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The struggle against climate change will not be successful without a sufficient level of collective action. However, a necessary precondition for this is the existence of trust between people. The literature on trust and attitudes to climate change is displaying a growing tendency, and today the results of numerous empirical studies are available. Although, for the time being, on the basis of these studies, we only have a fragmented picture from which it appears that trust is having a significant effect on attitudes to climate change at both the micro and macro levels. The current paper tries to progress on this path and reveal the role of trust in various dimensions of the attitude to climate change using the data of the European Social Survey originating from 22 countries. The results show that while climate change beliefs and climate concern display no relationship with trust, neither on the individual or national level, trust does have a clear effect on the feeling of individual responsibility in connection with climate change and on support for the various policy measures. In addition, it is also investigated whether the effect of trust can be shown to exist in the relationships between climate concern and the feeling of individual responsibility, and climate concern and policy support. The results show that in both cases the relationship is stronger in those countries characterized by a higher level of social trust.

This article aims to present on the one hand the challenges the new-born State of Israel faced in 1948 (creating sustainable structures for housing, various social services, education, employment, food-security, healthcare, etc.) in addition to the absorption of Jewish refugees, including Holocaust survivors and tens of thousands of Jews from Muslim countries who had to leave their homes because anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic incidents became regular there, and on the other, to emphasise the social and territorial disparities which were not decreased, not even stabilised despite the comprehensive resettlement and economic programmes during the 1950s and 1960s launched by consecutive governments, as well as to point out the complex efforts for social integration. The first part of the article presents the enormous immigration waves just after the establishment of the state in detailed numbers, during the Independence War (1948–49) and in the early fifties, when, in fact, the population of Israel had doubled. After the illustration of the basic demographic changes, the next part deals with the above mentioned challenges and with the social conflicts which emerged between the mainly Ashkenazi community (of European and American descent) – deeply Zionist-motivated, wealthier, better educated, socially more integrated, more influential in a political context – and the new-comer Sephardi (Mizrahi) immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, much of them without any perspective and hopeless, at least disappointed. Although the national institutions, their rights and powers, exact functions were undefined or non-existent at the time, just as the whole structure of public services and the central government had no financial resources available mainly because of having to defend the new-born state against the Arab invasions, it was clear that those serious difficulties needed comprehensive, state-organised solutions. The first actions of the central government were mostly stop-gap, ill prepared measures with chaotic practical implications. However, in the early fifties, well-planned, but lastly unsustainable regional and economic development programmes, as well as resettlement projects became typical which might – at most – have been suitable for a short transitional phase. The second part of the article analyses the social and territorial consequences of these complex state-controlled interventions, the reasons behind the non-decreasing disparities, the negative impact of marginalisation on the Sephardic (Mizrahi) community, the problems created by the imbalanced industrialisation of Northern and Southern Israel, the challenges of uprooting and resettlement, as well as the drawbacks of the centralised spatial development, planning and governance structures.

The paper is based on a research project launched in 2012. The objective was to analyse, from a political science perspective, the main factors and circumstances of the process of territorial governance reform attempts before 2010, and the turning point after starting a strongly centralised model. The focus of the research was not so much on the objectives of the reforms, but rather on the context and the actors of the reform processes. It was presumed that the defeat of decentralisation could be explained by the weakness of the actors to preserve the formerly strong positions of local governments. The research hypothesised that, following the transition years, the gradually fading enthusiasm of parliamentary and party-political elites contributed to the failures of correctional reforms and to the limitation of institutional guarantees for safeguarding the interests of local governments. Municipalities were gradually being confined to a subaltern role in the power structure, and in addition to the loss of a significant share of their competencies and resources, their support on behalf of the local communities has also declined., Rad se temelji na rezultatima istraživačkog projekta pokrenutog 2012. godine. Cilj je projekta bio provesti politološku analizu glavnih čimbenika i uvjeta u kojima se pokušavalo reformirati lokalno upravljanje u razdoblju prije 2010. te analizirati primjenu naglašeno centraliziranog modela i zaokreta koji je potom uslijedio. Rad nije toliko usmjeren postizanje svrha i ciljeva reformi koliko na njihov kontekst i sudionike u samome procesu. Pretpostavlja se da se neuspjeh decentralizacije može objasniti time da sudionici u procesu nisu bili dovoljno snažni kako bi održali ranije čvrstu poziciju lokalne samouprave. Autori polaze od hipoteze da je nakon tranzicijskog razdoblja došlo do postupnog gubitka entuzijazma parlamentarnih i stranačkih elita, što je nadalje pridonijelo neuspjehu reformi i ograničenju institucionalnih garancija koje su štitile interese lokalnih vlasti. Lokalne su jedinice postupno podređene u strukturi moći. Osim što su izgubile značajan dio nadležnosti i sredstava, podrška zajednica lokalnog stanovništva lokalnim vlastima također se znatno istopila.