Ultimate Authority Research Articles

Arbiters of Value: The Nationalization of Art and the Politics of Expertise in Early Socialist Romania

In 1948, immediately after the Communist Party came to power in Romania, state officials commissioned a group of art experts to radically transform the existing public and private art collections into a national system of museums. These professionals became the new regime’s arbiters of value: the ultimate authority in assessing the cultural and financial value of artwork, and thus deciding their fate and final location. Newly available archival evidence reveals the specific strategies that they employed, and the particular political needs of the state they were able to capitalize on in order to survive and even thrive under a regime that, in principle, should have disavowed them. Even though many of them had professionally come of age during the interwar period, the art experts managed to make themselves indispensable to the new state. They functioned as a pivotal mediator between state officials and a broader public because they knew how to use the national network of museums to put the new state on display. Through the rearrangement of public and private collections across the country, and the centralization of art in museums, they produced a particular “order of things” meant not only to entice the public to view the socialist state as the pinnacle of progress and as a benefactor to the masses but also to validate their expertise and forge a new political trajectory for themselves. The strategic movement of art objects that they orchestrated reveals the material and spatial dimensions of state-making in early socialism.

Reforming Withdrawal and Opt-Outs from the European Union: A Dual-Constituent Perspective

This paper engages in a normative critique of the phenomena of Member State withdrawal and opt-outs from the European Union from the perspective of the dual-constituent thesis. Opt-outs from the EU legal order are conceptualised as the retention of the constituent power of Member States to derogate from the norms of the EU constitutional order. By contrast, Article 50 TEU functions as the pooling of the ultimate sovereign authority for nationals of a a Member State to withdraw their consent to engage in the exercise of constituent power at the European level. It is argued that reform should be enacted to limit the power to opt-out to strict conditions established by the EU constitutional order. By contrast, although withdrawal may have more extensive consequences for individuals, the sovereign right to withdraw is a prerequisite for the exercise of the mixed constituent power shared by individuals in their dual roles as nationals of the Member State and citizens of the EU. Therefore, reform of withdrawal could only legitimately be enacted at the domestic level of the 'constitutional requirements' necessary under Article 50(1) TEU.

A "Fine Liberal" in Black Radical History: W. E. B. Du Bois's Strategic Citation of Carl Schurz

A "Fine Liberal" in Black Radical History:W. E. B. Du Bois's Strategic Citation of Carl Schurz Sarah Papazoglakis (bio) "There is probably no man living who has a more intimate knowledge of the Negro Question than Mr. Schurz," wrote S. S. McClure in the editor's introduction to Carl Schurz's 1903 McClure's Magazine article, "Can the South Solve the Negro Problem?"1 No one living, except, of course, the entire black community who intimately knew what it was to experience what W. E. B. Du Bois theorized as "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others."2 In fact, months before Schurz's essay appeared in McClure's Magazine, Du Bois had published The Souls of Black Folk, his profound work on race and double consciousness that explained the "problem of the color-line" as a problem of "the disfranchisement of the Negro."3 Yet, without a hint of irony, McClure made this hyperbolic claim, naming Schurz, a German American white elder statesman, the ultimate authority on racial conditions in the United States. He did so in the face of a significant body of black activism, writing, and scholarship. Du Bois confronted this fallacy by leveraging Schurz's acclaim among the political and social white elite to turn him into an unlikely ally, citing Schurz throughout much of his scholarship on Reconstruction as he wrote against the grain of the "standard—anti-negro" revisionist histories proliferating at the turn of the century and beyond.4 By strategically citing Schurz, Du Bois could more easily defend against racialized charges of bias and more effectively appropriate and exploit white discourses on race widely considered to be neutral. Du Bois positioned himself alongside and against Schurz as a widely respected liberal figure. Despite the praise of the prestigious, middle-brow, muckraking magazine, Schurz's record in the struggle for civil rights was controversial at best, [End Page 97] given that he, like many other Radical Republicans, "abandoned the negro" as the political tide turned against Reconstruction policies in 1872.5 Schurz's liberalism included the belief that racial inequality was a troubling exception to equal rights and opportunity. However, at the turn of the century, he was portrayed as radical by the conservative Dunning School historians who gave scholarly credibility to blatantly racist accounts of Reconstruction, casting it as a failure because of black incompetence. Du Bois shows that the Dunning School's framing of the liberal Schurz as a radical was part of a larger effort by Southern apologists to rewrite the Reconstruction Era as one of "unrelieved sordidness in political and social life."6 In Du Bois's works, Schurz emerges as an exemplary liberal figure whose writings could only be seen as radical if placed in contrast to extremist antiblack propaganda. To advance a black radical interpretation of the era that would situate a material history of racial exclusion and oppression at the center of—rather than incidental to—American democracy, Du Bois needed to dramatically shift the discourse on Reconstruction. In Du Bois's hands, Schurz became the perfect foil for white supremacist views of Reconstruction, legitimated in large part by Dunning School scholars. By moving the narrative of Schurz to the right and exposing exclusionary tenets of liberalism, Du Bois insisted on black radical resistance at a time when much of the popular commonsense discourse on racial inequality focused on accommodation, compromise, and reform. For Du Bois, Schurz came to represent the racialization of gatekeeping in a number of contexts. In many ways, Schurz's prominence symbolized the currents of white supremacy that undergird white liberalism, which does not appear openly racist or hostile but relies on more polite forms of racial violence. That "fine liberal," as Du Bois called him, could silence the black community by promoting a white perspective as more objective and more knowledgeable than even the most credentialed black scholar. While Schurz's moderate views—later characterized by Du Bois as "fair to indifferent to the Negro"—displaced black voices in magazine outlets, Schurz also embodied the progressive outer limit of elite power circles and demarcated the racial and social boundaries that...

The nature and meaning of the Directive 2013/34/EU on financial statements according to the CJ EU

Abstract The Directive 2013/34/EU is a fundamental part of European Union (EU) legislation harmonising the regime of financial and non-financial reporting throughout the entire EU, including reporting about corporate social responsibility (CSR). Inasmuch as its transposition deadline expired in 2015, it is possible and also highly elucidating to holistically study its nature and actual transposition. A related literature summing up, accompanied with a legislation and transposition review compiled via the EUR-Lex database, makes for a solid foundation for a holistic and critical exploration of the related case law of the ultimate judicial authority for the interpretation and application of the Directive 2013/34/EU, namely the Court of Justice of the EU (CJ EU). Researching this case law within the Curia database brings forth an interesting meta-analysis, refreshed by Socratic questioning, which reveals the approach of the CJ EU to the Directive 2013/34/EU. The hypothesis suggests that this case law of the CJ EU offers valuable and as-yet hitherto-neglected indices, signifiers about the EU conforming to the perception of the nature and meaning of the Directive 2013/34/EU. These indices could be pivotal for further improvement of the harmonized regime of financial and non-financial reporting, for the boosting of CSR and also for supporting European integration and its legitimacy.

China’s Favored Muslims? The Complex Relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Hui Ethnic Group

The People’s Republic of China remains a multinational unitary state, where the prc Constitution expressly guarantees freedom of religion and fair treatment of ethnic minorities. The Chinese Communist Party (ccp) retains ultimate authority regarding internal and external affairs, including the selective enforcement of constitutional rights. Various ethnic groups, such as the Turkic Uighurs, have long been perceived as rebellious, while the Muslim Hui have often been treated favorably, with laxer enforcement of laws and more religious autonomy. Many attribute this “model minority” perception of the Hui to cultural similarities shared with the Han. Although the ccp continues to allow religious freedoms to the Hui, the trajectory of persecution has slightly increased due to threats of global Islamist insurgencies. Leadership under President Xi Jinping seeks to maintain its power by combating “foreign infiltration” of Islam. Party officials allow Hui to interact with Muslim countries internationally under one circumstance—beneficial business transactions.

Christ’s Πίστις vs. Caesar’s Fides: Πίστις Χριστοῦ in Galatians and the Roman Imperial Cult

This study examines the meaning of πίστις Χριστοῦ with respect to the political and religious situations of Paul’s Galatian recipients, including the issue of circumcision. When the apostle sent his letter to the Galatian churches, the Gentile believers were returning to the Roman imperial cult; by doing so, they were accepting the emperor as the ultimate authority and benefactor and incorporated into the reciprocity of fides. Through πίστις Χριστοῦ, our apostle criticised and superseded this Roman imperial ideology and the imperial cult. Paul’s πίστις Χριστοῦ was intended to advocate Christ’s faithfulness in opposition to Caesar’s faithfulness. He exhorted the recipients to live in a relationship of πίστις with Christ, not Caesar. Christ’s faithfulness and ‘the believer’s faith in Christ’ are not mutually exclusive. Paul deliberately intended the ambivalence of the Greek phrase to denote the reciprocal πίστις between Christ and the believer. The apostle defined the believer’s relationship with both the Jewish tradition and the Roman Empire concurrently.

Transfer Pricing and the Decision-Making Authority of the Tax Function in Multinational Companies

The allocation of decision rights is a fundamental issue of organizational design. We study the decision-making authority and respective outcomes within firms’ transfer pricing function where tax and managerial objectives typically conflict. Exploring unique survey data on transfer pricing systems of multinational companies, we investigate the extent to which the centralization of decision-making authority at the tax department is associated with (external) tax audit conflicts and (internal) coordination conflicts. We find that disputes with local tax authorities are more likely, i.e. tax risk is higher, when the tax department has ultimate authority over transfer pricing decisions. This result is consistent with theory predicting that central tax managers focus on firm-wide objectives instead of easing local tax audits. Internal coordination, however, seems to be unaffected by the allocation of decision rights to the tax department.

The DSM-ICD diagnostic approach as an essential bridge between the patient and the "big data".

The use of diagnostic manuals in psychiatry is generally necessitated by the lack of tests that would corroborate psychiatric diagnosis. Criticism towards the today prevailing DSM-ICD diagnosis traditionally regards among others such problems as hyponarrativity, biologism, "death of phenomenology", and a questionably valid over-fragmentation of diagnosis. Lately, and especially after the appearance of the 5th edition of DSM (2013), criticism focuses at such issues as lack of validity, having failed to adopt a dimensional model, not adequately relying on genetics and neurobiology, and impeding, rather than facilitating, research into the etiology of mental disorders, the DSM becoming an "epistemic prison". The former problems seem to derive from the fact that the operationalist criteria are often uncritically adopted as the ultimate authority in diagnosis, instead of being merely guides, as intended originally and explicitely; the latter problems have been made more evident since the emergence of the American RDoC research initiative, which not only points to an alternative, more valid classification of mental disorders, but also aspires to signal a move of psychiatry tοwards precision medicine, having as its main dogma that mental disorders are disorders of brain circuits, which are expressed as complex syndromes. In this paper, the historical and epistemological context of the emergence of DSM is examined; its achievement in terms of diagnostic reliability as well as clinical utility is not negligible, especially taken into consideration the climate of virtual diagnostic arbitrariness which characterized the (American) psychiatry before 1980, with obvious consequences for the authority of the specialty. Then, the potential of the new era of genetics, neurobiology and analysis of the "big data" for generating a novel approach to psychiatric diagnosis and classification is put into consideration, while it remains unknown in what way the findings of RDoC could lead and be translated into a new classification system. Moreover, the particularity of the psychiatric object, the clinical significance of the categorical approach to diagnosis, as well as the need for a "irreducible psychological level of explanation" are discussed. In our view, today, the DSM-ICD diagnosis lies between two different and potentially opposing demands and tendencies: on the one hand, the demand for the individual, subjective and phenomenological particularity of the mentally ill to be taken into consideration (a demand that sometimes underestimates the need for clinical communication); on the other hand, the (largely future) vision for more and more analysis of biological data in the name of a yet to be clarified personalized therapy (the very notion of diagnosis becoming potentially redundant). Finally, considering the particularity of the psychiatric object, we conclude that matthe DSM-ICD approach, with its categorical diagnoses and its descriptive operational criteria, despite its inherent imperfections and inadequacies, continues to have a place in psychiatry as an essential bridge/interface between clinic and research data, as a common clinical language, and as an epistemic hub; and that prerequisites for diagnostic validity should be sought both in the cells of RDoC and in those theoretical approaches which examine human subjectivity as such, included phenomenology and psychoanalysis.

Restoring Confidence in the Roman Catholic Church: Corporate Governance Analogies

Events of the Summer 2018 brought the long running sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church back onto the front pages, highlighting the role of diocesan bishops in covering up the scandal and enabling abusers. In response to these developments, the Church is again considering reforms to protect victims and punish abusers and enablers. This article proposes that the Church create a system for laity to anonymously report allegations, enact strong protections for whistleblowers, and impose a mandatory whistleblowing requirement on priests. As a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report demonstrates, however, the laity was reporting the abuse to the Church but the hierarchy buried those reports in secret files. The ultimate problem thus is not so much the lack of reporting, as it was the lack of action after the report. Accordingly, the article’s principal proposal is the creation of both diocesan and national disciplinary bodies led by expert lay members as the ultimate authorities in sex abuse cases. The proposal draws an analogy between these bodies and corporate audit committees and argues that a number of aspects of how audit committees function can be usefully adapted to the proposed review bodies. This version of the article has been revised to take into account developments at the February 2019 Vatican summit on the sex abuse scandal. Those developments do not change the recommendations made herein.

Sovereignty, a Swinging Concept Between International Law and Political Reality

Abstract The State, as the fundamental unit of the international system, appeals to ultimate power and authority in order to control its own domestic affairs and claims equality as a legal basis regarding its relation with other legal political units. But the existence of the sovereign state in the current international context, where the multiple interdependencies generate divergence and cooperation in the same, is subject to permanent challenges. And the issue is not easy approachable in theory, nor in practice. Like other concepts, as security or democracy, the concept of sovereignty needs to be updated according to the new rules revealed by the process of globalization, rules that are defined not by the equal states, but by the powerful ones.

Konsepsi Ketatanegaraan Kahar Muzakkar

Abstract: this article explains the political thought of Kahar Muzakkar. Kahar Muzakkar proclaimed his Islamic state with the name of Republik Persatuan Islam Indonesia (RPII) on 14 of May 1962 which is a realization of his Islamic political thought. Kahar Muzakkar wanted a federal state and positioned sharia as the state foundation. In addition to sharia, Kahar Muzakkar viewed that social justice and democracy were potential concepts that workable for his Islamic federal state. Concerning executive system, he opted for presidential system in which his Islamic federal state was to be led by a president directly elected by people with members of cabinet. Legislative body was also to be formed which would consist of Nation Assembly and the senate. Similar arrangement would be applied for states. Kahar Muzakkar believed that this model would save human civilization. He called this as Demokrasi Sejati in which the ultimate authority is God. God’s law is applicable for all aspects of life as has been revealed in the Quran and Hadith
 Key words: kahar Muzakkar, Islamic Political Thought, Demokrasi Sejati

The Crown and Constitutional Reform

The Crown and Constitutional Reform is an innovative, interdisciplinary exchange between experts in law, anthropology and politics about the Crown, constitutional monarchy and the potential for constitutional reform in Commonwealth common law countries. The constitutional foundation of many Commonwealth countries is the Crown, an icon of ultimate authority, at once familiar yet curiously enigmatic. Is it a conceptual placeholder for the state, a symbol of sovereignty or does its ambiguity make it a shapeshifter, a legal fiction that can be deployed as an expedient mask for executive power and convenient instrument for undermining democratic accountability? This volume offers a novel, interdisciplinary exchange: the contributors analyse how the Crown operates in the United Kingdom and the postcolonial settler societies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In doing so, they examine fundamental theoretical questions about statehood, sovereignty, constitutionalism and postcolonial reconciliation. As Queen Elizabeth II’s long reign approaches its end, questions about the Crown’s future, its changing forms and meanings, the continuing value of constitutional monarchy and its potential for reform, gain fresh urgency. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.

PERGULATAN OTORITAS DAN OTORITARIANISME DALAM PENAFSIRAN

This article specifically studied about Khaled Abou el Fadl’s thought about the authority and authoritarianism in the interpretation. The Qur’an, divine Kalam, has the ultimate authority in human life, where it’s part of God’s manifestation in realizing the intent and purpose. The effort to understand the Qur’an has been done since the verse was revealed and even developed in accordance with the times and has produced many exegetical products, such as Sufi interpretation, fiqh, philosophy, etc. The Divine Message neatly arranged in the Qur’an has been shaped a text. The text as a sign represents the Divine purpose in conveying its meaning. Therefore, the reader must be wise and careful in understanding the text of the Qur’an. If the reader is careless in understanding al Qur’an though only slightly, they will be authoritarian people.

An Exploratory Study of Accounting and Reporting Practice for Waqf Among State Islamic Religious Councils in Malaysia

Nowadays, Muslims has been exposed to the increasing number of waqf practice and the importance of waqf to the society due to the huge benefits in the socio-economic development and assist the poor and those in need. However, there is a lack of accounting system and systematic management of waqf assets and the absence of written procedures of recording financial transactions of waqf assets. The purpose of this research is to identify the range of differences of waqf accounting practice in details and discover the rationale behind the diverse of accounting and reporting practices for waqf. It examines accounting and reporting practices in terms of recognition, measurement and disclosure in eleven selected state waqf institutions. It provides an insightful meaning of the issues and challenges on how accounting is practice in these State Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs). From the analysis conducted, it is found that the financial accounting and reporting related to waqf in SIRCs differs in terms of the guideline used, the recognition and measurement (valuation of waqf asset) as well as the disclosure and reporting practice of waqf. The variations of accounting and reporting practices in these waqf institutions portray the dynamism of waqf accounting and reporting among SIRCs in Malaysia. The reason for the variation in accounting practice is attributed to the nature of SIRCs governance where each SIRC is headed by its ruler (Sultan) as the ultimate authority in Islam and the fatwa councils’ decision. The decision of the Board members with regard to the management and administration of waqf may differ in each states.

Chiefs in a Democracy: A Case Study of the ‘New’ Systems of Regulating Firewood Harvesting in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Much of the international commons literature reveals a decreased functioning of local traditional institutions that regulate natural resource harvesting. In South Africa, it is believed that the creation of new democratic structures at the end of Apartheid has contributed significantly to the deterioration in traditional resource regulation and this in turn has led to the extensive resource degradation seen in parts of the country. Many of these assertions, though, remain anecdotal in nature. Given the high reliance by rural households on natural resources, and the serious negative implications that over-use has on livelihood security, understanding how well or poorly such commons are regulated is key to ensuring the sustainability of such resource-dependent populations. The aim of this study was therefore to examine systems of resource governance, focusing specifically on firewood, and to determine the roles of traditional and democratically elected community leaders in six rural villages spanning two chieftaincies in Bushbuckridge, South Africa. In each study village, five local leaders were interviewed and five community focus groups were conducted. Results indicate that most parties still regard the Chief as the ultimate authority for regulating firewood harvesting. However, overall firewood management appears weak, at best, across the region. Although some authors attribute this to community confusion over the roles of local leaders in a new democracy, we provide evidence that other socio-political factors, including political expediency, may be driving the increasingly relaxed implementation of these firewood management systems. With resource dependence remaining a vital contributor to livelihood security across the developing world and with many rural communities facing increasing strain under local resource depletion, these findings shed new light on the complex social dynamics underlying the widely reported weakening of traditional institutions in South Africa. In so doing, it offers insights into local firewood governance that can be used to combat these challenges and thereby reduce regional social and ecological vulnerability being experienced in communal landscapes across the region.

Advances in perioperative quality and safety

For decades, safe surgery focused on intraoperative technique and decision-making. The traditional hierarchy placed the surgeon as the leader with ultimate authority and responsibility. Despite the advances in surgical technique and equipment, too many patients have suffered unnecessary complications and suboptimal care. Today, we understand that the conduct of safe and effective surgery requires evidence-based decision-making, multifaceted treatment approaches to prevent complications, and effective communication in and out of the operating room. In this manuscript, we describe three significant advances in quality and safety that have changed the approach to surgical care: the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, evidence-based bundled prevention of surgical site infections, and the Surgical Safety Checklist.

A Comparison of Teacher-Centered and Student-Centered Approaches in Educational Settings

Student-centered instruction in the classroom has recently challenged teacher-centeredness for allowing students to construct their understandings using their experiences and actions. Student-centered pedagogy is based on constructivist and democratic principles. That students make sense of what they learn in a classroom environment in which they are stimulated to develop their reflective and critical thinking and sense of responsibility come to the fore in student-centered pedagogy. Teacher-centered instruction on the other hand relied heavily on the behaviorist theory which was based on the idea that behavior changes are caused by external stimuli. Compared with student-centered classroom, students in teacher-centered classroom are passive and respond to environmental stimuli. Teacher has the ultimate authority and is in charge of learning for that reason students do not have adequate opportunities to develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills. This article endeavors to compare student-centered and teachercentered approaches and documents their general features in the classroom.

Implications of the coverage of theDSM-5in textbooks on learning and teaching of psychology within higher education

Many criticisms accompanied the development of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), yet it was still released in 2013 and is used within clinical work throughout the United States. Despite on-going questions pertaining to its development and validity, many undergraduate psychology students view the DSM-5 as the ultimate authority in diagnosis within the field of mental health. Current publication trends indicate that a focus on the DSM-5 within college textbooks is limited in scope, which may have a profound influence on students’ understanding of mental health conditions. Implications for the teaching of psychology within higher education are discussed.

On understanding the crisis of European supernational political integration

It has been shown in this paper that deeper economic and political integration of the EU does not have to be a good in itself because the institutions of a super state most often do not function as a welfare state in a single country the set-up of which is aimed at solving the problem of negative externalities on the basis of a unique and coherent fiscal and social policy on a domestic level. The motivation for a research of this type has been initiated by the idea of ?hidden federalism?. This expression is used in Bojan Kovacevic?s book published under the same title with an aim to explain the fundamental problem in functioning of EU institutions which endangers the very existence of this super national political community. By leaving its contents unchecked by the wide European electorate, and by leaving simultaneously the question of ultimate political authority quite unresolved, the ?founding fathers? of the EU let the final political goal of the EU remain under the veil of non-transparent political agreement. Their hope was that the economic integration of the European Community lead by technocrats would amount eventually to its harmonious political integration on liberaldemocratic grounds. This practice has been continued by later political elite of the EU except that non-elective policy-making group were also in charge for creating central European institutions that shaped its political content in a centralistic federal manner. Since these latter institutions and policies remained unchecked by a wider public, the question of the legitimacy of the EU institutions remains constantly unresolved leaving the EU in permanent crisis.

Executive Tenure and Firm Performance: An Empirical Examination of the Indian Corporate Landscape

In a typical corporate setting, a CEO is analogous to the captain of a ship with ultimate authority vested in him by the board of directors of the firm. During the period he heads the firm, it is expected that he would render his services as a fiduciary of the shareholders. By virtue of being in the role of a fiduciary, he would be expected to take wise decisions which benefits the firm in long/short term and the stakeholders of the firm become well off. Chairman is another top executive who oversees the actions of the CEO. In some cases, both the office of a CEO and chairman is headed by the same individual known as dual executive. The objective of this study is to explore the relationship between firm performance and tenure of top executives in the Indian context. Executive tenure is calculated by the number of years s/he spends in office in that capacity of a Chairman or a CEO. However, the length of the tenure varies to a great degree from firm to firm. There can be many factors impacting the duration of tenure of executives in India. So, this paper attempts to find out the impacts of performance on executive tenures of the firm. Other than that how much of an effect does various executive specific variables (such as executive age), firm specific variables (such as age of the firm, group affiliation/stand-alone firm) do have on the tenure of executives would also be explored. Top executives would be divided into three categories i.e. CEO/Managing Director, Chairman and Dual (holding both CEO and chairman position) to get better insight into the research question.