Pub Date : 2025-03-26DOI: 10.1177/08883254251324195
Ivan Jarabinský
This article examines the appropriation of opposition policy proposals undertaken by the Czech minority governments led by Andrej Babiš and his technocratic populist party, ANO. The article defines policy appropriation and then assesses its theoretical and empirical underpinnings within the broader context of a technocratic populist government. This is followed by a discussion of Babiš’ premierships and ANO’s tenure, their incentives to appropriate policy and how appropriation unfolded. Employing a multiple-case study design, the article scrutinizes fifteen policies affected by appropriation with the help of parliamentary documents available online. The findings reveal three relationships among bills addressing the same issues: policy appropriation, policy ownership conflict, and unrelated governmental policies. In cultivating the image of expert competence, technocratic populists may encounter challenges in achieving other objectives, such as fostering an efficient parliament. While several bills addressed similar policies in similar ways, not all of the opposition’s allegations were substantiated. Nevertheless, the government’s conduct diminishes the role and contributions of the opposition in the Chamber of Deputies, potentially undermining political pluralism by delegitimizing the opposition.
{"title":"From Opposition to Implementation: Unraveling the Strategy of Technocratic Populist Government’s Appropriation of Opposition Policy Proposals","authors":"Ivan Jarabinský","doi":"10.1177/08883254251324195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254251324195","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the appropriation of opposition policy proposals undertaken by the Czech minority governments led by Andrej Babiš and his technocratic populist party, ANO. The article defines policy appropriation and then assesses its theoretical and empirical underpinnings within the broader context of a technocratic populist government. This is followed by a discussion of Babiš’ premierships and ANO’s tenure, their incentives to appropriate policy and how appropriation unfolded. Employing a multiple-case study design, the article scrutinizes fifteen policies affected by appropriation with the help of parliamentary documents available online. The findings reveal three relationships among bills addressing the same issues: policy appropriation, policy ownership conflict, and unrelated governmental policies. In cultivating the image of expert competence, technocratic populists may encounter challenges in achieving other objectives, such as fostering an efficient parliament. While several bills addressed similar policies in similar ways, not all of the opposition’s allegations were substantiated. Nevertheless, the government’s conduct diminishes the role and contributions of the opposition in the Chamber of Deputies, potentially undermining political pluralism by delegitimizing the opposition.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143713002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-24DOI: 10.1177/08883254251324435
Zsanett Pokornyi, Tamás Barczikay
Building on Margaret Levi’s theory of fiscal contract (1997), this article argues that people are primarily motivated to pay tax by governmental legitimacy. According to Levi, the agreement assumes the provision of collective services which focus on the needs of society; if services respond effectively to public interests, taxpayers reimburse them with their taxes. Put another way, under the fiscal contract, as long as the government abides by its own terms, legitimacy guarantees taxpayers that the government will draw up policy frameworks for cooperation. Thus, legitimacy is the main tool used by the government to influence citizens’ moral considerations in taxpaying, that is, their tax morale. Based on Fritz W. Scharpf’s thesis of input-oriented and output-oriented legitimacy (1999), the article investigates the impact of legitimacy on tax morale through five governmental tools: government communication, channeling public opinion (input-oriented legitimacy), quality of collective services, legal frameworks, and implementation (output-oriented legitimacy). However, the case of Hungary also highlights on the role of the nature of a political regime what also has an impact on the effectiveness of governmental legitimacy. Results show that the centralization of the tax administration and the exclusion of citizens from flagship collective services in the Hungarian hybrid regime could make the role of important legitimacy tools insignificant in shaping citizens’ tax morale. Building on this argument, this article provides a new framework to investigate the role of governmental legitimacy and the nature of a political regime in shaping tax morale.
本文以李维（Margaret Levi）的财政契约理论（1997）为基础，认为人们纳税的主要动机是政府的合法性。利瓦伊认为，该协定假定提供集中于社会需要的集体服务；如果服务有效地回应了公共利益，纳税人就会用他们的税款来偿还。换句话说，在财政契约下，只要政府遵守自己的条款，合法性就会向纳税人保证，政府将为合作制定政策框架。因此，合法性是政府用来影响公民在纳税时的道德考虑，即纳税士气的主要工具。基于Fritz W. Scharpf关于投入导向和产出导向合法性的论文（1999），本文通过政府沟通、引导公众舆论（投入导向的合法性）、集体服务质量、法律框架和实施（产出导向的合法性）这五种政府工具来研究合法性对税收士气的影响。然而，匈牙利的案例也强调了政治制度的性质对政府合法性有效性的影响。结果表明，在匈牙利混合政权中，税收管理的集中化和公民被排除在旗舰集体服务之外，可能会使重要的合法性工具在塑造公民税收士气方面的作用变得微不足道。在这一论点的基础上，本文提供了一个新的框架来研究政府合法性和政治制度在塑造税收士气方面的作用。
{"title":"The Role of Legitimacy in Shaping Tax Morale: The Case of Hungary","authors":"Zsanett Pokornyi, Tamás Barczikay","doi":"10.1177/08883254251324435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254251324435","url":null,"abstract":"Building on Margaret Levi’s theory of fiscal contract (1997), this article argues that people are primarily motivated to pay tax by governmental legitimacy. According to Levi, the agreement assumes the provision of collective services which focus on the needs of society; if services respond effectively to public interests, taxpayers reimburse them with their taxes. Put another way, under the fiscal contract, as long as the government abides by its own terms, legitimacy guarantees taxpayers that the government will draw up policy frameworks for cooperation. Thus, legitimacy is the main tool used by the government to influence citizens’ moral considerations in taxpaying, that is, their tax morale. Based on Fritz W. Scharpf’s thesis of input-oriented and output-oriented legitimacy (1999), the article investigates the impact of legitimacy on tax morale through five governmental tools: government communication, channeling public opinion (input-oriented legitimacy), quality of collective services, legal frameworks, and implementation (output-oriented legitimacy). However, the case of Hungary also highlights on the role of the nature of a political regime what also has an impact on the effectiveness of governmental legitimacy. Results show that the centralization of the tax administration and the exclusion of citizens from flagship collective services in the Hungarian hybrid regime could make the role of important legitimacy tools insignificant in shaping citizens’ tax morale. Building on this argument, this article provides a new framework to investigate the role of governmental legitimacy and the nature of a political regime in shaping tax morale.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"96 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143695289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-20DOI: 10.1177/08883254251324523
Elena Pavlova, Irina Paert
This article analyzes the way in which traumatic memories of the Soviet past are communicated in Estonian- and Russian-language women’s literature published in Estonia. The representation of the past in these works does not support the claim that the collective memories of Russian and Estonian communities are antagonistic and incapable of “agreeing to disagree.” Focusing on women’s prose written in independent Estonia after 1991, this article examines narrative elements that expose agonistic, rather than antagonistic, interpretations of the cultural memory of these two communities. These interpretations rely on a multiplicity of perspectives, dealing with issues of personal and collective responsibility and agency.
{"title":"Fictionalizing the Past in Estonia: Cultural Memory in Women’s Literature","authors":"Elena Pavlova, Irina Paert","doi":"10.1177/08883254251324523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254251324523","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the way in which traumatic memories of the Soviet past are communicated in Estonian- and Russian-language women’s literature published in Estonia. The representation of the past in these works does not support the claim that the collective memories of Russian and Estonian communities are antagonistic and incapable of “agreeing to disagree.” Focusing on women’s prose written in independent Estonia after 1991, this article examines narrative elements that expose agonistic, rather than antagonistic, interpretations of the cultural memory of these two communities. These interpretations rely on a multiplicity of perspectives, dealing with issues of personal and collective responsibility and agency.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"93 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143665853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-19DOI: 10.1177/08883254251324191
Tim Haughton, David Cutts, Marek Rybář
Politicians whose political careers appear finished rarely make successful comebacks. Slovakia’s Robert Fico was propelled back to power when his party, Smer-SD, won the 2023 parliamentary elections and was able to form a coalition government. An election victory for Fico, however, seemed unthinkable in 2018 when he resigned as prime minister amid large-scale protests, and even more unlikely in 2020 when his party lost power, suffered a subsequent split, and slipped to single digits in the polls. Organizational and ideational resources provided a platform for recovery for Smer-SD and other parties to bounce back. Moreover, the chaotic nature of the government formed in 2020 and stark challenges posed by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine created conditions propitious for a comeback. Data from a specially commissioned survey conducted in the days after the election show campaign messaging around strong and effective leadership combined with policy pitches towards key demographic groups found a receptive audience. Although Smer-SD won a plurality of the vote, its ability to return to power was dependent on forging a coalition highlighting not just the pivotal nature of one of Smer-SD’s eventual partners in government, but also the mechanics of the electoral system that ensured Smer-SD’s other coalition partner crossed the electoral threshold. The 2023 elections demonstrate not just how divisive politicians like Fico can return to power, but also given the subsequent democratic erosion in Slovakia, they provide lessons for the study of democratic backsliding and resilience.
{"title":"A Narrow Path to Victory: Robert Fico, Smer-SD, and the 2023 Elections in Slovakia","authors":"Tim Haughton, David Cutts, Marek Rybář","doi":"10.1177/08883254251324191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254251324191","url":null,"abstract":"Politicians whose political careers appear finished rarely make successful comebacks. Slovakia’s Robert Fico was propelled back to power when his party, Smer-SD, won the 2023 parliamentary elections and was able to form a coalition government. An election victory for Fico, however, seemed unthinkable in 2018 when he resigned as prime minister amid large-scale protests, and even more unlikely in 2020 when his party lost power, suffered a subsequent split, and slipped to single digits in the polls. Organizational and ideational resources provided a platform for recovery for Smer-SD and other parties to bounce back. Moreover, the chaotic nature of the government formed in 2020 and stark challenges posed by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine created conditions propitious for a comeback. Data from a specially commissioned survey conducted in the days after the election show campaign messaging around strong and effective leadership combined with policy pitches towards key demographic groups found a receptive audience. Although Smer-SD won a plurality of the vote, its ability to return to power was dependent on forging a coalition highlighting not just the pivotal nature of one of Smer-SD’s eventual partners in government, but also the mechanics of the electoral system that ensured Smer-SD’s other coalition partner crossed the electoral threshold. The 2023 elections demonstrate not just how divisive politicians like Fico can return to power, but also given the subsequent democratic erosion in Slovakia, they provide lessons for the study of democratic backsliding and resilience.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143661249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-16DOI: 10.1177/08883254251321179
Lucie Bohdalová
This study explores gender differences in public issue salience—the relative importance that men and women place on various public issues—focusing on how assets like wealth, education, and marketable skills shape these priorities within the Czech social context. This study is rooted in Iversen and Soskice’s theory of assets as well as in the Iversen and Rosenbluth’s theory of political preferences, which help to explain gender differences in the issue salience among subgroups of women who negotiate their positions in the labor market. When data from the Czech Public Opinion Research Center (CVVM) were analyzed with binary logistic regression and predictive margins, the findings revealed that assets affect the salience that men and women assign to social protection issues. Women are more likely than men to view social protection issues as the most important issue domains. This is explained by the potential of social protection policies to enable women to invest in their marketable skills, use their skills in the labor market, and emancipate themselves. Health issues are highly gendered, with men consistently assigning low importance to health concerns, irrespective of their background. This study contributes to the understanding of gender differences in issue salience, political attitudes, and agenda-setting.
{"title":"Gender Differences in Public Issue Salience: Evidence from Czechia","authors":"Lucie Bohdalová","doi":"10.1177/08883254251321179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254251321179","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores gender differences in public issue salience—the relative importance that men and women place on various public issues—focusing on how assets like wealth, education, and marketable skills shape these priorities within the Czech social context. This study is rooted in Iversen and Soskice’s theory of assets as well as in the Iversen and Rosenbluth’s theory of political preferences, which help to explain gender differences in the issue salience among subgroups of women who negotiate their positions in the labor market. When data from the Czech Public Opinion Research Center (CVVM) were analyzed with binary logistic regression and predictive margins, the findings revealed that assets affect the salience that men and women assign to social protection issues. Women are more likely than men to view social protection issues as the most important issue domains. This is explained by the potential of social protection policies to enable women to invest in their marketable skills, use their skills in the labor market, and emancipate themselves. Health issues are highly gendered, with men consistently assigning low importance to health concerns, irrespective of their background. This study contributes to the understanding of gender differences in issue salience, political attitudes, and agenda-setting.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143635664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-03-16DOI: 10.1177/08883254251321177
Ekaterina Pierson-Lyzhina
This article explores radicalization processes among the Belarusian opposition-in-exile using resource mobilization theory. Drawing on the case of the post-2020 opposition, exiled in the European Union and recognized by the West as a privileged interlocutor and “legitimate representative of the [Belarusian] people,” it identifies the stages of its radicalization in response to repression in Belarus and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine: first a peaceful approach, then emphasis on self-defense, and finally preparation for violent resistance. It explains each stage by the aggregation and maintenance of a “resource threshold.” It counts domestic/exile networks and Western allies as resources crucial for activism among the exiled opposition. The article also argues that different strategies (peaceful versus violent) have been useful for achieving the resource threshold of the Belarusian opposition-in-exile depending on the domestic, host states’, and sponsor states’ political and geopolitical environments.
{"title":"“We No Longer Only Carry Flowers”: Radicalization Processes Among the Belarusian Opposition-in-Exile","authors":"Ekaterina Pierson-Lyzhina","doi":"10.1177/08883254251321177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254251321177","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores radicalization processes among the Belarusian opposition-in-exile using resource mobilization theory. Drawing on the case of the post-2020 opposition, exiled in the European Union and recognized by the West as a privileged interlocutor and “legitimate representative of the [Belarusian] people,” it identifies the stages of its radicalization in response to repression in Belarus and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine: first a peaceful approach, then emphasis on self-defense, and finally preparation for violent resistance. It explains each stage by the aggregation and maintenance of a “resource threshold.” It counts domestic/exile networks and Western allies as resources crucial for activism among the exiled opposition. The article also argues that different strategies (peaceful versus violent) have been useful for achieving the resource threshold of the Belarusian opposition-in-exile depending on the domestic, host states’, and sponsor states’ political and geopolitical environments.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143635747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-01-29DOI: 10.1177/08883254241309286
Kristen R. Ghodsee
This article explores the lost history of the Olympia Traveller and Traveller de Luxe typewriters. Designed in Germany but manufactured in a once multiethnic town called Bugojno in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of a thriving Yugoslav typewriter industry, these machines were once exported to all corners of the globe with more than ninety different keyboards. Sold throughout Yugoslavia under the brand name UNIS-tbm and UNIS-tbm de Luxe, these typewriters were also common objects in many former Yugoslav homes and have recently become ubiquitous props in a thriving culture of “Yugonostalgia.” Using Roland Barthes’s key 1957 insight about the “mythologies” that inhere in quotidian objects, this article views the typewriters as a concrete embodiment of the memory of Yugoslavia as an imagined community of “brotherhood and unity.” Using historical accounts in the Yugoslav, Bosnian, and international press, as well as expert interviews with journalists, curators, and historians, this article pieces together the backstory of a fascinating piece of Yugoslav material culture and its legacies and meanings in an ethnically homogeneous but corrupt and disappointing neoliberal present.
这篇文章探讨了奥林匹亚旅行者和旅行者豪华打字机丢失的历史。这些打字机在德国设计，但在波斯尼亚和黑塞哥维那共和国一个名叫布戈耶诺（Bugojno）的曾经多民族的小镇生产，作为蓬勃发展的南斯拉夫打字机工业的一部分，这些打字机曾经出口到世界各地，有90多种不同的键盘。这些打字机以“UNIS-tbm”和“UNIS-tbm de Luxe”的品牌在南斯拉夫各地销售，在许多前南斯拉夫家庭中也是常见的物品，最近在蓬勃发展的“南斯拉夫情结”文化中成为无处不在的道具。利用罗兰·巴特1957年关于日常物品中固有的“神话”的关键见解，本文将打字机视为南斯拉夫记忆的具体体现，作为一个想象中的“兄弟情谊和团结”的社区。本文利用南斯拉夫、波斯尼亚和国际媒体的历史报道，以及对记者、策展人和历史学家的专家采访，将南斯拉夫物质文化的迷人背景故事、遗产和意义拼凑在一起，呈现在一个种族同质但腐败和令人失望的新自由主义时代。
{"title":"Platens from the Past: Yugonostalgia and the UNIS-tbm Typewriter","authors":"Kristen R. Ghodsee","doi":"10.1177/08883254241309286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254241309286","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the lost history of the Olympia Traveller and Traveller de Luxe typewriters. Designed in Germany but manufactured in a once multiethnic town called Bugojno in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of a thriving Yugoslav typewriter industry, these machines were once exported to all corners of the globe with more than ninety different keyboards. Sold throughout Yugoslavia under the brand name UNIS-tbm and UNIS-tbm de Luxe, these typewriters were also common objects in many former Yugoslav homes and have recently become ubiquitous props in a thriving culture of “Yugonostalgia.” Using Roland Barthes’s key 1957 insight about the “mythologies” that inhere in quotidian objects, this article views the typewriters as a concrete embodiment of the memory of Yugoslavia as an imagined community of “brotherhood and unity.” Using historical accounts in the Yugoslav, Bosnian, and international press, as well as expert interviews with journalists, curators, and historians, this article pieces together the backstory of a fascinating piece of Yugoslav material culture and its legacies and meanings in an ethnically homogeneous but corrupt and disappointing neoliberal present.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143055546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-12-18DOI: 10.1177/08883254241295463
Jan Kubik
The rise of right-wing populism as a challenge to liberalism has two major explanations: cultural and economic. Cultural explanations must strike a balance between general mechanisms and specific conditions of concrete regions or countries. There is an argument that a large segment of the population in east central Europe has rejected liberalism because it sees liberalism as an alien implant from “the West.” However, this explanation does not answer two key questions: Why this rejection seems to have come after a considerable delay and why it took the form of right-wing populist reaction. Relying on the concepts of neo-traditionalism and neo-feudalism, I propose answers to these questions.
{"title":"Neo-Feudalism and Neo-Traditionalism as Responses to Liberalism","authors":"Jan Kubik","doi":"10.1177/08883254241295463","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254241295463","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of right-wing populism as a challenge to liberalism has two major explanations: cultural and economic. Cultural explanations must strike a balance between general mechanisms and specific conditions of concrete regions or countries. There is an argument that a large segment of the population in east central Europe has rejected liberalism because it sees liberalism as an alien implant from “the West.” However, this explanation does not answer two key questions: Why this rejection seems to have come after a considerable delay and why it took the form of right-wing populist reaction. Relying on the concepts of neo-traditionalism and neo-feudalism, I propose answers to these questions.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142849098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-11-01DOI: 10.1177/08883254231196318
Kacper Szulecki
To understand the political dimension of dissident legacies, we need first to understand the components that “made” the dissidents and follow their reconfiguration after 1989, leading to initial empowerment followed by gradual demise of the liberal post-dissident elite. Dissidence in the form that first appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s in central and eastern Europe constituted a particular mode of political practice, combining open, non-violent dissent with universalist moral claims. The phenomenon of dissidentism was transnational, as political empowerment of oppositionists was achieved through a particular network of relationships between domestic audiences, repressive regimes, and Western media, social movements, trade unions, political parties, and policymakers. The specificities of the dissidents’ empowerment can partly explain key features of post-dissident politics and the visible backlash against former prominent dissidents, which has contributed to the rise of illiberalism and to democratic backsliding. This article traces the post-1989 trajectories of a few who belonged among central Europe’s most prominent representatives in this symbolic category, to try to explain the causes and character of the swift backlash against them—or as Václav Havel put it, their “expulsion from the fairytale.” Three pillars of dissident political power turned into the roots of their demise. First, critics question the dissidents’ uniqueness and rewrite their master narrative. Further, we see a clash of representations that results from the dissidents’ transnational empowerment, and third, the broader anti-elite and anti-intellectual tendencies that always accompanied dissidence as its shadow became amplified by more recent populist rhetoric.
{"title":"Expelled from the Fairytale: The Impact of the Dissident Legacy on Post-1989 Central European Politics","authors":"Kacper Szulecki","doi":"10.1177/08883254231196318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254231196318","url":null,"abstract":"To understand the political dimension of dissident legacies, we need first to understand the components that “made” the dissidents and follow their reconfiguration after 1989, leading to initial empowerment followed by gradual demise of the liberal post-dissident elite. Dissidence in the form that first appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s in central and eastern Europe constituted a particular mode of political practice, combining open, non-violent dissent with universalist moral claims. The phenomenon of dissidentism was transnational, as political empowerment of oppositionists was achieved through a particular network of relationships between domestic audiences, repressive regimes, and Western media, social movements, trade unions, political parties, and policymakers. The specificities of the dissidents’ empowerment can partly explain key features of post-dissident politics and the visible backlash against former prominent dissidents, which has contributed to the rise of illiberalism and to democratic backsliding. This article traces the post-1989 trajectories of a few who belonged among central Europe’s most prominent representatives in this symbolic category, to try to explain the causes and character of the swift backlash against them—or as Václav Havel put it, their “expulsion from the fairytale.” Three pillars of dissident political power turned into the roots of their demise. First, critics question the dissidents’ uniqueness and rewrite their master narrative. Further, we see a clash of representations that results from the dissidents’ transnational empowerment, and third, the broader anti-elite and anti-intellectual tendencies that always accompanied dissidence as its shadow became amplified by more recent populist rhetoric.","PeriodicalId":47086,"journal":{"name":"East European Politics and Societies","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142563239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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