公民參與可謂是當代民主政治的核心概念，它並非是一句空泛的口號或名詞，而是真切、實在地遍佈在人們的日常生活之中，舉凡社區關懷、集會遊行、陳情抗議、選舉投票等皆屬之。而公民參與的重要性，可歸納有四：提供政府治理的正當性、更加順遂推動公共政策、促成公共利益的形成，以及促進社會的安定與和諧。隨著民主政治的蓬勃發展，國人對公共利益的追求與實踐，公民參與課題將愈發重要。 新移民是臺灣新興的一類族群，大多以婚姻關係進入我國社會，並且以女性居多。長久以來，民眾對於新移民的議題，只著重在生活適應、子女教育等議題上，對於公民參與課題的關注，相對較少。本研究以臺北市女性新移民為研究對象，採以文獻分析法、深度訪談法，以公民參與概念建構臺灣社會與新移民的關係，探討臺北市女性新移民的公民參與情形，並期能提供可行的具體建議。 / Civic participation is the core concept of contemporary democratic politics. It is not a vague slogan or noun, but something real and all over people’s daily life, such as community care, assembly and parade, petitions and protests, elections. The importance of civic participation generalize to four factors which are offering legitimacy of government govermance, promoting public interests and promoting social stability and harmony. Because democratic politics is flourishing and people chase and practice public interests, the subjective of civic participation is more and more important. New immigrant is an emerging group. Most of them join our society through marriage and most of them are female. People focus on life adaption and children education more than civic participation for a long time. The object of this study is female new immigrants in Taipei city. Using document analysis and in-depth interview construct the relationship with Taiwan society and new immigrants by the concept of civic participation and research the circumstance of female new immigrants’ civic participation in Taipei. Hope to provide concrete and feasible recommendations.

La présence des acquéreurs étrangers dans le capital des sociétés cotées soulève de nombreuses questions au niveau de la recherche académique. Les études menées jusqu’à présent sont rarement concluantes quant à l’effet réel des investisseurs étrangers sur la performance des sociétés cibles. C’est la raison pour laquelle nous avons voulu appréhender l’incidence de la nationalité des acquéreurs à la lumière des théories de la gouvernance d’entreprise. En nous basant sur une approche synthétique de la gouvernance d’entreprise, d’une part, nous avons cherché à comprendre les changements apportés par l’acquéreur étranger au niveau de la gouvernance disciplinaire : changement au niveau de la taille, indépendance, cumul des fonctions, présence et présidence du conseil d’administration ; d’autre part, nous nous sommes intéressés, via l’approche cognitive, aux différences culturelles comme amplificateur des coûts cognitifs. Notre étude a porté sur les acquisitions effectuées aux États-Unis, sur la période 1994 à 2008, par des acquéreurs étrangers ou américains. Les acquéreurs étrangers considérés sont les acquéreurs français, allemands et japonais.Nos résultats montrent que le niveau d’implication des acquéreurs étrangers, dans la gouvernance de la cible, se traduit par des changements différents. Quant à la dimension cognitive, la distance culturelle entre les deux partenaires et le départ du top management, influencent la performance de la cible. Nous avons trouvé, également, que l’acquéreur domestique (américain) a un effet plus favorable sur la performance, comparativement aux acquéreurs étrangers considérés dans notre étude. Au niveau des nationalités, nous montrons que les acquéreurs de nationalité japonaise influencent négativement la performance de leurs cibles. Les acquéreurs français sont ceux qui procèdent le plus à des changements au niveau de la gouvernance disciplinaire ainsi qu’au niveau de la dimension cognitive avec un transfert de connaissances plus important vers les cibles. / The presence of foreign acquirers in the capital of listed companies raises many questions for academic research. The studies that have been conducted to date rarely generate conclusive findings about the impact of foreign investors on the performance of listed targets. This is why we sought to get a better understanding of the role of the nationality of acquirers in the light of theories of corporate governance. Based on a synthetic approach to corporate governance, we have sought to understand, on the one hand, changes brought by the foreign acquirer in the corporate governance system of the target firm under the disciplinary view : change in size, independence, CEO duality, presence and chair of the board of directors; on the other hand, we examined, under the cognitive approach, the cultural differences as an amplifier of cognitive costs. Our study focuses on acquisitions in the United States over the period 1994-2008, carried out by foreign or domestic acquirers. The foreign acquirers considered in our study are the French, German and Japanese acquirers.Our results show that the level of involvement of foreign acquirers in the corporate governance of the target, results in various changes in the corporate governance of the target firms. Our results suggest also, for the cognitive dimension of corporate governance, that the cultural distance between the two partners and the departure of top management, influence the performance of the target firms. We found also that the domestic acquirers (U.S acquirers) improve performance of the target firms after acquisition more than foreign acquirers considered in our study. In terms of nationalities, we show that the acquirers of Japanese nationality influence negatively the performance of their targets. The French acquirers are the ones who brought the most important changes into the disciplinary governance ; at the cognitive governance level, they implement an important transfer of knowledge to their targets firms.

The presented diploma thesis deals with the effects of the Czech-German relict border on the religiosity and the sacral landscape of the city region called Manetin, which consists of the permanent Czech territory and the Nectiny village of German historical origin. The theoretical introduction of this work therefore includes a part dedicated to the topic of borders, introducing different types of borders, focusing particularly on the terms relict and ethnic borders used in the further study. The second part of the theoretical introduction contains the characteristics of the religiosity and the sacral landscape, its evolution on the national level after the Second World War, highlighting the consequent processes related to the exile of the German population after 1945. The research section of the thesis consists of the micro-regional analysis of the reference region. The analysis is based on the field study which consists of semi-structured interviews, which were complemented by the descriptive statistical analysis and method of observing the condition and location of sacral objects. The main aim of the investigation presented in the thesis is to analyze the differences in the religiosity and the sacral landscape in the regions under study through the chosen methodological approaches and...

This study aims to answer two interlinked questions with respect to ethnic conflict in Georgia: Why and how two ethnic groups (Abkhazians and Ossetians) in Georgia sought secession in 1990s rather than accepting unity under a common Georgian roof, and what explains the occurrence of ethnic conflicts between the Abkhazians and Georgians and between the South Ossetians and Georgians? The central argument of this thesis is that Soviet nationality policy was a foremost driving force in shaping consciousness of being ethnic groups in Georgia and set the stage for the inter-ethnic conflicts of the post-Soviet era. A number of factors explain the particular inter-ethnic conflicts in Georgia among ethnic groups, including a long historical relationship between the Georgian people and the Abkhaz and Ossetian minorities, but I argue that the foremost factor was the role of Soviet nationality policy that evolved from Lenin to Gorbachev, a policy that granted ethnic groups some level of privileges and fostered a wave of national self-assertion, Soviet nationality policy and the Soviet federal structure created numerous ethnic- and territorial-based autonomous units during the Soviet era; these units shaped their own political institutions, national intelligentsias, and bureaucratic elites, forming the basis for later nationalistic movements and developing a wish for self-determination and full independence. These institutions and beliefs made ethnic conflict in a post-Soviet Georgia inevitable.

The diploma thesis deals with topic of relict Czech-German ethnic boundary. In the first part of the thesis theoretical-methodological aspects of the study are discussed with an emphasis on delimitation of Czech-German ethnic boundary in literature. In the past the tendency to draw ethnic boundary as a line prevailed and it was common not to deal with zonal character of ethnic boundaries. In the second part of the thesis the shape of Czech- German ethnic boundary in the Czech lands and its changes from the end of the 19th century to 2001 are studied. In the third part of the thesis the shape of Czech-German ethnic boundary in chosen interest regions is analyzed, and the function of ethnic boundary as a socio-cultural divide of a territory is considered. The aim of the study was to find out if there are differences between Czech and German community in the interest regions. The function of ethnic boundary as a socio-cultural divide was examined in two periods: in an interwar era of the first Czechoslovak republic, and at the beginning of the 21st century, when Czech-German ethnic boundary remains only as a relict boundary. Comparison of both parts along the ethnic boundary in the interest regions was done on the basis of religiosity of population and results of parliamentary elections. Key words:...

Today, different parts of a value chain operate in different places, different firms may hold ranges of brands with different national heritages, and leaders, shareholders and customers are widely spread across the world. Policy makers are facing new challenges as national borders define less and less of corporate thinking. In this paper, we argue that there is a need to find a new way of how to understand the relationship between business and nation-states. The theoretical framework was constructed by breaking down the concept of national identity of companies. We found four different aspects that we argue can connect business to nations, and in the empirical study, our ambition is to test this framework. By conducting the study using qualitative content analysis, we aim to answer the research question of if it possible to understand the national identity of companies through different aspects of business, and if so, how this is reflected in the national trade policies of four countries. Our results showed that by looking beyond the traditional view of national identity of companies, policy makers have three important factors to take into regards when considering their relations to business; location, culture and contribution.

Using the film La Haine (1995), directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, as an object of analysis, this paper explores culture as a tool of exclusion in France through sociological, architectural, and political contexts. It investigates La Haine as one of the first representations of the banlieue to mainstream French audiences, as well as the ways in which the film reveals how immigrants and children of immigrants struggle to find personal, cultural, and national identity in France.

The methodology of exploring stereotypes in spoken languages has been described in Jerzy Bartmiński's papers in great detail.Bartmiński works with three types of data (linguistic, textual and empirical ones), which he uses to formulate a cognitive definition describing the stereotype of the explored phenomenon. This work is the first of its kind to attempt to apply this methodology to exploring ethnic stereotypes in the Czech Sign Language. Sign languages are visual-motoric by their nature and lack a written form, which brings certain difficulties when exploring textual data. Therefore, for the purpose of exploring stereotypes in these languages the aforementioned method had to be modified in numerous ways. It is especially the linguistic data which have become important here, along with the empirical ones to a certain extent. It turns out that the sought stereotypes are most frequently contained in the very form of the sign (in the so-called parameters, i.e. hand shape, location, movement etc.) or in modifications of its parameters. This is documented on ten different ethnic stereotypes in the Czech Sign Language.

Le concept de nationalité des sociétés, qui traduit le rattachement politique d’une société à un Etat, a longtemps semblé impossible à définir, les critères retenus par les juges variant en fonction des décisions. Pour ajouter à la confusion, les juges ne distinguaient pas toujours la nationalité de la lex societatis. En énonçant dans un arrêt Roval de 1990 que la nationalité d’une société se déduisait de la localisation de son siège de direction effective, le juge fiscal a livré de la notion la première définition à portée universelle. La solution n’est cependant pas totalement satisfaisante. D’une part, elle procède d’une lecture erronée de la définition contenue dans la clause conventionnelle de non-discrimination selon la nationalité applicable en l’espèce, qui renvoyait à la loi de constitution de la société. Cette méprise a eu pour effet d’étendre la portée du principe conventionnel de non-discrimination bien au-delà des intentions des rédacteurs du Modèle de convention OCDE, jusqu’à prohiber les différences de traitement selon la résidence des sociétés. La solution mériterait d’être réexaminée. Hors de tout contexte conventionnel, elle conserve sa pertinence. Cependant, si le siège de direction effective se situe, comme l’a jugé le Conseil d’Etat, à l’endroit où les personnes exerçant les fonctions les plus élevées dans une société prennent les décisions stratégiques, ce siège pourrait s’avérer difficile à localiser pour les sociétés les plus internationalisées. Le maniement du concept de nationalité par le juge fiscal et son articulation avec la notion fiscale de résidence seront alors analysés, notamment en lien avec l'application des principes de non-discrimination conventionnel et communautaire qui prohibent les différences de traitement fondées respectivement sur la nationalité et la résidence du contribuable. Il apparaît en effet que le juge fiscal, en butte à l'imprécision des concepts dont il doit faire application, tende parfois à les confondre ou les utiliser de façon simplificatrice. / The concept of nationality of companies, which expresses the political connection between a given company and a State, has long been impossible to define as French judges would resort to different criteria depending on each case. The courts would also frequently mix up the concept of nationality with the notion of « lex societatis », thus creating additionnal confusion. Lastly a 1990 tax case Roval led French Civil Supreme Court to hold that the nationality of a company derives from the location of its effective seat of management. This definition is not totally satisfactory though. It derives from a misinterpretation of the non-discrimination treaty provision applicable to the case, which conveys to this clause a much broader scope than was initially intended by the drafters of the OECD Model convention and indirectly weakens French domestic rules that discriminate among companies depending on their tax residence. The Roval case should be reconsidered in light of the treaty definition of « nationals », which refers to the law of incorporation of the companies. Outside of a tax treaty context, the reference to the effective seat of management concept sounds more suitable. French administrative Supreme Court clarified that such a seat would be where strategic decisions necessary for the conduct of the enterprise’s business are in substance made by the most senior managers. In practise, determining the location of that seat may prove to be quite difficult for certain multinational entities.

A circulação de pessoas pelo mundo é facilitada, na contemporaneidade, pelos avanços tecnológicos, porém, ao mesmo tempo, sofre restrições por questões econômicas. Entende-se que a restrição ao ingresso do estrangeiro não mais pode acontecer por decisão totalmente livre do Estado receptor; isso porque as normas internacionais de direitos humanos limitam essa liberdade, ao impedir que ele decida sobre o ingresso de forma desprovida de amarras. Três teorias explicam a relação do Estado com o direito de ingresso. A teoria vitoriana, desenvolvida por Francisco de Vitória, defende que há liberdade total de circulação de pessoas pelo mundo, havendo espaço para restrição tão somente quando a circulação, comprovadamente, causar dano ao Estado receptor do migrante. A teoria do livre arbítrio absoluto do Estado, por sua vez, entende que não existe direito de ingresso e a decisão do Estado não é passível de discussão, pois faz parte do exercício da sua soberania. Atenta às mudanças ocorridas no mundo, inclusive no que tange à soberania, a teoria do controle das decisões estatais, desenvolvida nesta tese, propugna que a decisão tem de ser fundamentada e não pode ignorar os avanços dos direitos humanos e que, portanto, o Estado deve usar a lógica das escolhas trágicas para decidir sobre o ingresso, não havendo mais espaço para uma decisão sem limites. A atuação livre do Estado sofre uma releitura para que suas decisões passem por controle e suas ações sejam interpretadas sob a égide dos direitos humanos. Também experimenta restrições a liberdade dada ao Estado de determinar quem há de se ter por seu nacional, não mais adstrita à sua vontade. São emblemáticos o caso Nottebohm, no qual a Corte Internacional de Justiça impôs limites à concessão de nacionalidade, determinando que ela deve ser contínua, e o caso dos decretos de nacionalidade da Tunísia e do Marrocos, em que a Corte Permanente de Justiça Internacional também se manifestou sobre o tema. Este estudo faz uma análise de como a questão da entrada de estrangeiros é tratada em alguns países do mundo e de como o tema é vislumbrado no Brasil. O trabalho utiliza como fontes de pesquisa a revisão da literatura nacional e estrangeira, a legislação pertinente ao tema, como o Estatuto dos Estrangeiros, a Constituição Federal brasileira, bem como decisões e pareceres consultivos internacionais, além do uso da técnica do direito comparado, exame do direito comparado. / If, on the one hand, technology makes travelling easier, on the other, economic matters restrict peoples movement around the world. This thesis defends that restrictions on foreign entry cannot be let to the States sole discretion anymore. The reason for this is that international Human rights rules limit that discretion, attaching strings to the State action. Three theories explain how the States face the right of entry. First, the Vitorian theory, developed by Francisco de Vitória, defends peoples total freedom of movement around the world, while restrictions to this right would be possible only if enough evidence is shown that the migrant could cause damages to the receiving State. Second, the State Total Discretion theory holds that there is no such thing as a right of entry, and the States decision cannot be questioned, because it is the expression of its sovereignty. Last, responsive to the world changes, including on sovereignty, the theory of the Control of the States Decisions, here developed, argues that the State decision has to be justified on solid grounds, and cannot ignore the development of Human rights. Therefore, the State must use the tragic choices rational in order to decide about ones right of entry, with no room for total discretion. According to this thesis, States decisions have to be controlled and its actions must be interpreted under the Human rights aegis. Moreover, this thesis argues that there cannot be total discretion on States decision of classifying someone as a national or a foreigner. Supporting this idea are the emblematic cases of Nottebohm, on which the International Court of Justice imposed limits to the granting of nationality, upholding that this granting has to be continuous, and the case of nationality decrees of Tunisia and Morocco, on which the Permanent Court of International Justice has spoken on the subject. This study examines how the issue of foreign entry is treated in some Countries, specially in Brazil. To do so, this thesis uses as source the Brazilian and overseas literature contained on books, scientific articles and Law.