Populist parties participate in the process of political representation through elections. Little is known about how they conceptualize this process since their statements refer to a direct involvement of citizens in decision-making and disapprove of representatives. This article addresses this issue and presents an empirical study about how Lithuanian populist political parties define political representation. The data come from the 2016 election manifestos and from party websites between April 2016 and September 2017. The qualitative content analysis reveals that populists define representation by referencing common moral values and constant communication with citizens. This helps them create a political identity common to themselves as representatives and the represented.

There is plenty of stuff out there that looks like science, sounds like science and yet which is no more science than the ‘cargo cult’ aircraft and landing strips constructed by Pacific Islanders in the 1940s and 1950s were functional technology. My talk is not so much about the usual suspects – homeopathy, crystal healing, UFOs and the like – but other areas of cargo-cult science that sit far closer to the high altar of respectability. We take far too much for granted in science, and this can be seen in the replicability (or otherwise) of peer-reviewed studies, the phenomenon of publication bias, the so-called Decline Effect and the persistence of folk myths such as the one that describes how aeroplanes fly.

Empires usually operate on the premise that only imperial centres are carriers of the historical progress of humanity, whereas imperial peripheries are far removed from this progress’s blessing. According to John Maxwell Coetzee, the Dutch Empire considered South Africa as its own land, which deprived that country’s indigenous people of their citizen rights. Like the residents of European imperial peripheries who were relegated to similar zones of historical indistinction, they were doomed to the twilight of legal illegality. Unlike the regulated area of historical progress, their state of exception was ruled by the whims of imperial officials. ‘The security police could come in and out and blindfold and handcuff you without explaining why, and take you away to an unspecified site and do what they wanted to you’, he wrote in Diary of a Bad Year (1977: 171). In his novel Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee strategically ‘unmoors’ and ‘deterritorializes’ this peripheral state of exception, spreading its iconoclastic effects all over the ‘sacrosanct’ territory of history.

During 19th century there was a migration of angels from their usual places in religion, art, and literature into the field of natural sciences. In works of Carus, Fechner and Exner, angels became objects of physiology, comparative anatomy, and astronomy. Although traditionally angels are considered as images or materialisations of pure mind, respectively of metaphysical/transcendental elements, such empirical methods of dealing with heavenly creatures have several precursors in history. This article discusses the traces of angels within the history of knowledge and arts as a specific dialectic of secularisation, focusing on the metamorphosis of heavenly creatures into representatives of the miraculous in 18th century aesthetics. Concerning the issue of representation, the article analyses the disappearance of materiality of painting through techniques of reproduction as prerequisites to transform the angels into objects of experimental research in 19th century sciences. As a result, the angels may be interpreted as symptoms of the problem of visualisation within a context where sciences have to address the boundaries of positivistic methods, for instance as a historical example for the epistemological problems of brain imaging.

Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has begun to propose a neologism – the educational concept of ‘intrinsic development’. On the occasion of the 2012 Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress, President Jinping Xi again called upon people to promote the intrinsic development of higher education. During the past 25 years, Chinese higher education has gone through drastic changes and reforms, but regrettably the idea of intrinsic development has not been expounded or defined adequately, let alone properly practised. Based on actual developments in the past and on the present situation, the author of the present article aims to examine the concept of intrinsic development and how it has been neglected or even betrayed in reality. The author concludes that the core idea of the intrinsic concept lies in improving the academic quality and level of Chinese higher education instead of worshipping the dazzling numbers of papers published and projects undertaken, in the natural growth of education from the inside instead of the quantitative expansion pushed by outside forces, in building the higher institutions and the disciplines with distinctive features instead of pursuing universal ‘comprehensiveness,’ and in developing a higher education in accordance with its internal and intrinsic laws instead of submitting to external forces, whether they are political, economic, or commercial.

The word ‘symmetry’ expresses in everyday language the correspondence in form, size, and arrangement of parts on opposite sides of a plane, line, or point. Such a concept of correspondence is the main idea of most definitions of this term in the various humanities disciplines discussed in this volume of European Review. But if we go back to the Greek origins of this term, we discover that the understanding of symmetry was completely different, that it signified mathematical commensurability of all important elements of a three-dimensional figure. This article discusses the termʼs initial meaning and its importance for the design and appreciation of beautiful architectonic and human bodies. It goes on to provide an outline of the main phases of the step-by-step development from the original concept towards its modern meaning established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

EU law has known coordination since its beginnings. A careful study of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (in the following: Treaty or TFEU; see Official Journal No C 326 from 26 October 2012, pp. 0001– 0390) and numerous secondary law acts results in a variety of Member States’ obligations in connection with coordination. Through the years, relevant secondary legislation has been issued. In recent years, EU legislature has established new rules in sensitive – from Member States’ point of view – areas of national budget law. The coordination of budgetary policies constitutes both a new and a crucial instrument. Over the years, first the Contracting States and then EU legislature established tens of obligations to consult EU institutions on national draft laws. These mechanisms assume increasing importance. This very remarkable and at the same time under-discussed category deserves its own legal terms and definitions. The current article reviews legal uncertainties resulting from the application of procedural rules, suggests solutions, and coins new terms such as hybrid legislative procedures (Section 2) and effet utile du contrôle préventif (Section 3) that are crucial for a new dogmatic approach regarding the obligations to consult. Because national and EU legislative procedures overlap in the case of obligations to consult, many mistakes may occur at any stage. Current research tries to determine the consequences of violations of obligations to consult EU institutions on national legislative procedures (Section 4). In this respect, it deals with the settled case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter: Court or CJEU). The current article argues that the control of EU institutions over national law drafts is preventive and that the violation of a procedural obligation to consult can thus have only an indicative effect with regard to internal market disruption. New barriers to the internal market should not arise with the coming into force of a new law. This article introduces a new dogmatic approach towards obligations to consult, with the aim of avoiding legal uncertainty for national legislatures and practitioners.

The numerous interpretations and evaluations of 1968 that have been developed over the past half-century can arguably be divided into two. On one side, there are those accounts that regard 1968 as the threshold across which an older form of modernity passed to become what student revolutionaries of the period began to call late capitalism; and although late capitalism itself quickly became a fissured thing, this view has become orthodox. On the other side, there are those who insist that ’68 was a Badiousian event, an outbreak of liberatory possibilities to which we not only have a responsibility to remain faithful, but which provided a template for later more or less insurrectionary movements; undoubtedly the strongest argument for ’68’s enduring radical meaning and potential has been made by Kristin Ross in her 2002 book, May ’68 and its Afterlives. This article is partly committed to arguing for a middle way between these two views. I accept that the processes leading to and following the events of 1968 triggered the development of a new kind of capitalist society as well as formed the template for the radicalisms we now have. This mediation might seem to involve a contradiction, but in the end it is more accurate not to see these two views as they see themselves, namely as enemies, but rather as dialectically and functionally united. Without the kind of capitalism that the 1960s triggered, no radical movement politics; without radical, post-communist movement politics, no such late capitalism. To see that, we need to think about ’68 in larger contexts and terms than is usual. I will call the context I wish to bring to bear general secularization.

Science is often seen as empirical inquiry that aims at proof or explanation, but eschews normative considerations. This, I shall argue, is inadequate. Scientific thinking and practice also depend on additional standards, including a range of norms that are not and cannot be established by empirical methods. It follows that science cannot and should not aspire to be value free.

In this essay I discuss the emergence of the Mao cult during the Cultural Revolution in China and its appropriation in cultural revolutions in Europe and the United States to show how this image resonated with similar cults of popular icons in the West and lent itself to the formulation of theories and practices of postmodernism. The image quality of these cults facilitated the rise of the Mao-craze in the late 1980s and 1990s when political pop productions of Mao by Chinese artists emerged in New York and were then transplanted to China where they met with transfigurations of Mao’s legacy in the People’s Republic. The final stage of postmodern variations of Mao is reached with the presidency of Barack Obama in 2009 and the merging of the two leaders into Chairman Obamao or Comrade Maobama, which can be read as the end of ideological contrast between the two countries for the sake of creating a system of political interdependence for the 21st century, a postmodern prefiguration of a coming ChinAmerica.

In this article we introduce the Schumpeterian growth paradigm, where growth results from innovations that render previous innovations obsolete. We show how this paradigm can be used to elucidate enigmas in recent growth history, such as the growth take-off, secular stagnation, and the middle-income trap. We then illustrate how the Schumpeterian paradigm can be tested using rich micro data, focusing on the relationship between product market competition and innovation-led growth. Finally, we use the paradigm to question some common wisdoms on growth policymaking.

Scientific fraud still lacks a precise, universally accepted definition: the borders between unambiguously established fraud, errors, misconduct are uncertain: this frequently complicates decisions on whether or not cases of questionable behaviour can be classified as true fraud. In this article we have listed the behaviours which establish that true fraud has occurred. The most important is undoubtedly the intentionality of the behaviour, aimed at creating fictitious support of a theory or of a hypothesis. The fraudulent behaviour must have violated the standards of the time in which it occurred: this is an important point, as these standards may have been different in different times. Also important is the fact that the assessment of the seriousness of suspected cases is incremental: it goes from simple misconduct cases that would border on negligence, to cases of evident fraud, e.g. the fabrication or falsification of data or results, and/or the appropriation (plagiarism) of another person’s ideas or data without giving appropriate credit. In recent times, scientific fraud has become widespread, but it was known in the distant past as well: it has involved scientists who are real icons in the history of science. This article analyses the most important cases, dissecting with great attention the particular aspects of the accusations that had been levelled at them. With one exception, it clears them all of the accusations.

The digital transformation of public administration and public services has become an urgent need for many governments around the world. This article aims to explore the homogeneity and pace of digital transformation of public administration through the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify problems and forecasts of research processes at the EU level. The method of cluster analysis was used to study the similarity of the digital transformation of public administration in the EU. The pace of digitalization of public administration in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was studied through trend analysis. The results show that the EU countries, according to the level of public administration digitalization, are grouped into five clusters, between which there are significant digital gaps. The COVID-19 pandemic has widened the gaps, potentially impacting the EU’s strategy for digitalizing society and establishing e-government. Public e-services usage in 2020 to 2021 is higher than predicted by trend analysis for 2009 to 2019. This suggests an acceleration of digitalization in the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed technique can be used to predict the level of digitization of any country or group of countries.

This paper considers the reception and growth of sport in Spain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period during which the new activity developed from a novelty into part of the national culture. I focus on who exactly gravitated to sport and why, to explain this growth and ground that explanation in the larger national and regional history. Several factors and early groups spurred Spanish interest in sport including the movement to ‘regenerate’ the country around the turn of the century, the support from the medical community, and organizations such as the Institución Libre de Enseñanza and the Federación Gimnástica Española. Sport was also attractive to the emerging urban, Spanish middle classes who embraced it as a form of conspicuous consumption and for whom sport served a similar social purpose as art in cities such as Barcelona. In the 1910s and 1920s, the masses also became receptive to sport and football in particular for various reasons. In particular, clubs created local identities that drew in members and allowed teams to serve as community leaders, like Athletic de Bilbao and F.C. Barcelona do today.

Globalization challenges all social systems in all nations – how then could it spare the sciences? A question however is: what is new about this? Has not this happened throughout history? And a further question is: what is special for the sciences in all this? Although globalization may not be a new thing, with a population of over 6 billion people its impact becomes all-pervasive and its consequences are severe. It is not only that science enters into all cultures, whether advanced or less developed. Humans also come to depend on it more and more, and this for better or for worse. Science is literally vital to human beings in that they have come to rely upon it for food, potable water, energy, and security in their environment, or in old age. All people, in ever-increasing numbers, therefore have to be instructed in science so that they become aware of how dependent they are from the continuing progress in science, and to what extent innovation and advantages in economic competition depend upon their abilities to make the best use of science. In fact, science has become so powerful an influence on all ways of life that it can no longer be left to the scientists alone. Their power has to be constrained by morals and by laws, and it becomes inevitable that economists and lawyers, and above all politicians intrude upon what the scientists often regard as their exclusive turf. This may in time be the biggest challenge of the globalization of science.

Over the last few decades, two developments have brought fundamental changes to the study of the humanities. The digital revolution triggered the construction of huge databases, universally accessible and searchable on an unprecedented scale. As a consequence, new ways of thinking in wider contexts and organizing research on a larger scale came within reach of disciplines that had previously mostly been active on an individual level and focusing on particular phenomena. Moreover, applications of new scientific methods led to breakthroughs in fundamental humanities issues such as environmental and biological data that were essential for living conditions and for the formation of collective identities. The increased collaboration between disciplines led to major innovations.

Unmanned spacecraft have visited the other planets of our Solar System (and some of their moons), beaming back pictures of varied and distinctive worlds – but none propitious for life. However, prospects are far more interesting when we extend our gaze to other stars. Most stars are orbited by retinues of planets. Our home Galaxy contains a billion planets like the Earth. Do some of these have biospheres? Moreover, our Galaxy is one of billions visible with a large telescope – all the aftermath of a cosmic ‘big bang’ 13.8 billion years ago. More astonishing still, ‘our’ big bang may not have been the only one. The remarkable advances in recent decades are primarily owed to new engineering and technology. Armchair theory alone doesn’t get us far.

This paper critically reviews seven productions at Avignon 2000. The first was ‘Le chant perdu des petit riens’. This corresponds to visual and tactile perception bound to the hand and skin. ‘Le Petit Köchel’ is a story of Mozart devoured by the Heifetz sisters, two virtuoso violinists. The non-lyrical dry writing is made up of very dry statements that distance the observer; the result seems to resolve into an attractive ‘skin effect’ and a repulsive ‘bone effect’. In the ‘Ruines romaines’ relations between people are a field of ruins; individuals are obsessed by bad feelings and disgust. Bones stick out to signify the excessive fixity of ideals. In ‘Terres promises’ the enigma of textual and scenic images overwhelms the spectator; the subject wants to be guided by an organizing principle, the resemblances are explored at multiple levels. In ‘La Peau d'Elisa’ the relationship of flesh and clothing is emphasized; the main character can only communicate after eye contact. ‘Andromaque’ is a modern interpretation of a great classic. Finally ‘La Mouette’ shows the heroine immersed in feathers from a disembowelled pillow; the ambiguity of meaning is emphasized and the production is maintained between intellectuality and sensuality.