Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

For the last two decades, lone wolf terrorists in Western countries have been significantly changing their modus operandi. Part of these changes and possibly even one of their causes is the increasing use of the internet by lone wolves. This article reviews the role of the internet in the preparation of a terrorist attack as well as during the process of radicalisation of lone wolves. The possibilities and methodical flaws of lone wolf identification on the internet are also discussed. Based on current knowledge, it can be said that the Internet still has a limited role for lone wolves during the preparation of their terrorist attacks. However, it has been demonstrated, that as an efficient communication tool, the internet is of considerable importance in the process of lone wolf radicalisation. The internet is also a place where lone wolves may leak indications of their future actions. These leakages may be utilised for the identification of future lone wolf terrorists on discussion forums or radical websites using semi-automatic methods. However, the biggest drawbacks of these methods is their inability to distinguish between future lone wolf terrorists and common radical authors with no real intention on committing any terrorist act.

In this article, the problem of terrorism is discussed in view of the peculiarities of legal nature. The phenomenon of terrorism is being analyzed by scientists in the political, economic, socio-psychological point of view and more attention is paid to the legal theoretical characteristics of this phenomenon. A more detailed analysis of terrorism in the article shows that use of concept of terrorism, regardless of reasons for this, makes the fight against terrorism an ideological tool, posed together as a growing threat to human rights. Furthermore, this article analyzes the reasons of terrorism and provides tendencies for further development of global terrorism. When there is no clear definition of terrorism and its causal relations are acceptable to all, questions concerning the scope of the fight against terrorism arise. In this case, we cannot be sure that modern democratic countries use the correct definition of terrorism in all cases and do not violate the human rights when fighting against terrorists. Even more doubts about the actions of democratic countries participating actively in fight against terrorism arise. The uncertainty of terrorism concept is being used to conceal violations of the human rights.

Section 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania establishes the basic human of our society security rights. In accordance with the basic law of our state human has a right to life, health, freedom, personal integrity, property and other rights. The law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Lithuania, including the police play a major role in realizing these rights in protecting these human values. From which responsibility for performing duties in many cases belongs to the quality of the protection of the said constitutional values in our society and the comfortable, easy staying in Lithuania of each person. However, how to find the optimal model of the relationship between the society and the police, so that each side - the public and its institution, the police would be interested in legal relations - the society should encourage its authority to carry out safety functions, responsibly and willingly, and the police has to ensure proper human security. In this article, possible model of legal services between police and society based on free market (supply and demand) principles is analyzed. Based on free market principles and pairing its elements – supply and demand with law elements – duty and right. Upholding the idea, that free market is an optimal and the most rightful way of cultural exchange, theoretically attempting to model legal relations in free market principles to achieve the most rightful exchange of legal services between society and police, while at the same time meeting security needs of society.

The article sums up some results of the studies devoted to the socialization of the economy in the aspect of the reduction of threats to national security. The following research objectives were defined by the authors: an attempt to estimate the role of such functions of social economy as concern for public health, reduction of social and economic inequality, increase of social cohesion and trust that is most fully reflected in the phenomenon of social capital. A special place is given to the assessment of the manifested implementation of socialization of economy on the examples of Latvia and Ukraine. As arguments, the authors use both their own empirical studies and the data of national and international analytical and statistical institutions. The carried out analysis provides a clearer vision of the model of strengthening the socialization of economy in the aspect of ensuring national security with emphasis on economic security. Weak realization of the socialization of economy inevitably leads to an increase in social-economic inequality of population, when along with economic inequality other components of aggregate capital can serve the main catalyst for this negative process. For different countries at different times these components of aggregate capital are very specific. In some cases, the dominant threat is health capital, in others – the human (vocational and educational) capital. The proposed model reflects both the theory of aggregate capital as a methodology for analysis of the interconnection between social economy and security and the role of social capital as an important indicator of inequality, and, at the same time, the most important indicator of stability and security.

The article presents the current issues and latest trends of the legal and administrative aspects of ensuring public security in the field of how road traffic safety is ensured. The legal regulation in this area and the problems of organizing the activity of institutions responsible for traffic safety are discussed; the situation of traffic safety in Lithuania and other countries in the Baltic region is studied. Utmost attention is attached to the organization and coordination of comprehensive measures, dedicated to the reduction of the rate of accidents. The authors applied general scientific methods of studying objective reality, peculiar to legal sciences: systematic document analysis, meta-analysis, structural-functional analysis, teleological, comparative, critical approach, generalisation and prediction. As a result in this research is emphasised the importance of decentralisation in ensuring public security at the level of the road traffic safety; the main guidelines of modernization in this field are presented.

Effective employee motivation needs leaders who are able to formulate visions of incentive programs and who have positive influence on employees. Leaders are able to analyse the environment regarding the level of motivation, barriers to motivation and are able to develop an effective motivation system. A motivation system refers to a system illustrating basic motives, motivation preferences, intentions and priorities, incentives being applied and their effects. The authors of the paper attempt to assess the level of employee motivation in a trading company and its relation to work performance. The research was conducted in the months of September–December 2016 and 213 respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaire. A Pareto chart was used illustrate the research results.

Recently, the countries try to attract more foreign investments, improve the standard of living in the country and improve not only macroeconomic but also the indicators of the personal life satisfaction. More and more attention is paid to the tax system reorganization and evaluation. However, the different evaluation methods of the tax system can give different results and for this reason, there is not so simple to choose the right method or complex. The research was done with purpose to find out, which method of the evaluation of the tax system would be the most acceptable. On the basis of the results of the empirical study, there were identified the complex tax system evaluation criteria. According to them, the country, taking into account its specific characteristics, can compose the suitable complex tax system evaluation model. It can help to evaluate the country’s tax system in the most objectively way.

The article analyses and summarizes the various author’s approach to value-added tax (hereinafter - VAT), its role in the tax system and the impact of VAT revenue on the state budget. The article considers the features of VAT, its positive and negative characteristics, discusses the aspects of implementation of tax function, and identifies the revenue collection determinants examined in literature. The impact of VAT revenues on the European Union (hereinafter - EU) Member States (hereinafter - MS) budgets, and the dynamics of the standard VAT rate and income from VAT collection efficiency is analysed. Having selected four EU Member States (Bulgaria, Italy, Ireland and Lithuania), the method of pair correlation is used to evaluate the economic and VAT describing factors affecting the revenue from VAT collection in these countries. The most correlating factors in each of the selected countries were used to create multiple regression models. After discussing the situation of VAT in the EU, the article analyses the dynamics of the revenue from VAT part in the state budget income. It examines the changes of revenue from VAT, the causes that determined a (non) enforcement of the plan of the revenue from VAT, the efficiency of the collection of revenue from VAT and its reasons analysing the case of Lithuania. In order to identify the factors that determined the revenue from the collection of VAT in Lithuania in the period 2005-2015, three multiple regression models were se up, analysed and summarized.

The paper presents a calculation technique and projections on the indices of social efficiency of sustainable land management. The relevance of this study is determined by the authors’ technique measuring social, economic and environmental efficiency parity, and its implementation prospects in the context of more sustainable land management in Ukraine as a country that has tremendous potential for its use with a potential worldwide impact on food markets. The paper is aimed at presenting the technique of projecting social efficiency of land management in the context of sustainable development. Projections about the integral efficiency of land management are made according to the developed criteria (productivity, motivation, consistency) using the map of projected effects using conventional and relative, as well as absolute input parameters. This enables improved information support during the formation of national sustainable development strategy of land relations development. The authors substantiate the methodological approaches to planning parameters of land use in dynamics, which are based on determining the impact, including social one, and evaluation of social efficiency of sustainable land management, which allow diagnostics at meso- and macroeconomic scale and can also become tools for scenario modeling.

The current agricultural production is facing different challenges. Successful solutions require improvement of production system based on sustainability. As such it is able to provide both economic and environmental performance based on products diversifications, energy efficiency and closing loop in agriculture. To solve this, imitation models of circular agriculture production system created by linear modeling was proposed in the study. Modeling was done base on the real data of one of the Ukrainian agriculture production region. The region with the middle continental environmental condition was taken as a base. This is making proposed example suitable to apply in the other European countries with similar conditions.