroscepticism of UK citizens can be explained because of the EU's infringement of the nationalist and neoliberal norms at the basis of British citizens' moral economy proceeds in three steps. First, using semi-structured interview data collected right after Brexit (2016 Qualitative Election Study of Britain) we identify popular outrage against the EU as nationalist neo-liberal Euroscepticism by analyzing how Brexit supporters and opponents socially legitimated their vote. Second, relying on focus group data that predates Brexit by a decade (2005-6 CITAE) we show how the deligitimation of the EU in 2016 can be traced back to shared 3 popular norms regarding EU market action that constitute a moral economy of nationalist neoliberal Euroscepticism. Third, based on our analysis of Celine Belot's semi-structured interview data (1995-6) collected just after the Maastricht Treaty, we identify the beginning stages of this normative anti-EU popular outrage. This final step does not find evidence of a nationalist neo-liberal moral economy, but instead finds what appears to be building blocks of such a moral economy. This three-step analysis then sets the stage for an investigation into this nationalist neo-liberal moral economy as 'normative policy feedback' (Rothstein 1998; Svallfors 2006; Koos and Sachweh 2017)—a perspective that sees moral economy as structured by institutionalized norms of economic exchange. Future work can then investigate this moral economy as a form of policy feedback in order to supplement work on Euroscepticism as structured by socio-economic or ethnic divisions. This paper falls into six sections dealing with the theoretical framework on moral economies, nationalism and neo-liberalism, methodology and data, the three-step analysis and discussion and conclusions.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the debate on Islam and Muslim immigrants has moved into the center of European political discourse. The increasing volume of publications about the role of Islam in social, cultural and political spheres indicates that Islam is now a major political issue, often associated with the debate on terrorism and security. This article argues that the shift in focus should be understood as the result of a hegemonic shift that goes back to the mid-1980s when the populist far-right intervened in the immigration debate in Europe. The far-right not only presented immigration as a cultural threat to the future of European nations but also succeeded in moving immigration to the center of political discourse. This was done through successive right-wing political interventions that helped establish Muslim immigrants as an incompatible ontological category predicated on culture, and kept the national focus on immigration as an imminent threat to 'our common' achievements.
In Colombia, right-wing leadership returned to power after winning the presidential elections in 2018 in a campaign in which they opposed the previous government, primarily because of the negotiations and peacemaking with the FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia&mdash ; Ejé ; rcito del Pueblo &lsquo ; Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia&mdash ; People&rsquo ; s Army&rsquo ; ), Colombia&rsquo ; s largest guerrilla organization. Globally, there is a vibrant academic debate about how to characterize the current rise of right-wing populism or authoritarianism, but more profound insights from each country&rsquo ; s situation and its political economy implications are needed. The victory in Colombia was due to numerous factors, including the support from some rural elites who have historically obstructed the enforcement of redistributive land policies. However, the populist aspirations of the right-wing government have been persistently frustrated not only by social unrest and political mobilization but also because of the enforcement of institutions previously incorporated into the country&rsquo ; s political scenario. Specifically, in terms of agrarian political economy, two sets of human rights-oriented institutional changes are relevant regarding this matter: (a) the Land Restitution Law enacted in 2011 and (b) the Comprehensive Rural Reform contained in the Agrarian Chapter of the Peace Agreement between the national government and the FARC-EP in 2016. The purpose of this paper is to ground the ongoing theoretical and political debate about the rise of different forms of populism and right-wing authoritarianism in the current Colombian political context, and its implications on the countryside. The analytical contribution of this paper is twofold: On the one hand, I propose an alternative for explaining the nature of the current political regime in Colombia as right-wing authoritarianism ; on the other hand, I analyze some features of such regimes in terms of its disputes with the enforcement of human rights-oriented institutions, that are in force as the result of political processes triggered by peasants&rsquo ; mobilization.
Globally, it is generally acknowledged that every individual and a every citizen possess certain definite political, civil, economic and social rights, which are fundamental to his/her dignity and personhood. Theoretically, these presumptuous ideals hold sway in the constitutions of countries of the world, Nigeria inclusive. However, in reality and with respect to Nigeria especially, during the military era, can hardly be reconciled with constitutionalism as there are always cases of infringement upon citizens' fundamental rights. With successful transition to democracy in 1999 and the consequent stabilisation with the conduct of four successive elections as of 2011. This paper considered the state of human rights under President Goodluck Jonathan's administration (2011-2015). It appraised how human rights issues have been handled under Jonathan's administration in line with democratic considerations in the Nigerian polity. Nigeria continues to confront serious human rights challenges politically and socio-economically, including a culture of impunity where perpetrators are often not held accountable for their actions in forms of corrupt practices, extra-judicial killings by the police and Boko Haram insurgency. Moreover, no serious improvement in the socio-economic status of the Nigerian citizens as the increasing GDP growth is only on paper and not real in the economy. In protecting the rights and liberties of all Nigerians, the paper concludes that the Nigerian Government must be resolute in its commitment to ensuring security without compromising human rights. Strong and transparent institutions that deliver essential services must be built and sustained. The key now is to look internally with readiness to use political will in the right direction; to take significant actions to address critical human rights issues in Nigeria.Key Words: Citizens, Human Rights, Security, Democracy, Governance
Redistricting is a well-studied phenomenon, & our knowledge about the subject has expanded ten-fold in the last decade as a great deal of scholarly work probes the political, constitutional, & legal issues raised by the creation of majority-minority districts (Karlan 1995; Grofman 1998). Although scholars have looked at the political effect & outcomes related to redistricting, the Dept of Justice's involvement is largely unexplored. The Justice Dept plays a prominent role in the redistricting process as it implements Section Five of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended. Section Five directs the Justice Dept to review new district lines & other changes related to voting. Using principal-agent theory & systems theory, the institutional role of the Justice Dept is investigated. This study proposes that examinations of redistricting should include an analysis of the inputs related to redistricting, rather than only focusing on the outputs & consequences of majority-minority districts (see Canon 1999). It is possible to expand the dialogue on redistricting & in particular the implementation of Section Five through the examination of compliance letters (also referred to as preclearance letters). The implementation of the Section Five of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is viewed through the written correspondence between the Justice Dept & the state of LA & logistic regression is employed. 1 Table, 1 Appendix, 53 References. Adapted from the source document.
Name any valued human trait—intelligence, wit, charm, grace, strength—and you will find an inexhaustible variety and complexity in its expression among individuals. Yet we insist that such diversity does not provide grounds for differential treatment at the most basic level. Whatever merit, blame, praise, love, or hate we receive as beings with a particular past and a particular constitution, we are always and everywhere due equal respect merely as persons. But why? Most who attempt to answer this question appeal to the idea that all human beings possess an intrinsic dignity and worth—grounded in our capacities, for example, to reason, reflect, or love—that raises us up in the order of nature. Andrea Sangiovanni rejects this predominant view and offers a radical alternative. To understand our commitment to basic equality, Humanity without Dignity argues that we must begin with a consideration not of equality but of inequality. Rather than search for a chimerical value-bestowing capacity possessed to an equal extent by each one of us, we ought to ask: Why and when is it wrong to treat others as inferior? Sangiovanni comes to the conclusion that our commitment to moral equality is best explained by a rejection of cruelty rather than a celebration of rational capacity. He traces the impact of this fundamental shift for our understanding of human rights and the norms of anti-discrimination that underlie it.
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
Considers whether the traditional rights accorded tangible property apply also to intellectual property, asserting that philosophical, legal, economic, & political bases for protecting these kinds of property differ significantly enough that equating the two forms of property is problematic. References. Adapted from the source document.
To revitalize politics we need to abandon the idea that ideologies evolve from "right" to "left", from conservatism to socialism, and look at our political differences in terms of the distinction, more familiar in the arts, between classicism and romanticism. She argues that by abandoning our current modes of debate and rediscovering the Enlightenment liberalism that is an enduring part of our political tradition we will help to recreate Canada as a place of debate on fundamentals, not one in which a monolithic definition of identity answers all questions in advance.
This article identifies & considers the existence of a manifest, though often overlooked, paradox contained within the doctrine of human rights. The principal justifications for human rights are based upon the identification of variously conceived human characteristics, or attributes of human agency. Nevertheless, human rights have all too often been required to protect some human beings from being seriously harmed by other human beings. The justification for human rights envisages a single, universal community of human beings, whereas the actual application of human rights typically testifies to the existence of two, very distinct communities: victims & perpetrators. The single greatest impetus for the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the desire to prevent the re-occurrence of genocide. The modem human rights regime emerged out of mountains of human corpses. One would like to claim that the impetus for human rights became less urgent after the horrors of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, genocide has persisted & gross violations of human rights remain a feature of the geo-political landscape. Our need for protective human rights remains as urgent today as it did fifty years ago. This article accounts for this paradox & answers the question: Why is it that the ultimate justification & application of the doctrine of human rights is frustrated by members of the very species upon which the doctrine is based? Adapted from the source document.
