Suchergebnisse

Since the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, neoliberal discourse has dominated among the political elite in the post-communist countries, paving the way for unprecedented mass privatisation, economic deregulation, and other market reforms. In this paper, we study the development of public support for market economy principles in post-communist countries compared to other European countries during the 1999-2008 period, which is the period that directly followed the initial stage of market transformation. We use data from the European Value Survey covering 22 European countries for the years 1999/2000 and 2008/2009. In addition to analysing the trends, we apply multilevel regression models to study the determinants and levels of support for the market economy in post-communist and other European countries. We find that, when controlling for individual and country-level variables, a significant increase in support for market economy principles has taken place in the post-communist cluster, which is not the case in the other countries. There is some inconsistency in support for the individual principles of market economics: support exists in post-communist countries for the notion that the state should be responsible for the social and economic well-being of its inhabitants and for state regulation of the economy, while support is high for some market economy principles, such as free competition and private ownership. In other words, support for some kind of social market seems to dominate the views of those living in post-communist countries, in which the state should combine a market economy with relatively generous social policies.

Do radical right fringe parties affect main parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Using data from the Manifesto Project, we analyze the relationship between radical right fringe parties' and main parties' policy programs regarding sociocultural issues in six post-communist countries of CEE. Even though radical right fringe parties have participated in government in several of these countries, and in Hungary a fringe party has become the country's second largest party, our analysis shows that the sociocultural issues in radical right fringe party manifestos do not systematically relate to the changes in main party manifestos regarding those issues. Even if some of the main parties in our study might often agree with the radical right fringe parties, our analysis shows that the latter do not directly influence the policy priorities of the main parties.

This article documents and compares the social policies that the governments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) implemented to combat the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. Our findings show that governments in all four countries reacted to the COVID-19 crisis by providing extensive protection for jobs and enterprises. Differences arise when it comes to solidaristic policy responses to care for the most vulnerable population, in which CEE countries show great variation. We find that social policy responses to the first wave of COVID-19 have largely depended on precious social policy trajectories as well as the political situation of the country during the pandemic.

"The celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall provoked a debate on the outcomes of the transition process in the post-communist countries, including a debate on the functioning of civil society. This provided a good opportunity for researchers to collect new data and revise the discourse on collective action and the dynamics of civil society in these countries. Jacobsson and Saxonberg's collection of essays looks at social movements, and their forms of mobilization and organization, as well as action repertoires in relation to the social context, and their success or failure. The book meets an important need in the discourse on post-communist social movements by going beyond the usual discourse about the weak and non-participatory civil society in the post-communist context. This book gives a nuanced and updated view of social movements in post-communist Europe, by looking at the cases of relatively successful mobilization, by examining groups that have often been neglected in the discourse on social movements and civil society (including animal-rights groups, racist movements and non-feminist family organizations), and by giving a deeper analysis of the different strategies that civil society organizations and groups can use. Rather than expecting social movements in post-communist Europe to follow the same patterns and operate in the same fashion as in Western Europe, this volume shows that a wider view of contentious action is needed in order to understand the variety of strategies employed by collective actors operating in this context"--Provided by publisher.

AbstractThis study shows that although Norway and Sweden have rather similar family policies, the seemingly small differences that exist reflect different national ideals of care, and these differences encourage parents to employ different gendered moral rationalities. However, Sweden's ideal of 'equal‐sharing/professional care', encourages fathers to take longer leaves than the Norwegian ideal of 'partial sharing plus choosing between professional or parental care'. Given their different national ideals of caring, different gendered moral rationalities emerge. While in Norway the dominant gendered moral rationality among our interviewees is 'man‐doing‐his‐duty', in Sweden two different rationalities arise: the 'breastfeeding‐plus‐sharing' rationality and the 'male‐opt‐out'. This conclusion is based on 60 interviews with mothers and fathers in Oslo and Stockholm.