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The foreign direct investment (FDI)-led development path of the East-Central European (ECE) countries has been queried most recently. Using mainly the evidence of Hungary and Poland the paper analyses one of the potential reasons of this strategic turn: the struggle between political elites. One elite was bound to the strong presence of multinational business and the institutions of the 'competition state'. Their positions were challenged by another political elite that allied mainly with local bourgeoisie. One main arena of conflicts is the economy where political elites try to widen their influence in order to gain financial support. New forms of rent-seeking and corruption became possible after the V4 accession to the European Union (EU) when the flow of financial aid increased. Aid was channelled to partisan firms in public procurement tenders that made legal corruption possible. Political and social control over this practice declined with the demise of classic program parties' role in politics and the raise of populist 'business firm' political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project "Monuments and Artworks in East Central Europe Research Infrastructure" exemplifies introducing methods and tools of digital humanities to art-historical problems in multilingual and culturally diverse milieu. East Central Europe is a region with historically changing borders and different national cultures of knowledge. For such a region, a proper transnational scientific infrastructure is vital for the adequate description and classification of art-historical monuments, and dynamic networks of actors and cultural phenomena. Drawing on our project experience, we argue that the model of knowledge created through the process of data modelling and setting standards for digital images can be seen as an interpretative and epistemological frame for research. This paper analyses the transnational integration of catalogued data into the infrastructure through a semantic data model. We tackle the question of implementation of multilingual external vocabularies and authority control in the database. The method of indexing photos in the context of the material turn is another crucial issue in the infrastructure. In addition, this paper underlines practical challenges of the project such as: involvement in an international network of collaborators, legal requirements, and copyright. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joining a series of analyses of effects of othering, orientalism, or coloniality in East Central Europe, the paper asks how long-term structural-ideological effects of global hierarchies, as reflected in post-colonial contexts by the term "coloniality of power," can be conceptualized for East Central Europe. In a case study of political polarization in post-socialist Hungary, it examines the effects of global integration, claiming that two dominant economic-political blocks formed along a division of vertical alliances related to integration with either Western or national capital. From those positions, they developed divergent political ideologies of development: modernization through Western integration, versus the protection of "national" wealth from Western capital and its local allies. While both propagated capitalist integration, they each needed to develop ideologies that appealed to electorates suffering the costs of integration. One framing of developmentalist emancipation promised Western modernity through rejection of popular, backward characteristics of the country, including nationalism. The other promised advancement in the global hierarchy through overcoming internal and external enemies of national development. These two, mutually reinforcing ideological positions, which I call"democratic antipopulism" and "antidemocratic populism," denied the contradiction between elites' and workers' interest and perpetuated existing global hierarchies. Within the wider debate over cross-contextual applications of the notion of "coloniality of power," and of emancipative efforts born from the "colonial wound," the paper emphasizes the significance of the structural conditions, positions and alliances within which experiences of global domination are born and mobilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hungary became host to various business services through relocations of these activities from other, higher cost locations, especially from Western Europe and through opening up new capacities. Locational advantages determine which countries are chosen as hosts to new or relocated service centres. For the case of Hungary, the analysis is carried out on the basis of eight detailed company case studies. The majority of these is vertical FDI (close to 100% of exportlsales ratio), and two companies represent a confluential case of vertical and horizontal (domestic market oriented) FDI, where sales to the domestic market are also important, though not dominating. The paper's main aim is to make an attempt at contributing to filling some gaps in the literature, in terms of analysing locational advantages for vertical FDI in services, specifically in business services. It shows that locational advantages, taken into consideration by vertical and horizontal FDI differ from each other to a great extent. It identifies the various elements of locational advantages connected to the different elements of investment motives, in terms of cost reduction, reducing costs of disintegration of production, reducing other costs, and motives arising from the confluence of vertical and horizontal FDI, and the paper relates these elements to the specificities of the business services sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Held on 6–7 October 2018, the Romanian referendum on the topic of gay marriage was the fourth referendum of this kind organised in East Central Europe over a five-year period. Because turnout was low in all of them and demands explanation, this paper: i) discusses the common characteristics of these Eastern European marriage referendums, contextualising the Romanian referendum; ii) overviews the history of the Romanian referendum, emphasising the legal, political, ideological and societal aspects; iii) quantitatively examines the electoral geography of the voting patterns; and iv) interprets qualitative data seeking to understand the voters' choices and why conservative mobilisation was so weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the moral element of the claims-making process in the case of solidarity movements. The question is how claims are made and articulated if the claimants do not seek direct benefits but refer to moral principles. The paper answers the research question by identifying the role of morality on three levels of two Hungarian solidarity movements' praxis: goals, forms and means of mobilization; hence, the issues, the forms and frames of solidarity movements' claims making. According to the data, organizations helping refugees stand closer to voluntary organizations of political altruism than to the politically motivated solidarity movements. The data also demonstrate that established solidarity movements use a medley of policy reasoning and morally justified action. New, emerging solidarity movements can rely on morality claims when they wish to supplement their lack of expertise or resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews different approaches to the study of both the state and civil society in post-communist East Central Europe and questions the predominant view in the literature that civil society in the region is weak. Existing research has focused on the one hand, on the elitist character of the state and the growing strength of the central executive within government, and on the other hand, on the low levels of grassroots involvement in interest groups and civic associations. Drawing on data from two different research projects on Hungary, one on the state, the other on interest group politics, the paper suggests there is evidence of more effective interest representation and more dynamic inter-relations between state and society than is usually assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary cities in East Central Europe (ECE) represent a hybrid type of urban development which is still generally considered to be a special case and is only exceptionally referred to in the recently intensified debate over the European city. Our paper argues that such exclusion is short-sighted because ECE cities face structural problems similar to those of their Western pendants. Therefore, the contextual frame of urban research needs to be widened and can no longer be restricted to post-socialist transition. In this regard, one of the main challenges for future urban development will be the consequences of demographic change. Ageing, new patterns of fertility behaviour and more diversified household structures in line with the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) will have significant implications for urban structures and housing markets, as already known for Western Europe. The purpose of this paper is to work out new questions and hypotheses for future urban research with special respect to Polish and Czech cities. Besides West European experience, recent developments in eastern Germany are taken as a frame of reference, assuming that this specific transition case may, in many respects, be regarded as a forerunner for similar developments in its neighbouring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The radical right party family is the fastest growing party family in Europe. Initial research centered on East Central Europe has shown that radical right parties receive higher levels of support in reaction to the success of parties that support ethnic minorities. However, the strength of radical right parties can vary considerably within a country. This paper breaks new ground by investigating the subnational factors in ethnically diverse East Central European countries that contribute to the vote share that a radical right party receives within a community. We test hypotheses drawn from the literature on ethnic competition, economic deprivation, and institutional constraints using an original dataset to explore subnational variation in support for radical right parties in national elections since 2000 in Bulgaria, Romania, and Slovakia. Our research yields two main findings about countries with politically mobilized ethnic minority communities: First, radical right support is lower in ethnically diverse subnational units, and second, radical right support increases after ethnic minority parties have been in government in subnational units which experienced economic decline relative to other subnational units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common popular and scholarly opinion of Islamophobia in the so-called 'Visegrád Four' or 'V4' (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) sees it as caused by circumstances unique to Eastern Europe. Specifically to blame, it is alleged, is a distinctive local history of intolerance, especially antisemitism, and the fact that under socialism these countries were exempt from the post-war soul-searching that took place in Western Europe. Kalmar's paper, instead, decentres Islamophobia in the V4 by considering it less as a limited regional phenomenon, and more in terms of how it is linked to Islamophobia in other European Union member states and the United States. As elsewhere, foremost among the conditions that encourage Islamophobia in the V4 is the alienation of certain publics on the periphery, which is an effect of global neoliberal policies. These have generated, along with Islamism and Islamophobia, a reinvented, essentializing discourse of difference between Eastern and Western Europe. In spite of that alleged difference, however, Islamophobic populism in the V4 is not just a regional threat to liberal democracy, but targets all of the European Union and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of transformation in East Central Europe have exerted a significant influence on both demographic processes and structures. In this paper a description of some dynamic changes in the scope of population which have taken place since 1990 is presented. However, the main objective of it is an analysis of natural movement of population of East Central Europe. The author focused mainly on fluctuations of birth and death rates as well as marriage and divorce rates. The research period for this paper ends in 2011. The author analyzed statistic data derived from some national censuses which were held in chosen countries of the above-mentioned region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Industrielle Beziehungen is the property of Rainer Hampp Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Among several groups vulnerable to discrimination in 21st century Europe, Roma loom large because the poorer, traditionally-minded elements continue to resist integration and remain on the margins of society. Most of the people involved have become EU citizens as a result of recent accession by East Central European countries where marginalisation has been tolerated, with varying degrees of discrimination, ever since the 19th century abolition of feudalism. In the interest of a more inclusive society, Roma are now being encouraged to strive for living standards comparable with those enjoyed by the mainstream population. This paper concentrates on Romania, which has one of the largest Roma communities in Europe. We profile the situation with some reference to regional geographies and previous policy history. We examine the key concepts relevant to marginality, arguing for an element of self-exclusion, because while many Roma elements have been successfully assimilated over the years, a large residual element insists on preserving elements of 'identity', implying separation from the mainstream in terms of the modernising ethos and the rule of law. The main thrust of the paper rests with a comprehensive programme to improve the condition of the Roma community as a major element among a number of other factors which are working towards the same objective. We give particular attention to the education programme that is now making significant progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study intends to identify those levels of public sphere at which the public choice seems to be optimal, according to the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, and depending on the scale of public works investments and the historical period, legal context. 20th century Transylvania -- with an area that could comprise in it twice the Belgium's and one whole Netherlands -- being part consecutively of Austria-Hungary, Romania, Hungary (its Northern part) and again Romania (since 1947 People's Republic of Romania) is a good terrain to analyze in the long term the specificities of public administration, public-private investments and the efficiency of public works in different time periods on local, regional and country level, continuing with the comparison of cross-border, trans- and international level public works based on public procurement. The durability and warrant of final product as public goods are also an actual topic, mainly because most of these public goods and historic public buildings approach their lifetime limits and need urgent restoration, nowadays their renovation frequently being financed by the local and state authorities with funds from the European Union's Cohesion or Regional Development Funds. According to a classic Romanian public law and accountability law principle (local-regional) cooperatives had certain facilities in being involved in implementing public works on (local-regional) level without breach in the general law of competition. Based on the local roots of any cooperative and their ideal functioning according to universal principles (democratic structure, delegation of votes, autonomy inside a network or a hierarchical structure with their own supervising and coordinating non-lucrative offices, together with proper financial centers), it was a general rule and many parts in the world it still works as such, except for the neo capitalist oriented former East-Central Europe, where all the preexisting cooperative structures were dismantled and there are no countervailing powers or checks and balances on this market of public works. The historical examples (in a comparative Romanian-Hungarian or Transylvanian Saxon) will surely help in understanding the logic of public procurement policies and investments, works and the efficiency of realizing/ creating public goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, eight formerly communist East Central European states acceded to the European Union, an event which was celebrated as the final overcoming of the post-war division of Europe into East and West and the ‘return to Europe’ of those states which had been ‘kidnapped’ by the Soviet Union. To mark the accession, an Austrian film production company commissioned five East Central European directors to make short documentary films under the collective title Über die Grenze: Fünf Ansichten von Nachbarn (Across the Border: Five Views From Neighbours). Drawing on geopolitical analysis of the dichotomy of Europe and Eastern Europe which underpinned the European Union enlargement discourse, this paper examines the Czech episode České Velenice Evropské as a film which explores the ways in which borders have been conceptualized and identities (re)framed in the context of European Union enlargement. At the moment when the Central European states’ symbolic ‘return to Europe’ is being realized, director Jan Gogola reflects on the meaning of European Union accession for Central Europeans, on shifting borders and their implications for the construction and understanding of identities of self and other, and on the dynamics of openness and closure in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The phenomenon of transitional justice appears when authoritarian regimes transform into democracies—a topic that has been studied for many years. One main focus has been the question of the responsibility of the former ruling elite and their subordinates, and in particular, criminal responsibility. After the collapse of communism in Europe, secret police informers were perceived as sharing responsibility, alongside the regime's functionaries. The first steps toward bringing them to justice were taken in March 1990 in Czechoslovakia. The process was called "lustration," harking back to an ancient tradition of cleansing newborns of evil. In the jargon of the Czechoslovak security apparatus, "lustrace" meant checking an individual's secret police records. The best known example of lustration took place in Germany, but the basic idea was carried out in all post-communist Central European countries. This kind of transitional justice was not associated with criminal responsibility, and—except in Poland—the courts were not involved in lustration, which was conceived of as a purely administrative procedure. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, only the Baltic states adopted lustration legislation; in other post-Soviet states, such initiatives failed. A similar situation emerged when Yugoslavia disintegrated, where the ethnic wars overshadowed society's memories of communist wrongdoing. Lustration was unique to post-communist states and was not seen in any other transitional context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the authority enjoyed by noblewomen and female rulers in medieval Europe varied considerably according to time and place, a constant factor was that, among women, widows had the broadest latitude to act independently. The social acceptance of noblewomen's authority and leading role is well documented in charters, which reveal their influence and legal agency in several contexts – as witnesses, consent givers, seal owners and issuers of their own documents. This paper examines the evidence for the legal and social position and power of widowed female rulers in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Silesia. It argues that, while the parameters of charter production by Silesian duchesses did not change significantly during this period, the acceptance of the value of documents issued by widowed duchesses evolved considerably in favour of a growing authority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Hiperboreea is the property of Balkan History Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this research I explore the effect of religious denomination and belonging on political participation in former communist countries of East Central Europe after the fall of communism. In the early 1990s, mostly as a response to forced secularization during communism, authors heralded a massive religious revival in the countries formerly belonging to the Eastern Bloc. In this paper I show that the re-discovery of God and church was not equally popular in all countries. Moreover, I explore the links between religious participation and political participation and I find no uniform transnational effect of denomination. Rather, the Eurobarometer survey data from the early 1990s suggests that the ways in which religious believing and belonging influence political participation at the beginning of democratization is context driven. Indeed, one of the strengths of this paper resides in my attempt to capture the religious context in post-communist Europe shortly after its collapse. I thus contribute to a better understanding of how religious and political involvement are intertwined during early transition in East Central Europe. In the conclusion, I advocate the need for adequately taking context into consideration, especially given its dynamic and multi-faceted nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study summarizes the information about Bohemia (and East Central Europe in general) that is given by the Western Frankish chronicles of the 10th and first half of the 11th centuries. These contributions were mostly omitted or refused by general majority of the Czech historiography. Recent changes of attitude to the relevance of these sources could bring a new view on these sources. The information about Bohemia contained in these sources could also help us to expose a possible relations and stereotypes about our region in Western Europe in the 10th and 11th century.

During the first half of August 1920, it was a huge diplomatic battle where Romania had an important part, maybe a decisive one. The dispute was between a French plan that intended to set up a Polish-Romanian-Hungarian alliance with an apparent Anti-Bolshevik disposition, essential for France's interests in that moment, and a Czech plan for an Anti-Hungarian alliance of all the neighbors of Hungary. For the Romanian leaders both political designs were somehow unsatisfactory. Which proposal was picked up by Romania? And especially why? Did Romania forward its own scenario for regional cooperation in East-Central Europe? Did the Romanian proposal succeed? Which were the bases of the Little Entente? Why regional cooperation had so many misfortunes in the first inter-war years? The responses for these questions represent the substance of our text, the core of our paper, even if some answers imply more questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary & Nonprofit Organizations is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The economic development of East Central Europe within the last one and a half century can be simply divided into different sessions. Each session has had its own social, political system, which has essentially determined the spatial distribution of economy and the degree of regional disparities in terms of level of economic development. In this paper the five sessions of economic history of East Central Europe are analyzed and compared. The sessions are as follows: 1) Preindustrial interval before the mid-nineteenth century; 2) The age of modernisation and industrialisation before the First World War; 3) The age of integration and disintegration during the inter-war period; 4) The age of emergence and decay of state socialism in the second half of twentieth century; 5) The age of transition with reorientation and reintegration after the early 1990es. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes such as declining and low-level birth rates, ageing, changing household compositions and sizes, as well as growing diversity in households, residents and migration have an increasing imprint on almost every aspect of urban development in Poland and the Czech Republic. This is especially true for the housing market, neighbourhood structures and the demand for technical infrastructure, certain social services and amenities. Inner cities are particularly affected by these changes. Most recently, they have been shifting from areas of long-term decline and ageing to places of repopulation, rejuvenation and increasing housing mobility - processes that only partly find their representation in official statistics and consequently in recent research. The paper analyses processes and patterns of sociodemographic change in East Central European inner cities, using the Polish and Czech second-order cities of Łódź and Brno as examples. It looks at quantitative and qualitative evidence using a mixed-method approach and reflecting empirical findings with the perceptions and priorities of urban practitioners. It argues, among other things, that inner cities in East Central Europe currently face a juxtaposition of persistencies (such as decline and ageing) and changes (such as repopulation and diversification) that lead to a complex pattern of sociodemographic 'de-mixing' and 're-mixing'. For the practice of urban regeneration, such evolving processes urge planners to re-think previous agendas and strategies for inner-city development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of nonprofit organizations—the organizational infrastructure of civil society—in East Central Europe, from one important respect: by placing them in the context of the comparative historical sociology of the region's widespread informality. This involves two steps: (1) summarizing an argument about the role of informality in East Central European capitalism today in order to (2) outline its implications for the study of post-state-socialist nonprofits. Most of the empirical examples come from Hungary. These examples serve illustrative purposes and are intended as devices to provoke new analysis. They are meant to open, rather than close, discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the case of the interwar Yugoslav Sokol (Sokol Kraljevine Jugoslavije), this article examines the complex relationship between the discourses of organic nationhood and political socialization in what was the largest voluntary association in the country. While Sokol typically projected a vision of itself as an apolitical entity--as it claimed to represent the organic national body--this article will explore the dynamics, as well as contradictions, between such discourses and the socio-political reality they aimed to describe and eventually alter in their pursuit of improving the 'national body.' In conversation with scholarship on the conceptual history of modern East Central European nationalisms, including the social history of ideas and movements and political socialization more specifically, this article provides insight into the contextual, conceptual history of nationhood by focusing on selected thinkers engaged in Sokol, against the backdrop of particular mass practices and modes of political socialization in the organization. The tension between the involvement of the masses in the allegedly apolitical formations and the reality of subjecting them to political socialization en masse provides the central axis around which the argument is organized. The article concludes that their concept of nationhood was intimately intertwined with that of democracy and simultaneously posited against (party) politics and statism. Moreover, it demonstrates that Sokol was rooted in notions of civilizational hierarchies and directly linked to producing modern political subjects for the new Yugoslav state by means of the gymnastic and educational practices they promoted and conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on introducing spaces of social exclusion in East Central Europe and interpreting spatial processes of the area within this framework. In order to interpret the multidimensional characteristics of social exclusion, domains and dimensions of the phenomenon are represented while territorial aspects of exclusion are illustrated by the generalization of spatial patterns. Research questions touch upon that what kind of spatial dimensions differentiate territorial aspects of social exclusion in East Central Europe, and what relationships can be discovered between them and other social characteristics. Furthermore, the paper summarize the changes in territorial patterns of social exclusion took place during the 2000s in East Central Europe.

Joining a series of analyses of effects of othering, orientalism, or coloniality in East Central Europe, the paper asks how long-term structural-ideological effects of global hierarchies, as reflected in post-colonial contexts by the term “coloniality of power,” can be conceptualized for East Central Europe. In a case study of political polarization in post-socialist Hungary,it examines the effects of global integration, claiming that two dominant economic-political blocks formed along a division of vertical alliances related to integration with either Western or national capital. From those positions, they developed divergent political ideologies of development: modernization through Western integration, versus the protection of “national” wealth from Western capital and its local allies. While both propagated capitalist integration, they each needed to develop ideologies that appealed to electorates suffering the costs of integration. One framing of developmentalist emancipation promised Western modernity through rejection of popular, backward characteristics of the country, including nationalism. The other promised advancement in the global hierarchy through overcoming internal and external enemies of national development. These two, mutually reinforcing ideological positions, which I call“democratic antipopulism” and “antidemocratic populism,” denied the contradiction between elites’ and workers’ interest and perpetuated existing global hierarchies. Within the wider debate over cross-contextual applications of the notion of “coloniality of power,” and of emancipative efforts born from the “colonial wound,” the paper emphasizes the significance of the structural conditions, positions and alliances within which experiences of global domination are born and mobilized.

This paper presents an attempt to model water-level fluctuations in a lake based on artificial neural networks. The subject of research was the water level in Lake Drwęckie over the period 1980-2012. For modelling purposes, meteorological data from the weather station in Olsztyn were used. As a result of the research conducted, the model M_Meteo_Lag_3 was identified as the most accurate. This artificial neural network model has seven input neurons, four neurons in the hidden layer and one neuron in the output layer. As explanatory variables meteorological parameters (minimal, maximal and mean temperature, and humidity) and values of dependent variables from three earlier months were implemented. The paper claims that artificial neural networks performed well in terms of modelling the analysed phenomenon. In most cases (55%) the modelled value differed from the real value by an average of 7.25 cm. Only in two cases did a meaningful error occur, of 33 and 38 cm.

The war in Ukraine has accelerated Europe's decoupling from Russia in the energy sphere. Nuclear energy is no exception. Most East Central European countries traditionally reliant on Russian nuclear technologies and services are diversifying away from Rosatom to seek alternative vendors. This paper analyzes the difficulties and risks associated with the decoupling process. Despite a range of apparently available options, East Central European countries pursuing decoupling may struggle to find both technically competent and (geo)politically viable nuclear energy vendors to fulfill their new-build, maintenance, and fuel supply needs – a concerning scenario given the importance of nuclear energy to the energy security and decarbonization agenda of the region and wider Europe. Avoiding this scenario requires efforts from all actors. First, Western vendors must improve their capacity to deliver viable reactor designs as well as competitive fuel and maintenance services to the region's existing reactors. Second, regional nuclear industry stakeholders must further develop local expertise and equipment manufacturing capacity while exploring non-Western vendor options. Last but not least, local and international political actors must reduce their interference in the technical and commercial process of vendor selection so as not to exclude the most competent suppliers based on their country of origin. • Nuclear-reliant East Central European states are decoupling from Rosatom services. • As favored alternatives, U.S. and French reactor vendors lack key technical capacity. • China has reactor design, equipment, and fuel solutions but is barred by geopolitics. • Stagnation of the regional nuclear sector would harm energy security, decarbonization. • The solution for local actors lies in local capacity and pragmatic vendor selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Kresy' [ borderlands/outskirts ] is a sentimental term used by Poles to denote the lands of today's Western Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. The Polish rule in that region has rarely been discussed in terms of colonialism. In this article, I employ the framework of postcolonial theory within the context of Polish rule in 'Kresy'. The article juxtaposes anthropologist Józef Obrębski's ethnographic writings about Polesia region (a part of 'Kresy' that was polonised in the most extreme manner) with Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – a Polish-British author born and raised in 'Kresy', that during his time was subjugated by Russian Empire. The figure of Conrad, whose ambivalent relationship with colonialism was pointed out by many postcolonial scholars starting with Chinua Achebe, becomes a point of departure to think about what Maria Janion describes as 'the paradoxical Polish postcolonial mentality': the ambivalence of being a colonised coloniser. The article is an attempt of contribution to the ongoing debate about identity and dependence in the East Central Europe region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to analyse several concepts that expressed different perceptions about the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The article proves that the choice of terminology is crucial in the discussion of the political and cultural identity of the region. The starting point is the Enlightenment concept of Eastern Europe, which suggested the backwardness and secondary status of this region. This concept is confronted with the concept of Slavophilism, inspired by Romanticism. The article argues that this idea, which initially expressed the ambitions of the region's independence, later became an instrument of Russian imperialism. In the concept of Central Europe, as the article proves, there is a certain ambiguity: on the one hand, it contains elements of German liberal imperialism, a special role, especially economic, played by Germany in this region. On the other hand, intellectuals from this region gave the concept of Central Europe an idealized meaning that still inspires many authors writing about the region. Finally, the author analyses the concept of and East Central Europe, which is most justified by academic knowledge, but does not inspire political imagination to such an extent. In conclusion, the article refers to the relevance of some of these concepts and their interpretative potential, which depends on the current political situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including forced migration in Eastern and Central Europe; multiethnic character of the region, on labor migration and Timothy Snyder's book "Bloodlands" on migration history.

Focusing on the relationship between the access of political parties to direct public funding and electoral support for anti-political-establishment (e.g. populist, extremist) parties (APEp), this article tries to fill an important gap in the literature. Whereas previous contributions, mostly focused on the United States or established democracies in Western Europe, have presented contradictory findings, our study of 19 new democracies in East Central Europe clearly shows that the absence of state subsidies for political parties boosts support for those with an anti-political-establishment character. More importantly, and taking into account the minimum legal payout threshold that grants parties access to public subsidies, our results show that the more restrictive the regulations and the greater the difficulties faced by parties in obtaining state help, the higher the support for APEp. Our findings have obvious implications for the development of post-Communist party systems and the future of legislative (party funding) reform in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late nineteenth century, cities from the Austro-Hungarian, Prussian and Russian Empires gained new importance and developed ambitions to become regional and/or national centres. City museums became key vehicles with which to advance this project. Before 1918, modern urbanism was tightly interwoven with projects of nation building. After the First World War, and within the context of newly independent states, this interdependence between urbanism and nationalism was further enhanced as cities served as national capitals and important representatives of the new state. Providing case studies of Warsaw, Prague, Zagreb, Gdańsk (Danzig), and Gdynia, this special issue examines the modernising role of city museums in multi-ethnic East Central Europe, from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. It provides important insights into the interplay of modernisation, urbanism, and nationalism, as well as the negotiation of community and identity at various levels. Urban heritage is often regarded as a product of recent postmodern economic and societal changes. Exploring the history of these city museums shows that the uses of the urban past, and the relevance to urban history in the present, have longer historical trajectories. This issue aims to provide the incentive for further, synchronically and diachronically comparative and complementary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we study differences between generations in the degree to which long-term and short-term factors affect party preferences in established and consolidating European democracies. Scholarly literature has shown that younger cohorts in Western Europe are less likely to be guided by social class, religion and left/right than older cohorts. Little is known, however, about the extent to which such differences exist for the effects of short-term factors. Similarly, inter-generational differences in the effects of long- and short-term factors in post-communist countries have remained largely unexplored. Based on the European Election Study 2009, we show differences between generations that are compatible with de-alignment of younger generations along traditional cleavages. Yet, we also see an increased importance of attitudes towards immigration among the younger generations, which could signal a form of re-alignment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper assesses the inequalities of the production of geographical knowledge mainly against the backdrop of the East–West relations, which still dominate Hungarian practice. However, it also offers examples of Anglo-American hegemony making itself felt more acutely; or of Hungarian geographers, at the receiving end of these dimensions of hegemony, producing hegemony in a different system of relations. Investigating the political economic power relations underlying this hegemony and the social agents involved in `hegemony-producing'' helps establish potential strategies of putting an end to the inequalities of academic knowledge production. Some possibilities of these strategies are outlined. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Keywords: East Central Europe; early modern period; Riga; Vilnius; Prague; coexistence; Counter-Reformation EN East Central Europe early modern period Riga Vilnius Prague coexistence Counter-Reformation 1409 1414 6 10/12/21 20211101 NES 211101 O'Connor, Kevin C. (2019). The subtitle of Central Europe is a bit misleading, as the overwhelming focus of the book involves Bohemia and Moravia, with Prague itself the subject of a number of chapters. East Central Europe, early modern period, Riga, Vilnius, Prague, coexistence, Counter-Reformation As Kevin O'Connor rightly observes, cities such as Riga rarely figure in larger, sweeping accounts of Europe despite their role in such central events as the Northern Crusades and the Hussite Wars. [Extracted from the article]

The article explores how oral history and memory studies have been used in East Central Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It focuses particularly on the question of whether Eastern European scholars only reproduce what was invented in the West, or whether they advance their original concepts and ideas. Both disciplines have been involved in reassessing the history of communism and the communist version of history itself and both contributed to revealing memoires obscured by the communist regime, even if the role of oral history may be considered as pivotal in this process. Although oral history had been practiced in the region at least since the 1970s, it was introduced as a new discipline according to the Western criteria after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Memory studies and their most successful concept, the “lieux de mémoire”, were implemented into to the region later and the promoters of the concept were predominantly Western scholars. Drawing on the uses of the term “historical consciousness” in Czech and Polish research, the article argues that various strategies associated with the “return to Europe” can be found in the region when promoting native traditions and equalizing them with the Western ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the East Central European parties have already reached an early stage of maturation as a partial consolidation of a party system. In this respect the case of the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) is characteristic, since this party has gone through two drastic changes, first after an electoral defeat in 1990 and second after a landslide victory in 1994. The change by defeat was easier than the change by success, but against all the difficulties of economic crisis management the HSP has consolidated its social position and institutions, yet still remains weak as a programme party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tests two propositions derived from European transitions to democracy on three countries in East Central Europe: Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. On balance, the paper finds that new party systems seem to be developing differently in postcommunist regimes than they did in Southern and Western Europe. First, the political cleavages of the pre-authoritarian period that might have re-emerged after an interruption in democratic rule did not simply 'unfreeze' after the demise of communism. Second, the type of transition — whether by reform or ruptura — does not predict how ex-regime parties fared initially in East Central Europe. These findings suggest that, at least initially, the pre-authoritarian period and transition mode are likely to be less influential in shaping party systems than is the legacy of the communist authoritarian period. They also highlight the particularly destructive nature of communist rule in East Central Europe, in that it may have altered the bases of social and political life to a greater extent than did other types of authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the phenomenon of Jihadist foreign terrorist fighters from the perspective of East Central European countries. Over the past decade, the term ‘foreign terrorist fighter’ has become established in scholarly literature, international law and the popular consciousness. Today, Jihadist foreign terrorist fighters are closely watched globally for the security threat they pose. Although the greatest danger in Europe is seen to be to nations in the west, several cases in East Central Europe – involving terrorists travelling through the region and attempting to radicalise local jihadists – have led Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to adopt important legislation to eliminate this threat.

In this article, we formulate a theoretical framework that examines the "internal" organizational characteristics of ethnic minority political parties, the characteristics of the ethnic minority group they purport to represent, and the external environment that these parties face, to explain the political success of these parties. As an empirical plausibility probe of this framework, we use data from 1991 to 2016 for 41 ethnic minority parties across 12 countries and 89 national legislative elections. Using a logistic regression analysis, our findings suggest that party organizational capability is most associated with ethnic minority party success in postcommunist politics when compared to other "supply" and "structure of opportunity" variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pandemic of Covid-19 has been an unprecedented challenge to the majority of countries in the world. This article examines whether COVID-19 has strengthened or weakened the previously chosen path of development in four countries in Central and Eastern Europe - Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, and Moldova. The selected countries represent different transformation paths taken after the collapse of communism and allow for showing various reactions of governments to the Covid- 19 crisis. Therefore, we analyze the pandemic's effect on three major components of the developmental process - political, social, and economic and check whether COVID-19 has caused any changes in these three spheres. Also, we scrutinized the scope of the measures implemented by governments and their impact on their development paths. We found that while in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the liberal democracy model has not been questioned, in Hungary, the earlier tendencies of backsliding from democracy have deepened. In the countries which are in the process of democracy-building - Moldova and Ukraine - the pandemic has not significantly affected the intensity of violating its principles, as they are still weakly established. Thus, the analysis of the first wave of the Covid -19 pandemic showed that it was not a catalyst for the change but tended to deepen and strengthen trends that existed before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article belongs to the special cluster, "Politics and Current Demographic Challenges in Central and Eastern Europe," guest-edited by Tsveta Petrova and Tomasz Inglot. We explore housing finance and policy in East Central Europe to understand the connection between housing, in particular independent household formation, and the demographic crisis. The combination of high debt-free homeownership rates with illiquid housing finance and limited rental markets produces conditions where housing restricts independent household formation and likely has a restrictive effect on fertility. We first assess the housing regime type in East Central Europe and demonstrate that it closely corresponds to the "difficult housing regime" in Southern Europe, which has well-established negative effects on independent household formation and fertility. Then we present a detailed case study of Hungary, which is a country with very low fertility rates and substantial changes in housing finance and policy over time. In particular, the issue was recently politicized through housing policies centered on household formation to counter the demographic crisis. We present a detailed analysis of policies related to access to housing for young adults through increased access to markets or state housing support schemes. These policies attempted to reduce dependence on families, but after the crisis, we find that these policies reinforce, rather than challenge, dependence on families for housing solutions, thereby limiting independent household formation. While these policies may serve a rhetorical role demonstrating a state response to the demographic crisis, we claim that their impact on fertility can be at most minimal because of stringent restrictions in access that concentrates on upper-middle-income households and limited financial commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If historians now recognize that the Habsburg Monarchy was developing into a strong, cohesive state in the decades before the First World War, they have yet to fully examine contemporaneous European debates about Austria's legitimacy and place in the future world order. As the intertwined fields of law and social science began during this period to elaborate a binary distinction between "modern" nation-states and "archaic" multinational "empires," Austria, like other composite monarchies, found itself searching for a legally and scientifically valid justification for its continued existence. This article argues that Austrian sociology provided such a justification and was used to articulate a defense of the Habsburg Monarchy and other supposedly "abnormal" multinational states. While the birth of the social sciences is typically associated with Germany and France, a turn to sociology also occurred in the late Habsburg Monarchy, spurred by legal scholars who feared that the increasingly hegemonic idea of nation-based sovereignty threatened the stability of the pluralistic Austrian state. Proponents of the "sociological idea of the state," notably the sociologist, politician, and later president of Czechoslovakia Tomáš Masaryk and the Polish-Jewish sociologist and jurist Ludwig Gumplowicz, challenged the concept of statehood advanced by mainstream Western European legal philosophy and called for a reform of Austria's law and political science curriculum. I reveal how, more than a century before the "imperial turn," Habsburg actors came to reject the emerging scholarly distinction between "nations" and "empires" and fought, with considerable success, to institutionalize an alternative to nationalist social scientific discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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