The status of minority languages in Georgia and the relevance of models from other European states
Abstract: 'The paper will be divided into two sections. The first section will examine how the existing status quo in which Georgian is the only official language in all parts of Georgia outside Abkhazia affects the working of the courts, the local...
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Abstract: 'The paper will be divided into two sections. The first section will examine how the existing status quo in which Georgian is the only official language in all parts of Georgia outside Abkhazia affects the working of the courts, the local organs of state administration, the media and the education system in Javakheti. It will then assess whether or not the current situation is sustainable. The argument is that, for the present time at least, language use within state bodies in Javakheti corresponds to informal arrangements rather than formal laws. To retain the status quo, I argue, is likely to further entrench these informal practices and may hinder rather than promote integration. The paper then discusses whether it would be possible to somehow tinker with the legislation in order to mitigate these undesirable consequences in the short term while retaining the status of the Georgian language as the only administrative language at all levels of government, or whether some kind of
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Euroscepticism in Croatia: on the far side of rationality?
Abstract: This paper deals with the characteristics of euroscepticism in Croatia, defined as a combination of distrust in the European Union and distaste for membership. An analysis of the dynamics of the two dimensions shows that initially these two...
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Abstract: This paper deals with the characteristics of euroscepticism in Croatia, defined as a combination of distrust in the European Union and distaste for membership. An analysis of the dynamics of the two dimensions shows that initially these two factors did not coincide, but that after 2004 they converged. Starting off from a theoretical model according to which the attitude to the EU is affected by both utilitarian or pragmatic as well as ethnic-cum-nationalist (symbolic) factors, the analysis of data collected at the end of 2003 on a probabilistic national sample draws attention to the heterogeneous motives behind euroscepticism, which calls into question the effectiveness of any single intervention strategy. Exclusive nationalism and its socio-cultural, political and economic premises have been confirmed as an important source of euroscepticism. As against symbolic motivations, the impact of utilitarian motives on the attitude to the EU turned out to be marginal, but it is not clear
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