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Sustainable development is a developmental concept that takes into account the economic, the environmental, and the social dimension of development. The modern approach to the concept of sustainable development implies acknowledgement of new dimensions or pillars of development. The subject of this paper is the institutional dimension as the fourth dimension of sustainable development. The path to sustainable development requires interconnectedness, harmonization, and coordination of different dimensions of development. Institutionally, new principles or concepts are necessary to improve the functioning of the various institutions and actors involved in the process of achieving the goals of sustainable development. The aim of this paper is to indicate that economic, ecological, and social development based on sustainability requires institutional support as a complementary and necessary dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are sufficient reasons for the impression that Serbian science unfairly disregarded the existence of a relatively rich history of the Roman Catholic Church in the "far east" of Serbia, i.e. in Timočka Krajina - in the Bor and Zaječar Districts - to date. One of the reasons to draw such a conclusion can be found in the fact that this segment of history, due to, mildly put, extremely speculative terms, does not belong to the Serbian history. As a result of a set of different circumstances and due to possible prejudice and ignorance, i.e. the recognition of a selective history as the only true history, an easily makeable parallel has not yet been made concerning the role of Roman Catholics in the development of modern Serbia and the ancient Saxons, also Roman Catholics, who had a crucial role in the economic development of medieval Serbia and thus its overall power, which is the fact that the propagators of the so-called Golden Age of Serbdom and "Celestial Serbia", contemporary and future, continually keep 'forgetting'. The fact that the dominant confessional affiliation of the people shapes the quality of the cultural and social fabric (understood in the broadest sense) of a social space was not left unrecorded even among prominent sociologists, such as Max Weber, who attempted to verify the hypothesis of a link between the Protestant faith and the spirit of the capitalist economy in a broad comparative perspective. However, the issue of the impact of confessional minorities to the cultural, social, and economic conditions of a region is only incidentally treated in the writings of sociologists and scholars in related fields, which was the direct motivation for this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of its historical development, sport has often represented the economic, social, as well as political dimension of our society. The Olympic Games, as a planetary phenomenon, play an important role in modern society. The topic of this research pertains to the importance of the political impact on the largest sporting event in the world - the Olympic Games. The aim of this research is to determine the possible interrelation of politics and the Olympic Games. Historical and analytical methods were used in the research. From its inception, the Olympic Movement has made a big contribution to the development and preservation of the Olympic spirit. Numerous events during the previous century led to significant changes in its structure and management system. The interference of politics in sports, i.e. the struggle for political goals at the Olympic Games, has caused a lot of damage to the development of the Olympic Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first half of the 20th century, social reconstructionism represented a radical wing of the larger Movement for Progressive Education. Its supporters constituted the part of the progressive forces that withdrew from the primary focus on the child, which dominated in the 1920s, instead becoming focused on the social dimension of education during the 1930s. Since the contemporary post-industrial societies require reflective individuals capable of identifying and solving common problems through the dialog discourse, there is the question of the significance of social reconstructionism for education in the 21st century. The aim of this paper is to examine the reconstructionism perspective in the context of current global changes. The paper is based on the assumption that the ideas of prominent socially-oriented progressive theorists are crucial for consideration of the curriculum for the 21st century, i.e. for consideration of the ways in which the young people could prepare to become responsible, tolerant, and peaceable individuals in a globalized world. From both the historical and the current perspective, theoretical and comparative analysis shows that the importance of social reconstructionism lies in the demand for direct confrontation with the political, economic, social, and moral dimensions of education. In this context, the conclusion is that the study of ideology of social reconstructionism and the attained levels of practical experience of its application could contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the nature and possibilities of education in a democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a new socio-economic paradigm has been tested on the example of the City of Leskovac in Southern Serbia. The paradigm claims that the system of values in a community can produce different developmental consequences if it is in agreement or in collision with the target function of a social system. The universal validity of this paradigm was tested in the space of one local community. Historical sources about the City of Leskovac, as one of the centres of Southern Serbia migrated toward by its surrounding population, were used to provide a closer insight into socio-economic winding of this region of Serbia through the process of adaptation of the structures of values to different social and historical environments. The typical "disjointed" path of development of the City's local economy is seen in this paper from a different perspective when analyzed in terms of methodology introduced to the classical economic analysis by Douglass North. Possible causes were found for cyclical ups and downs of the local economy as well as of Southern Serbia as a socio-economic space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 20th century, rapid development of information technology led to changes in the economic field. Instead of businesses aimed at their own benefit, there emerged communities of structures, whose integration is inherent in objective necessity: rapidly changing conditions of the economic game require joint efforts in searching for new approaches to attract the consumer. The features of the present stage of development of the global and domestic economies - globalization of economic systems, increasing openness (accessibility) of the markets, limited resources, implementation of constantly updated technologies in business, rapid growth of intercompany cooperation in its various forms, and the current issue of "blurring the boundaries of the company" - necessitate a search for new mechanisms of interaction between companies and firms, as well as between states. The mechanism of functional management, driven to perfection by Max Weber in his theory of rational bureaucracy, is losing its relevance because of the changing conditions in the economic field: linearity of development, management as coercion, preference for stability, hard determinism giving way to non-linearity, openness, complexity, uncertainty, flexibility, and management as self-organization. All these factors are replaced by the corresponding new conditions of the theory of rational self-organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current global economic crisis challenges not only the ability of global economy to maintain positive economic growth, but also the very foundations of the mainstream economic paradigm, which assumes that economically self-interested individuals, through complex interactions, inevitably ensure the maximum of social goals. The paper explores the so-called Islamic banking and finance to test its viability as an alternative to conventional, western-style, banking and finance practice. We analyze the relationship between financial structure and economic stability, as well as specific financial arrangements to address compatibility of contracting parties' incentives. We found a rather weak potential of Islamic finance to reform the predominant practice of business finance toward a safe and sound financial system. Nevertheless, the prohibition of interest-based finance, when implemented in public sector management, tackles a burning economic issue of modern world - the snowball effect of public sector over-indebtedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first part of this paper, it is established that sociology did not react adequately to the global economic crisis. In the second part, views of critically oriented economists on the causes of the crisis are presented. They are used as an introduction to the analysis presented in the third part, which specifies economic, political, technological and cultural conditions that were suitable for transnational capitalist class efforts to adapt the global economic system exclusively to their own interests. Current economic crisis is nothing but an expression of social imbalance that must be overcome if further escalation of the crisis is to be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article elaborates issues of social security and social state. The term Social Security embodies meanings of two terms -- Economic Safety and Social Insurance. The aim of Social Security is to increase the level of traditional legal security and to make provisions for human existence in dignity, i.e. to enable protection against all social risks originating from living and working. Social state is a new type of state that stems from the industrial society to which the new state has adjusted its functions. This state is a state defined by the law and characterized by particular qualities refelected in justice and endeavours in enabling a satisfying level of existence and dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the history of parlamentarism, ist institution and development in the Kingdom of Serbia, in the period from 1903 until the outbreak of I World War. The first part outlines the basic socio-economic and political conditions, the pillars and theoretical position of the concept of parlamentarism. The journey towards a parlamentary democracy was short but generally beneficial. The new Serbian state conformed to the constitutional practice of the European countries, above all, England, France and Belgium. The second part is dedicated to the activities of the basic constitutional institutions (the assembly, the crown and the government), as well as to the activities of the political parties. The enactment of the Constitution in 1903, brought about dynastic changes, which liberalized and strengthened Serbia and improved its reputation throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]