Issue 26

The article brings a review of Weber’s considerations about order, legitimacy and charisma. The first part of the article deals with the sociological concept of order, difference between Marxist and functionalist perspectives, and some theoretical resolutions (Alexander, Wrong, Elster, Shils). The second part deals with Weber’s concept of legitimate order. It is argued that this concept is wider than is usually used in political theory. Weber’s concept of legitimate (social) order must not be blurred with legitimate political order, or types of legitimate authority. The article points to the Weber’s probabilistic conception in dealing with orientations, motives, and reasons granting the legitimate order its validity. The third part deals with Weber’s concept of legitimacy. Two contemporary interpreters are contrasted: Habermas and Luhmann. The first founded on the theory of communicative action, the second on the system theory. Luhmann’s ideas seem to fit better the complicated (and complex) situation of modern societies. Legitimation seems to be a systemic and no pscychologic phenomenon. The fourth part deals with charisma – a phenomenon easily put into the historical sociology of religion, but being a bit problematic in the contemporary sociology of politics and domination.

Recent events throughout the Arab world once again placed the Middle Eastern region in the center of media attention and world politics. The collapse of the regime of Hosni Mubarak was widely welcomed but it has also generated some doubts regarding the final outcome of the incipient political changes and of the Egyptian society’s democratic potentials. In Egypt, as well as in other Arab autocracies, the democratic opposition is institutionally weak and fragmented while the Islamic movement has proved itself to be well organized and firmly embedded in the key institutions of the civil society. Thus, is it not legitimate to ask whether we can realistically expect that the emerging political processes will lead towards the democratic transformation of the Arab world or if, conversely, they will result in new type of authoritarian political system replacing the old one? This article maintains that broadly defined Islamist movements represent important socio-political forces that will, in the forthcoming years, influence the direction and character of future Middle Eastern politics. Following an analysis of the phenomenon of Islamic revival and of the different forms of the political articulation of Islam, the authors’ pay particularly attention to Egypt’s Islamist movement. Egypt is taken as the template for analysis for two reasons: First, because it is home to Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the organization which played the most critical role in the development of contemporary Islamist politics, and second, because the authors believe that the future of the whole region heavily depends upon the outcome of the Egypt’s political transition. Therefore, this article deals with issues such as the socio-historical roots and evolution of the Islamist movement in Egypt, organizational structure of the MB and the character of its activism, and with the controversies surrounding MB’s true political goals and ambitions. Although there are reasons to doubt whether most of the MB’s activists and leaders are genuinely pro-democratic, the authors still believe that accepting MB as an equal player in the political arena represents the only true path toward democratization of Egypt and a safeguard against its political radicalization.

The study investigates the relation of the police intelligence system of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) towards Kingdom of Hungary in the II World War on the basis of available archival sources and the existing literature. Relationship between two neighbouring states were tense because Hungarian was occupied Međimurje and Baranja. The entire police (and administrative) system of the NDH was set up folowing the models, but also under direct patronage, of fascist Italy and nazi Germany. A particular problem in the work of police and intelligence services was that the territory of the NDH was covered by networks of other, generally unfriendly intelligence services that had to be detected, observed and neutralised. Therefore, the Hungarian police-intelligence services as well as the German and Italy were treated by the NDH authorities as hostile.

The article describes actions of the Soviet submarines during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 and American Top Secret system Boresight which helped the Americans to succeed to locate the Soviet submarines, forced them to surface and leave the area of operations in the Sargasso Sea, along the Bahamas.

Besides the formal administration, there is a parallel form of government in Italy with the power to influence all political, social and economic processes of the country. This is the Italian mafia whose biggest advantage in comparison to the other forms of organized crime is its connection to the State based on a system of mutual favors. Relations with the State form the basis of mafia power providing it not only protection from legal prosecution, but also the ability to influence various political decisions that facilitate the entry of the mafia in the legal sectors of Italian economy and make it possible for it to drain its resources in order to increase mafia’s capital and launder money gained by illegal activities. Accustomed to its presence in all political and economic areas, the society itself perceives mafia as a form of government just as strong or maybe even stronger than the State, which raises additional question, the one about another possible thesis according to which the mafia in Italy presents full power. Also, blurred boundaries between the mafia and politics enable the thesis according to which the mafia and the government in Italy are actually the same thing.

TERORIZAM: SJEME ZLA, Goran Koletić - Bilandžić, Mirko (2010.) Sjeme zla: Elementi sociologije terorizma. Zagreb: Plejada, Synopsis, 255 str.

NOVO PLEMSTVO: OBAVJEŠTAJNE AGENCIJE RUSKE FEDERACIJE, Aleksandra Grubić - Soldatov, Andrei; Borogan, Irina (2010.) The New Nobility: The Rebirth of the Russian Security State. New York: PublicAffairs, 301 str.

PRVI MODERNI POPIS STANOVNIŠTVA, Lidija Barišić Bogišić - Historijski zbornik (2010.), LXIII(1). Zagreb: Društvo za hrvatsku povjesnicu/Srednja Europa, 412 str.