Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Trust in political institutions is an important issue in contemporary democracies, as it contributes to democratic regimes' legitimacy and sustainability. This paper investigates what effects corruption, political allegiance, and the post-communist history of a country have on political trust. Political trust is measured as trust towards parliament, political parties, and politicians. Both individual-and country-level factors are included in the analytical model in order to account for the personal and contextual characteristics that might shape political trust. This research employs the multilevel modelling for empirical analysis. The results show that the winner effect and corruption perception impact are relatively strongly affecting political trust. Surprisingly, the post-communist history of a country seems to play no significant role in driving political trust. The concluding part links the findings of this study back to the theory and draws several implications not only for the future research but also the real world of policies and politics.

Almost a decade has passed since the first post-communist states acceded to the EU. Ten years after confirmation of the successful establishment of democratic and market-economic institutions in these countries, it is time to ask what type of institutions really developed. This article critically reviews contemporary research into capitalism in the eight countries, the main approaches applied, and the findings published. Firstly, it attempts to identify the type of capitalism that has developed in the region. Secondly, it highlights some pitfalls in the contemporary study of capitalism in Central Eastern Europe and discusses possible remedies for future research. The main recommendation, discussed in more detail in the study, is that stricter theoretical reasoning would help to eliminate the contradictory conclusions many authors have arrived at.

AbstractHow do citizens in European Union (EU) member states think about the EU? And what are the implications of different 'thinking styles' for citizens' preferences regarding formation of policies, politics and polity in the EU? The current article uses relational class analysis (RCA) and analyses perceptions of the EU as a political order by citizens in six selected member states. These are France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – three founding/large member states and three members of the Visegrád group (two of which represent the most notorious examples of the ongoing 'sovereignist' backlash). Using RCA, we identify two thought communities in the selected EU member states: statists and pragmatists. These are the communities of citizens sharing thinking styles that would suggest their support for particular polity types in the EU.

How do populists govern in crisis? We address this question by analyzing the actions of technocratic populists in power during the first wave of the novel coronavirus crisis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We identify three features of the populist pandemic response. First, populists bypassed established, institutionalized channels of crisis response. Second, they engaged in erratic yet responsive policy making. These two features are ubiquitous to populism. The third feature, specific to technocratic populism, is the politicization of expertise in order to gain legitimacy. Technocratic populists in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia weaponized medical expertise for political purposes.

Televised political debates have become a permanent part of electoral campaigns, the campaign finale. However, evidence that such debates can shift voters' attitudes is mixed, while the impact on voters' preferences is highly doubted. Our research contributes to this debate based on empirical data on the effects of televised debates in the 2020 parliamentary elections in Slovakia. In contrast to other research on the impact of TV debates', we followed our participants for a longer period of time after the experiment, which allowed us to measure not only declared vote preference ex ante, but also reported behaviour ex post. We employed a pre-test/post-test experimental design in a controlled environment. The analysis investigates what effect debate exposure has on opinions about candidates' leadership skills, credibility, and political competence.

How do populists govern in crisis? We address this question by analyzing the actions of technocratic populists in power during the first wave of the novel coronavirus crisis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We identify three features of the populist pandemic response. First, populists bypassed established, institutionalized channels of crisis response. Second, they engaged in erratic yet responsive policy making. These two features are ubiquitous to populism. The third feature, specific to technocratic populism, is the politicization of expertise in order to gain legitimacy. Technocratic populists in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia weaponized medical expertise for political purposes.

The popularity of televised political debates is growing, attracting millions of viewers. However, evidence that such debates can shift voters' attitudes is mixed and the impact on voters' preference is also mixed. In addition, the evidence comes mostly from presidential elections in the United States and almost exclusively from established democracies. A call for comparative research in new democracies has been made several times. Our research answers the call and contributes to this debate by comparing two experimental studies based on first-order national elections and second-order European Parliament elections in Slovakia. To our knowledge, this is the first time such a study has been performed in a post-communist EU country. We employed a pre-test/post-test experimental design in a controlled environment with participants randomly assigned to both groups. The results show that debate exposure has a stronger effect on opinions about candidates' leadership skills, credibility, and economic competence if the candidates were previously unknown. Familiarity with the candidates and pre-existing preferences also function as a block to preference change. Almost all of our findings are in line with previous research originating from Western contexts. Therefore, we conclude that the causal mechanism linking debate exposure to voters' preference and attitudes in the post-communist context is similar to that in Western countries with long-term democratic traditions.