Interdisciplinary Studies on Central and Eastern Europe – serie

This volume allows a new generation of scholars, from the Balkans and beyond, to shed light on some of the struggles the region faces. The combination of post-communist and post-conflict transition, together with the current economic and financial crisis, pose difficult challenges for the Western Balkans.What is the state of democracy in the region? Are the countries of the Western Balkans stuck somewhere between authoritarianism and genuine democracy? What are the remaining obstacles to state building? What effect has the crisis had on young people in the Western Balkans?These are some of the questions the authors of this volume seek to answer. The studies look at different countries and combine methods from various disciplines ranging from political science, history, economics and law to sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

Since the early 1990s, the southern Caucasus and its larger neighbourhood, the Black Sea region, have experienced deep and sometimes painful transformations, including bloody conflicts. They have also become an arena of geopolitical and geoeconomic competition between great powers. This has attracted growing attention from social scientists. In this volume, authors from universities in Europe, the United States and the southern Caucasus focus on several of the most topical problems of the region, particularly how nascent states and societies grapple with the results of unresolved ethno-territorial conflicts and how they try to construct new civil societies from the cultural mosaic that they inherited from their Soviet past. How do elements of democracy and autocracy combine in the political regimes of the new states? Can the West have an effect on their internal development and, if so, how? How do the rich mineral resources of the Caspian region influence the development of the region’s economies and define the geopolitical standing of these countries?

This volume deals with different aspects of informal structures and practices in Eastern Europe. Its objectives are twofold. It aims at discovering whether or to what extent informal structures and practices in Eastern Europe have meanings, functions, forms and effects different from those that can be observed in the politics and societies of Western Europe. The authors of this volume – most of them are from the region – have been invited to discuss the scientific relevance of the distinction informal / formal in their respective field of research or discipline. This points to the second objective of this volume which is to encourage a more fruitful interaction between disciplines that often disregard each other and which, despite inevitable and essential epistemological differences, have significant shared interests such as the comparative analysis of political phenomena in terms of elementary forms of social organization. The relation between informality and formality in a more methodologically pluralist and ultimately holistic way can be analysed via regards croisés between the disciplines anthropology, political science and sociology. This allows the extension of this comparative and multidisciplinary approach to other themes and phenomena of mutual interests.

This volume offers a view of modern Russian intellectual culture as shaped by the dynamic of conversions. The individual contributions examine a rich variety of personal conversions occurring in a culture in which the written word enjoyed a privileged status and, historically, was closely linked to the sacred. However, the essays presented go beyond the original meaning of conversion as a change of religious beliefs. They address shifts in style, aesthetic outlooks, and mindsets, political and ideological transfigurations as well as religious conversions in the true sense of the term.Whether at the level of culture, society or biography, the study of conversions opens the way to profound reflections about questions of identity, cultural ruptures, and continuity. The awareness of former conversions and the possible «convertibility» of one’s own ideological, spiritual or social stance has been among the central traits of Russian intellectual culture during the last two centuries.

Ukraine’s protest movement of 2013–14, known as the Euromaidan, and its culmination, the people’s uprising in late 2013–early 2014 became one of the most dramatic world events in recent years. The accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation and military conflict in the Donbas demonstrate that the dramatic dynamics of the country’s ongoing transformation are still far from predictable. This book examines the manifold aspects of Ukraine’s current crisis and its political upheaval. The contributors to the book, Ukrainian experts in a variety of disciplinary fields, explore social, political and cultural reasons and factors behind the country’s transformation in its national and regional dimensions, the impact of Ukraine’s revolution on European and global politics, and also the new challenges of tough reforms with which the country is faced. The contributors share the view that the Euromaidan brought new opportunities for Ukraine’s modern development and the greatest historical chance for the country’s European future since independence in 1991.

This volume addresses the crucial role of knowledge and innovation in coping with and adapting to socio-economic and political transformation processes in post-Soviet societies. Unique are the bottom up or micro-sociological and ethnographic perspectives offered by the book on the processes of post-Soviet transformations in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus. Three thematic fields form the structuring frame: cultures of knowledge production and sharing in agriculture; local governance arrangements and knowledge production; and finally, the present situation of agricultural advisory services development.

Even though the democratic decline has been deemed a global phenomenon, the question of how it manifests itself in the postcommunist world and how it varies across different regions with divergent levels of democratic consolidation has not been sufficiently addressed yet. This book tries to fill the gap and examines the causes and nature of the deteriorating quality of democracy in Central Europe as well as the reversal or stagnation of democratization processes in Southeastern and Eastern Europe. The political elite plays a key role in initiating legislative changes that may lead to democratic backsliding. Its constant commitment to the rule of law and to the practice of selfrestraint in securing the independence of judiciary and the rights of political opposition appears hence indispensable for sustainable liberal democracy.

Like all empires, the Soviet Empire was also based on the distinction centre–periphery. Although the Soviet Empire no longer exists, relationships between centres and peripheries still shape realities in the region. The book analyses the relevance of this distinction for the understanding of political, economic, and cultural realities in the post-Soviet space. Case studies provided by scholars from different countries of the former Soviet Union explore the potential of the distinction in historical as well as in economic and political perspectives

This comparative study at hand has been the result of a two-year research project on floods in 2014 in the Western Balkans engaging eight research teams from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia. Representing quite different disciplines, the authors of this volume have analysed diverse aspects of the crisis governance and its ramifications. This publication’s goals are twofold. Firstly, it pins down the characteristics of the crisis responses during the floods of 2014 in three affected countries, preconditioned by the existing institutions, crisis leadership, the role of media and the social capital as well as the foreign financial aid. On the other hand, through the lenses of the crisis governance we conclude on the state capacities and the nature of political regime of the cases under study. The flood megacrisis did not constitute a "window of opportunity" for individual or institutional learning. On the contrary, it did unveil some authoritarian tendencies in Serbia and Bosnia, and thus stalled the hitherto ongoing democratization process.

The book is a collection of articles treating the question of modernization in Georgia. It is an interdisciplinary volume, comprising the studies from disciplines of history, political science, sociology and international relations. The texts deal with the topic from various angles, creating a rich and multifaceted picture: theories of modernization, history of modernization and Europeanization efforts in Georgia from the 19th century to the present day, Soviet past and its influence on the present socio-political processes, interrelation between foreign policy and modernization project, social capital and civil society, state and nation in the Caucasus. The book takes into account both theoretical and historical dimensions of the topic, presents various interpretations of the concept of modernization and discusses how distinct processes and projects of modernizing society existed in different historical epochs in Georgia.

This book contains collection of articles which provide policy implications related to the problem of achieving substantive reform on the basis of harmonising legislation in Western Balkan (WB) countries with the standards of the European Union (EU). While WB states have generally been successful in adopting legal reforms that make up a part of EU conditionality, many laws remain unenforced, amounting to "empty shells." In the space between law, as it is written, and practices as they are engaged in everyday life, exists a gap, characterized by informality, clientelism, and exchange often based on strong tie relationships. Some instances of informality undermine the goal of establishing rule law and contribute to corruption. Others offer valuable solutions to persistent social problems or represent traditional vehicles of social cohesion that should be promoted. The recommendations in this book seek to address both constructive and damaging instances of informality, and to identify policy measures that can help to harmonise not only legislation, but existing informal practices on the ground.

This book focuses on social and political developments in Armenia during a turbulent post-2018 period. Between 2018 and 2020, the country experienced three significant waves of upheaval: a revolution, a pandemic, and a war. These events had far-reaching implications for Armenia's social, cultural, security, and political foundations. The book provides both factual insights and theoretical underpinnings that help readers understand the country's transformation and the resulting challenges. In its immediate neighbourhood, Armenia is one of the few countries with a clear commitment to democratic governance. However, the country, with its democratic potential in Europe’s eastern neighbourhood, is currently undergoing complex dynamics in security and social spheres. The main goal of this volume is to shed light on Armenia's complicated reality, bring it into the research spotlight, and foster discussions about the country's core challenges.

The last five years have proven to be quite tumultuous for Ukraine. The Orange Revolution, as witnessed around the world, sought to overthrow the ancien régime and to replace it with younger, more democratic leaders. At the same time it was a declaration that Ukraine was truly a European nation that duly embraced the democratic values of the west. However, disappointment soon replaced the euphoria of the victory. This volume attempts to show the elements of change and conflict that have arisen since the Orange Revolution and to explain some of Ukraine’s challenges today on its meandering path between East and West.

This book does what few other works have done: it examines the role media have played in the larger political, economic and social transformations in the post communist space. An international group of scholars from various disciplines explore the complex relations between media, society, and the state in this region over the past twenty years, and present theoretical arguments that challenge dominant views. They scrutinize changes in the public sphere as well as the media itself, its role, format, agenda and quality in the context of changing values and shifting power relationships.

The volume is an attempt to assess the meanings of 1989, in particular the multiple transformation processes and their effects in Eastern Europe. Obviously, the realities of the post-communist transformations have not met the expectations. Were the expectations too high? Did democratic institutions prove incompatible with local cultures? Was their implementation too fast to correspond to a genuine development of democratic culture? Whatever the reasons, the road to democracy has turned out to be steeper and the communist legacy heavier than expected.The authors of this volume seek to comprehend the intricacies of various aspects of the post-communist transition; looking at a broad array of countries that have followed different paths. The studies combine methods of different disciplines. ‘Insider’ perspectives are juxtaposed with external assessments. This comparative and problem based approach brings into focus the ambiguities of the unfinished transformations as well as their broader cultural contexts: the politics of history and the battles for new memory, the re-signification of past and present, and the problematic transformation of homo sovieticus into an autonomous and responsive subject.