Abstracts:

Slobodan Antonić

THREE FACES OF POWER

Summary

The article exposes theories which refer to three dimensions of power. Robert Dahl has written about the first dimension. In this dimension power is understood as a conflict, competition between the one who gains power and the oppressed. The oppressed engages in the process of active resistance but the one who possesses power wins in the end. The other dimension was discussed by Peter Bakrack and Morton Barack. It does not contain any struggle that could be recognized and described. The oppressed estimates that the one who is in power will certainly win and does not want to expose himself to useless efforts. That is why the oppressed does not engage in any visible resistance although he is dissatisfied. Third dimension of power was emphasized by Steven Lukes. It also contains neither struggle nor resistance. But the one who is in power governs the circumstances so well that the oppressed does not understand his position at all. He either does not know that he is the oppressed or does not wish to think abut that. The result is power without any resistance, even without dissatisfaction of the oppressed. This is the crucial dimension of power in contemporary world.

Key words: power, struggle, resistance, domination.

Robert Dahl

POWER

Summary

At the most general level, power terms in modern social science refer tu subsets of relations among social units such that the behaviors of one or more units (R) depend in some circumstances on the behavior of the other units (C). The closest equivalent to the power relation is the causal relation. For the assertion ‘C has power over R', one can substitute the assertion, ‘C's behavior causes R's behavior`. If one can define the causal relation, one can define influence, power, or authority, and vive-versa. Even though the analysis has not produced many rigorous causal models, it has spawned a profusion of schemes for classifying types of power relations. Among the characteristics most often singled out for attention are (1) legitimacy: the extent to which R feels normatively obliged to comply with C; (2) the nature of the sanctions: whether C uses rewards or deprivations, positive or negative sanctions; (3) the magnitude of the sanctions: extending from severe coercion to no sanctions at all; (4) the means or channel employed: whether C controls R only by means of information that changes R's situation or his environment of rewards and deprivations. These and other characteristics can be combined to yield many different types of power relations.

Key words: power, influence, authority, government.

Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz

Two Faces of Power

Summary

Power is exercised when A participates in the making of decisions that affect B. But power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to cresting or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A. To the extent that A succeeds in doing this, B is prevented, for all practical purposes, from bringing to the fore any issues that might in their resolution be seriously detrimental to A's set of preferences. To the extent that a person or group – consciously or unconsciously – cresces or reinforces barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts, that person or group has power.

Key words: power, influence, authority, government.

Steven Lukes

Power: A Radical View

Summary

This short book, developed from a speech Lukes originally gave at the Sorbonne, is groundbreaking in power theory research. The essay builds a critique of the behaviouralist, functionalist notions of what constitutes power and how it manifests itself. Lukes' third dimension of power exists where people are subject to domination and acquiesce in that domination. The intentional stance allows us to predict and explain others' behaviour in ways that those agents may not recognise. It denies agents' privileged access to their own reasons for actions. Using the intentional stance we can understand how agents may acquiesce in their own domination. We can also make distinctions between those who dominate knowingly and those who dominate without realising they do so.

Key words: power, influence, authority, government.

Bertrand Russell

FORMS OF POWER

Summary

This paper presents a survey of different forms of power. Firstly, it distinguishes between the power exerted over human beings and that used on inanimate objects. Power over people is classified according to the way it influences an individual, or according to organizations which wield influence. An individual can be influenced through: (a) direct physical force; (b) rewards and penalties as forms of encouragement; (c) opinion-forming (propaganda) or creation of desirable practices. All these forms of power are mixed in functions performed by the state. The functions distinguish between traditional and newly established power, with the latter displaying two forms of expression: revolutionary force and brute force.

Key words: power, influence, organization, state.

Vukašin Pavlović

CLASSICAL POLITICAL THOUGHT Of POWER

(The Ancient Greece, Machiavelli and Hobbs)

Summary

The paper offers a survey of classical political thought on power. The ancient Greeks discovered two attributes of power: the inner desire to expand and the outer ability to deteriorate. Machiavelli introduced a symbol of equivalence between politics and power, i.e. he believed politics to be a skill for protection and expansion of power. Hobbs noticed that the need for power was the man's most profound characteristic, and the accumulation, acknowledgement and expansion of his power his deepest life instinct.

Key words: power, politics, state, human nature.

Ivan Milenković

Foucault's genealogy of power

Summary

This paper tries to show that Michael Foucault is a great thinker of power who de-substantializes the power itself. Rejecting the metaphysical constructions that always presuppose only one, central, big Power, Foucault insists that power is always relative, that every refering on power is actually refering on relations of power, so it should be always analyzed as an empirical phenomenon. As a relation, power differs from violence becouse violence is a lack of relation, and from the authority as a selfreflecting power. Therefore, the knowledge appears to be the connected unseparably with power, as something always involved in power relations, same as the power relations are always some kind of relations of knowledge.

Key words: power, relation, knowledge, authority, violence, discipline, monitoring.

Saša Gajić

POWER IN CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Summary

Taking over the definition that determines power as a capability of imposing will of one political subject to other wills, power in contemporary international relations is defined in four ways: power as the aim of the state or of political elits and leaders; power as measure of impact, i.e. control; power as exposition of security and power as capability of using resources. In continuation, division of power into „hard“ and „soft“ power is analyzed, as well as basic facts of classic power. Turning over to evolution of international relations after the end of the Cold War and intensification of processes of globalization, the author concludes that the classic concept of power is still actual in contemporary conditions.

Key words: power, international relations, global diffusion of power, fragmentation, balance of forces, the international community.

Oliver Subotić

Social Implications of Biometric Systems of Identification

Summary

Biometric systems of identification have long been a controversial subject in the world while in Republic of Serbia they became topical soon after the introduction of new types of personal identification cards with the central biometric data base have been announced. Technologically speaking, problems essentially pertain to the centralized base. Technical background, however, is merely a problem of conceptual nature which basically affects the relation between the state and its people. So, does storing everyone's biometric finger prints in the central electronic data base mean that everyone is a suspect until proven not to be? And is this the first step towards the state with totalitarian supervision? What will be the next move of the system if non-critical implementation is allowed to take place today? Answers to this, and similar questions, lie solely in the critical reexamination of biometric systems of identifications.

Key words: biometry, identification, central data base, identity theft, security, antiterrorist fight, privacy, data protection, electronic services.

Slobodan Miladinović

THE AUTHORITARIAN CONTEXT OF ESCALATION

OF YUGOSLAV CRISIS IN THE 90-TIS

Summary

The main attitude of this paper is that authoritarity is one of the most important subjective (value) components which contributed to escalation of Yugoslav crisis of ninetieths. The paper is based on survey data research presents of authoritarian value orientations in power elites in Serbia and Croatia before the Yugoslav state disintegration. Elites are watched as generator and main distributor of authoritarian value system and Yugoslav crisis. It main motives in this process are to protect their own positions of power and privilege. Authoritarian value orientation is considered as one of instruments by which elites tend to make control over totality of social relations and to realize their own particular interests. The result is permanent generating of conflicts particularly conflicts between nations.

Key words: authoritariity, nationalism, social values, power elites, and Yugoslav state disintegration.

Mile Bjelajac

The Kosovo – The Production OF The 1987 Myth

Summary

This abstract maintains that public speech is full of rigid and one-dimensional opinions about the origins of the Kosovo crisis towards the end of the 20th century. Such opinions have recently been firmly adhered to by part of the international community which supports Albanian ultimatum according to which the only solution likely to bring peace to the region is an independent Kosovo and Metohija. As the consequence of internal clashes in Serbia, while still fighting Milošević's regime, controversial qualifications were being used with same intensity and equal amount of bias.

Such political speech has entered academic literature to a large extent. Part of scientific community has produced an “intellectual orthodoxy” which, deliberately or non-deliberately, supports or abuses the “Albanian issue”. There are, however, few scrupulous and well-informed researchers whose findings are in sharp contrast with the existing cliché whereby “everything started in 1987”, and according to which Serbia wanted to establish great Serbian hegemony in Yugoslavia, the Albanian community was stripped off of all rights, and plans were being made for their mass ethnic cleansing.

Key words: Serbia, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, disintegration, 1987, manipulation, ethnic cleansing.

Mileva Tomić

Constitution and the “Vojvodina Issue”

Summary

Constitutional reforms as a rule always open the “Vojvodina issue”. It is obvious, however, that the latest ones will not produce an answer to it. A legal norm, even in the form of a “general consensus”, cannot resolve wide political, and also sociological, cultural, sometimes psychological discrepancies in perception of Vojvodina and the question of its autonomy. Initially national, lately constitutional, but above all a political issue, the autonomy of Vojvodina has been a bone of contention for nearly eight decades without a promising outcome for a long term solution in sight. Differences in opinion, pertaining to the constitutional status of Vojvodina, that are apparent today have deep roots in the past and are most obvious in the way advocates of the autonomy have been interpreting motives for it over the past eighty years.

Key words: Vojvodina, autonomy, Constitution, Yugoslavia, Serbia.

Branko Balj

DISINTEGRATION OF YUGOSLAVIA AND THE SERBIAN ISSUE TODAY

Summary

The author tries to validate the hypothesis whereby Yugoslavia underwent dismembering and not disintegration although several systemic theories of disintegration had been in preparation for a number of decades. The dismembering that occurred under the influence of certain western governments and multinational corporations still has not reached the wished-for target since the process of tearing apart of Yugoslavia has turned into a process of destroying Serbian people-their territories and the state as well as their spirit. The author uses events that happened in Republika Srpska, Kosovo and Metohija, Vojvodina, and the secession of Montenegro from Serbia, to corroborate this hypothesis.

Key words: dismembering and disintegration of Yugoslavia, Serbian issue, role of the Church, West European opinion, globalization.

Milan Brdar, Slobodan Vuković

SEMIOTICS OF WESTERN PROPAGANDA:

FROM CASE STUDY OF SERBIAN GUILT TO

THE GENERAL PARADYGM

Summary

In the article the authors attempt to reconstruct the semiotic logic of “enemy menagement“ by examining the process od demonization of Serbs carried by the Western media in the 1990s. Relying on contemporary semiotics' content analysis, they explore whether it is possible to infer some universal characteristics of this logic that could be applicable to media treatment of the enemy in other cases. A general paradigm is being reconstructed that is applied on the any case of opposition, to prepare it as an enemy and to eliminate it if is needed in terms of strategic political aims. For tha sake of empirical corroboraton of the paradigm analysis took broader scope including antiserbian propaganda at the eve of I and II WW.

Key words: semiotics, meaning, discourse, power, politics, Serbia, Serbs, crime, justification, geopolitics, Nazism, Neoliberalism, Communism, propaganda machine, civil war.