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Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential. Because of these countries' unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent "hard times" – the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia's war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world. The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region. Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at "http://www.taylorfrancis.com" http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential. Because of these countries' unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent "hard times" – the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia's war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world. The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region. Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at "http://www.taylorfrancis.com" http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Exploring republican ideas and concepts that developed in sixteenth-century Poland under the impact of humanism and the Renaissance, as well as political and constitutional changes, this is a landmark study of republican discourse in sixteenth-century Poland-Lithuania. It provides a conceptual and contextual analysis of the rich political literature and debate which animated intellectual life and political reasoning during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and effectively demonstrates its republican character. Using a comparative perspective, Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves situates the Polish republican discourse within both the classical and early modern republican traditions, bringing together contexts and ideas that have traditionally been overlooked by scholars of early modern Europe. In addition, she also underlines the originality of Polish concepts such as the relationship between law, liberty and virtue as key elements of a well-ordered commonwealth and the vision of a mixed res publica that had a monarchical character. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in European intellectual history and the early modern republican tradition.

Thirty years ago, many credited civil society for communism's sudden and mostly peaceful demise in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In the decades since, scholars have debated the definition, structure, impact, and strength of civil societies in this region. This article introduces a special section that provides theoretical, methodological, and empirical considerations of civil society activism in CEE thirty years after the end of communist regimes in the region. Based on our new multi-country survey instrument and extensive field research, we contend that despite important differences in civil society and democracy's trajectories within the region, there are commonalities emerging, with new forms of civic activism which are more informal, more dynamic, and ad hoc, often focused on "everyday issues" that average people identify as important and worthy of engagement. Unlike much previous research that focused on formal organizations and institutional conditions, we argue that civil society development in CEE needs to be analyzed from the perspective of actors—activists and citizens—and the concrete concerns that motivate the varied forms of their civic activism.

In this article we argue that what is called today a 'democratic backsliding' or de-consolidation should be analysed, at least in some cases, as a liberal-constitutional backsliding for which the pandemic of Covid-19 adds a new impetus and creates the situation where violation of constitutionality of law might become a norm. In our theoretical considerations, we propose to examine this problem from two interconnected perspectives: the tension between the liberal and the democratic components of liberal democracy, often overlooked by the dominant democratic theory, and constitutionalism as the major safeguard of individual rights and liberties that limits democratic sovereignty, or the will of the people expressed by democratic representation. To better understand the nature of the current crisis of liberal-constitutional backsliding, we refer to Carl Schmitt's concept of 'the administrative state' where the dominant legal act is an administrative decree which does not require constitutional legitimacy or even the guarantee that it expresses the will of the majority. Our empirical considerations focus on the case of the liberal-constitutional backsliding in Poland exacerbated by the pandemic, which provides a good illustration of how the tensions within the liberal-democratic model itself can be used to justify democratic sovereignty as the only source of political legitimacy.

The model of deliberative democracy poses a number of dificult questions about individual rationality, public reason and justification, public spiritedness, and an active and supportive public sphere. It also raises the question about what kind of civic involvement is required for the practices of democratic deliberation to be effective. The aim of this article is to examine the last question by looking at the role and value of citizenship understood in terms of participation. It argues that deliberative democracy implies a category of democratic citizens; its institutional framework calls for the activity and competence of citizenry, and consequently, the participatory forms of deliberative democracy come closest to the democratic ideal as such. Also, the model of participatory-deliberative democracy is more attractive as a truly democratic ideal than the model of formal deliberative democracy, but it certainly faces more dificulties when it comes to the practicalities, and especially the institutional design. This problem is raised in the last section of the article where the possible applicability of such a model to post-communist democracies is addressed. The major dificulty that the participatory-deliberative model poses for the post-communist democratization can be explained by a reference to the cultural approach towards democratization and to the revised modernization theory presented by Inglehart and Welzel. The problem of the applicability of such a model in the post-communist context seems to support the thesis presented here which suggests that active citizenship, civic skills and civic culture are indispensable for the development of deliberative politics.

"Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential. Because of these countries' unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent "hard times" - the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia's war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world. The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region"--

Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential. Because of these countries' unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent "hard times" – the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia's war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world. The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region. Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at "http://www.taylorfrancis.com" http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.