Post-communist States Research Articles

Geopolitics and the geographer: ethics and the everyday in times of global existential crisis

ABSTRACT This is a version of the Eurasian Geography and Economics sponsored keynote paper presented at the Cities After Transition (CAT-network) 10th International Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States Conference, hosted by the Department of Human Geography, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia in September, 2023. Given the numerous overlapping crises that threaten life around the globe at every scale, this paper questions the relevance of status-quo approaches to geographical inquiry, beginning from but not limited to Central and Eastern Europe. In the context of so much urgent and ongoing need, the paper posits that a refinement of conceptual, methodological, and ethical commitments is necessary if we wish to do work that matters. It proposes a series of keystone sensitivities: humility and the appreciation of difference, relevance and the appreciation of the moment, and scale and the appreciation of the everyday. The paper presents the theoretical commitments underpinning each of these keystones and then suggests a menu of practical moves to inform future research and ground academic work within the urgency of the present moment. Ultimately, the paper aspires to break out of the limitations of regional container thinking and instead puts into practice the notion that theory can be generated anywhere, rather than only from select sites in the dominant Anglo-American circuits of knowledge production. On this foundation, the paper attempts to make meaning from difficulty, and offers theoretical and practical suggestions for scholars to do ethical and relevant work in this era of existential crisis.

The Uprisings of Gaza: How Geopolitical Crises Have Reshaped Academic Communities from Tahrir to Kyiv

Abstract The Arab uprisings spawned a new body of theoretical, empirical, and methodological advances by political scientists of the Middle East. This essay reflects upon the contributions of the edited volume The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research since the Arab Uprisings to address three occurring central issues at the intersection of regional studies and political science that are affected by geopolitical shocks: how shocks highlight previously neglected topics and actors; how they subsequently discredit and privilege certain disciplines and methods; and how they recast the role of academic research within global communities of knowledge and policy-making. Topics such as the adaptation of authoritarianism, the role of social media, and the onset of multipolar politics, addressed by the volume on the Middle East, are compared with similar processes that have informed the evolution of social science research in the post-Communist states. The final section reflects on how two contemporary conflicts—Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas-Israel conflict—have affected the American academy, including student protests at American universities, university policies, and academic freedom.

Everyday Bribery in North Korea as Moral Economy

This study investigates how bribery is defined, negotiated, and practiced in the everyday lives of ordinary North Koreans. Reflecting on interviews spanning over two decades with North Korean migrants in South Korea and China, a team of North Korea experts has identified the patterns of micro-level bribery in everyday life in North Korea that differ, to some extent, from those of other post-communist states in Eastern Europe and Asia. By carefully examining the accounts of ten former North Korean residents, the researchers find that the traditional socialist economy, once prevalent in workplaces, schools, and hospitals, has now been supplanted by individual-to-individual private market interactions. Moreover, bribery serves not only as an informal practice but also as a “moral economy,” which differs from the more organized forms of corruption seen at the elite and enterprise levels.

Problems of sanctioning economic environmental crime in the Czech Republic

The article deals with economic environmental crime, i.e. those illegal attacks on the environment that are perceived as the most serious. Using the example of the Czech Republic, a post-communist state in Eastern Europe that joined the European Union, the main problems associated with its criminal prosecution are presented. As a result of the analysis, the key factors of insufficient prosecution of economic environmental crime are identified, i.e. in particular high latency, low clearance of registered suspicions, mild punishment and ineffectiveness of criminal repression against corporations. In conclusion, proposals are made for certain measures, both in terms of legislation and application practice, which would positively influence the above factors.

I’m Angry! Disability Protests in Post-Communist Poland

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to analyse the disability protests that took place in Poland in the 2010s in relation to the American tradition of disability protest as a reference point in the global history of disability. The similarity of means and the difference of outcomes between American and Polish protests reveal the role of social, political and economic contexts of post-communist states in the use of disability protest strategies. This paper also explores how the hidden transcript of deaf and disabled resilience was transformed into a public one, reshaping the general public’s mental framework in relation to disability.

Welfare in Crisis: Labor and Social Protection in the Global South

Abstract Welfare expansion in the global South is partly in response to the social crises caused by neoliberal restructuring since the 1980s, with the 2008 global financial crisis escalating them, and the covid-19 pandemic further exposing the impact on the most precarious working populations. What are the new dynamics of labor struggles against these structural, industrial, and health crises under the expansion of social protection or the lack thereof? How do the state and non-state actors manage recurring and new capitalist crises by reconfiguring labor and social policies? The contributions in this special issue address these questions by engaging with workers’ lived experiences across the global South and post-communist states. They show that current labor and social policies fail the test under various crises. We argue that the neoliberalization of labor and welfare reconfigurations and the recurring crises of global capitalism have reproduced each other in these global South countries.

The contestation of international ties and regime transitions: evidence from the former Soviet republics

ABSTRACT Studies of noncooperative transitions find that domestic balances of power shaped postcommunist regime trajectories in favor of the powerful. Then, what determined the balance of power during a transition? Drawing on relational-network analysis in IR, I argue that the configuration of international ties determined the relative strength of democrats and Soviet-era elites. States with diversified ties between the US and the Soviet Union - that occupy a brokerage position- were more likely to democratize. Their ties with the US funneled material and non-material assistance into democrats in postcommunist states. However, states deeply integrated into the Soviet order resisted democratization to a greater extent. Their extensive ties to the Soviet order resulted in stronger Sovietization and Soviet legacies impeding democratization. The interplay of states' ties with the US and the Soviet Union, as a function of brokerage and integration, shaped the domestic balance of power, conditioning postcommunist political changes. Empirical analysis using medium-N analysis and case studies on the former Soviet Union republics lends support to the argument. The finding contributes to the literature on international determinants of regime changes by highlighting how underlying global power structures frame the domestic balance of power.

The Iron Curtain and Referee Bias in International Football

Using the assignment of referees to European international association football matches played between 2002 and 2016, we ask whether judgments were biased according to the legacy of the Cold War. We find that referees from post-communist states favored teams from non-communist states, but there was no evidence of favoritism in the other direction. This out-group bias of referees born behind the Iron Curtain was statistically significant for relatively less important and more subjective decisions, namely the awarding of yellow cards for foul play. The bias was particularly large among referees from the former Soviet Union. It has also diminished over time, perhaps due to increased professionalism in European refereeing, or because memories of the Cold War era have diminished among active referees.

Are Autonomy and Intrinsic Motivation of Public Servants Lower in Post-Communist States?

Post-communist states have economic, geopolitical and cultural importance; however, they remain largely under-explored in public management literature. This study applies self-determination theory (SDT) to understand how work context affects perceived autonomy and intrinsic motivation in the public sector of post-communist states, whose administrative context is distinct from that of their counterparts from other administrative traditions. Using the data of 5,662 individuals from the International Social Survey Program we find that public sector employees in post-communist states demonstrate a lower level of autonomy, which in turn, decreases their intrinsic motivation. Our findings provide support to important SDT insights and have implications for public managers.

Contending Temporalities: Stretching the Temporal Reach of Lustration in Central and Eastern Europe

As part of de-Communization, states in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union used lustration measures to remove Communist officials and secret police collaborators from positions of power and to bring to light Communist-era abuses. As a form of transitional justice, lustration is unusually temporally tethered to the Communist past. However, in practice some states stretched lustration’s temporal parameters, reaching back up to eighty years to pre-Soviet and Nazi World War II (WWII) abuses, and extending forward decades into the post-Communist present. This temporal stretching expanded lustration’s goals beyond vetting mechanism to corruption fighter, historical memory marker, and nation-state (re)builder. Lustration’s temporal stretching conflicts with Venice Commission, Council of Europe, and European Court of Human Rights guidelines and legal rulings on lustration. This article presents three temporal approaches to the window of time covered by lustration in eleven post-Communist states between 1990 and 2018: lustration focused on a single, elongated Communist past, lustration covering multiple pasts, and lustration spanning both Communist and post-Communist abuses. Comparative cases in these three temporal categories illustrate significant variation within states surrounding the temporal purview of lustration. This regional variation is juxtaposed with Council of Europe guidelines, related court rulings, and Venice Commission amicus briefs to illustrate contending temporalities surrounding the use of lustration as an “extraordinary” justice measure in consolidated democracies. This study highlights the importance of time as a variable and invites more empirical work on the conditional effects of time on transitional justice.

Lustration: A Post-Communist Phenomenon

The phenomenon of transitional justice appears when authoritarian regimes transform into democracies—a topic that has been studied for many years. One main focus has been the question of the responsibility of the former ruling elite and their subordinates, and in particular, criminal responsibility. After the collapse of communism in Europe, secret police informers were perceived as sharing responsibility, alongside the regime’s functionaries. The first steps toward bringing them to justice were taken in March 1990 in Czechoslovakia. The process was called “lustration,” harking back to an ancient tradition of cleansing newborns of evil. In the jargon of the Czechoslovak security apparatus, “lustrace” meant checking an individual’s secret police records. The best known example of lustration took place in Germany, but the basic idea was carried out in all post-communist Central European countries. This kind of transitional justice was not associated with criminal responsibility, and—except in Poland—the courts were not involved in lustration, which was conceived of as a purely administrative procedure. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, only the Baltic states adopted lustration legislation; in other post-Soviet states, such initiatives failed. A similar situation emerged when Yugoslavia disintegrated, where the ethnic wars overshadowed society’s memories of communist wrongdoing. Lustration was unique to post-communist states and was not seen in any other transitional context.

Post-Communist Populism in Poland: The Case of the Law and Justice Party

The article analyses the issue of populism in Central Europe, a region where original features of this phenomenon have emerged, determined by the system transformation and the circumstances of a post-communist state. The authors aim at systematising theoretical discussion on populism and search for important determinants of its post-communist variety. They also suggest a theoretical model of post-communist populism that is equated with styles of political activity, expressed by specific movements and political parties. Additionally, the researchers define the basic features of post-communist populism, i.e. deprivation, threats to identity, a lack of trust in élites, and how the system was shaped after 1989. Such theoretical frames allow the authors to analyse the activity of the Law and Justice party at an ideological level as well as in terms of its political actions in order to find in them the features of post-communist populism.

National Attachments and Good Citizenship: A Double-Edged Sword

The recent popularity of nationalist movements bears witness to the continued power of national feeling in politics. This article considers the potential relationship between different kinds of national attachments and what we call active and allegiant citizenship—support for democracy, community participation, and prosocial behavior. We analyze these relationships using data from two waves of the European Values Study. We find that a set of attachments often called civic nationalism—including patriotism, national identity, and respect for one’s country’s institutions—are connected with better citizenship on virtually all of our outcomes, whereas ethnic nationalism is frequently connected with worse citizenship. These associations, however, tend to be weaker in the postcommunist states which have a different experience with both nationalism and democracy. The results suggest that national feeling can be a double-edged sword for citizenship.

Unveiling the Perils – Addressing Clientelism and Corruption in Post-Communist Albania through Enlightened Civic Engagement and Electoral Accountability

This paper provides an overview of the challenges and dynamics surrounding the democratic transition and corruption in Albania over the past 30 years. It highlights the persistent issues of corruption, clientelism, and state capture within the country’s political landscape. Despite continuous reports from international entities and a growing concern regarding democratic developments, the road to European membership remains arduous. The influence of the same political elite and the re-election of corrupt leaders have contributed to the perpetuation of these issues. The prevalence of clientelism during electoral seasons has further complicated matters, with voters often prioritizing personal benefits over national-interest projects. Clientelism and clientelistic relationships put democratic instruments in jeopardy. In post-communist states, political science has had mixed success in discovering strategies to combat clientelism and ensure free and fair elections. In a post-communist society, the relationship between corruption and electoral responsibility is yet unknown. As a result, corrupt politicians continue to get elected over time. This theoretical paper presents a new technique for boosting citizen awareness about the existing situation of corruption and punishing corrupt politicians through voting. The breakdown of clientelistic links based on distributive advantages from rival political parties to citizens is at the heart of this strategy, as is developing a sense of belonging to a political grouping based on shared values and aims.

Divided by Memory: Divergent Memory Cultures and the Debate about Democracy in the EU

While the accession of the first post-communist states to the European Union (EU) in 2004 seemingly reunited the continent after 45 years of division, new political fault-lines soon emerged. I argue that the divergent understandings of nationalism, sovereignty and democracy in Europe at the start of the twentieth century – most often captured with the distinction between liberal and “illiberal” democracy – are rooted in collective remembrance. Whereas memory cultures organized around the defeat of National Socialism in 1945 emphasize overcoming nationalism, the protection of fundamental human rights and the constraining of popular sovereignty, those organized around communism and its fall in 1989, interpret nationalism as a source of liberation, the importance of majoritarian democracy and the inviolability of popular sovereignty. Given the role that differences over the interpretation of the recent past have played in justifying Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I conclude by arguing for the mutual recognition of these different narratives, rather than their assimilation within a meta-narrative.

Book Review: Joanna Rak, Roman Bäcker (Eds.), Neo-militant Democracies in Post-communist Member States of the European Union, Routledge, London and New York 2022, pp. 268.

Book Review: Joanna Rak, Roman Bäcker (Eds.), Neo-militant Democracies in Post-communist Member States of the European Union, Routledge, London and New York 2022, pp. 268.

International Policy Transfer in Post-Communist States

This study aims to explore international policy transfer (IPT) through examining educational reforms in Kazakhstan. Literature on policy transfer lacks cases between Western countries and post-communist states with a Soviet legacy. This study used the IPT framework as a heuristic device to analyze the Bologna Process (BP), an intergovernmental higher education process. Empirical data included semi-structured interviews with BP stakeholders and thematic analyses of official documents to examine the stages of accession transfer. The findings demonstrated that a Soviet legacy constrains the policy transfer process during accession stages, limiting the policy transfer process from the West and leading to incomplete transfers.

Holocaust memory and political legitimacy in contemporary Europe

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how Holocaust memory serves to consolidate political legitimacy in contemporary Europe. In the aftermath of communism, post-communist states performatively adopted the established Western memory canon while rejecting much of its focus on the uniqueness of Jewish suffering. Instead, they refocused the gaze on the suffering of non-Jewish national majorities. This approach provided cover and protection to Western governments, which have been reluctant to seriously address national mythologies that emphasize resistance and downplay complicity and collaboration in the Holocaust. Holocaust memory became decoupled from the Holocaust and is better understood through the prism of contemporary European politics.

Understanding Weak Local Governance in the Neoliberal City through the Case of Skopje 2014

While Skopje 2014 intended to rebrand the city for international companies and tourists, the lack of local accountability over the project raises questions about what happened to the powerful local governance under Yugoslavia. Bringing local governance into analysis of the city’s physical changes helps show how its capacity weakened under neoliberalism and how municipalities shifted toward nationalist placemaking because of their inability to address other problems. These factors set the stage for Skopje 2014. In pushing Skopje 2014, the Gruevski government also exhibited patterns of authoritarian neoliberalism found in urban redevelopment in other post-communist states. Project opponents gaining control of the Centar Municipality was important in unraveling the project and regime, but building local citizenship remained a challenge as municipalities still lack the conditions to create and sustain their own agendas and legitimacy. By taking a longer historical view, the case helps distinguish mechanisms of local government capture in authoritarian neoliberal urban redevelopment from broader problems of urban governance and local citizen disempowerment under neoliberalism.

Against the Wind of Change: An Auto-ethnographic Account on Gender Relations in the Diplomatic Sector of Post-communist States

Summary The article sets оut to investigate gender-related challenges in the diplomatic work of post-communist diplomatic institutions, with a focus on Bulgaria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It draws on the author’s own experience as a diplomat and takes an auto-ethnographic perspective in order to elucidate from within the daily routines, working life and gender relations at Bulgaria’s Foreign Office. The research provides unique first-hand access to the institutional and micro-political context in which Eastern European diplomats perform and develop. It brings greater nuances to the understanding of gender and diplomatic work and unpacks important issues that have remained invisible in mainstream diplomacy studies such as the complex and sensitive contemporary interactions between gender, diplomacy, and the national security and intelligence departments.