Civil Society and Ethnic Difference in East-Central Europe and the Baltic Countries

1998 ◽  
pp. 16-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
The Baltic

Business Risk from Governmental Corruption in East Central Europe, the Baltic Countries, and Russia

2014 ◽  
pp. 119-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duane Windsor
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Geographic Region ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Business Risk ◽  
Framework Analysis ◽  
Regional Competitiveness ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
The Baltic

This chapter places in a comparative, cross-country framework analysis of selected secondary information about business risk from governmental corruption in the region comprised of East Central Europe (including the Balkans), the Baltic Countries, and Russia. The region is an important setting for understanding corruption and anticorruption reform. What defines this geographic region is that all the countries are transitioning from monopoly-party rule and typically Soviet economic and political domination. Globalization is drawing the region into world economic integration through increasing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Key information from several sources provides an analytically consistent picture. Corruption increases business risk for multinational and domestic enterprises. Corruption deters inward FDI, undermines corporate integrity, and reduces country and regional competitiveness. The chapter provides information and examples about corruption in 21 political entities. These entities range from reasonably clean to endemic corruption, with varying patterns of corruption and anticorruption reform effectiveness. The chapter discusses possible solutions and recommendations and proposes future research directions.

scholarly journals National Innovation System Dynamics in East Central Europe, the Baltic Countries, and Russia

2014 ◽  
pp. 32-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teemu Makkonen
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Innovation Systems ◽  
National Innovation Systems ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
Innovative Capabilities ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
The Baltic

In this chapter, the structure and dynamics of national innovation systems are explored to produce a comprehensive picture of the current, as well as the past, performance of the countries of East Central Europe, the Baltic countries, and Russia vis-à-vis their competiveness and innovative capabilities. The results highlight the importance of political and economic freedom, science, and education for promoting innovation. According to the principal component analyses, the best performing countries of the East Central Europe and the Baltic countries, in terms of their national innovation systems, have developed rapidly after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc and compare well in global rankings of innovative capabilities and competitiveness with standings above the countries of Latin America and South-East Asia. The countries under closer examination here that are members of the EU seem to be in a better position compared to the non-EU member countries. Thus, most of the countries in East Central Europe and the Baltic countries have been able to catch up with the global leaders during the analysed time period (1992–2008). However, this kind of development is yet to manifest in Russia.

Business Risk from Governmental Corruption in East Central Europe, the Baltic Countries, and Russia

2015 ◽  
pp. 869-890
Author(s):  
Duane Windsor
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Geographic Region ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Business Risk ◽  
Framework Analysis ◽  
Regional Competitiveness ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
The Baltic

This chapter places in a comparative, cross-country framework analysis of selected secondary information about business risk from governmental corruption in the region comprised of East Central Europe (including the Balkans), the Baltic Countries, and Russia. The region is an important setting for understanding corruption and anticorruption reform. What defines this geographic region is that all the countries are transitioning from monopoly-party rule and typically Soviet economic and political domination. Globalization is drawing the region into world economic integration through increasing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Key information from several sources provides an analytically consistent picture. Corruption increases business risk for multinational and domestic enterprises. Corruption deters inward FDI, undermines corporate integrity, and reduces country and regional competitiveness. The chapter provides information and examples about corruption in 21 political entities. These entities range from reasonably clean to endemic corruption, with varying patterns of corruption and anticorruption reform effectiveness. The chapter discusses possible solutions and recommendations and proposes future research directions.

Fragmentation in East Central Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Richter
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The First World War ◽  
New States ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
First World

The First World War led to a radical reshaping of Europe’s political borders like hardly any previous event. Nowhere was this transformation more profound than in East Central Europe, where the collapse of imperial rule led to the emergence of a series of new states. New borders intersected centuries-old networks of commercial, cultural, and social exchange. The new states had to face the challenges posed by territorial fragmentation and at the same time establish durable state structures within an international order that viewed them at best as weak and at worst as provisional entities that would sooner or later be reintegrated into their larger neighbours’ territory. Fragmentation in East Central Europe challenges the traditional view that the emergence of these states was the product of a radical rupture that naturally led from defunct empires to nation states. Using the example of Poland and the Baltic States, it retraces the roots of the interwar states of East Central Europe, of their policies, economic developments, and of their conflicts back to deep in the First World War. At the same time, it shows that these states learned to harness the dynamics caused by territorial fragmentation, thus forever changing our understanding of what modern states can do.

Anti-Political or Just Anti-Communist? Varieties of Dissidence in East-Central Europe and Their Implications for the Development of Political Society

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Renwick
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Third

Several authors argue that the heritage of dissident ideas and activity in East-Central Europe has hindered the development of post-communist political society. But this proposition has not been subject to systematic analysis. This article focuses on one part of that proposition: whether dissident ideas corresponded to the features of “ethical civil society” that some argue harm political society. Concentrating on Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, it differentiates eight varieties of dissident thought. It then assesses the relation of the three most important varieties to ethical civil society, finding that one variety resembled ethical civil society very closely, another only marginally, and the third not at all. It finally draws out implications for the study of political society in the region.

scholarly journals DECLINING SYSTEMIC TRUST IN THE POLITICAL ELITE IN THE EU’S NEW MEMBER STATES: THE DIVERGENCE BETWEEN EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE BALTIC STATES

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila Ágh
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Baltic States ◽  
Member States ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
New Member States ◽  
Systemic Trust ◽  
The Baltic

In the last decade there has been a process of rolling-back Europeanization efforts in the EU’s new member states (NMS), a process intensified by the global crisis. This de-Europeanization and de-democratization process in the NMS has become a significant part of a more general polycrisis in the EU. The backslide of democracy in the NMS as a topical issue has usually been analysed in terms of macro-politics, formal-legal state institutions, party systems, and macroeconomics. The most significant decline of democratization, however, is evident in the public’s decreasing participation in politics and in the eroding trust. This decline in systemic trust in political elites in the NMS has been largely neglected by analysts. Therefore, this paper concentrates on this relatively overlooked dimension of declining trust and social capital in the NMS. This analysis employs the concepts of governance, trust, and social capital to balance the usual formalistic top-down approach with a bottom-up approach that better illustrates the divergence between East-Central Europe and the Baltic states’ sub-regional development.

The Rhetoric of War and the Reshaping of Civil Society in North Macedonia

Slavic Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-364
Author(s):  
Vasiliki Neofotistos
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Direct Connection ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Republic Of Macedonia ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Europe Today

In this article, I explore recent efforts to “de-Sorosize” the Republic of Macedonia, arguing that they reveal an obsession in Macedonia—and more broadly in east central Europe—with defending ethnonational interests against assumed interlopers. New, self-proclaimed patriotic associations have mobilized ideas of combined external and internal threats to national existence as though there were a war frontier. This imagined war frontier marks the dividing line between belligerent nationalists, who claim that Macedonian sovereignty and national identity are under threat of extinction, and the Macedonian center-left and liberal (moderate and left-leaning) NGOs, which tend to promote greater inclusiveness in society, are assumed to side with “the Albanians,” and to have a direct connection to George Soros. The case study of Macedonia highlights the outright public rejection of liberal ideals and the key role that populist, militant sensibilities play in the formation of civil society groups in Europe today.

The Earthquake, Civil Society, and Political Change in Turkey: Assessment and Comparison with Eastern Europe

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 761-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kubicek
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
The State ◽  
Positive Experience ◽  
Political Liberalization ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central

Civil society has been widely celebrated as instrumental in democratization, but in some countries it remains poorly developed. Such was the case in Turkey, but many hoped that the 1999 earthquakes would lead to an invigoration of civil society and subsequent political liberalization. Examining this claim shows that Turkish civil society has not been able to sustain the energy it enjoyed immediately after the earthquake because of factors within civil society itself and the attitude of the state. This relative failure is then contrasted with the more positive experience of civil society in East-Central Europe. The comparisons reveal some limits to the utility of a civil society approach to democratization. I conclude by assessing the ability of other actors and factors to fashion political reform in Turkey today.

Federalism in the Baltic: Interpretations of Self-Determination and Sovereignty in Estonia in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 237-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaarel Piirimäe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Right

The objective of this article is to challenge the widespread interpretation of interwar East Central Europe as a hotbed of excessive nationalism, by establishing a longue durée of federalist thinking in Estonia in the first half of the twentieth century. By focusing on personal continuities from the founding years of the Estonian Republic into the 1940s, it is possible to detect a remarkable persistence of ‘idealist’ visions about intra and interstate federalism that had been internalized by Estonian statesmen before and during the First World War and earlier. Apart from establishing the continuity of federalist thought the article analyzes the political discourse in which the concept of national self-determination was picked up. The primary framework for Estonian thinkers on nationality was the debate that developed within the all-Russian socialist movement in the context of the nationality problems of the multinational Western provinces and Congress Poland. The discourse on territorial and cultural autonomy within a federative Russia, demands that came to the fore in 1905, developed only after the idea of self-determination entered the thinking of Estonian radicals. Until late 1917, asserting the right to self-determination by no means meant separation from Russia. Even after 1917 Estonian politicians imagined the future republic as part of a regional league or union relinquishing part of its sovereignty to a supranational authority, plans that foundered on the incompatibility of national interests by 1920. Although the experience had not been encouraging, Baltic politicians resuscitated federalist concepts in the early period of the Second World War, as they tried to envisage a new structure for a cooperative and autonomous East Central Europe, within a restored Europe.

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