Jaroslav Olša, jr.: 150 Years of Hidden Ties Between Koreans and Czechs

Chapters from the history of contacts between the Czech Lands and the Korean Peninsula.

Long-term Prescription? Digital Surveillance is Here to Stay

An emerging literature has shown concerns about the impact of the pandemic on the proliferation of digital surveillance. Contributing to these debates, in this paper we demonstrate how the pandemic facilitates digital surveillance in three ways: (1) By shifting everyday communication to digital means it contributes to the generation of extensive amounts of data susceptible to surveillance. (2) It motivates the development of new digital surveillance tools. (3) The pandemic serves as a perfect justification for governments to prolong digital surveillance. We provide empirical anecdotes for these three effects by examining reports by the Global Digital Policy Incubator at Stanford University. Building on our argument, we conclude that we might be on the verge of a dangerous normalization of digital surveillance. Thus, we call on scholars to consider the full effects of public health crises on politics and suggest scrutinizing sources of digital data and the complex relationships between the state, corporate actors, and the sub-contractors behind digital surveillance.

Rethinking the Infodemic: Global Health Security and Information Disorder

The discourse on the infodemic constructs the combination of the pandemic and disinformation as a new source of insecurity on a global scale. How can we make sense – analytically and politically– of this newly politicized nexus of public health, information management, and global security? This article proposes approaching the phenomenon of the infodemic as an intersecting securitization of information disorder and health governance. Specifically, it argues that there are two distinct frames of security mobilized in the context of infodemic governance: information as a disease and information as a weapon. Drawing on literatures on global health and the emerging research on disinformation, the paper situates the two framings of the infodemic in broader discourses on the medicalization of security, and securitization of information disorder, respectively. The article critically reflects on each framing and offers some preliminary thoughts on how to approach the entanglements of health, security, and information disorder in contemporary global politics.

Pandemics as Crisis Performance: How Populists Tried to Take Ownership of the Covid-19 Pandemic

With the Covid-19 pandemic dominating the agenda, it seems almost natural that it be associated with another buzzword: populism. As the pandemic advances, it seems that the prediction of populism surviving the pandemic due to its own diversity has been proved right, given the variation in responses by populists around the world. One common denominator stands out though: populists across the political spectrum understood the benefits of performing the Covid-19 crisis as a tool to strengthen their political positions. They tried to politicize the pandemic to increase the antagonism between the people and the elites. In this article, I introduce the notion of crisis as both a construct and a performance, and as a useful concept to analyze populist reactions to the pandemic. I argue that notwithstanding the attempts to politicize the pandemic, the Covid-19 crisis ended up imposing its own reality. In other words: the crisis could not be owned by politics.

Emma Dowling: The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It?

What is care and who is paying for it? Valuing care and care work does not simply mean attributing care work more monetary value. To really achieve change, we must go so much further.As the world becomes seemingly more uncaring, the calls for people to be more compassionate and empathetic towards one another—in short, to care more—become ever-more vocal. The Care Crisis challenges the idea that people ever stopped caring, but also that the deep and multi-faceted crises of our time will be solved by simply (re)instilling the virtues of empathy. There is no easy fix.In this groundbreaking book, Emma Dowling charts the multi-faceted nature of care in the modern world, from the mantras of self-care and what they tell us about our anxieties, to the state of the social care system. She examines the relations of power that play profitability and care off in against one another in a myriad of ways, exposing the devastating impact of financialisation and austerity.The Care Crisis enquires into the ways in which the continued off-loading of the cost of care onto the shoulders of underpaid and unpaid realms of society, untangling how this off-loading combines with commodification, marketisation and financialisation to produce the mess we are living in. The Care Crisis charts the current experiments in short-term fixes to the care crisis that are taking place within Britain, with austerity as the backdrop. It maps the economy of abandonment, raising the question: to whom care is afforded? What would it mean to seriously value care?

Trine Villumsen Berling, Ulrik Pram Gad, Karen Lund Petersen and Ole Wæver: Translations of Security: A Framework for the Study of Unwanted Futures

This book scrutinizes how contemporary practices of security have come to rely on many different translations of security, risk, and danger. Institutions of national security policies are currently undergoing radical conceptual and organisational changes, and this book presents a novel approach for how to study and politically address the new situation. Complex and uncertain threat environments, such as terrorism, climate change, and the global financial crisis, have paved the way for new forms of security governance that have profoundly transformed the ways in which threats are handled today. Crucially, there is a decentralisation of the management of security, which is increasingly handled by a broad set of societal actors that previously were not considered powerful in the conduct of security affairs. This transformation of security knowledge and management changes the meaning of traditional concepts and practices, and calls for investigation into the many meanings of security implied when contemporary societies manage radical dangers, risks, and threats. It is necessary to study both what these meanings are and how they developed from the security practices of the past. Addressing this knowledge gap, the book asks how different ideas about threats, risk, and dangers meet in the current practices of security, broadly understood, and with what political consequences. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, anthropology, risk studies, science and technology studies and International Relations.

Russia’s Vaccine Diplomacy in Central Europe: Between a Political Campaign and a Business Project

Drawing on the concept of vaccine diplomacy, the article analyses Russia’s efforts to promote its Sputnik V vaccine and the repercussions this had in two Central European EU member states which authorized the use of the Russian vaccine. The authors argue that for Russia, Sputnik V promotion was significant both as a business project and as a political enterprise, as it was supposed to enhance Russia’s international status and help it in overcoming its post-Crimea isolation from the West. The results were mixed, however, as Russia’s international credibility had been undermined by its previous policies. Thus, in Hungary the vaccine managed to gain some traction thanks to a government that preferred importing non-EU certified vaccines as part of its larger policy of fostering closer ties with the authoritarian great powers in Eurasia. In Slovakia, the vaccine deal with Russia caused a political crisis but eventually resulted in a very poor performance of Sputnik V as compared to EU-certified vaccines.

Framing as a Social Movement’s Transnational Strategy: The Gülen Movement’s EU-Turkey Discourses in the Post-2016 Online Media

This paper focuses on framing as a social movement’s transnational strategy. Applying the cultural approach to framing analysis, it investigates how the Gülen movement, as a social group with restricted access to national gatekeepers, uses discourse to internationalise a domestic power struggle with a powerful opponent. Moving the struggle to the international arena presents a discursive opportunity that determines which ideas become visible and legitimate both internationally and nationally. The importance of such internationalization increases in times of conflict and the media play a vital role in this process. The paper argues that the editors of the pro-Gülen movement foreign online platforms established after the movement was forced into exile following the failed 2016 coup, use strategic framing to tailor their frames for the host context and culture. That increases the resonance of their frames and the potential of the discursive opportunity. The article confirms the previous findings that media are a crucial resource for transnational social movements because policymakers are sensitive to public opinion, which is shaped by media frames.

Adrian Robert Bazbauers and Susan Engel: The Global Architecture of Multilateral Development Banks: A System of Debt or Development?

This book explores the evolution of the 30 functioning multilateral development banks (MDBs). MDBs have their roots in the growing system of international finance and multilateral cooperation, with the first recognisable MDB being proposed by Latin America in financial cooperation with the US in the late 1930s. That Inter-American Bank did not eventuate but was a precursor to the World Bank being negotiated at Bretton Woods in 1944. Since then, a complex network of regional, sub-regional, and specialised development banks has progressively emerged across the globe, including two significant recent entrants established by China and the BRICS. MDBs arrange loans, credits, and guarantees for investment in member states, generally with the stated aim of fostering economic growth. They operate in both the Global North and South, though there are more MDBs focusing on emerging and developing states. While the World Bank and some of the larger regional banks have been scrutinised, little attention has been paid to the smaller banks or the overall system. This book provides the first study of all 30 MDBs and it evaluates their interrelationships. It analyses the emergence of the MDBs in relation to geopolitics, development paradigms and debt. It includes sections on each of the banks as well as on how MDBs have approached the key sectors of infrastructure, human development, and climate. This book will be of particular interest to researchers of development finance, global governance, and international political economy.

Democratic Erosion and Democratic Resilience in Central Europe during COVID-19

What are the effects of populists in power on democracy during a pandemic? The paper seeks to distinguish the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic can (not) be traced to democratic erosion and democratic resilience. Are the changes in the quality of democracy resulting from political leaders' actions or rather a path-dependent continuation of previous trends? This contribution focuses on two paths – democratic erosion and democratic resilience – in the Visegrad Four countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), which are all governed by populist leaders. It builds on previous literature that focused principally on the first wave of the pandemic by focusing on institutional guardrails and accountability (vertical, horizontal, and diagonal) during the 18 months of the pandemic. It seeks to answer the following question: What conditions are necessary and sufficient to prevent democratic erosion?