An examination of political, social and economic development in Poland since the summer of 1989, with the main focus on democratization.

Political Parties and the European Union offers a panoramic survey of the political parties of contemporary Europe. It covers party politics from Scandinavia to Greece, focusing on how parties in the individual member states have responded to the processes of European integration. Despite a trend towards political convergence, national traditions continue to shape politics across Europe. In order to reflect, and do justice to, the diversity of political cultures, the book combines case studies, comparative approaches and supranational perspectives. It examines the history of the main national parties, offers new comparative perspectives on communist, green and extreme right parties, and analyses party politics at the European level.

Ethnic minorities make contemporary Europe increasingly diverse. The wisdom in research on ethnicity is that it is a trouble-maker disrupting programmatic politics, prioritizing group identity over ideology, polity over policy, principle over compromise. In this book, Jan Rovny approaches ethnic politics as normal politics, and investigates the ideological potential of ethnicity. He shows that ethnic minorities often search for group preservation by championing liberal rights that would protect them from the tyranny of the majority. This translates into broader ideological preferences and political behavior, including the formation of liberal political poles, which in turn configures political cleavages, shapes party systems, and informs the absorption of new political issues. Ultimately, the presence of ethnic minorities can be a force for liberal democracy. Simultaneously, ethnic liberalism is circumstantial, as conditional factors cross-pressure ethnic minority search for rights and liberties, potentially attenuating ethnic liberalism and inducing exclusionary particularism. This book combines the study of ethnic politics with research on electoral behavior and party competition, while comparing minorities and majorities in eastern Europe. The book analyzes existing and new data using mixed experimental, quantitative, and qualitative methods. The empirical chapters in the book are organized into two parts, one focusing on large-N comparative analyses, while the other presents three in-depth case studies on interwar Czechoslovakia, contemporary Slovakia, and contemporary Estonia. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

Hudson explores the development of communists and other left forces, charting their survival and renewal after 1989. She shows how an open and democratic form of socialism has emerged which embraces environmental, gender and anti-war politics.

This is a book about political values - socialist, nationalist, liberal and democratic values - in five former communist countries: Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Based on eleven surveys involving extended interviews with 7350 members of the public and 504 Members of Parliament it provides an authoritative account of the extent to which politicians and the public in East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union have rejected communist ideals and adopted nationalist and/or liberal democratic values.

As we come upon the 30th anniversary of communism’s fall, it is a good time to reexamine what life was like behind the Iron Curtain and how communism impacted people for generations. The study of communication is important as it shows how much effect government type has on the principles its people support. Those interested in promoting and maintaining democratic ideals in countries around the world require a book such as this to better understand the effect communism has had. Impact of Political Socialization on the Support for Democratic Principles: Emerging Research and Opportunities examines life under communism in Czechoslovakia and Hungary with particular attention paid to education, religion, travel, and exposure to Western culture, as well as their transition to democracy and how successful that transition has been. The book makes the case that being politically socialized under communism has made embracing democratic principles more difficult. The evidence for this case is based on 200 interviews conducted in 2017-18 with people who lived in Czechoslovakia and Hungary during communism, present-day analysis of government and politics in the Czech Republic and Hungary, and survey data from the European Social Survey. The main struggles in transitioning to democracy are identified, and it is speculated whether the Czech Republic and Hungary can ever be long-term, fully functioning democracies. The main implications of this publication are how government type during political socialization affects support for democratic principles, and whether the United States could ever be at risk for democratic erosion. The book is intended for political scientists, government officials, historians, academicians, researchers, and students.

This book traces the struggles over the institutions of political representation in Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on the factors that have held women back over the post-communist period, as well as on the growing evidence for change throughout the region. Post-communist Europe has long raised two puzzles for scholars of women’s representation in politics. First, why have women been under-represented in politics in every country in the region since communism’s collapse? Secondly, why are there relatively few cases where women’s advocates have been successful in pressing for change? This comparative study of Europe’s new democracies argues that these puzzles are best understood as questions about male dominance – that is, about the mechanisms that sustain, or, alternatively, change long-established patterns of male over-representation in politics over time. The author covers six EU member states – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – during the period 1990-2016. The book will be of use to students and scholars in the fields of Comparative Politics, Democracy and Democratization, European Studies, Gender Studies, Post-Communist Studies, and Central and Eastern European Studies.

This book examines the crisis of democracy that has arisen in Hungary since the election of the Fidesz government in 2010. After moving swiftly to transform the Hungarian constitution, Fidesz created a new political system which has led its critics to argue that the era of democracy in Hungary is over. US Senator John McCain has gone so far as to describe Hungary as an illiberal democracy on a path toward fascism. The author argues that Fidesz has sought to challenge the capitalist and democratic transformation that shaped Hungary for 20 years after the fall of communism by increasing the power of the state over crucial aspects of the economy, society, and the political system. In so doing Fidesz’ actions resemble those undertaken by many authoritarian states that have emerged since the end of the Second World War, all aiming to build up a national capitalism and protect their economies whilst undertaking nation-building. To make sense of this the author draws upon two traditions of thought, world systems-analysis, which situates Hungary in the context of its incorporation in the modern capitalist world-system after the fall of communism; and anarchist social thought which provides a unique way of seeing the actions of states and political elites. In so doing the book argues that the events unfolding in Hungary cannot be explained on the basis of Hungarian exceptionalism but must be situated in the broader political and economic context that has shaped the development of Hungary since 1990. The form of capitalism introduced in Hungary and across the region of East and Central Europe has systematically undermined the strong state and social security that had existed under communism, and when added to the failure of the left and liberals in the region it has paved the way for far-right and neo-fascist political movements to emerge claiming the mantle of defenders of society from the market. This represents a fundamental threat to the enlightenment traditions that have shaped dominant modern political ideologies and raises profound problems for both the EU and NATO.

National intelligence cultures are shaped by their country’s history and environment. Featuring 32 countries (such as Albania, Belgium, Croatia, Norway, Latvia, Montenegro), the work provides insight into a number of rarely discussed national intelligence agencies to allow for comparative study, offering hard to find information into one volume. In their chapters, the contributors, who are all experts from the countries discussed, address the intelligence community rather than focus on a single agency. They examine the environment in which an organization operates, its actors, and cultural and ideological climate, to cover both the external and internal factors that influence a nation’s intelligence community. The result is an exhaustive, unique survey of European intelligence communities rarely discussed.

This book examines how membership of the European Union has affected life in the ten former communist countries of Eastern Europe that are now members of the European Union. For each country, political, economic and social changes are described and discussed, together with people’s perceptions of the effects of EU membership. Overall, the book shows how the benefits of EU membership have differed between different countries, and how perceptions about the benefits also differ and have changed over time.