The ability of civil society to act against corruption

Actions against any acts of criminal nature should be complex. Fight against corruption as a multi aspect social phenomenon especially requires a complex approach. Each state that considers corruption as a negative social phenomenon and is willing to eliminate it, uses, maximum possible resources in compliance with political position of a ruling class. First of all, a state makes full use of legal remedies – regulative and protective (punitive). It is reasonable to make the steps in social and economic direction. However, reliance only on public law measures in terms of preventing and fighting corruption cannot be justified. The reason lies in the corruption itself, its expansion and tolerant attitude of the society. This proves the need to uproot corruption determinants not only “from the top” but from “down”, i.e. from the civil society as well. On the one hand, the society serves as a social base for corruption; on the other hand, it is the civil society that is able to control corruption and the work of public authorities in terms of corruption combat. The aim of this paper is to designate civil society as a subject fighting against corruption. The objectives are to detect the means with the help of which civil society could significantly increase efficiency in terms of combating corruption adding to governmental means. The authors of the paper applied traditional methods of criminal science. The paper presents the results of criminological studies carried out by the authors of this paper and by other researches concerning corruption combating.peer-reviewe

Energy Consumption and GDP in Market and Transitional Economies

A cross-country analysis of factors affecting the levels of the energy intensity of production in the countries with both the market and the transitional economies is provided. Climatic conditions, variables of institutional environment, production structure variations and evaluations of unofficial economy shares are involved into consideration. These variables turned out to be significant when explaining the differences of energy intensity. We construct regressions for both the values of absolute levels and their time change indices involving 1993, 1995, 1996 and 2000 statistics. We show that the quality of institutional environment directly affects the process of energy consumers' adjustment to energy price changes: the higher is the institutions' quality the more effective are the measures aimed at the energy conservation. The samples used include up to 117 economies.Russia, energy intensity, institutions, prices, unofficial economy

Cultural and legal significance of the Supreme Court of the United States

The study’s objective is to reflect on the cultural and legal experience of the United States Supreme Court as the oldest body of constitutional justice, with its long legal tradition, which seems essential for states undergoing constitutional law reform. The study used general scientific methods of analogy, classification, typology, systematization, analysis, and others, as well as special scientific methods such as systematic, functional, historical, the study of judicial practice (which included observation and description), the method of comparative law, etc., which allowed to present the views of the authors, and thus to achieve the objective of the study. The results and novelty of the work are to identify the cultural and legal significance of the activities of the highest judicial instance of the United States in the formation of the legal culture of American society. The authors address the genesis of the cultural and legal aspects of the U.S. Supreme Court, which served as the basis for the formation and implementation of constitutional rights and freedoms in the American state

Influence of the Nature of Porphyrin and Extraligand on the Stability of Zinc Extracomplexes

The mutual influence of ligands within the structure of Zn-porphyrins on the thermodynamic stability of the latter was investigated