Search

Large proportions of spoilt ballots may lead to a distortion of election results. While invalid votes are sometimes meaningful political acts, reflecting political protest, spoilt ballot papers may also be a consequence of voter error, which can be attributed to the poor design of a ballot paper. In this study, we focus on the widely publicized case of the Polish local elections of 2014. These elections saw unprecedentedly large proportions of spoilt votes, and ballot paper format was often mentioned as a potential culprit. Yet it remains largely unclear whether or not there indeed does exist a cause-and-effect relationship between ballot card format and the tendency of voters to cast invalid votes. We argue that what we deliver here is the first methodologically refined test of the aforementioned hypothesis. We apply the generalized synthetic control comparative method, proposed by Yiquing Xu (in 2017), and show that the implementation of a complex or ambiguous ballot design can result in a substantial increase in the rate of spoilt votes. We thus demonstrate that ballot paper design matters. Specifically, the results of this study corroborate the existence of a cause-and-effect relationship between ballot paper format and the fraction of invalid votes in the 2014 municipal elections in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal narratives about families, ranging from individual discourses to public discourse, do not always reflect the reality of family lives. This is also valid for Narratives of Return (NoR), which propose a return to a "natural" family order and lean on conservative ideological values. However, such a notion does not rely on actual past and present social practice but tries to reshape it. It deliberately omits the variety of existing forms and relationships present among families. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia, many processes, patterns, and problems in society became more visible. The crisis put particular pressure on families and intergenerational relationships, mainly regarding care. This paper analyses micro-narratives about families, relationships, and care, juxtaposed to actual practice, during the pandemic. We rely on data from a two-year-long ethnographic research project using online surveys, ethnographic interviews, and autobiographical texts. We compare these data with political discourse and its presentation in media, where we looked for aspects of NoR. It seems that the political discourse was primarily focused on securing public health but was at the same time oriented towards particular problems (such as natality or abortions), constructing an ideological narrative with specific family structures in mind (in accordance with NoR). Simultaneously, it put older adults at the forefront as a uniform social group that was vulnerable and dependent on others, omitting their function as caregivers of the youngest generation in the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will compare and contrast Visegrád and Southeast European mobility towards (and away from) the European Union (EU) ideal of cohesion, in the process investigating conflicting "core" and "peripheral" assertions of "Europeanness." Though the Visegrád states have exceeded economic expectations, they have to varying degrees stood in opposition to the values of the EU's self-professed "European identity," with Hungary and Poland in particular demonstrating increasing illiberalism. Meanwhile, in Southeast Europe, lacklustre economic performance has tended to contrast with increasingly liberal democratic rule and strong popular support for the EU "project." The EU's cohesion strategy has prioritized economic convergence and, ultimately, this has meant that budgetary considerations, and political rhetoric and scrutiny, have often favoured the rebellious but economically resurgent Visegrád states over the weaker economies of a more compliant Southeast Europe. The EU's integration strategy of constructing "identity hegemony" depends upon both economic and socio-political convergence. This paper questions the congruence of these focuses, given the discriminatory application of integration incentives and the persistence of Orientalism/Balkanism in West European rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reassesses Russia's policy vis-à-vis the Western Balkans in terms of its pursuit of status. The region has been historically significant to Russia. It saw centuries of interaction between rulers in Moscow (or St. Petersburg) with the local Orthodox Slavs and other great powers of the day. Following the end of the Cold War, the Russian state emerged as a very different entity from imperial Russia or the Soviet Union. In the Western Balkans, it found a stage for not just rekindling centuries-long ties but also rebuilding its image as a great power in cooperation and, as this paper shows, increasing competition with primarily the West. However, as this research attests by referring to the Larson–Shevchenko framework of the Social Identity Theory (SIT), status must be conferred through a voluntary recognition by other great powers, which recognize status-aspirant's actions as non-threatening to their standing and as having a positive value. So far, Russia's Balkan policies have primarily been seen negatively as either promoting retrograde ideology or outright spoiler behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the constitution of a moral economy of welfare through acts of benefit fraud. The structural conditions of contemporary labour, citizenship, and migration regimes in Europe exclude large shares of workers from access to social citizenship and place them in a position of undeserving trespassers of the social contract. Drawing on the case of Bulgarian Roma engaged in precarious labour and short-term intensive mobility between Bulgaria and the Netherlands, I show how labour conditions in both countries and the structures of the welfare regimes effectively exclude them from access to social citizenship and confine them to the realms of informal work, thus putting them in a position of differential inclusion. The benefit fraud in this context has multiple interpretations—ranging from crime through a survival strategy to a claim to social justice. By mobilizing the idea of the moral economy of welfare, I seek to explain how migrants justify their actions not as transgression, but as a claim to social citizenship and a critique of an unjust social and economic order. In a moral economy of welfare, the migrants see themselves as deserving state support both by virtue of being citizens and of being good workers. Being excluded from proper welfare support is interpreted as a failure of both states. In this context, the fraud is framed in moral terms as an act of citizenship aiming to restore justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics usually look for constitutional conventions in Westminster-style democracies, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia. Nevertheless, growing evidence from practice shows that constitutional conventions are similarly essential attributes of even substantially different political regimes. This article is the first paper to systematically deal with constitutional conventions in the Czech Republic. To be more specific, I identify eight existing constitutional conventions there: (1) respect for the parliamentary majority, (2) institution of a formateur, (3) simultaneous existence of two prime ministers, (4) new cabinet's statement of policy, (5) delegation of negotiation and ratification of international treaties, (6) appointment of a (vice-)governor of the Czech National Bank without a countersignature, (7) missing signature of the president under laws, and (8) single vice-chairperson of the Supreme Court. On one hand, the scrutiny shows that constitutional conventions play an already established and important role even in a Central European democracy. On the other hand, the lack of political respect for unwritten rules and the relative immaturity of Czech democracy confirm that constitutional conventions are as fragile (or as strong) as political actors allow. Thanks to these facts, the study of constitutional conventions in the post-communist country is a precious laboratory with universal findings even for long-existing democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates attitudes towards the welfare state measured as government responsibility towards the standard of living of the unemployed and the old. The article focuses on the differences between post-communist countries and the rest of Europe, contextualised using the self-interest theory, specifically economic strain. Data on thirty one European countries gleaned from the European Social Survey collected in 2008 and 2016 are analysed using multilevel methods. The findings show that even though citizens in post-communist countries are purportedly more in favour of government intervention in regard to the welfare state, perceptible differences emerge based on individual characteristics, namely economic strain, combined with whether the respondent lives in a post-communist country. The cross-national differences in welfare support between post-communist countries and the rest of Europe are largely driven by differences in economic strain, with citizens in post-communist countries that struggle financially exhibiting higher support for welfare state provisions in comparison to their peers in countries without a communist legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium offers EEPS audience insights to the process of peer review to which manuscripts submitted to the journal are subjected. It is composed of the original paper (titled "Re-enchanting Modernity in the East and West: Comparative Perspectives on the Legacy of 1968"), reviews and additional comments by the three reviewers, and the author's response. It illustrates the variety of criteria typically used by reviewers – and editors – in their assessment of submitted research papers and essays, as well as the options available to their authors in response. The symposium is also a contribution to the ongoing debates on the topic of the manuscript in question: the legacies of the tumultuous year 1968 and the contributions of the generation defined by those events to the intellectual, political, and other dimensions of public affairs in the East and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the history of Polish revisionist Marxist political economy, which flourished between 1956 and 1968, mostly in the academic institutions of Warsaw. The fate of Polish revisionism in Marxist economics is presented in parallel to the intellectual biography of Włodzimierz Brus (one of its leaders) and the fate of the Faculty of Political Economy (Wydział Ekonomii Politycznej [WEP]), which he co-established at the University of Warsaw. The authors compare contemporary documents and existing analyses of the period with memories of Brus's colleagues and students, collected decades after the events. The authors show that both the relative freedom of expression and academic research and the process of gradual closing of these possibilities were related to the changing balance of power within Party elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"This was my rudest awakening that I was Jewish. I was not Polish, I was horrified!" Cesia Honig, from Tarnów, perceived herself as a Polish patriot until 1938, when she was insulted for being a Jew by Gentiles, who claimed to be the only so-called real Polish patriots. In the late 1930s, a polyvalent sense of belonging was no longer acceptable in Poland's public sphere, although urban spaces during the Second Polish Republic had been multiethnic realms of interaction. Excluded from the Polish nation by local compatriots, Cesia painfully experienced being turned into the Other in a community to which she thought she belonged. This article explores interethnic relations in the local community of Tarnów, a western Galician town, during the interwar period. It leans on late witness testimonies, which are read against contemporary sources. The article dwells into dense contact zones between Jews and non-Jews in the urban space. Special attention is paid to the role of schools. As this paper shows, social class also played a salient role in shaping narratives of belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction to the selection of the papers presented at a two-day workshop “The End of the Story?” Problems and Perspectives of East European Literary Studies,” held at Princeton University on 8–9 February 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thirty years after communism's demise, Polish civil society is, decidedly, self-sustaining, and wide-ranging, with activism focused on various issues, from the natural environment to education reform to reproductive rights. This paper uses data from interviews and a nationally representative survey to explore the evolution of activism in Poland and specifically the claim that Polish citizens are more likely to engage in civic action when these efforts concern everyday social problems, rather than abstract political ideals. We argue that since 2015, the Polish government is, indeed, attempting to direct civil society's growth and development, thereby shrinking the space for activism, especially for liberal, progressive organizations. Yet, this is only a part of a more complex and interesting picture of activism that is also shifting, with individuals focusing on new issues and mobilization tactics, and strengthening through the creation of networks, and groups that work on different sectors but join forces. Thus, although some citizens are mobilizing around local, social concerns, intangible, political issues remain important, with Poles participating in activities online and in person to defend the rule of law and judicial freedom. Polish citizens are also regularly protesting limitations on reproductive rights and in support of gay rights. Thirty years of change and democracy in Poland have produced a dynamic and diverse civil society that is, simultaneously, shrinking, shifting, and strengthening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The postscript reports on the conference and comments on what the papers and audience participation tell us about the state of the field and Poland’s struggle to come to terms with its past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The tragic events of 10 April 2010 became one of the most important topics of public discourse in Poland. They remain its central issue until today. This paper is an attempt to investigate one aspect of the phenomenon: the impact of the disaster and subsequent events on the presidential election of 2010. It is based on the results of research carried out within the Polish National Election Study (PNES) project. At least three reasons make it plausible that the Smolensk catastrophe had a great impact on Polish politics. Firstly, the disaster had legal and constitutional consequences; the sudden death of a head of state always generates a number of specific actions, policy changes, and (most importantly from the perspective of this paper) determines the election calendar. Secondly, the disaster had psychological consequences; it caused a strong psychological shock for participants in the political process, which redefined political competition, public discourse, and the media coverage. Thirdly, narratives about the events preceding the crash and following it quickly became an important element of Polish politics, especially in the media and in the electoral campaign. The main finding of the paper is that the Smolensk catastrophe did not produce a fundamental change in the political preferences and voting patterns of Polish citizens. At both the aggregate and individual level we observe relative stability in voter turnout patterns and voting preferences. The paper also finds that the catastrophe strengthened existing preferences and behavior patterns, and it petrified existing divisions. This paper is a study of voting behavior in extreme situations. It analyses a unique phenomenon—voting during a huge social trauma and right afterwards. Thus, in addition to the idiographic objective of the paper (explanation of voting behavior in the 2010 presidential election in Poland), it also has a nomothetic aspect, because it contributes to the theoretical discussions about voting behavior in traumatic, exceptional situations. It can serve as a reference point for future studies addressing the issue of electoral behavior in unexpected, unusual contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the impact of local demography on the electoral strategies of ethnic political parties. We focus on Hungarian parties in Slovakia and their tactics of fielding candidates in the 2014 and 2018 mayoral elections in 4,461 municipalities with competitive elections. We find that local demography is an essential explanatory factor concerning the strategies of ethnic parties. Our results show that in towns where an ethnic minority predominates, ethnic parties are more likely to challenge each other in elections. On the other hand, we find only little support for the split demography hypothesis that ethnic parties will cooperate in such an environment. Although Hungarian parties form alliances in these municipalities, their occurrence is not different than in towns where the same ethnic group dominates the local population. Finally, we observe that in areas where Hungarians are a numerical minority, inter-ethnic alliances are formed, but only by the more moderate ethnic party. In general, the paper shows that the ethnic composition of municipalities can provide incentives to avoid ethnic outbidding as well as to enhance intra-ethnic rivalry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a framework to analyze the varying understanding of democratic developments. Based on the theory of frame-analysis, it distinguishes six brackets within which democratic developments can be interpreted. This framework is applied to identify the nature of international rankings of domestic democracy and to compare the framing of developments in Polish democracy in reports on democratic developments from international organizations. The conclusion is that sense-making of democratic developments in general varies enormously, and that this is also visible in the international rankings of democracy. Democratic developments in Poland are also assessed in different ways, resulting in varying claims about the nature of the developments in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the membership of the most important Czech political party, ANO (meaning "yes" in Czech), led by Andrej Babiš, in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). Our goals are to reconstruct how Babiš's party joined ALDE and to discuss the ideological differences between ANO and ALDE. The paper shows that ALDE's offer of membership in 2014 was motivated by a pragmatic need to bolster its own position in the European Parliament; ANO, meanwhile, needed to anchor itself in European politics. Andrej Babiš's technocratic and illiberal view was not apparent at the beginning, but more importantly, this did not matter to ALDE. ALDE's Czech "point of contact," ANO's foreign policy expert and the leader of its party group in the European Parliament, Pavel Telička, made ANO's membership credible. However, as a Euro-optimist, Telička was not compatible with ANO's flexible ideological character in the long term and the party group split up. A comparison of the parties' European Parliament election manifestos and positions on crucial controversial European issues clearly reveals a deep division between ALDE and ANO—and their fundamentally opposed ideological positions. We describe the findings as a new hyper-pragmatic trend in the creation of Europarties, which weakens their ideological cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at contributing to the social history of the Solidarity movement by tracing the collective biography of its elected representatives. It will focus on the life trajectories of the 900 delegates to the First National Congress of Delegates. The convention, held in Autumn 1981, is commonly perceived as a focal moment in the history of Solidarity and plays a crucial role in almost every academic narrative on the anti-communist opposition. Often seen as a first genuine Polish parliament since pre-war times, its main task was to forge the political and economic programme thus furthering the revolution. The projected research will draw on genuine methodology, combining prosopographical and oral history approach. The research will address mainly the following issues: what social strata the elites came from, what was their cultural and educational background, what motives/causes/expectations drove them to engage with Solidarity, to what generations did they belong, how did they embrace the character of political transformation of 1989, and to what extent and how did they get involved in the political, economic, and social life of post-communist Poland. In general, the paper seeks to shed a new light on our understanding of Solidarity's social roots—for instead examining to what extent the contesting, revolutionary elites were a product of the Stalinist social advancement. It also tries to depict the level of continuity between the elites of 1981 and post-1989—thus testing the common theories whether the Third Republic is (or is not) rooted in the legacy of Solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article belongs to the special cluster, "Think Tanks in Central and Eastern Europe", guest-edited by Katarzyna Jezierska and Serena Giusti. What is the role of think tanks in Europeanization of national public spheres? To address this question, our paper explores the performance of think tanks in the immigration debate in the Czech Republic. Employing political claims analysis (PCA) and treating think tanks as boundary organizations active in multiple fields, we compare the levels of Europeanization of political claims made by think tanks with other actors. Our data set includes 2,374 political claims made on broadcast public TV in the period from April 2015 to March 2016. According to our quantitative data, Czech think tanks chose the discursive strategy of Europeanization more often than any other actor represented. Thus, think tanks have the potential to support Europeanization of national public spheres. However, their representation in media coverage is relatively low. Our results also demonstrate that think tanks should be treated as sui generis organizations since their strategy in the public sphere deviates from that of other civil society organizations. Think tanks Europeanized their claims-making, but others largely stayed on the national level while discussing the refugee crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neither in her cover letter, nor at any time during the long and laborious process of preparing this symposium for publication, did Nina Witoszek inform us of the previous publication of her paper. As we explain below in our editorial introduction, the idea behind the symposium printed in this issue was to give our authors, reviewers, and readers an insight into the peer review process. In our manuscript guidelines for authors, we state unequivocally: "We (...) discourage more than a minimal amount of "text recycling", the reproduction of an author's own text from a previous publication. [Extracted from the article]

The present article offers a new framework for understanding the early East European post-war that introduces and conceptualizes the idea of "Void Communities." The core of the argument is that the disappearance of various groups of Others—ethnic, religious, and class—was one of the most important consequences of the Second World War for Central and Eastern Europe, and particularly for Poland and Ukraine. The Void left by those who had disappeared could be described on several levels, such as physical absence, social and economical dysfunctionality, transformation of the social structure and stratification, property transfer, decline of moral values and norms, and changes in local culture and traditions. Based on an extensive oral history research (of more than 150 interviews) and in-depth reading of ego documents, the article prioritizes the first-hand perspective of witnesses and centres on those who remained in the post-war Void Communities after their neighbours had been murdered, deported, resettled, or encouraged to leave semi-voluntarily. While the paper primarily focuses on the historical region of Galicia, now divided between Poland and Ukraine, the source material used to analyze the framework for Void Communities includes documents associated with the entire pre-war Polish Second Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2015 refugee crisis has held the attention of Romanian news media, as one of the most challenging issues for the European Union in the last decade, even though Romania is not situated on the main routes on which refugees arrive. Our research focuses on the variation of issue-specific news frames in time, according to media type, and by the countries covered, also addressing the locally salient issue of religion. Articles from the websites of the top-ranked six Romanian news outlets were analyzed, including three quality papers and three tabloids (N=6,183), from 1 April 2015 to 30 September 2017. Using a computer-assisted, cluster-based frame analysis, we identify six primary, mutually exclusive and six secondary, nonexclusive frames: European crisis, context/victimization, relocation/distribution, international conflict, and social problem, national costs, religious issues, US immigration policy, humanitarian/international. The variations in their salience follow the general European tendency toward securitization. At the same time, the emphasis on the issue as a European crisis indicates a tendency characteristic of Central and Eastern European media coverage. Co-occurrence patterns of frames and specific countries also indicate that the salience of some globally recurrent frames varies by countries covered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the turn of the millennium, the number of Estonians running at least one marathon a year has grown nearly twentyfold. This paper links the marathon boom in Estonia to novel ideas about the "good life" among a subset of the country's middle class, also situating the phenomenon in the broader context of post-1991 socio-economic changes. Drawing on fifty narrative interviews with recreational runners and a content analysis of various runners' blogs, the article pays special attention to "runners' bodies." Recreational marathoners consciously put their bodies at the service of their "selves" by submitting the body to regular physical strain, which fits with their distinctively middle-class ideals of self-discipline, motivation, diligence, and perseverance. But runners' bodies are also "bodies for others"—they not only encapsulate but also display these ideals. Approaching runners' bodies as "bodies for selves" and as "bodies for others," the article makes two arguments. Firstly, a fit body as physical capital and the "purposeful suffering" that long-distance running almost inevitably leads to have recently shifted to the core of living a "good life" in the case of growing numbers of the Estonian middle class. Secondly, the "others" for middle-class runners' bodies are first and foremost the sedentary and generally overweight bodies of their own class. For a subset of the Estonian middle class, a slim and fit running body, in combination with changed consumption practices and reference groups, serves to distinguish themselves from the generalised idea of a middle-class person in today's Estonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political representation of ethnic minorities in the party systems of Central and Eastern European states remains understudied despite the consolidation of democracy in these countries following their accession to the EU. This paper asks what institutional factors influence the way ethnic minorities are represented in the party systems of Central and Eastern European states. It does so based on a comparison of ethnic minorities in two paired cases (Slovakia/Romania and Estonia/Latvia), each of which shows similarities in some regards but have different outcomes in terms of party representation. The paper specifically examines explanations for the diverse forms through which minorities are represented in these four countries with a focus on three distinct types: ethnic particularist minority parties, integrationist minority parties, and accommodative majority parties. We examine two institutional/political factors that influence specific minority party types: (1) electoral systems and (2) political strategies of the dominant ethnic elite. We argue that while electoral systems do play a role in explaining differences in the party representation of minorities, they become particularly important in the broader political institutional context that emerged in the first decade following the collapse of communism. The manner in which dominant ethnic political-elites approached minority representation in the early years of democratization is critical in explaining different types of party representation that ensued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most political science interpretations of the post-2010 Orbán regime have been written either within the framework of populism or in the democratization paradigm. We have learned much from these papers about Hungary's drift in an authoritarian direction, but they also have drawbacks. This article aims to fill the gap between these two approaches and offers a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of populism and other trends of contemporary politics (like de-alignment, growing electoral volatility, citizens' disengagement, personalization, legitimacy problems, the decline of party membership and partisanship, the mediatization of politics, etc.) on the political regime. It argues that these trends add up to an authority and regime type that can be conceptualized by Weber's concept of plebiscitary leader democracy (PLD). PLD forms a new hybrid regime type that differs from comparative authoritarianism and other hybrid regime types known from the literature in three respects. First, PLD is less about institutional framework and procedures than about the sources of legitimacy; second, it serves better to understand how the regime works than measuring its distance from liberal democracy; third, it is an ideal type that aims to reveal the endogenous logic of democracy that generates authoritarian elements of the regime. The article also demonstrates the suitability of the concept of PLD for empirical research through presenting a structured case study of the Orbán regime. The PLD model enables us to reveal the endogenous logic of the Orbán regime and the impact of populist governance on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a new set of questions to analyse the impact of populist attitudes on party preferences and voting behaviour in the 2015 Polish parliamentary elections. At these elections, voters faced a choice between two broad blocs: parties that accepted the "liberal-orthodox" model of post-communist politics, and those that rejected this model and the political elites associated with its implementation. I find that there is a coherent set of populist attitudes among the Polish electorate, and that it correlates with economic and cultural attitudes in ways consistent with the supply-side divide between liberal and anti-liberal parties. Analysis of the individual and combined impact of these attitudes on voting behaviour reveals that populism plays a significant role both in structuring the sentiments of voters towards particular kinds of political parties and in determining how they cast their vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that bottom–up, people-centered research which uses ethnographic and everyday approaches is crucial but underutilized in research on identity politics in Eastern Europe. In order to understand what concepts such as ethnicity and citizenship mean in the context of people’s everyday lives, it is vital to understand whether taken-for-granted political concepts are appropriate and the make-up of data such as census data. The article first introduces the methods of political ethnography and bottom–up interviews by discussing how they can be applied and their value within political science. The paper uses data gathered from interviews in Moldova and Crimea (when it was still a de jure and de facto part of Ukraine) to demonstrate the value of this approach. It shows how interview data can add significantly to the understanding of kin-state relations within political science by adding a richness of context and a bottom–up perspective that quantitative and elite-level interviews fail to provide. Lastly, the paper draws on experiences gained from research design to discuss how bottom–up research in political science can be conducted rigorously. The article argues that this approach can deepen the understanding of identity politics and kin-state relations or, more broadly, important post-communist questions such as democratization and Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we explain variation in the organization of LGBT activism in postcommunist Europe, both across countries and over time? Much of the extant scholarship has analyzed the comparative politics of homosexuality in the region in terms of transnational norm diffusion occurring within the context of EU accession and integration. Thus, it emphasizes the empowerment of domestic gay rights groups either through maximizing the leverage of their external allies or through increasing their linkage with transnational advocacy networks. This paper argues that the effectiveness of these diffusion mechanisms is strongly constrained by the collective action problems faced by gay rights activists in societies with a legacy of civil society underdevelopment, such as in postcommunist Europe. We argue that hard-right backlash is a critical domestic factor that can help overcome these collective action problems, enabling gay rights activists to find resonant frames, build internal solidarity, and win allies—even when social movement resources are minimal. The research focuses on a close comparison of Poland and the Czech Republic since 1989 and draws on field interviews and original sources to process-trace the resonance of LGBT rights frames and how activism is organized. By building organizationally robust activism, postcommunist gay rights movements lay claim to full membership in the political community, exercise civil rights as LGBT citizens (not merely as private ones), and expand the sphere of “sexual citizenship.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of evidence-based research into the behaviour of Gazprom and the relevant behaviour of the Russian government in selected countries of Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Belarus). The authors’ aim was to determine the scope of involvement by the Russian government in problems that have arisen in supplying these states, and the degree to which these issues have been linked with Gazprom’s conduct and Russia’s foreign policy toward the countries. Another interest was to seek out the key factors that may determine this behaviour in particular environments. To address these goals, the authors monitored specific indicators defined by the strategic approach to energy security (indicators that uncover governmental support, the linking of foreign policy to gas supplies, and misuse of a dominant market position). The core of the research underlying the paper was organized as a set of individual idiographic, theory-guided case studies. Data were gathered from official documents, statistics, articles, analytical studies, and from semi-structured interviews with experts. The exploration revealed that Gazprom has behaved in such a way as to indicate that it is being used as a tool of foreign policy, but the primary factor controlling its behaviour remains the environment in which the company is operating. Two points were crucial: implementation of the IEM rules and—above all—the diversification of sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian governments produce internal assessments of the quality of governance that allow them to identify and address brewing problems before they threaten regime stability. This paper provides a theory of how the information necessary to produce such assessments is collected. The empirical focus of the paper is on pre-1989 Bulgaria, which is used to illustrate how information-gathering channels in communist autocracies differ from those used in electoral autocracies. The theoretical argument of the paper is that citizen complaints rather than elections function as the main channel for gathering information on popular perceptions about governance problems in communist autocracies. Information compiled through the analysis of complaints is valued because it allows the leadership to identify problems with policy implementation, to track corruption, and to monitor the level of popular trust in the regime. Therefore, citizen complaints serve as a barometer of public opinion regarding governance problems. The archival materials on which this paper is based were accidentally discovered in the 2000s, when a closetful of about 2,000 files of the Information-Sociological Center of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party was located during routine repairs of the Central State Archive in Sofia. These files, which were previously assumed lost, give scholars access to a treasure trove of material that provides a rare internal perspective on governance under late socialism. In conjunction with other formerly classified archival materials, they allow us to document what information on public opinion was collected and transmitted to the top leadership in pre-1989 Bulgaria. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the pro-market rhetoric of the early phase of the post-communist transformation in Poland. It looks at one case of such rhetoric, that of the Warsaw daily Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish paper medium. Gazeta was an unequivocal supporter of the market transition and perhaps the country’s most important pro-market opinion-forming platform. In order to convince its readership, it argued, in a vein similar to that of the early nineteenth-century classical economists, that this was the only way to achieve an efficient economy but that, in the short run, social costs and suffering were unavoidable. In its rhetoric, it stressed logic and rationality as characteristics of the reform projects, while often using irony in reporting differing views. Critical voices it treated as either naïve or representing the vested interests of those opposing the reforms. The Gazeta editors and authors were in favor of rapid reforms, afraid that pain and suffering would mobilize resistance. They believed that the sooner the economic rebuilding process succeeded, the greater support there would be for the reforms. The danger they were most afraid of was right-wing, nationalist populism. Ironically, the type of policies they advocated, while economically successful, actually contributed to marginalization and social exclusion. Thus, as an overview of East-Central Europe politics shows, in the longer term they led exactly to what Gazeta was most afraid of. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I draw on the approach to the study of “actually existing liberalisms” with an example from contemporary urban east-central Europe. I focus on the city of Wroclaw, a success story of Poland’s economic urban transformation, and consider the symbolic politics embodied in the city’s promotional strategy as a tool of ongoing neoliberal restructuring. I argue that an important feature of the city’s symbolic politics is the commodification and fetishization of dwarves, the historical symbols of an antitotalitarian movement that used the image of a dwarf as a means for people’s deliberative and performative action that helped lay foundations for democracy. Today, the historical legacy of dwarves as a means of associational and performative action has been disguised in the city’s promotional strategy, which has turned dwarves into commodities that help sell the city on the global neoliberal market of intercity competition. I call this process of contemporary fetishization, the kidnapping of Wroclaw’s dwarves. Kidnapping refers to the process whereby the symbol’s meaning and historical legacy is turned into a commodity, disempowering it by depriving it of its meaning for social action. At the conclusion of my paper, I offer a critical ethnographic and pedagogical perspective focused on symbolic politics as a venue for understanding and inspiring critical action in the context of these urban neoliberal developments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main problem addressed in the paper is the relation between politics and administration. The authors try to answer if independent administration exists at the sub-national level in Poland. In a more detailed manner, the question is whether an acceptance of independent administration has been fostered by the dispersion of political power and the experience of participation in important decision-making processes. The data used in the article come from a survey of councillors and in-depth interviews with councillors and clerks. The analysis proved that the councillors’ opinions as to the independence of administration are influenced by their participation in the ruling majority. Opposition members support stricter, more stringent legislative oversight. Majority members, on the contrary, accept greater independence of administration. The result of the study leads also to a conclusion about the importance of monopolization and the influence on administration by the executive and the majority councillors. Administration becomes perceived as a functional part of the majority. A more fundamental conclusion is when there is no programmatic competition between political groupings of councillors, there are no conditions for establishing an administration independent of politics. This outcome completes the relationship noted by Miller and Whitford with the programmatic dimension of political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative study of cities’ migration policies. By comparing four bigger and four smaller Polish cities and their approaches towards Ukrainian war refugees, we show the differences in support offered by bigger and smaller towns. Polish cities wholeheartedly and spontaneously welcomed Ukrainians fleeing their country after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While bigger cities start from reception and then offer integration activities, smaller ones see the presence of Ukrainians as temporary and identify their needs in terms of immediate humanitarian aid. The extra value of this original research is in documenting the specific moment when those cities have become ethnically diverse. The research includes interviews with the cities’ authorities, panel discussions, and analyses of documents and press articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of borderland shuttle trade across Russia’s borders with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. I argue that borderland shuttle trade is more sustainable in comparison with long-haul shuttle trade, as the former gives entrepreneurs more flexibility, involves fewer transaction costs, and can rely on the extensive support of borderland communities. At the same time, it has some specific vulnerabilities, and its susceptibility to customs control and reliance on overloaded border crossing infrastructure are among the most important. Contrary to beliefs about contemporary states’ inability to exercise efficient control over informal cross-border flows in the age of globalization, this research demonstrates that over the course of time, states may be at least partially successful in suppressing informal cross-border trade. Ultimately, cross-border shuttle trade has proven to be vulnerable to more and more targeted restrictions and control practices. Still, it has also proven to be highly resistant to governmental crackdown in various ways, such as buying fuel from long-haul truck drivers or switching to trade in non-excisable goods or to low-penalty cigarette smuggling. The latter practice illustrates that shuttle trade is only part of the flexible informal cross-border economy and that it can be transformed into low-penalty smuggling when needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text is a political analysis of the events surrounding the demise of the Austro–Hungarian administration in Transylvania and its replacement by the Romanian one at the end of World War I. It focuses on the months of November and December 1918. In particular, the text looks at the Romanian paramilitary groups called the National Guards. I argue that in Transylvania in November and December 1918, the National Guards played a pacifying and state-building role through their repressive and anti-Communist function. Unlike the paramilitary phenomenon in the rest of Europe, in Transylvania it was the very counter-revolutionary function of the paramilitary troops that produced constructive and constitutive effects. At the same time, unlike Romanian historiography, which almost unanimously has seen the role of these troops as only a positive one, I underline the repressive function of the National Guards, which made them act violently against any alternative political projects of that period in the region. The revolutionary state of the province in those days had to be calmed down for Transylvania's autonomy to be ensured under the control of the local Romanian authorities. The Romanian elite's state-building project needed security to gain legitimacy. To this end, this elite took control of the various paramilitary forces of the region and monopolized them under the National Guards umbrella. These groups were crucial in the repression against the republican movement and the perceived Bolshevik threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research article analyses Polish underground publishing during the late Cold War using the NOW-a publishing house as an example. The innovation of my approach lies in an attempt to bring closer Western and Eastern studies on various aspects of resistance. The subject of Polish resistance has already been studied, but more can be done with reference to the concept of everyday resistance. Protest sites are examined in this article in relation to the question of how urban and rural geography can play a role in bringing a movement together. The contribution revives Charles Tilly's concepts to study Polish resistance and to see historical developments from a social movement perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polish intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century defended Polish independence in the European public sphere through the conscious invention of a tradition of religious tolerance. Because defenses of Polish independence in this period were often designed for a European public, the multi-religious heritage of Poland-Lithuania's past provided resources to shape Polish politics for a variety of audiences and their differing political and religious values. European and Polish publics saw the Russian empire as religiously intolerant, and therefore Poles crafted histories of Poland that offered an explicit counterpoint to this perception of Russia: a Polish tradition of religious co-existence. As long as these international geopolitical appeals remained a dominant part of their political imaginations, Polish intellectuals conceived of Poland in a multi-confessional manner. Polish intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century did not conflate Polish national identity with Roman Catholicism but framed their ideas against the multi-religious legacy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, by tying the question of Polish independence so strongly to the religious sphere, the figures in this article laid the groundwork for future developments in Polish nationalism in later (and more confessionally rigid) periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contributes a better understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the intertwining of national and religious identity at the individual level in (some) former Communist and socialist European countries. It starts by retracing from a historical perspective the place religion occupied under the regimes, then paying attention to how, once politicized and ethnicized by the hand of a new class of ethnopolitical entrepreneurs, religion became "the hallmark of nationhood." This excursus allows us to better contextualize both the theoretical argument and findings. The intertwining of national and religious identity is investigated from two main theoretical sources. The first is the debate within sociology and political science on different ideas of nationhood, while the second consists of socio-psychological models of intergroup relations. The empirical investigation is based on survey data from the European values study (EVS, 2017). A comparative approach is used that includes four countries having Catholic large majorities (Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary) and, as a benchmark, Romania, having an Orthodox majority. To test the hypotheses, a structural equation model is specified. The causal model seeks to unravel to what extent different conceptions of nationhood (ethno-religious vs. civil), together with national attachment, influence the intergenerational transmission of religious values and distrust of people of another religion/nationality. The research results are in line with the current European trends pointing in the direction of a stronger overlap between the religious and the national in tailoring collective identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the thematic cluster "Who Cares for Families? Narrative(s) of Return in Postsocialist Europe" identifies and analyzes its core concept—the narrative of return. Families of today are talked about differently, and how they are narrativized matters. The narrative that stresses that family is under threat and in need of defense or a special form of care, figuring care as restitution of the natural, traditional, or proper family, is termed the narrative of return. The trope of return is strongly normative and non-descriptive, as it relies on mythical temporalities that ought to be restored in our present. The article first defines the choice of concepts—narrative, return, care, and threat. Second, it applies this conceptual frame in the transnational context, particularly within the transnational anti-gender campaigns in the populist moment. Third, it focuses on the postsocialist part of Europe, where, as the entire thematic cluster aims to demonstrate, the narrative of return has gained particular currency. In eastern Europe, these narratives are integral to larger projects of restoration of national agendas and serve as a tool of double emancipation: from the Soviet past and from the present European Union. Political actors using narratives of return advocate and successfully push through fundamental changes in the political frameworks and value systems of the postsocialist countries. In sum, the introduction aims to demonstrate the conceptual background of a political tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has two main objectives. First, it proposes an analytical framework for how to explore "narratives of return" as policy proposals and tools of memory politics. Second, it reveals coexisting versions of "return" advocated by three Polish political actors: the populist right-wing Law and Justice party ("Return" to the Nation), Catholic activists ("Return" to Religion), and representatives of liberal feminism ("Return" to Women's Rights). The case material consists of four policy proposals relating to either family or women's reproductive rights. The article shows that all analyzed political narratives of return have used some variation of the discourse on victimhood, and all of them mean to terrify and raise fear. The policy proposals draw on Polish collective memory and, specifically, on the politics of memory of the post-1989 transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to assess the Lithuanian population's punitive attitudes towards juvenile delinquents, to discuss them from the perspective of authoritarianism and to connect them to Lithuania's Communist past. This study was a cross-sectional population-based study, administered in 2021. Multistage stratified sampling techniques were used to create a representative sample of 1,508 Lithuanian residents aged eighteen years and older. A measurement of attitudes was created by the authors based on ideas about the tripartite attitude structure: measuring multiple attributes from the areas of affect (feelings towards juvenile offenders), cognition (explanations of the causes of juvenile offending), and action (measures for reduction of juvenile delinquency). The study revealed that almost half of Lithuanians hold punitive attitudes towards juvenile delinquents. These punitive attitudes correlate with negative feelings towards juvenile delinquents related to common stereotypes and inaccurate explanations of the causes of juvenile delinquency. Punitiveness was also connected with fears of "bad" Western influences, such as the perceived overvaluing of children's rights and disapproval of violence against children and authoritarian parenting. The question "Is juvenile delinquency in Lithuania increasing because of the bad influence of the West?" divided the Lithuanian population into two almost equal groups: "Pro-Westerners" and "Anti-Westerners." "Anti-Westerners" were more likely to hold authoritarian views, while "Anti-Western" attitudes were more prevalent among older, less-educated, and lower-income citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the different meanings behind the narratives of "family," "childcare," and "child protection" in public discourses against the National Strategy for the Child (NSC) 2019–2030 in Bulgaria. These meanings are seen as reflecting the intertwining and cumulative effects of transnational and local influences in the anti-gender movement. Using frame analysis as an approach in social movement studies, the aim is to analyse the main ideas of NSC opponents—conservative far-right non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and citizens who joined the discussion during the public debate on the Strategy in January 2019. We differentiate between the discourses of the NGOs and the critical citizens, paying attention to the way they use the narrative of return—return to traditional family forms and child-rearing models. The conservative NGOs declared themselves to be defenders of Bulgarian children and families against the liberal policies of the European Union (EU) and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) lobbies. The citizens' discourse is directed against the child-centred philosophy of the Strategy, seen as a threat to both the children themselves and parents' rights, but it rarely mentions LGBT and gendering as a danger. The discussion revealed the deep distrust of citizens and parents towards the state and its institutions, which was amplified and instrumentalized by the far-right NGOs who mobilized and organized a mass social movement against the Strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that while nationalist discourses construct "the people" through positive identity practices, populist discourses articulate it through negative identity practices. Nationalism emphasizes who "the people" are, by identifying a number of core positive characteristics that they share, such as ethnicity, language, culture, history, religion, or political rights and civic traditions. Populism, on the other hand, defines "the people" primarily in a negative fashion in opposition to the elites. Here, "the people" do not share any positive characteristics beyond their oppression, exclusion, and marginalization by the elites. In order to empirically demonstrate the above distinction, I compare the political discourse of Rafael Correa in Ecuador during his first term in office (2007–2012) with that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, primarily during his second term in office (2010–2014). The comparison between these two political projects not only spells out important differences between populist and nationalist articulations of "the people" but also highlights different types of anti-system politics that have emerged in Latin America and eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine a decade of parliamentary debates related to the topic of family to understand the reasons and the rhetorical strategies that drive the support of Romanian MPs for the traditional family. Starting from four themes identified in the literature as relevant for the topic of family—national identity, religion, heteronormativity, and children—we identify the dominant definition of the "traditional family" as that of the Christian Romanian family founded and defended by ancestors—that is, union between a man and a woman for the purpose of reproduction—as the only place that can guarantee that children will grow up in a healthy and moral environment. This hegemonic narrative is enhanced by the anti-gender campaign repertoire and strengthened by populist logic, aiming to restore true Romanian values—Christian, ancestral, and national—in opposition to contemporary Western relativism and the alleged colonial cultural project of gender equality+ politics. The decadent present, threatening national identity, the continuity of the people, Christian values, the natural gender order, or the safety of children, can be saved only by returning to the traditional family, which functions as a hegemonic signifier re-imposing, in the logic of the narrative of return, a nationalist, conservative, and religious definition of the family, based on biological and natural foundations and necessarily heteronormative and chauvinist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German right-wing populist party "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) opposes diverse family lifestyles by promoting the return to a family model of father, mother, and children. This "Narrative of Return" paves the way for the party's anti-gender, anti-childlessness, and anti-immigration agendas. This article examines how narratives about families as promoted by the AfD reflect or address experiences of the post-socialist transformation in East Germany. It turns out that Narratives of Return (NoR) overlook the elderly as acting individuals and disregard the ways they engage with their families and how they continue to organize their lives autonomously in old age. NoR instead depict older people as an anonymous group of supposedly undeserving pensioners, who benefit from society and family without having any function in them. However, discourses on care for the family can be traced down to a micro-level that confirms how care for the family is, in fact, care for older people. The article presents two selected life stories of advanced-age East Germans to substantiate this claim. The life stories reveal that older people themselves believe in various notions of family, despite being served with NoR in the recent past. Experiences in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) even seem to prevent older people from again falling for totalizing schemes that order and prescribe uniform (family) experience. Consequently, it is not to be expected that NoR will succeed in closing discourses on care for the family easily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to provide insight into the mechanisms of familism in the landscapes of Hungarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), public and higher education, and academia. By contextualizing the growing importance of familism as a governing ideology and an effective political tool used by the current government, aiming to offer an alternative to the insecurities rooted in economic restructuring and cultural transformation in eastern Europe in the last few decades, we show how "academic familism" and "NGO-familism," often intertwined, reproduce the ideological underpinnings of the Hungarian neoliberal gender regime. The article's novelty is in, first, revealing how recent institutionalization tendencies show that Hungarian academia, especially in the social sciences, is shifting to reproduce and legitimize familism, risking the autonomy of science even in the short term. Second, the study highlights the fact that besides some government-friendly NGOs dedicated to promoting familism, the ideology of the importance of families is strengthened even by some bottom-up civil organizations that campaign for a more inclusive family concept as a reaction to the government's idealization of nuclear, heterosexual, and marriage-based family formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approximately 32 nations currently use reservation of legislative seats for minority voices, whether by race, ethnicity, language, religion, or territory. Romania has among the most extensive and complicated arrangement of reserved seats, with 18 different ethnic minorities currently provided special parliamentary representation. This paper addresses two key political issues: how is it determined that there exists a valid ethnic minority deserving of recognition with a reserved seat? What are the political consequences from the broad allocation of reserved seats? The paper understands a reserved legislative seat as a distributive good over which rival claimants assert contested title. The state has incentive to avoid controversial choices although this is not always possible. Incumbent interests have incentive to restrict competitive entry without appearing to violate the principles of open inclusion. As seen through the Romanian case, the regime consequence from this dynamic tends to be clientele politics, in which minority organizations emerge segmented, dependent, and relatively powerless, yet simultaneously satisfied that they can guarantee by means of state subsidies the foundations for group identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The city of Łódź in central Poland has witnessed de-industrialisation and urban decay. Often tagged the Polish Manchester on account of its former prominence in textiles, the city has struggled to reinvigorate itself in the post-socialist period. Focusing on the post-1999 period, this paper examines how narratives of “Europeanisation” and “multiculturalism” have been promoted to legitimate current efforts to regenerate the city. It is argued that new moral geographies are being constructed, in part, through a selective reading and exploitation of the city’s past as well as through wider socio-economic processes, which have a detrimental impact on sections of the city’s population. The final part of the paper highlights how the dissonant heritage of the city offers possibilities for more inclusive “revitalisation.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The period between March 1990 and June 1993 represents the critical window for European Union (EU)-Baltic relations. During this time Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania laid the foundation for future EU membership. For its part, the European community made a commitment to include the three republics in the process of enlargement. This paper traces the beginnings of EU-Baltic cooperation and examines factors that led to growing political and economic convergence. Nordic membership in the EU, ex-Soviet troop withdrawal, and Russian parliamentary elections were instrumental in bring-ing both sides together on the road to enlargement, but collective guilt provided the underlying rationale. In this paper, the author argues that it is impossible to understand fully this process of convergence without taking into account the connotations and consequences of the "black trinity": the Munich pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and the Yalta agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]