There is no comprehensive monograph dealing with the complex legal issues of compensation for the damage done to European Jews by the Nazi regime. The purpose of this thesis is to set forth and analyze the political and legislative means employed by the Hungarian Government to settle human rights claims brought by Hungarian Jewish citizens and Jewish organizations arising from Hungarian legislation discriminating against Jews, and from the nationalization and confiscation of property by the former communist regime in Hungary. The thesis also examines the German compensation system as it applies to Hungarian Jewish citizens.

This dissertation examines lawyers and lawyering in post-Soviet Georgia. It suggests that the collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a rapid de-professionalization of lawyers. The monopoly of the Soviet-era Bar was broken, the number of law graduates multiplied, many of the objective conditions for lawyering (such as functioning courts) were simply absent and most jurists employed by state enterprises lost their jobs. In other words, lawyers were left with little control over their markets or work. But there has also been a growing movement towards the professionalization of lawyers since 1991. Intriguingly, the key to understanding the new professionalism lies not with the reconstruction of state-mandated monopolies (indeed for several years there was simply no law regulating the Bar), but rather with lawyers' attempts to control a market through means firmly lodged in culture and the politics of the post-Soviet transition. These means include a traditional reliance on reputation and networks. Comparisons are also made here to the legal professions in Armenia and Azerbaijan, revealing similar findings and rounding out this thesis as a regional study. The empirical findings, which are based on fieldwork carried out in Transcaucasia between 1998 and 2001, have implications for studies of the legal profession and the rule of law in transition societies.

<p>This research proposed to look at quality standards of evaluations in economic and financial respect undertaken on behalf of the European Commission in order to assess the performance of its development assistancein a policy-driven context. the research found that evaluation on the basis of an individual project is often flawed and lacks quality in terms of the applied evaluation method.</p>

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<p> There is no question that early modern France was a patriarchal society. In fact, during this period, there was an increase in legislation further subordinating women under the authority of their fathers and then of their husbands. The legal identities of women as daughters and wives was officially negligible. However, this dissertation argues that in practice, family needs trumped the constricting legal prescriptions placed upon women. In examining the estate accounts, contracts, and family papers of the Saulx-Tavanes, Brulart, Le Goux, Joly, Marmier, and Baissey families, it is abundantly clear that women of both the <i>noblesse de robe</i> and <i>noblesse d'&eacute;p&eacute;e </i> were actively engaged in estate management which required negotiations of the legal hurdles placed in front of them. At least unofficially noblemen expected their wives to enter marriage armed with a cadre of managerial skills to be employed for the good of the family during their marriage and if necessary after. Furthermore, noble husbands, many of whom were legists themselves, seemed to have fully embraced women's negotiations of familial authority as commonplace. </p><p> Fran&ccedil;oise Brulart was a member of the <i>noblesse de robe </i> in Burgundy, albeit of the highest echelon, who married a prominent member of the <i>noblesse d'&eacute;p&eacute;e,</i> Claude de Saulx-Tavanes. From the onset of their marriage, Fran&ccedil;oise and Claude worked together in a sort of collaborative partnership, one in which he clearly depended on her to take an active role in co-managing the estate and family economy. Upon his death, rather than naming a male relative as the trustee over his properties, he left Fran&ccedil;oise in charge. In her viduity, she increased her assiduous estate administration while successfully continuing to promote and defend the family rights and assets. Fran&ccedil;oise's experiences and agency were far from singular. Through the analysis of documents involving not only Fran&ccedil;oise Brulart, but also those of Louise Joly, Anne de Marmier and Anne de Baissey, it is clear that both in marriage and in widowhood, family success and advancement relied on the ability of noble women to administer the estates frugally, and to sustain, and if possible to grow, the family assets.</p>

The European Union (EU) and Australia share a significant volume of historical connections in languages, cultures, economic and trade relationships, political views and ideas. These associations have had different levels of strength and frequencies in the past, depending on how these two political entities interacted with each other in the framework of international relations. Australia and the EU jointly developed an important political and socio-economic basis for working together, and cooperation between them is deeper and more common than the public might perceive to be the case. The EU is a growing superstructure; meanwhile Australia is a developed and successful nation, a successful democracy and a middle power. Nevertheless, Australia cannot expect to match the power and position of a polity, which comprises 28 different countries. This fact can produce a certain asymmetric relationship in the connection between these two political entities' communities. These asymmetric elements in the collaboration between them are liable to create certain discrepancies and disharmonies in the development of their different agreements in general. This thesis aims to examine the scope and depth of the EU-Australia working relationship, the convergent and the divergent issues within it. This exploration provides an analysis of the philosophical and sociological foundations of international relations in general, with special regard to the framework of sociological constructivism and sociological institutionalism, as possible catalysers in the growth and furtherance of the many-sided EU-Australia collaboration. To reach the most effective and efficient cooperation between the European Union and Australia, which includes the efforts to alleviate the urgent environmental sustainability and related problems regionally, and in a globalising world, will go a long way to create peace, security, and prosperity in Eurasia and in the Pacific. The EU-Australia mutual relationship is facilitated through shared values, norms and normative principles, such as the constitutive norms of liberty, democracy, good governance; the regulative norms of the centrality of peace, human rights, social solidarity, environmental sustainability; and the evaluative norms of the rule of law, transparency, human dignity and anti-discrimination. The willingness of the European Union and Australia to partake in a joint experience of continuous social learning process, provide them the power to achieve their aims together in a changing world.

One of the novel aspects of the European debate in the post-Cold War era is the deliberate attempt by scholars and policy-makers to articulate a more meaningful idea of Europe. Such an idea, it is hoped, would enhance the legitimacy of the European Union and could provide the basis for a European identity capable of mitigating against the rise of nationalist and racist violence in Europe. After more than a decade, however, a compelling vision of Europe that would fulfil these aspirations is still widely deemed to be lacking. The question that arises, therefore, is why, in fact, it is proving so difficult to articulate a more meaningful idea of Europe in the post-Cold War era, and how, concomitantly, this difficulty might be addressed. In response to this question, the present thesis offers a detailed analysis of the largely unexplored European thought advanced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche towards the end of the nineteenth century. For, the thesis argues, Nietzsche's thinking about Europe can still significantly illuminate our understanding of the current impasse by contextualising the latter within the larger problem of European nihilism, or meaninglessness, resident in the cultural configuration of European modernity. On the basis of this understanding, moreover, the thesis subsequently turns towards a consideration of Nietzsche's own idea of the 'good European' which he developed in response to the experience of meaninglessness in modern European culture. This idea of what it means to be a 'good European,' the thesis concludes, can assist contemporary scholars of European affairs in delineating a response to the current impasse which neither posits an essentialist idea of Europe, nor falls back onto a technical and functional approach to European governance.

This thesis applies the neo-functionalist theory of integration to a study of the European technology policy, taking the BRITE-EURAM programme as a case study. A three- level mode of analysis is used to examine actor behaviour: actors at the micro-level, national technology systems, and the European-level institutions. The study makes a comparative analysis of participation by two of the European member states, the United Kingdom and Spain, to examine the community building processes that operated in each. The national institutional system in which economic actors operate influences their behaviour, and the analysis of the European technology collaboration identified the political changes that took place within the context of particular national institutional systems. One variable that is key to the process of integration is the technological capability of the national system. At the supranational level, the ideology and ideas underpinning technology policy created a market-based community, excluding other interests. The effect is to compromise any attempt to upgrade the common interest through directing technology policy towards economic and social cohesion.

European Union membership affects budgetary practices in Britain and France much more than the conventional literature acknowledges. Budgetary Europeanisation, defined as the process of adaptation of budgetary processes to EU pressures, involves not merely the compliance of budgetary aggregates to EU guidelines but mainly changes in bureaucratic practices, methods and strategies. Budgetary institutions have become hybrid because of the growing entanglement of national and EU budgetary procedures; therefore the conventional national approach to budgeting is outdated. The impact on budgeting is greater on spending than on taxing because unanimous voting safeguards national governments' sovereignty on taxation. The thesis isolates various pressures which contribute to budgetary Europeanisation (competition, substitution, regulation, lobbying and demand by Member States). It explains strategic differences between Britain and France. The Euro-PES mechanism and the Fontainebleau agreement in the UK explain the non-maximisation strategy of British administration, which contrasts to the French, based on the "principe de constance" and sectoral rates-of-return. The thesis compares the processes of adaptation of bureaucratic mechanisms to the consequences of EU membership in different policy domains (Agriculture, Transport and Health). It concludes that the degree of adaptation of EU pressures is higher when national bureaucrats often interact with international actors because they are better able to influence decisions at EU level (a major difference between Transport and Health). It confirms the link between budgetary Europeanisation and the amount of EU finance in departments' budgets, but it shows that this link is a secondary explanation of differences in degrees of Europeanisation. Finally, the thesis shows how EU programmes promoted shifts in national decision-making, with greater effect on the processes of decision-making than on the substance of policy. This analysis suggests that national administrations retain a large margin of manoeuvre both in policy-making and in finance, and through their participation in the EU budgetary process.

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