From Commonwealth to Ukraine: The Reconceptualization of “Fatherland” in Cossack Political Culture (1660s–1680s)

This article shows how the Cossacks developed the concept of a united Cossack Ukraine on both banks of the Dnipro as their “fatherland” and began viewing this “fatherland” as an object of common identity, loyalty, and reverence. It demonstrates that in a period of two decades the Cossack elite underwent a major shift in group identity from considering as its fatherland the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in favour of a Cossack Ukrainian/Little Russian polity. It further indicates that all major political actors in Cossack Ukraine accepted and adopted this concept and that by the late 1680s the idea of a Ukrainian/Little Russian fatherland had become entrenched in early modern Ukrainian political culture. Finally, it points to the long-term consequences of this identity shift on relations with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Muscovy/Russia, and the emergence of a modern Ukrainian identity.     

Transparency and the particular

Abstract

Transparency generates a paradox. For the way that we make things transparent is by simplification which at the same time masks all the information and thus contributes to opacity. The paper looks at how this paradox is played out in the contexts of the interplay between legal rules and particularity and between political representation and complete democracy. This raises questions of the Rule of Law and the functions and meanings of democratic legitimacy and though these are different questions, they are closely related and overlapping. Finally, it looks at how the issues come into focus in questions of governance of an entity like the EU which should not be seen either on the model of a union of states or a nation state itself.     

Connectedness of PBIB designs

A necessary and sufficient condition for the connectedness of an m-associate-class PBIB design is derived in a form, and using an approach, different from those in Ogawa, Ikeda, and Kageyama (1984) and Saha and Kageyama (1984). The applicability of this condition is shown in the context of group-divisible m-associate-class PBIB designs.