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The Western Balkans and possible alternatives to accelerating EU membership
Full text linkThe future of the Balkans lies within the European Union - this is the central sentence of the European Council conclusions adopted at the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003. Today, almost two decades later, the Western Balkans are even further away from that goal. After mass membership in 2004, then Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, and finally Croatia in 2013, the EU obviously looks tired. Montenegro has entered the twelve years tenth year of negotiations, and the results are still halfway through. Serbia is experiencing the same fate. And other Western Balkan countries have been on waiting tracks for decades.
Fulfillment of basic conditions for membership such as - stable democratic institutions, rule of law, respect for human and minority rights, functioning market economy, competitive capacities, etc. - seems to be stagnant. In much of the Western Balkans economies have remained underdeveloped, dependent on aid, loans and remittances, and prone to high levels of state intervention.
No new memberships are expected to occur in the near future. All this creates depression in the region with many accompanying risks. In these conditions, the region should think about possible alternatives for speeding up the integration process, which would not be in conflict with the existing compatibility of the European integration process. Could it be the European Economic Area, assisted by the Berlin Process, Open Balkans (Mini-Schengen), CEFTA, etc.?
During this paper we will use especially the methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison and history
Gjeopolitika e Shqipërisë – mundësia e kyçjes së Republikës së Kosovës në gazsjellësin – TAP
Full text linkNë Ballkan, Evropë dhe botë zhvillohen beteja të ashpra për atë se kush do t’i kontrollojë tubacionet gazpërçuese, gjë e cila nuk nënkupton vetëm favore financiare, por edhe pozicione të fuqishme gjeopolitike.
Pas dështimit të dy projekteve të mëdha gazpërçuese për Ballkanin – projekti “Rrjedha Jugore” (South Stream) dhe “NABUCCO”, definitivisht fitoi projekti TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipelines), projekti më i madh në Ballkan, në 100 vitet e fundit, i cili Shqipërinë do ta shndërrojë në arterie të rëndësishme energjetike të Evropës. Kjo dukshëm do të ndikojë në dinamizimin e zhvillimit ekonomik të Shqipërisë, i cili nga ky gazsjellës do të përfitojë mbi 15 mijë punësime të reja në pesë vitet e ardhshme dhe mbi një miliard euro do të fitojë nga taksa e tranzitimit në 20 vitet në vijim.
Tani për tani projekti TAP parasheh dy krahë të vetat: Krahu, i cili lidhet në tubin kryesor të gazsjellësit TAP në Greqi, vazhdon për në Bullgari (180 kilometra i gjatë) dhe i cili parashihet të vazhdojë përmes Rumanisë dhe Hungarisë në drejtim të Evropës Qendrore. Krahu tjetër, i ashtuquajturi-IAP (Ionian-Adriatic Pipelines), pra Gazsjellësi Adriatik–Jon, do të furnizonte Malin e Zi, Bosnjën e Hercegovinën dhe Kroacinë, kurse një shtesë e këtij krahu do të kalonte përmes Maqedonisë dhe Kosovës.
Pa dilemë se ky projekt do të jetë tejet i rëndësishëm jo vetëm për zhvillimin e rajonit, por edhe për stabilizimin dhe integrimin e tij
Geopolitics of Albania – possibility of involving Republic of Kosovo in the pipeline – TAP
Full text linkIn the Balkans, European countries and the rest of the world fought fierce battles over who will control the gas pipelines, which means not only financial benefits but also powerful geopolitical positions of the countries.
After the failure of two major Balkan gas pipelines – the project “South Stream” and “Nabucco”, the project TAP (Trans-Adriatic Pipelines) definitely won the battle, becoming the largest gas project in the Balkans in the last 100 years. This project will turn Albania into a very important energy artery in Europe. This will significantly affect the dynamics of the economic development of Albania, creating over 15 thousand new jobs with the pipeline in the next five years and over a billion euros will be gained from tax transition in the next 20 years.
TAP Project is currently predicted to have two branches of its own. The first one is the branch tube which will be connected to the main TAP pipeline in Greece and will continue through Bulgaria (180 kilometers long), and is also expected to continue through Romania and Hungary towards Central Europe. The other branch, the so-called – IAP (Ionian-Adriatic Pipeline), will supply Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, while an additional branch of it will pass through Macedonia and Kosovo.
There is no dilemma that this project will be very important not only for the development of the region, but also for its stabilization and integration
Western Balkans and the Internal Integration Processes
Full text linkWith the European flag, Germany is making great efforts to effect the Western Balkans' internal integration, but obviously the resistance from the countries of the region is very strong. Finally, the Americans are preparing to convince Western Balkan leaders, with the "stick and carrot", that their mutual integration in the region is not only beneficial for regional economic development but also for preserving world peace. Creating an economic or customs union would have multiple positive effects. The goal is to open a market of about twenty million people, which would vividly revive industry, commerce, agriculture, livestock, tourism, and so on. It would also greatly increase foreign investment. Above all, nations will have to come together in order to boost the region's economic development, as well as regional peace and stability. Given the real conditions in the region, which are specific by their nature, the key questions arise - to what extent is this possible, what are the means and ways of achieving this, and in what dynamics is it likely to occur? To be able to give an appropriate answer to this complexity, we have primarily used the comparative analysis method, but also the method of critical review by several authors
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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