Croatian Accession to the European Union: Facing the Challenges of Negotiations

This chapter summarizes the findings of the three year long project of monitoring Croatia’s preparations for EU accession, if and when it comes, performed by a group of Croatian researchers. The first hypothesis is that a kind of real integration of Croatia in the European space already exists and that it should be further deepened through improvements of the relevant institutions and harmonisation with European standards and requirements. The second is that despite the professed dedication of Croatia’s government to joining the EU and encouraging signals from the EU, hesitations in structural and institutional reforms may hamper not only the success of future negotiations and delay Croatia’s accession, but also the transformation to a modern and efficient state. The first part of the chapter analyses the changes in the last couple of years in Croatia regarding the administrative and judicial structure, economic sustainability and democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms; the second part emphasizes the effects of the latest EU enlargement, competitive pressures and market forces, the free movement of workers, knowledge and innovations, social issues, the real estate market and spatial planning, and regional policy. The chapter ends with conclusions and recommendations. We would lay stress on the necessity of structural reforms in legislation, the judiciary and the public administration, the restructuring of agriculture and shipbuilding, the privatization of public utilities and tourism; patient and shrewd negotiations with the EU, and the possibility of bearing in mind some kind of virtual membership that could help us deepen de facto integration even without de jure membership status. Croatia’s future will depend on capabilities of the government to implement and enforce the reforms and on the readiness of citizens to endure necessary adjustments even when they are painful, making certain sacrifices in the present for the sake of benefit in the future.European Union, Croatia, accession, transformation

The Case Against Powers

Powers ontologies are currently enjoying a resurgence. This would be dispiriting news for the moderns; in their eyes, to imbue bodies with powers is to slide back into the scholastic slime from which they helped philosophy crawl. I focus on Descartes’s ‘little souls’ argument, which points to a genuine and, I think persisting, defect in powers theories. The problem is that an Aristotelian power is intrinsic to whatever has it. Once this move is accepted, it becomes very hard to see how humble matter could have such a thing. It is as if each empowered object were possessed of a little soul that directs it and governs its behavior. Instead of attempting to resurrect the Aristotelian power theory, contemporary philosophers would be best served by taking their inspiration from its early modern replacement, devised by John Locke and Robert Boyle. On this view, powers are internal relations, not monadic properties intrinsic to their bearers. This move at once drains away the mysterious directedness of Aristotelian powers and solves the contemporary version of the little souls argument, Neil Williams’s ‘problem of fit.

Weak Mixing and Analyticity of the Pressure in the Ising Model

We prove that the pressure (or free energy) of the finite range ferromagnetic Ising model on $\mathbb{Z}^d$ is analytic as a function of both the inverse temperature $\beta$ and the magnetic field $h$ whenever the model has the exponential weak mixing property. We also prove the exponential weak mixing property whenever $h\neq 0$. Together with known results on the regime $h=0,\beta<\beta_c$, this implies both analyticity and weak mixing in all the domain of $(\beta,h)$ outside of the transition line $[\beta_c,\infty)\times \{0\}$. The proof of analyticity uses a graphical representation of the Glauber dynamic due to Schonmann and cluster expansion. The proof of weak mixing uses the random cluster representation.Comment: Updated Bibliograph

Leges sive natura: Bacon, Spinoza, and a Forgotten Concept of Law

The way of laws is as much a defining feature of the modern period as the way of ideas; but the way of laws is hardly without its forks. Both before and after Descartes, there are philosophers using the concept to carve out a very different position from his, one that is entirely disconnected from God or God’s will. I argue that Francis Bacon and Baruch Spinoza treat laws as dispositions that derive from a thing’s nature. This reading upends the currently orthodox treatment of Spinoza’s laws as infinite modes, and calls for a re-conception of his metaphysics of causation

Leibniz on Sensation and the Limits of Reason

I argue that Leibniz’s doctrine of sensory representation is intended in part to close an explanatory gap in his philosophical system. Unlike the twentieth century explanatory gap, which stretches between neural states on one side and phenomenal character on the other, Leibniz’s gap lies between experiences of secondary qualities like color and taste and the objects that cause them. The problem is that the precise arrangement and distribution of such experiences can never be given a full explanation. In response, Leibniz appeals to representation. I argue that the sense in which Leibnizian sensations are representations is too weak to close his explanatory gap. In the end, he must appeal to the doctrine of the best possible world

Removal of singularities and Gromov compactness for symplectic vortices

We prove that the moduli space of gauge equivalence classes of symplectic vortices with uniformly bounded energy in a compact Hamiltonian manifold admits a Gromov compactification by polystable vortices. This extends results of Mundet i Riera and Tian for circle actions to the case of arbitrary compact Lie groups. Our argument relies on an a priori estimate for vortices that allows us to apply techniques used by McDuff and Salamon in their proof of Gromov compactness for pseudoholomorphic curves. As an intermediate result we prove a removable singularity theorem for vortices.Comment: Minor changes and correction

The underground economy in Croatia

This article is a succinct description of research into the underground economy (UE) in Croatia in the 1990 to 2000 period. The circumstances surrounding and the reasons for the origin of the UE are explained, the dimensions of and changes in the UE are estimated at the level of the whole of the economy and in terms of certain industries. Also the socio-cultural and institutional dimensions of the UE are analysed, including the influence of formal and informal norms, privatisation, poverty, self-employment and so on. Various evaluation methods give different results ñ the national accounting discrepancy between income and expenditures method (below: national accounting discrepancy method) shows a growth of the UE from 1990 to a maximum of 37% of GDP in 1993 and a steady reduction to 7% of GDP in 2000. In accordance with that method in the 1990-1995 period, the UE came on average to about 25%, and in 1996-2000 to an average of 10% of GDP. The Eurostat method and estimates of tax evasion coincide with these trends, while two monetary methods and the consumption of electrical energy method show a rise in the UE in the 1995-1999 period, with trends at annual levels of between 22 and 34% and a fall in 2000. With reservations because of the uneven results obtained by these various methods and because of uncertainty whether this is a matter of a genuine reduction of the UE or of an improvement in statistics, we nevertheless have to conclude that this research indicates that there has been a genuine reduction in the UE. The results of the project indicate a negative correlation between the UE and GDP growth, then work ìon the blackî as the main reason for the UE, and the differentiation of statistical and economic reasons for the UE. Reasons for the reduction of the UE might be an improvement of the statistical system, a change in the structure of consumption, the introduction of VAT, the stabilisation of the large retail systems, the entry of foreign firms into the Croatian market, a change in the image of the government and so on. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of the kind of transparency and quality of public services that would have a considerable impact on the further reduction of the UE. The basic recommendation of this research is that for any reduction of the UE, it is more important to prevent the causes than to penalise the consequences, and in connection with this it is the institutional sphere that is crucial, the relationship of the government and the economy, i.e., the speed with which the government redefines its role in the market. Basic recommendations are also put forward for the improvement of institutions, for example, of the government, the process of privatisation, statistics, the tax system, the pensions system and so on

Sharp Asymptotics for the Truncated Two-Point Function of the Ising Model with a Positive Field

We prove that the correction to exponential decay of the truncated two points function in the homogeneous positive field Ising model is $c\|x\|^{-(d-1)/2}$. The proof is based on the development in the random current representation of a "modern" Ornstein-Zernike theory, as developed by Campanino, Ioffe and Velenik.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures, details adde