When does policy diffusion affect policy instability? Cases of excessive policy volatility in welfare policies in East Central Europe

2018 ◽  
pp. 26-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achim Kemmerling
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Welfare Policies

Considering the Sub-Regional Cooperation in East-Central Europe – Some Conclusions on Integrating and Disintegrating Tendencies in the Sub-Regional Dialogue

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacek Wieclawski
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Ukrainian Crisis ◽  
Regional Interests ◽  
Visegrad Group ◽  
East Central European

This article discusses the problems of the sub-regional cooperation in East-Central Europe. It formulates the general conclusions and examines the specific case of the Visegrad Group as the most advanced example of this cooperation. The article identifies the integrating and disintegrating tendencies that have so far accompanied the sub-regional dialogue in East-Central Europe. Yet it claims that the disintegrating impulses prevail over the integrating impulses. EastCentral Europe remains diversified and it has not developed a single platform of the sub-regional dialogue. The common experience of the communist period gives way to the growing difference of the sub-regional interests and the ability of the East-Central European members to coordinate their positions in the European Union is limited. The Visegrad Group is no exception in this regard despite its rich agenda of social and cultural contacts. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict confirms a deep divergence of interests among the Visegrad states that seems more important for the future of the Visegrad cooperation than the recent attempts to mark the Visegrad unity in the European refugee crisis. Finally, the Ukrainian crisis and the strengthening of the NATO’s “Eastern flank” may contribute to some new ideas of the sub-regional cooperation in East-Central Europe, to include the Polish-Baltic rapprochement or the closer dialogue between Poland and Romania. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v10i1.251  

Toward a Conservative Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balázs Trencsényi ◽  
Michal Kopeček ◽  
Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič ◽  
Maria Falina ◽  
Mónika Baár ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Conservative Revolution ◽  
Ontological Categories ◽  
Popular Religiosity ◽  
Religious Subcultures

The interwar radicalization of politics in East Central Europe was linked to the proliferation of a discourse of crisis. Symptoms of crisis could be localized in certain social groups, institutions, and social relations, such as the generational cleavage. Since the topos of crisis was not bound to any particular ideology, the very same discourse was used by liberal and leftist intellectuals as well. Nevertheless, the most plausible ideological framework offering a way out of the crisis seemed to be the “conservative revolution,” promising to restore the continuity of traditions that had been interrupted by the breakthrough of modernity. This led to the proliferation of “national metaphysics,” defining the specificity of the respective nation with ontological categories. Another face of this “conservative revolution” was the politicization of religion, linked to the renewed interest in myth and popular religiosity. At the same time, there was also a conservative anti-totalitarian stance and, in a few cases, a left-wing reorientation of certain religious subcultures.

Foreign Banks in the Crisis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel A. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Bank Lending ◽  
Foreign Ownership ◽  
Foreign Bank ◽  
Foreign Banks ◽  
Market Model ◽  
Unexpected Finding ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central

One reason governments have protected their banks from foreign ownership is that they feared foreign-owned banks would “cut and run”—i.e. abandon their host markets—in a financial crisis. An unexpected finding of this chapter, however, is that while foreign banks’ commitments to host markets have indeed been fleeting in crises, those commitments were weakest when the relationship between foreign banks and host markets was not characterized by ownership. Thus it was foreign ownership through a “second home market” model and bank subsidiaries during the acute phase of the US financial crisis (2008–9) that saved East Central Europe from economic catastrophe. In Western Europe, meanwhile, where foreign bank ownership levels were low but cross-border lending was significant, bank lending retreated behind national borders. This chapter also rejects the argument that the Vienna Initiative, a voluntary bank rollover agreement, compelled foreign-owned banks to maintain their exposures in East Central Europe.

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.

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