The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy

Jonathan Singerton’s is the first work to analyze the impact of the American Revolution in the Habsburg lands in full. He narrates how the Habsburg dynasty first received struggled with the news of the American Revolution and then how they sought to utilize their connections with a sovereign United States of America. Overall, Singerton recasts scholarly conceptions of the Atlantic World and also presents a more globalized view of the eighteenth-century Habsburg world, highlighting how the American call to liberty was answered in the remotest parts of central and eastern Europe but also showing how the United States failed to sway one of the largest, most powerful states in Europe onto its side in the War for American Independence.

An alarming absence of data on attitudes towards biobanking in the Central and Eastern Europe

In recent years, biobanking infrastructure has been gradually built in Central and Eastern Europe. The long-term success of biobanking, however, depends on the public’s engagement in the process. The available evidence indicates low informedness and hesitancy towards biobanking in CEE. Understanding of driving forces and barriers in laypeople’s participation in biobanking is thus a key challenge. The present paper aims to (1) summarize the available evidence, especially from the CEE countries, on public awareness and willingness to participate in biobanking, (2) provide the results of a systematic review on psychological correlates of engagement in biobanking in CEE, and (3) highlight the most pressing issues regarding the available evidence. In general, public awareness, biobanks’ communication and cooperation, ethical and legal regulations, and institutional/governmental trust seem to determine public engagement in biobanking the most. However, cultural specifics are likely to play a major role. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of behavioral data on this topic for the CEE countries. General recommendations on how to increase laypeople’s participation in biobanking are discussed. For the field to progress, future in-depth research on this topic conducted in the CEE countries is needed.

Wyszło, jak wyszło. Porażka i słabość w kulturze Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej [Things Turned Out the Way They Did: Failure and Weakness in the Culture of Central and Eastern Europe]

Things Turned Out the Way They Did: Failure and Weakness in the Culture of Central and Eastern EuropeThe text is the introduction to the new issue of Studia Litteraria et Historica. As such, it presents and conceptualises the category of failure in reference to Central and Eastern Europe in the last few decades of the twentieth century. It outlines the subject matter of respective texts and convergences of the points of view of their authors.Wyszło, jak wyszło. Porażka i słabość w kulturze Europy Środkowo-WschodniejTekst stanowi wstęp do nowego numeru „Studia Litteraria et Historica”. Przedstawia i konceptualizuje kategorię porażki w odniesieniu do obszaru Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej ostatnich kilku dekad XX wieku. Nakreśla tematykę poszczególnych tekstów oraz zbieżności punktów widzenia autorek i autorów.

Selected Factors Determining the Adoption and Use of Participatory Budgeting in Central and Eastern Europe

This is a summary article of the SJPS thematic issue on participatory budgeting in the Central and Eastern European region. Its authors provide an overview of the diffusion of participatory budgeting, and they classify relevant countries in terms of the pace of this diffusion into four different groups: frontrunners, early majority, later majority, and lagging adopters. In addition, they uncover various diffusion mechanisms that have been used. Since the research articles included in this thematic issue unpack various factors that influence the diffusion of the innovative practice of participatory budgeting in the specific settings of Central and Eastern Europe, the main goal of this article is to sum up their crucial findings and formulate several conclusions, including a few avenues for further research. A clear majority of countries in the region have already collected a relevant amount of experience with the adoption and further use of participatory budgeting. An analysis of the individual experiences reveals that the position and characteristics of mayors, organizational resources, and available capacities, as well as the quality of public trust, are likely to be important factors that determine the adoption and use of participatory budgeting in the region.