European Democracies Research Articles

Politics, Democracy and Disinformation

Disinformation and conspiracy theories systematically threaten our European democracy. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian war against Ukraine has shown us even more that we have a big problem with harmful propaganda directed by an undemocratic Putin’s regime. This problem prevents citizens from making informed decisions and undermines our foreign policy orientation, as well as the values of our society. And although the war in Ukraine has changed a lot in this regard, a significant part of EU citizens is still prone to easily succumb to massive disinformation campaigns. The aim of this text is to present the important steps of the institutions of the European Union, as well as the Government of the Slovak Republic and other official European or state authorities, which are trying to reverse this negative trend and gradually expand the capacity to combat hybrid threats.

A compromising mindset? How citizens evaluate the trade‐offs in coalition politics

AbstractCoalition building depends on citizens having a ‘compromising mindset’: they must accept that parties need to compromise in order to gain influence and that this entails deviating from the original policy positions. In this study, we show that European citizens understand that compromise is essential for democratic governance and that they, holding everything else constant, prefer political parties that express a willingness to compromise. This finding appears to be independent from specific forms of coalition politics and to be widespread across different levels of political interest, formal education and even ideological extremity. Our analysis compares observational data from the Austrian National Election Survey (AUTNES) 2020 and an original survey from Denmark in 2021. We also present results from a conjoint experiment fielded in Denmark, which evaluates the effect of willingness to compromise on vote choice. Our finding is good news for European democracies where coalition politics and thus compromise is a necessity for governance. Yet, for vote‐seeking politics, the situation is complex as citizens might sometimes punish parties for compromising, but sometimes also punish them for not compromising.

“We Are Flying Like a Fish”: Female Academics in Social Work in Hungary

Social 1 work was reintroduced to Hungary during the third wave of democratization in Europe. As an academic discipline, it is in a disadvantaged position: the domestic academic traditions prefer strict disciplinary boundaries to inter- or transdisciplinary integration. Ongoing reforms in the country highlight the economic gains and the societal mission of higher education, with a strong focus on internationalization and direct connections to professional practice. Unfortunately, in this new framework, social work is understood as an auxiliary profession. This, in combination with female academics’ unfavorable position in Hungary, establishes a situation in which gender-based and disciplinary disadvantages result in a negative synergy. To explore the potential impacts, we maintain a dual focus throughout the paper and analyze academic women's position and the position of academics in social work.

Political time in public bureaucracies: Explaining variation of structural duration in European governments

AbstractStructural duration conveys stability but also resilience in central government and is therefore a key issue in the debate on the structure and organization of government. This paper discusses three core variants of structural duration to study the explanatory relevance of politics. We compare these durations across ministerial units in four European democracies (Germany, France, The Netherlands, and Norway) from 1980 to 2013, totaling over 17,000 units. Our empirical analyses show that cabinets' ideological turnover and extremism are the most significant predictors of all variants of duration, whereas polarization in parliament as well as new prime ministers without office experience yield the predicted significant negative effects for most models. We discuss these findings and avenues for future research that acknowledge the definition and measures for structural change as well as temporal aspects of the empirical phenomenon more explicitly.

Роль сетей крайне правых в культурной войне и международных отношениях в Европе

The author analyzes the internationalization of European far right civil societies as non-traditional political actors that engage in international relations creating ideological networks. The purpose of the article is to reveal the role of European fascist civil societies in international ideological activism as a response to a perceived cultural war against globalism and cultural Marxism of left internationalists. The article analyzes and comprehensively defines the issue of the cultural war in the West and describes the characteristics of Spanish fascist civil societies as non-traditional political actors exposing their perspective as cultural war revolutionaries. Attempts to create international far right networks by Spanish actors are studied based on the analysis of The Militant – The Cultural War, the manifesto published by the Spanish fascist civil society European Future in February 2023. A discourse analysis of this document exposes the ideological narratives of this group that can help to create a theoretical framework of the cultural war concept for European far right politics. The results demonstrate that European far right activists consider there is an ideological war against Marxists and other leftist groups. Activists of the European Future see themselves as far right revolutionaries capable of causing an ideological revolution in European democracies. The manifesto serves as a tool to call out to other European far right activists of the continent to join them. The results can contribute to future research of ideological extremism and European far right activism.

Precarious work and challenger parties: how precarity influenced vote choice in the 2018 Italian election

AbstractAcross Western European democracies, the last 20 years have seen a growth of precarious employment and the rise of challenger parties. Both trends are especially marked in Italy, where occupational insecurity has become the norm and over half of the electorate has turned to a challenger party. In this article, I investigate the relationship between these two phenomena, addressing the question of whether and how precarity in the labor market influenced vote choice in the 2018 general election. First, I provide descriptive evidence that the Italian labor market shifted from dualism to generalized precarization. Second, I empirically investigate the relationship between precarity and voting in this context. The results show that the perception of precarity, not formal employment status, influenced voting behavior: it fostered participation, increased support for the Five Star Movement, and decreased support for the Democratic Party. These findings challenge core assumptions in the literature, first and foremost about precarious workers' low turnout rate, difficult mobilization, and consequent political irrelevance. They indicate that the electoral weight of precarious workers has increased, and their representation can be electorally beneficial.

Vor hundert Jahren: Coudenhove-Kalergis Pan-Europa —der Traum von einer demokratischen Weltmacht als Friedensstifter

abstract: In 1922 Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi placed similar articles about a future unified European Democracy in leading newspapers: the Berlin Vossische Zeitung and the Viennese Neue Freie Presse . One year later he published the book Pan-Europa in which he addressed again the cultural, political, economic, monetary, and peace-keeping advantages of a United Europe as one of the world powers. Coudenhove-Kalergi started the first European unification movement, and after 1945 Pan-Europa still inspired the founding fathers of the new European institutions. The book deserves a new reading in times of continental military conflicts. In one regard the author failed miserably: He was a colonialist and did not understand the anti-colonial movements that had already started.

Political Populism: Handbook of Concepts, Questions and Strategies of Research, edited by Reinhard Heinisch, Christina Holtz-Bacha, and Oscar Mazzoleni. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2021, 595 pp.

This handbook is divided into three parts, the first of which includes theories, approaches, conceptualizations and dimensions of political populism. The second part analyzes populist manifestations in Europe and America, while the third part focuses on new phenomena and new research programs of political populism. In this context, the interdisciplinary nature of research is considered, taking into account the peculiarities of political populism in Europe and America. This handbook offers a comprehensive theoretical and empirical introduction to the manifestations, causes, and consequences of political populism and the political dimensions of various populist phenomena, especially in the democracies of Europe and the Americas. The main focus of this handbook is on explaining the phenomenon as a result of the crisis of legitimation of the representative system, as well as contradictions and limitations in the current political science debate. The phenomenon of political populism is considered primarily from the standpoint of political science and communication studies. This handbook also offers a comprehensive analysis of the impact of political populism on various policy areas such as the environment, health or economic policy.

Philosophy of Law or Philosophy of Reason –The Idea of a Treaty Establishing a Constitution for the European Union

The main purpose of the study is to analyze the feasibility and necessity of an EU Constitution. Briefly, the history of the draft constitution is as follows: The draft treaty aims to codify the two main treaties of the European Union - the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992, as amended by the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) and the Treaty of Nice (2001). The debate on the future of Europe is believed to have begun with a speech by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in Berlin in 2000. The process began after the Laeken Declaration, when the European Convention was set up, chaired by former French President Valerie Giscard d'Estaing, with the aim of drafting a constitution. The draft contract was published in July 2003. After lengthy discussions and debates over the proposal for qualified majority voting, the final text was approved in June 2004 and signed by representatives of the Member States on 29 October 2004. The failure of the treaty in France and the Netherlands is a serious blow to the European Union because these two countries are considered to be loyal supporters of the European project. The text of the treaty was subsequently rewritten by the Amato Group, officially the Active Committee on European Democracy (ACED), a group of high-ranking European politicians. During the German presidency of the Union, a new treaty was proposed - the Treaty of Lisbon - to replace the original draft of the Constitution. On 12 June 2008, the Lisbon Treaty was also rejected in a referendum in Ireland. But if we want to look beyond history, we can ask - Why does the EU need a Constitution and how can the Constitution be the roadmap to an advanced future for the EU? The answers to this question can be found by analyzing several directions (these are the main points of the article): historical reflexivity; socio-cultural analysis of the philosophical concepts of well-known political and social philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, John Locke; the modern constellation through the prism of Jürgen Habermas and the decision to make a text as a Constitution which its aim is to reach the starting point of an entire community like the EU. Keywords: constitution, EU, philosophy, law, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Jurgen Habermas

Plurinational democracies in Europe: the quest for a profane constitutionalism

AbstractHow should we understand the claims on the right to decide on status made within plurinational member states of the European Union by actors and institutions seeking to protect the self‐government of sub‐state nations or peoples, or at least their right to consent to their ascribed status? Peaceful solutions to conflicts involving contested claims over territory, citizenship, and national sovereignty (authority) can be found when a conceptual or cultural transformation takes place towards a pluralist and bottom‐up or federal concept of plurinational democracy, recovering the centrality of self‐determination as the self‐assertion of a political community. Constitutional law based on the popular sovereignty of a majority nation within plurinational democracies often neglects the question of the definition of the demos as the prefigured constituency, and the existence of national or territorial minorities. If constitutions are interpreted as precluding any claim to self‐determination by a constituency, and any debate about that claim, then an undemocratic, sacralized model of militant constitutionalism may emerge. That model is not so much about protecting democracy as it is about imposing a national mould, a pre‐defined demos. This article revisits the claims of sovereignty made by national territorial minorities in Spain, against the background of the constitutional doctrine of the Spanish judiciary that precludes these constituencies from engaging in political debates on the right to decide. The resulting sacralization of the Constitution leads to a new version of the model of ‘militant democracy’, a militant nationalist constitutionalism, which can be countered by an alternative, secular, even profane approach to the Constitution.

Democracy Under Occupation: Coalition Government Formation and Survival in Iraq and Palestine

Abstract While existing research on coalition government formation and durability has significantly enhanced our understanding of coalition processes, it remains heavily focused on (1) the experiences of established democracies in Europe and on (2) the various roles of domestic institutions and actors. In this article, we examine the interplay of external interference and domestic actors to explain the success and failure of coalition government formation in the context of fragile democracies. We ask: How does external interference impact government coalition formation? Drawing on Domestic Opposition Theory (dot), we explore two cases of coalition government efforts in the Middle East: post-elections in Iraq in 2018 and in Palestine in 2006. Findings show that, in the case of Palestine, external interference – financial boycott of Hamas-led government and support for Fatah against Hamas – played a key role in the eventual failure of the governing coalition. In Iraq’s case, widespread public domestic opposition to continued external influence, particularly from Iranian-backed interests, played a defining role in coalition formation processes.

Back to Heraclitus: What Contentious Politics Looks Like When Everything Is in Flux

This article examines the Dynamics of Contention research program against the backdrop of political science’s emergent concern with institutions during the 1990s. By the time Charles Tilly had developed his mechanism-based explanatory framework for understanding contentious politics, the study of institutions had come to dominate political science. Although the contentious politics framework has some similarities with historical institutionalism, I argue that the two approaches are incompatible, precisely because of the latter’s focus on institutions. The contentious politics approach requires historicizing everything, including institutions, in such a way that anything analyzable becomes a process. Historical institutionalism relies on historical fixedness and some understanding of equilibrium, both of which Tilly came to reject for the study of contentious politics, in favor of open-ended political conflict and causal mechanisms as explanatory building blocks. To probe the tension between Tilly’s mechanism-based approach to understanding contentious politics and historical institutionalism, I conduct a close reading of two books that Tilly wrote using the contentious politics approach to explain matters of concern to historical institutionalists: European Revolutions, 1492–1992 on revolutions and Contention & Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000 on democratization.

The Conference on the Future of Europe as a chance for democratic catching up? Towards a citizen-centred perspective on constitutional renewal in the European Union

AbstractThe Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) was the first initiative to include citizens in deliberations about the future of European democracy since the failed Constitutional Convention of 2002/03. Although embedded within broader trends to involve ordinary citizens in the political process, it is of specific relevance in the European context because it raises expectations of democratic catching up and relates to ongoing discussions and struggles about the constitutional character of the European Union. This article argues for a citizen-centred perspective on constitutional renewal in the European Union that places European citizens as constituent subjects at centre stage. It outlines how making the European Union accessible as a political arena allows citizens to regain control over developments that have evolved behind people’s backs. It concludes that deliberative tools of citizen participation should be used to pave the way for a wider reorganization of public authority and a renewal of the European Union’s constitutional basis.

The Italian Constitutional Court under stress. How to respond to political inefficiency

ABSTRACT Constitutional courts in several European democracies are under stress. In Italy, the inefficiency of the system of government has led to increasing calls for the Court to intervene in crucial legislative matters. This article examines how and why the Constitutional Court plays a key role in contemporary Italian politics. First, it focuses on the determining factors of the political system that have strengthened the Constitutional Court vis-à-vis other political branches. Second, through a quali-quantitative analysis, it focuses on controversial decision-making techniques that have enabled constitutional judges to participate in the law-making process. It focuses on the so-called ‘warnings to the legislature’, which correspond to formal invitations to parliament to intervene in a particular discipline. It then examines the ‘manipulative judgments’ that have pushed the boundaries of constitutional adjudication, with the Court increasingly assuming the role of ‘positive legislator’. Third, the article examines the consequences of the Court’s expanding role in specific policy areas, shedding light on recent judicial decisions relating to assisted suicide. The aim of the article is to contribute to the understanding of the changing role of Constitutional courts in democratic political regimes at a time of their more or less manifest crisis.

Contextual factors, transnationalism attitudes, and support for GAL-TAN parties within European metropolises: Insights from London

European democracies are moulded by a ‘transnational cleavage’ between green-alternative-libertarian and traditionalist-authoritarian-nationalist parties and attitudes. The territorial reverberations of this new cleavage are still scarcely analysed. Therefore, this article aims to explore how the transnational cleavage relates to political opinions and choices at the local level, by uncovering connections between such cleavage and the characteristics of metropolitan places. What are the implications of living in different metropolitan contexts on citizens’ positions on the transnational cleavage? I answer this question by investigating how metropolitan contextual factors shape transnationalism attitudes and support for green-alternative-libertarian and traditionalist-authoritarian-nationalist parties within London. Findings highlight that transnationalism attitudes and support for green-alternative-libertarian/traditionalist-authoritarian-nationalist parties are statistically significantly related to contextual factors; among the latter, the boroughs’ housing conditions and ethnic structures are the best predictors of transnationalism attitudes and party choices; residents of disadvantaged metropolitan contexts exhibit lower support for transnationalism and green-alternative-libertarian parties.

There goes the Berimbau: An Africa-Brazil-Germany Musician-Body Trajectory

This article presents the partial results of a dissertation entitled The role of music in the internationalization of capoeira: Flows and crossroads Rio-France-Germany (2022). Documents prepared by practitioners of the N'Zinga Capoeira School in Hanover, Germany, published on a platform called Yumpu, provide information on how musical-cultural knowledge of capoeira is understood and passed down in this context. Through the translation of songs and the study of informational texts written by German instructors about capoeira, I observe that musicality (and, by extension, corporeality) are fundamenatal to the consolidation of capoeira culture in Germany. This analysis is influenced by Leda Martins' Performances da Oralitura (2003), which highlights the enduring African root in Afro-diasporic cultural activities, transmitting africanidades ("Africanities") beyond the performance itself. Paul Gilroy's The Black Alantic (1993) also informed my understanding of the relevance of Black culture in critiques of European democracy. German capoeira practitioners gain a deeper understanding of the structural differences imposed on racialized people when they coexist with their mestres and learn of oppression and social difference through the art of capoeira.

Globalisation and trust in Europe between 2002 and 2018

Are institutional trust and interpersonal trust threatened by globalisation? For nineteen countries in Europe, using a fixed effects model for a panel data set relating globalisation to several economic and social macro variables, like income inequality and diversity, to average institutional and interpersonal trust derived from responses in European Social Surveys, we do not find any significant relation between the relatively moderate globalisation of the first two decades of the 21st century on average interpersonal and institutional trust. At the same time, occurrences of economic decline in a country are negatively related to institutional trust. GDP has a positive effect on both institutional and interpersonal.Combining the macro factors with the individual traits of respondents using pooled repeated cross-sectional data demonstrate the dominance of personal characteristics in individual levels of trust, with only institutional quality emerging as a macro variable which is significantly and positively related to trust, especially for the Socio-Economic Groups 3 to 7 (of the eight groups distinguished). Those who are born in the country exhibit higher levels of interpersonal trust, in particular in the higher SES groups 4–7, but show significantly lower institutional trust for the SES groups 0–2. Age is negatively related to institutional trust for all SES groups, but positively related to interpersonal trust for SES groups 4–7.These findings appear to imply that those who are concerned with the level of institutional trust in the population as a basic requirement for democracy in Europe should focus on the quality of institutions and not on globalisation.

Does inequality erode political trust?

A long-standing argument in the political sciences holds that high levels of inequality are incompatible with democracy. Although a number of studies have by now investigated whether income inequality endangers democratic consolidation and stability through corroding popular support, the findings remain inconclusive. This study provides new evidence for a sociotropic effect of macroeconomic income inequality on trust in the institutions of representative democracy by making use of therandom effects within betweenspecification in multilevel models for data from 28 European democracies over a period of 16 years. The findings show that both long-standing differences in income inequality between countries and changes in inequality within countries over time are negatively related to trust in institutions. While the spirit-level thesis states that this effect should be more pronounced among rich democracies, the findings show that the effect of inequality is stronger in countries that are less affluent. Further analyses on whether the social-psychological mechanism proposed by the spirit-level thesis mediates the effect of inequality on trust document a partial transmission via status concerns and social trust. However, the study suggests that income inequality primarily influences trust in institutions through evaluation-based processes as captured by economic evaluations.

The relational dimension of the person in María Zambrano’s philosophy

María Zambrano is among the most influential voices in the philosophical landscape of the 20th century. Her thought, which came to light slowly and with delayed recognition, is still highly topical today. Of great interest is her reflection on the idea of democracy in Europe, which represents an anticipatory look at many contemporary issues. As a Spanish exile and witness of the Second World War, Zambrano is, to all intents and purposes, a European citizen who recounts the agony that her distant Europe is experiencing with great passion. The attention she pays to that decadent and diseased body, as she calls it, captures an additional dimension to the historical-political one, which is nevertheless central. In describing the violence of those years, she reaps the seeds that made the emergence of a common European ground possible, and that must be nurtured again. It is not only a matter of rediscovering the cultural roots - philosophical thought and the Christian message – but also of understanding the causes of that history that became sacrificial. It is, therefore, a matter of rethinking the human in virtue of its creatural and transcendent dimension and rediscovering the common origin that makes every human being a part of the same humanity.

Mental health-related limitations and political leadership in Germany: A multidisciplinary analysis of legal, psychiatric, and ethical frameworks

In recent years, political events have reignited contentious debates about psychiatry and democratic governance. This discourse has largely centred around the ethics and morality of public commentary, particularly in relation to the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule. Yet, few studies have examined the practical implications of health-related limitations due to mental illness in national leadership and the constitutional and legal provisions that surround these issues, including voluntary or involuntary proceedings. Accordingly, this theoretical paper analyses these topics in a German context using the position at the head of the executive: the chancellorship. Germany was selected as a case example as the biggest democracy in Europe with modern legal frameworks representative of the post-World War Two era in European constitutionalism, and for its economic and political influence within the European Union. Throughout this paper, we do not speculate on the mental health of any individual (past or present), but instead explore jurisdictional mechanisms around health-related limitations in German high office. Consequently, we outline relevant constitutional and legal scenarios, and how short- or long-term medical incapacity may determine requisite responses and contingent complexities. This underpins our discussion, where we consider legal ambiguities, functional capacity, and ethical concerns in psychiatric practice.