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Author: Michal Klíma
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-04
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780367777036
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book offers a fascinating, thought-provoking and ground-breaking study of post-communist political life. It is one of the first full-length academic works to explore the question of how informal structures, headed by bosses, godfathers and oligarchs, affect formal party politics and democracy.
Author: S. Birch
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2003-11-25
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 1403938768
DOWNLOAD EBOOKElectoral Systems and Political Transformation in Post-Communist Europe assesses the influence of electoral systems on political change in 20 post-communist European states. The main finding is that electoral institutions have systematic effects on the formation of representative structures. 'Party-enabling' aspects of electoral laws such as list proportional representation tend to foster popular inclusion in politics and institutionalized party systems, whereas 'politician-enabling' rules such as single-member districts and ballots that allow voters to select individuals often favour the development of weakly structured systems and high levels of popular exclusion from the representative process.
Author: David Ost
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-07-05
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 1501729276
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow did the fall of communism and the subsequent transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe affect the people who experienced it? And how did their anger affect the quality of the democratic systems that have emerged? Poland offers a particularly provocative case, for it was here where workers most famously seemed to have won, thanks to the role of the Solidarity trade union. And yet, within a few short years, they had clearly lost. An oppressive communist regime gave way to a capitalist society that embraced economic and political inequality, leaving many workers frustrated and angry. Their leaders first ignored them, then began to fear them, and finally tried to marginalize them. In turn, workers rejected their liberal leaders, opening the way for right-wing nationalists to take control of Solidarity. Ost tells a fascinating story about the evolution of postcommunist society in Eastern Europe. Informed by years of fieldwork in Polish factory towns, scores of interviews with workers, labor activists, and politicians, and an exhaustive reading of primary sources, his new book gives voice to those who have not been heard. But even more, Ost proposes a novel theory about the role of anger in politics to show why such voices matter, and how they profoundly affect political outcomes. Drawing on Poland's experiences, Ost describes lessons relevant to democratization throughout Eastern Europe and to democratic theory in general.
Author: Andrew A. Michta
Publisher: Praeger
Published: 1994-05-25
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis timely book surveys political change in postcommunist Europe. It concentrates on the western periphery of the former Soviet empire and covers the countries of four regions: East Central Europe (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary); the Balkans (Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, the Third Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and Albania); the Baltic Rim (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia); and Eastern Europe (Belarus and Ukraine). The book charts the changes in each of these countries. It provides a brief overview of the history and communist legacy of each country, then reviews the new constitutional framework, the principal political parties and their orientation, the direction and scope of economic reform, and the foreign and security policies. Throughout, it evaluates the extent and direction of postcommunist transformation in each country and its prospects for becoming a viable member of the new European order. By its concentration on the actual elements of the emerging political systems and its currency, this is essential reading for students and scholars of Eastern Europe and contemporary international affairs. Patrons of public and school libraries will find it an important resource as well.
Author: Bálint Magyar
Publisher: Central European University Press
Published: 2021-02-20
Total Pages: 834
ISBN-13: 9633863708
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOffering a single, coherent framework of the political, economic, and social phenomena that characterize post-communist regimes, this is the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries and China, the study provides a systematic mapping of possible post-communist trajectories. At exploring the structural foundations of post-communist regime development, the work discusses the types of state, with an emphasis on informality and patronalism; the variety of actors in the political, economic, and communal spheres; the ways autocrats neutralize media, elections, etc. The analysis embraces the color revolutions of civil resistance (as in Georgia and in Ukraine) and the defensive mechanisms of democracy and autocracy; the evolution of corruption and the workings of “relational economy”; an analysis of China as “market-exploiting dictatorship”; the sociology of “clientage society”; and the instrumental use of ideology, with an emphasis on populism. Beyond a cataloguing of phenomena—actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships—Magyar and Madlovics also conceptualize everything as building blocks to a larger, coherent structure: a new language for post-communist regimes. While being the most definitive book on the topic, the book is nevertheless written in an accessible style suitable for both beginners who wish to understand the logic of post-communism and scholars who are interested in original contributions to comparative regime theory. The book is equipped with QR codes that link to www.postcommunistregimes.com, which contains interactive, 3D supplementary material for teaching.
Author: S. Saxonberg
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2014-06-24
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 1137319399
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThrough the use of a historical-institutional perspective and with particular reference to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia; this study explores the state of family policies in Post-Communist Europe. It analyzes how these policies have developed and examines their impact on gender relations for the countries mentioned.
Author: Piotr Piotrowski
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2012-08-01
Total Pages: 314
ISBN-13: 1861899319
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Eastern Europe saw a new era begin, and the widespread changes that followed extended into the world of art. Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe examines the art created in light of the profound political, social, economic, and cultural transformations that occurred in the former Eastern Bloc after the Cold War ended. Assessing the function of art in post-communist Europe, Piotr Piotrowski describes the changing nature of art as it went from being molded by the cultural imperatives of the communist state and a tool of political propaganda to autonomous work protesting against the ruling powers. Piotrowski discusses communist memory, the critique of nationalism, issues of gender, and the representation of historic trauma in contemporary museology, particularly in the recent founding of contemporary art museums in Bucharest, Tallinn, and Warsaw. He reveals the anarchistic motifs that had a rich tradition in Eastern European art and the recent emergence of a utopian vision and provides close readings of many artists—including Ilya Kavakov and Krzysztof Wodiczko—as well as Marina Abramovic’s work that responded to the atrocities of the Balkans. A cogent investigation of the artistic reorientation of Eastern Europe, this book fills a major gap in contemporary artistic and political discourse.
Author: Marilyn Rueschemeyer
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-16
Total Pages: 283
ISBN-13: 1315292637
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDuring the Communist period, in most of these contries, even women with small children typically worked outside the home, and their participation in formal institutions was virtually mandatory. Today, as they are being disproportionately affected by marketization, downsizing, the dramatic erosion of social services, and as their sons are being drafted to participate in an unending series of border wars, have women found a new political voice?
Author: Petr Kopecky
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2007-10-11
Total Pages: 251
ISBN-13: 1136766928
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIt is not possible to understand the nature and functioning of post-communist political parties without understanding their relationship with the state. On the one hand, few parties in the region would be able to survive and perform without state resources as they lack strong roots within the wider society. On the other hand, the relatively weak st
Author: Richard E. Matland
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003-05-01
Total Pages: 394
ISBN-13: 0191529923
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book considers women's access to formal positions of powers in the newly formed democracies of post communist Europe. While acknowledging the relevance of recent history, this book takes an important step away from the communist legacy and explicitly argues for a framework based on causal variables identified in the existing literatures from industrialized democracies on women and politics and legislative recruitment After a brief introduction, the second chapter sets forth a general theoretical framework, which posits that the level of female legislative representation in a given country is a function of the relative supply of and demand for female candidates. After a chapter considering a broad overview of public opinion on women and politics in Eastern Europe, thirteen country chapters, spanning the spectrum of Eastern European democracies, address and test hypotheses about the key variables affecting the supply and demand sides of the equation in individual countries. Relevant aspects of the communist cultural and developmental legacy are addressed, but authors give particular attention to political factors, such as electoral rules and the characteristics of the emerging party systems, that vary within the Eastern European countries. The new democracies of Eastern Europe provide a novel context in which to test and extend our theories about the consequences of political institutions for the quality of democracy. Since institutional arrangements are more malleable than developmental or cultural characteristics, those variables also offer the greatest promise to scholars and practitioners wondering what can be done to improve women's access to formal arenas of political power? How can we build democracies that are stable, lasting and representative? A careful analysis of the post-communist context can help us to address issues concerning institutional design and development that has relevance well beyond the Eastern European context.
