scholarly journals Examining Illiberal Trends and Anti-EU Politics in East Central Europe from a Domestic Perspective: State of Research and Outline of the Book

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Lisa H. Anders ◽  
Astrid Lorenz
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
The Subject ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
East Central European

Abstract This opening chapter introduces the subject matter and objectives of the book. It first explains central terms and provides an overview of the different illiberal trends in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It then sketches recent conflicts between EU actors and the four East Central European states and explains why these conflicts are of a new quality. Next, it summarises the state of research on illiberal backsliding and on the EU’s tools against it and identifies shortcomings and gaps in the literature. Finally, it outlines the aims as well as the overall structure of the book and provides an overview of the contributions.

Varieties of Capitalist Democracy: What Difference Does East-Central Europe Make?

2004 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAIN McMENAMIN
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The European Union ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
Capitalist Democracies ◽  
East Central European

The establishment of capitalist democracies in East-Central Europe raises the question of whether existing accounts of varieties of capitalist democracy need to be revised. This article provides a systematic quantitative comparison of varieties of capitalist democracy in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland with 19 other OECD countries. It finds that the East-Central European cases constitute a distinctive cluster; that they have much in common with Greece, Iberia and Ireland and that they are closer to the continental European than the liberal variety of capitalist democracy. These results have important implications for the internal politics of the European Union, prospects of an East-Central European repeat of the relative success of Ireland and the Mediterranean in the European Union, and debates about the influence of neo-liberalism on public policy.

scholarly journals The Emergence of East Central Europe in a Welfare Regime Typology

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
Ágnes Orosz
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Welfare Regime ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
State Regime ◽  
East Central European ◽  
Over Time

The paper contributes to the welfare state regime literature by assessing the existence of the East-Central European welfare state regime. The article empirically tests whether East-Central European countries constitute a distinct welfare regime or they can be classified into existing regimes by using hierarchical cluster analysis. The paper defines clusters for two distinct time periods, in order to shed light on the changes over time. The research provides two substantive contributions. First, welfare states in East-Central Europe constitute a distinct welfare state regime only for the period of 2014-2016, and they might be subdivided into two groups: (1) Visegrad countries and (2) Balkan and Baltic countries together. Second, countries within the East-Central European welfare regime has become more similar over time.

Religious Change

2019 ◽  
pp. 630-636
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
East Central

After the decline of state socialism in the countries of Eastern and East Central Europe, sociologists and political scientists such as Rodney Stark, Andrew Greeley, and Miklós Tomka predicted a revival of church and religion after decades of their repression under communist rule. More than two decades later, it turns out that the religious situation in Eastern and East Central Europe has become more diverse than expected. Some Orthodox countries, such as Russia, Romania, and Ukraine, have certainly seen a significant increase of religiosity; others, though, such as East Germany, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, are confronted with religious decline; and others still, such as Poland and Croatia, have seen only comparatively minor changes to the observable level of religiosity. Factors that influence religious changes include the fusion between religious and national identity, levels of economic prosperity, and levels of political corruption.

Peculiarities of the Translation and Adaptation of the Concept of Nation in East-Central Europe

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-101
Author(s):  
Victor Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
East Central European

This article explores the controversial issue of concepts defining the East-Central European Romanian and Hungarian identities (nem, neam, popor, nép). It specifically focuses on the translation and adaptation of the German concept of nation by examining the inclusive or exclusive meanings this concept acquired in these two languages and political cultures during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Deconsolidation of Democracy in East Central Europe

2019 ◽  
pp. 431-436
Author(s):  
Attila Ágh
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
European Studies ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
Conceptual Frame ◽  
State Capture ◽  
East Central European

In the early 1990s consolidation was the key term and conceptual frame in the democratization theories of the East Central European (ECE) states. However, this concept has been more and more questioned and finally rejected by the 2010s and the term deconsolidation has been introduced instead. Nowadays, there is an age of uncertainty in democracy studies that necessitates the reconceptualization of both European studies and democratic theory. In the recent deconsolidation process the trend towards ‘transitions to authoritarian rule’ has been observed in the ECE states in general and in Poland and Hungary in particular, where state capture has been extended to full-fledged ‘democracy capture’. Poland and Hungary will serve in this chapter as exemplary cases of deconsolidation of democracy.

Unraveling a Tradition, or Spinning a Myth? Gender Critique in Czech Society and Culture

Slavic Review ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 919-943 ◽  
Author(s):  
Libora Oates-Indruchová
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
East Central ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Czech Society ◽  
The 19Th Century

The hostility that met feminist ideas and gender equality issues in east central Europe (ECE) after the demise of the Communist regimes was accompanied by a notion that feminism wasimportedto these societies after 1989. In the Czech Republic, the record of the publishing output by feminist scholars in the 1990s, however, speaks against this myth. Drawing on existing scholarship and the author's own research on cultural discourses of gender and on socialist state science policies and censorship, this article argues that there has been a long tradition of gender critique that was present in a variety of discourses even during late state socialism. It proposes that the feminist impulse began in the 19th century and continued in some form throughout the 20th century. It then examines how the myth of the feminist import came to exist and what were the possible sources of the hostility toward feminism in the 1990s.

scholarly journals East-Central Europe in the Writing of James Clarence Mangan

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Sinéad Sturgeon
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Central European ◽  
East European ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The One ◽  
East Central European

Abstract This study explores the significance of East-Central Europe in a range of James Clarence Mangan’s poetry and prose from 1838–1847, focusing particularly on his depiction of Biedermeier Vienna (in the short story “The Man in the Cloak”), revolutionary uprisings in Poland and Albania (in the poems “Siberia” and “Song of the Albanian”), and his translations from the work of Bohemian-born Viennese poet Joseph Christian Freiherr von Zedlitz (1790–1862). I argue that Mangan’s interest in this region is twofold. On the one hand, it stems from the amenability of East-Central European culture and writing to the themes and tropes of the gothic, a genre central to Mangan’s imagination; on the other, from an underlying affinity in the historical position of the Irish and East-European poet in negotiating complex and contested politics of identity. While Mangan is a poet keenly conscious of “the importance of elsewhere,” and closely engaged in contemporary continental politics, I suggest that these European elsewheres also function as Foucauldian heterotopias, mythopoetic mirrors that enable the poet both to participate in Irish cultural nationalism and to register his dissent and distance from it.

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