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Military, institutional and discursive competence as seen by Burgundian court historians, c. 1470 -c. 1500 -- Politics into fiction: Maximilian's transformation of the Burgundian model -- The rise of the confessional model -- The revival of civic humanism, raison d' âetat and the incompetence of subjects in the histories of Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato -- Mismanagement and Other Virtues: The construction of secular political competence in the historiography of Gottlieb Eucharius Rinck

Preliminary Material -- Note on political party names in English and Latvian -- Foreword /Maria Golubeva and Robert Gould -- Some Recent Discourses of Exclusion in the EU /Robert Gould -- Baltic Media Structures and the Influence of Media /Auksė Balčytienė -- Latvian Print Media as Opinion Leaders /Anda Rožukalne -- Latvian Political Party System and the Discourse on Political Parties /Iveta Kažoka -- The Construction of Ethnic Political Identity and the Mechanisms of Exclusion in the Latvian-language Media /Anda Rožukalne -- The Discursive Construction of "Russian-speakers": The Russian-language Media and Demarcated Political Identities in Latvia /Ammon Cheskin -- Multiculturalism as Imperialism: Condemnation of Social Diversity within a Discourse of Threat and Blame /Maria Golubeva -- Moral Superiority and the Soviet Stigma: Parliamentary Speech and Attribution of Blame in Political Discourses /Maria Golubeva and Iveta Kažoka -- Afterword /Maria Golubeva and Robert Gould.

Memories, both in individual and collective form, still have a significant impact on how people relate to political processes in Europe today. While much has been written about top-down attempts by states and political actors to mould people's memories of the past through public commemoration, textbooks, or monuments, this volume takes a few from below by focusing on different types of societal actors and the ways in which they interact with the political world in order to influence collective memory. Presented within a comprehensive conceptual framework, the empirical cases focus on three countries of the former Soviet Union: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. They show that different or even antagonistic perceptions of the recent past not only appear between different ethnic groups, but also between socio-economic groups, different age groups or generations as well as between women and men. Moreover, they give an impressive account on the multiple ways in which these perceptions empower individuals and groups to seek greater influce in the construction of collective memory. The volume, therefore, not only provides a valuable and fresh perspective on the relationship between social memory and democratic politics, but also contributes to post-Communist regional studies in the enlarged European Union. (Routledge)