Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2128338
Karlo Kralj
ABSTRACT In recent years, researchers have investigated many cases of new left social movements’ “electoral turns” in relatively favourable contexts that are open for new actors. This article explains how new left movements decide to enter the electoral competition despite an unfavourable context and low electoral prospects, based on the case study of “Do Not Let Belgrade D(r)own”, a municipalist initiative in Serbia. The article investigates in particular the role of eventful protests in changing activists’ perceptions of the electoral strategy and describes activists’ strategic framing in communicating the “electoral turn”.
{"title":"How do social movements take the “electoral turn” in unfavourable contexts? The case of “Do Not Let Belgrade D(r)own”","authors":"Karlo Kralj","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2128338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2128338","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In recent years, researchers have investigated many cases of new left social movements’ “electoral turns” in relatively favourable contexts that are open for new actors. This article explains how new left movements decide to enter the electoral competition despite an unfavourable context and low electoral prospects, based on the case study of “Do Not Let Belgrade D(r)own”, a municipalist initiative in Serbia. The article investigates in particular the role of eventful protests in changing activists’ perceptions of the electoral strategy and describes activists’ strategic framing in communicating the “electoral turn”.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79208380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-01DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122049
P. Guasti, Lenka Buštíková
ABSTRACT Is Covid-19 undermining European democracies? Recent scholarship overlooks the fact that most pandemic-related erosions of democracy can be attributed to illiberal inertia long in place before 2019. Did the democratic decay occur during the pandemic or due to the pandemic? We analyse the extent to which pandemic power grabs succeeded and failed in Europe with special attention to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The executive power of the purse was an opportunity to abuse state resources. Governments that engage in the “pandemic heist” with impunity can be directly linked to a power grab due to the pandemic.
{"title":"Pandemic power grab","authors":"P. Guasti, Lenka Buštíková","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122049","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Is Covid-19 undermining European democracies? Recent scholarship overlooks the fact that most pandemic-related erosions of democracy can be attributed to illiberal inertia long in place before 2019. Did the democratic decay occur during the pandemic or due to the pandemic? We analyse the extent to which pandemic power grabs succeeded and failed in Europe with special attention to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The executive power of the purse was an opportunity to abuse state resources. Governments that engage in the “pandemic heist” with impunity can be directly linked to a power grab due to the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80428594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-23DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122050
T. Popic, Alexandru D. Moise
ABSTRACT The article analyses the role of health, political and economic factors in governments' responses to COVID-19 pandemic in Eastern and Western Europe. It relies on survival analysis to test differences in timing of lockdowns and mixed effects models to unpack the determinants of the severity of restrictions. The results show that responses were correlated with health system capacities during the first wave, with Eastern European countries introducing restrictions early in epidemiological terms. As political and economic considerations took primacy in governments' responses, the socio-economically weaker countries in the East relaxed their restrictions sooner and were less likely to re-impose them compared to the West.
{"title":"Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in eastern and Western Europe: the role of health, political and economic factors","authors":"T. Popic, Alexandru D. Moise","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122050","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article analyses the role of health, political and economic factors in governments' responses to COVID-19 pandemic in Eastern and Western Europe. It relies on survival analysis to test differences in timing of lockdowns and mixed effects models to unpack the determinants of the severity of restrictions. The results show that responses were correlated with health system capacities during the first wave, with Eastern European countries introducing restrictions early in epidemiological terms. As political and economic considerations took primacy in governments' responses, the socio-economically weaker countries in the East relaxed their restrictions sooner and were less likely to re-impose them compared to the West.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83803839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-22DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122048
Amy H. Liu, E. Power, Meiying Xu
ABSTRACT Studies of tolerance often employ an ethnic lens. Reports of increasing anti-Chinese racism during the pandemic is evidence. Yet, COVID-19 is a global pandemic. How the disease is framed matters. We employ a survey experiment in Romania – where there is a large Chinese population and an even larger Romanian migrant population – to show that when primed about COVID-19, people responded with Chinese exclusion – a result consistent with the ethnic politics literature. But surprisingly, we find no evidence of Romanians cutting their coethnics a break. These results challenge how we think about identities when studying ethnic politics and group (in)tolerance.
{"title":"The framing effects of COVID-19 on ethnic intolerance: evidence from Romania","authors":"Amy H. Liu, E. Power, Meiying Xu","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122048","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Studies of tolerance often employ an ethnic lens. Reports of increasing anti-Chinese racism during the pandemic is evidence. Yet, COVID-19 is a global pandemic. How the disease is framed matters. We employ a survey experiment in Romania – where there is a large Chinese population and an even larger Romanian migrant population – to show that when primed about COVID-19, people responded with Chinese exclusion – a result consistent with the ethnic politics literature. But surprisingly, we find no evidence of Romanians cutting their coethnics a break. These results challenge how we think about identities when studying ethnic politics and group (in)tolerance.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79298076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-21DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122051
Dorothee Bohle, Edgars Eihmanis
ABSTRACT This article introduces the Special Issue on Eastern Europe in the COVID-19 crisis. It seeks to shed light on the different and partly worse experiences in East Central Europe compared to those of the West by analysing the crisis, its governance, and effects in the region from the vantage point of specific vulnerabilities, which have been building up for years. We identify four major vulnerabilities – a severe crisis of care, strains in social solidarity, democratic erosion and dependent capitalism – which have contributed to the East having experienced high infection and death rates, major economic crises, and pandemic power grabs.
{"title":"East Central Europe in the COVID-19 crisis","authors":"Dorothee Bohle, Edgars Eihmanis","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122051","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article introduces the Special Issue on Eastern Europe in the COVID-19 crisis. It seeks to shed light on the different and partly worse experiences in East Central Europe compared to those of the West by analysing the crisis, its governance, and effects in the region from the vantage point of specific vulnerabilities, which have been building up for years. We identify four major vulnerabilities – a severe crisis of care, strains in social solidarity, democratic erosion and dependent capitalism – which have contributed to the East having experienced high infection and death rates, major economic crises, and pandemic power grabs.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86636587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-21DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2121117
Marek Naczyk, Cornel Ban
ABSTRACT Why have Russia and Cuba developed and produced vaccines against COVID-19 while Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that are members of the European Union have only played a marginal role in the global supply of such vaccines? We argue that the answer is to be found in the capacity of Russia’s national security state and entrepreneurs to mobilise historic Soviet advantages as part of a broader security motivated statecraft. CEE countries lacked this legacy and this drive. Similarly, they failed to massively invest – as for example, Cuba has – into potential synergies between public health systems and biotech firms.
{"title":"The Sputnik V moment: biotech, biowarfare and COVID-19 vaccine development in Russia and in former Soviet satellite states","authors":"Marek Naczyk, Cornel Ban","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2121117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2121117","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Why have Russia and Cuba developed and produced vaccines against COVID-19 while Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that are members of the European Union have only played a marginal role in the global supply of such vaccines? We argue that the answer is to be found in the capacity of Russia’s national security state and entrepreneurs to mobilise historic Soviet advantages as part of a broader security motivated statecraft. CEE countries lacked this legacy and this drive. Similarly, they failed to massively invest – as for example, Cuba has – into potential synergies between public health systems and biotech firms.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74413838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-15DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122043
Ljubinka Andonoska
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to test the relationship between local elections and local government budgets. Using dataset of all Macedonian municipalities for the period 2007-2015, this study examines whether the overall spending and the composition of local government expenditures are systematically manipulated just before elections. The results show that spending during the pre-election period shifts toward more desirable categories such as permanent and temporary employment, capital projects, and individual transfers and subsidies. Very few studies relate pre-electoral fiscal manipulation to clientelistic linkages. This paper fills the void by adding empirical evidence from a transitional democracy.
{"title":"Pre-electoral fiscal policies and opportunistic spending: the case of the recently decentralised Macedonian local governments","authors":"Ljubinka Andonoska","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122043","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to test the relationship between local elections and local government budgets. Using dataset of all Macedonian municipalities for the period 2007-2015, this study examines whether the overall spending and the composition of local government expenditures are systematically manipulated just before elections. The results show that spending during the pre-election period shifts toward more desirable categories such as permanent and temporary employment, capital projects, and individual transfers and subsidies. Very few studies relate pre-electoral fiscal manipulation to clientelistic linkages. This paper fills the void by adding empirical evidence from a transitional democracy.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72943280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-14DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122045
Veronica Anghel, Erik Jones
ABSTRACT This paper explores how democracies handle the trade-off between public safety and fundamental democratic principles. We show that an exogenous shock, like the pandemic, creates incentives for governing elites to deploy self-empowering mechanisms to avoid institutional checks and balances – with lasting consequences for democratic performance. We examine this prospect in Italy and Romania. These cases have a long history of institutional gridlock; such history reinforces incentives to work around traditional institutions in responding to the pandemic. While the two cases vary in terms of the quality and resilience of their democratic institutions, we find that elites displayed a similar propensity to overlook the intricate institutional balances during a moment of crisis. In Italy, the executive strengthened its power relative to the legislature; in Romania, the strengthening is relative to the judiciary. This finding has implications in assessing the risk for falling standards of liberal democracy across the European Union.
{"title":"Riders on the storm: the politics of disruption in European member states during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Veronica Anghel, Erik Jones","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122045","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper explores how democracies handle the trade-off between public safety and fundamental democratic principles. We show that an exogenous shock, like the pandemic, creates incentives for governing elites to deploy self-empowering mechanisms to avoid institutional checks and balances – with lasting consequences for democratic performance. We examine this prospect in Italy and Romania. These cases have a long history of institutional gridlock; such history reinforces incentives to work around traditional institutions in responding to the pandemic. While the two cases vary in terms of the quality and resilience of their democratic institutions, we find that elites displayed a similar propensity to overlook the intricate institutional balances during a moment of crisis. In Italy, the executive strengthened its power relative to the legislature; in Romania, the strengthening is relative to the judiciary. This finding has implications in assessing the risk for falling standards of liberal democracy across the European Union.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84130832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-13DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122046
Alen Toplišek, Nils Oellerich, J. P. Simons, Edgars Eihmanis
ABSTRACT What factors influence governments' social policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in East-Central Europe? We attempt to answer this question by analysing the social policy responses to the pandemic across three distinct institutional varieties and welfare states: Estonia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Drawing on extensive analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, we argue that the constraints on government agency posed by previous, posttransition patterns of social policymaking and their underlying core institutional legacies have a distinct influence on governments' distributive choices. Governments' partisan interests are reflected in some of the enacted measures, albeit in less consolidated parts of welfare state structures.
{"title":"Path dependency and partisan interests: explaining COVID-19 social support programmes in East-Central Europe","authors":"Alen Toplišek, Nils Oellerich, J. P. Simons, Edgars Eihmanis","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122046","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT What factors influence governments' social policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in East-Central Europe? We attempt to answer this question by analysing the social policy responses to the pandemic across three distinct institutional varieties and welfare states: Estonia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Drawing on extensive analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, we argue that the constraints on government agency posed by previous, posttransition patterns of social policymaking and their underlying core institutional legacies have a distinct influence on governments' distributive choices. Governments' partisan interests are reflected in some of the enacted measures, albeit in less consolidated parts of welfare state structures.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80399990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-13DOI: 10.1080/21599165.2022.2122044
Dorothee Bohle, Gergő Medve-Bálint, V. Šćepanović, Alen Toplišek
ABSTRACT The extraordinary context of the COVID-19 crisis gave governments around the world a freer hand to reshape their socio-economic orders. Political economists studying East Central Europe have started a debate in how far democratic backsliding in the region has ushered in a more authoritarian form of capitalism. Our paper examines responses to COVID-19 of four anti-liberal governments in the region: Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia. Incorporating multiple case studies, it assesses the degree to which growing centralisation of political power has entrenched different mechanisms of authoritarian capitalism, as well as the limits to their use in different national contexts.
{"title":"Riding the Covid waves: authoritarian socio-economic responses of east central Europe’s anti-liberal governments","authors":"Dorothee Bohle, Gergő Medve-Bálint, V. Šćepanović, Alen Toplišek","doi":"10.1080/21599165.2022.2122044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122044","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The extraordinary context of the COVID-19 crisis gave governments around the world a freer hand to reshape their socio-economic orders. Political economists studying East Central Europe have started a debate in how far democratic backsliding in the region has ushered in a more authoritarian form of capitalism. Our paper examines responses to COVID-19 of four anti-liberal governments in the region: Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia. Incorporating multiple case studies, it assesses the degree to which growing centralisation of political power has entrenched different mechanisms of authoritarian capitalism, as well as the limits to their use in different national contexts.","PeriodicalId":46570,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75234311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}