Democratic Innovations in Central and Eastern Europe expands research on democratic innovations by looking specifically at different forms of democratic innovations in Central and Eastern Europe. The book covers direct democracy (referendums in particular), deliberative democracy practices and e-participation – forms which are salient in practice because they match the political realities of our time. Expert contributors show how the recent actions of ordinary citizens in several Central and Eastern European countries have challenged the contemporary political order, and grassroots movements and diverse forms of mobilization have challenged the notion of weak civil societies in the East. The empirical evidence presented attempts to deepen citizen involvement in political contexts sometimes quite different from the democratic political systems in the Western world. Using lessons from a still largely underexplored part of Europe, the book both complements and revises theoretical approaches, or complements empirical results in existing studies on democratic innovations. Democratic Innovations in Central and Eastern Europe will be of great interest to scholars working on democracy, political systems, political engagement, and Central and Eastern European politics. The chapters originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential. Because of these countries’ unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent “hard times” – the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia’s war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world. The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region.

Representative democracy is often seen as a stable institutional system insusceptible to change. However, the preferences of the broad public are changing and representative, group based democracy has lost importance. This development made it necessary to change established ways of decision making and to introduce participatory democratic innovations. Many national and sub-national governments followed this route and implemented various kinds of participatory innovations, i.e. the inclusion of citizens into processes of political will-formation and decisionmaking. The authors analyse and evaluate the various effects of these innovations in Europe, providing a bigger picture of the benefits and disadvantages different democratic innovations can result in.

The book aims to complement the existing research on democratic innovations mainly by making unique comparative analyses of the democratic innovations at the local level in selected European post-communist countries, i.e. the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Democratic innovations can help overcome political apathy, decreased confidence in democracy and improve efficiency of governance. We traditionally consider cities and municipalities to be cradles of democracy and connect them with deliberations on the further development of democratic theory and political practice. We therefore argue that the local level is a suitable arena and laboratory for both changes of institutional settings within the traditional model of representative democracy, and the structural changes, which concern changing relations between local representatives and citizens.

This volume presents a shared effort to apply a general historical-institutionalist approach to the problem of assessing institutional change in the wake of communism's collapse in Europe. It brings together a number of leading senior and junior scholars with outstanding reputations as specialists in postcommunism and comparative politics to address central theoretical and empirical issues involved in the study of postcommunism. The authors address such questions as how historical 'legacies' of the communist regime be defined, how their impact can be measured in methodologically rigorous ways, and how the effects of temporal and spatial context can be taken into account in empirical research on the region. Taken as a whole, the volume makes an important contribution to the growing literature by utilizing the comparative historical method to study key problems of world politics.

This book presents a systematic account of the relationship between political parties and deliberative democracy. It shows which parties prefer deliberation, how intra-party deliberation takes place in practice beyond theoretical models and general descriptions, and how political elites and party members perceive deliberative democracy. Specifically, the book answers how party characteristics influence the use of deliberation by political parties, why intra-party deliberation differs in its use and functioning across parties, and how politicians and party members see deliberation. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of party politics, deliberative democracy, democratic innovations, political theory, and, more broadly, comparative politics.

Democracy is increasingly the standard against which societies are measured. The term “democratic culture” designates the set of attitudes and behaviours that citizens need to have for democratic institutions and laws to function in practice. This is an important development from older perceptions of democracy, which focused on institutions, laws and procedures. It is a recognition that democracy will not function unless citizens want it to function. In all countries there are committed individuals aspiring to make their societies better democracies. As the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, has said on several occasions, our societies seek to address 21st-century issues through 19th-century institutions. Through contributions by authors from Europe, North America and other parts of the world, this book explores how higher education can help find new ways to develop commitment to public space and societal engagement and make democracy more vibrant.

Democratic innovations are proliferating in politics, governance, policy, and public administration. These new processes of public participation are reimagining the relationship between citizens and institutions. This Handbook advances understanding of democratic innovations, in theory and practice, by critically reviewing their importance throughout the world. The overarching themes are a focus on citizens and their relationship to these innovations, and the resulting effects on political equality. The Handbook therefore offers a definitive overview of existing research on democratic innovations, while also setting the agenda for future research and practice.

The chapters in this volume are from two Leiden conferences. There, distinguished scholars and practitioners from Russia and the Far Abroad measured the winds of change in the field of private law in post-Soviet Russia: enormous differences from the Soviet period, crucial in supporting post-Soviet changes toward freedom of choice in the marketplaces of goods, services, ideas and political institutions. This volume will enable the reader to further chart the progress made in Russia (and the region) in the revitalization of private and civil law—and its impact upon practice and comparative legal studies—and to appreciate the role which the distinction between the public and private sectors is seen as playing in the process.