Jacek Lubecki – författare

The 2014 Ukrainian-Crimean crisis has raised serious questions in the West about Russian motivations and future policy directions. Now more than ever, it is imperative to explore the defensive perceptions, reactions, and preparations of neighbouring countries, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Is there a convergence of their approaches along similar paths, or do their different cultures and historical experiences prefigure a divergence of their defense policies? While Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic all seem to have little concern about Russia’s policies in Ukraine, the Polish response has been uniquely strong and militarized. This book will explore reasons for the different responses to the crisis.

The 2014 Ukrainian-Crimean crisis has raised serious questions in the West about Russian motivations and future policy directions. Now more than ever, it is imperative to explore the defensive perceptions, reactions, and preparations of neighbouring countries, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Is there a convergence of their approaches along similar paths, or do their different cultures and historical experiences prefigure a divergence of their defense policies? While Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic all seem to have little concern about Russia’s policies in Ukraine, the Polish response has been uniquely strong and militarized. This book will explore reasons for the different responses to the crisis.

Following the passage of the fifteenth and twentieth anniversaries of the entry of many former communist states into both NATO and the EU in 2019, this book takes a comprehensive look at the changed security conditions of these new member states. How has NATO and EU membership improved their overall defence protection, and what elements are still missing for them on an individual state basis?Utilising alliance politics theory, convergence/divergence theory and defence policy theory, the book provides an invaluable assessment of defence policies, from the stable East Central European states to the most jeopardised Baltic states in the north of Europe. With chapters on the Cold War defence conditions during the last two decades of Soviet domination, post 1989–91 transformations in the direction of democracy and the impact of the 2014 Ukraine–Russia–Crimea crisis, this book is essential reading for those seeking to understand the changed landscape of European politics in the twenty-first century.

Following the passage of the fifteenth and twentieth anniversaries of the entry of many former communist states into both NATO and the EU in 2019, this book takes a comprehensive look at the changed security conditions of these new member states. How has NATO and EU membership improved their overall defence protection, and what elements are still missing for them on an individual state basis?Utilising alliance politics theory, convergence/divergence theory and defence policy theory, the book provides an invaluable assessment of defence policies, from the stable East Central European states to the most jeopardised Baltic states in the north of Europe. With chapters on the Cold War defence conditions during the last two decades of Soviet domination, post 1989–91 transformations in the direction of democracy and the impact of the 2014 Ukraine–Russia–Crimea crisis, this book is essential reading for those seeking to understand the changed landscape of European politics in the twenty-first century.

The authors of this book retell the political and economic history of East-Central Europe, the post-communist Balkans, and the Baltic states and speculate about their future from the vantage point of three competing forces operating in the region: territorial imperialism, globalization, and nationalism. Exposed to imperial aspirations, the geographic area from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea has in the past 150 years been subject to alternating waves of globalization and nationalism. The nineteenth century Eastern European empires were open to forces of economic globalization, but all collapsed at the end of World War One. Emerging nation-states embraced the logic of Western-led globalization but were subjugated by Nazi and Soviet empires, which pursued policies of economic autarchy. The demise of the Soviet empire marked the revival of pre-1939 nation-states and the re-entry of forces of liberalism and globalization into the region, with multiple crises of economic transition, ethnic militancy, new forms of authoritarianism, and external security threats. By 2010 negative, nationalist-populist reactions against crises that globalization brought to Eastern Europe became the dominant political trend. The analysis involves the consideration about the very contemporary factors of Brexit and COVID, as well as Russia’s and China’s influences, and their effects on Eastern Europe.

Why do democracies that appear consolidated unravel, not through coups, but through democratic means? Democratic Purgatory explores this paradox, introducing a powerful new concept to explain why liberal democracies in Latin America and East-Central Europe have faltered. Drawing on comparative case studies from Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, Poland, Hungary, and Romania, the book argues that democratic purgatory is a regime type in which formal institutions endure while legitimacy erodes, representation fails, and elite-driven governance calcifies. Rather than structural inevitability, these breakdowns stem from contingent choices: negotiated transitions, successor party dominance, and technocratic insulation created fertile ground for popularism, a top-down appropriation of populist rhetoric to dismantle liberal norms. From Orbán’s Hungary to Chávez’s Venezuela, the analysis reveals how democratic procedures can hollow out democracy itself. In an era of global democratic backsliding, this book offers a timely framework for understanding the fragility of liberal democracy and the decisive role of political agency in preventing breakdown or enabling renewal.

International Studies: Introductory Readings presents students with carefully curated readings that familiarize them with foundational ideas within the discipline and frame international studies as an interdisciplinary science.The opening readings presents a panorama of international studies as a field with focus on history, geography, political science, anthropology, economics, and regional studies. Through an interdisciplinary lens, additional readings explain key terms in international studies, examine the various forms of international organizations, and introduce ideas necessary to understand global health issues. Students learn key scientific facts and read about the political, social, and economic ramifications of global climate change, as well as how patriarchy and the global oppression of women is embedded in the very structures of our thinking. Closing chapters provide an overview of different regions of the world, including Latin America, East Asia, South and Central Asia, and Africa.The second edition features new readings addressing climate change and Latin America, East Asia, the Pacific, South and Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa within the context of international studies.Designed to help studies confidently confront issues, problems, and decisions in the modern world, International Studies is an ideal supplementary resource for courses in political science and international studies.