Post-communist Europe Research Articles

Extending the Powers of Constitutional Court, While Limiting and Focusing the Judicial Review: Some Considerations on the Impact of Recent Romanian Constitutional 'Reform' in the Activity of the Constitutional Court and of the Ombudsman

While the advent of constitutional courts in the post-communist Central-Eastern Europe provoked a wide array of insightful analysis, one of the lesser known and neglected courts in the region was the Romanian Constitutional Court. Despite this scholarly gap, the Romanian Constitutional Court’s activity supplies at least for the past decade a wealth of empirical data, which could be used for further testing the paradigms provided by Constitutional Politics theory. Based on our extensive empirical research on the decisions of the court since its inception, we attempt to prove that the great extension of powers of the Romanian Constitutional Court undertaken by the Romanian legislature in 2003, failed so far to produce the outcome sought by the Legislator at the time of the enactment of the constitutional amendments. In our view, the legislative efforts of the majority are well explained by the insurance theory in constitutional politics, while the cooperation of the legislative minority in the enactment needs further explanation, which we will attempt to provide. In doing so, we hope to contribute with an empirical and comparative argument to the constitutional politics theory, and also to the more neglected empirical research in the activity of Constitutional Courts from Central Eastern Europe. We also hope to fill a scholarly gap in the knowledge of the Romanian Constitutional Court. This paper should be of interest for those interested in constitutional theory, the theory of courts, constitutional politics and theories of the democratic process.

Milosevic's Voters

This 2004 paper is based on an original public opinion survey on nationalism in five East European countries and deals with the grassroots of ethnic conflict in postcommunist Europe, with a special focus on the Balkans. In other words, it is concerned with Milosevic’s voters (and others like them) rather than with the historical circumstances that have the potential to generate ethnic conflict, political environments that allow nationalist leaders to win votes, and political institutions that favor certain outcomes in specific conflict circumstances. Its main goal is to test the hypothesis that mass attitudes or behavior are the main causes of the Balkan ethnic conflict, or of any other ethnic conflict for that matter. Due to its positive association with political fatalism and distrust in politics a model of nationalism emerges from surveys as a substitute ideology, a form of distinctive political identity. Postcommunist nationalism is the ideology of non-ideologues, a form of political assertiveness of the less informed and more frustrated. But most of all, its essence is residual, as it draws on individuals high on communist attitudes such as authoritarianism, and nostalgia for the former regime. From a mass phenomenon in the nineties postcommunist nationalism is bound to see serious decline.

More Rights, Less Power: Labor Standards and Labor Markets in East European Post-communist States

This paper examines changes in labor markets and labor rights for 13 post-communist states of East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union. It focuses on the simultaneous pressures to increase the flexibility of labor markets and improve labor standards in the years since the collapse of communism. Comparative measures and patterns of both de jure and de facto standards and flexibility are presented, and the roles of key institutional promoters of change are analyzed. I find that a combination of democratic regime type and European Union accession has pulled East European states toward the strengthening of collective labor rights. The effect is strongest on the states that joined the EU in 2004, weaker for those joining in 2007, while the three post-Soviet, non-accession states remain significantly more labor-repressive. Labor market flexibilization has been a more uniform trend in the post-communist region. In the context of this project’s inter-regional comparisons, contemporary Eastern Europe has the strongest labor rights. At the same time, the decline of trade unions and limits of collective bargaining in most post-communist states undermine the effectiveness of transposed EU legislation and bargaining institutions in empowering labor. As shown by the exceptional case of Slovenia, strong unions are necessary to fully enforce rights.

Industrial and Human Ruins of Postcommunist Europe

With the former industrial cities of Eastern Europe in ruin—once the pillars of these economies— the attention of both investors and academics has shifted toward capital cities and their new political and economic potential fueled by the rise of new governments and new foreign direct investment. The failed attempts to privatize many of these former industrial spaces has left entire cities in ruin and despair, forgotten by all but artists and preservationists, who see these spaces not only as aesthetically inspiring but also as charged with redemptive potential. This article puts forward an alternative exploration of the Eastern European postcommunist transition through these ruined spaces, arguing that the aesthetic dimension of change is key to understanding the human impact of the transition. Focusing on two former industrial sites—the Hunedoara Ironworks in Romania and the Vitkovice Ironworks in the Czech Republic—the article seeks to understand the rhetorical and material relationship between these ruined spaces and the workers who once inhabited them as well as the effect that different practices of representation—mainly photography—and preservation have had on these spaces.

“Building the Ship at Sea” Revisited. Lessons Learned from the European Union Accession of Post-communist Europe

Article “Building the Ship at Sea” Revisited. Lessons Learned from the European Union Accession of Post-communist Europe was published on March 1, 2010 in the journal Comparative Southeast European Studies (volume 58, issue 3).

Digital TV and Democratic Media in Post-Communist Europe: Reflections from the Beyond East and West Conference Hosted by the Central European University in Budapest

Digital TV and Democratic Media in Post-Communist Europe: Reflections from the Beyond East and West Conference Hosted by the Central European University in Budapest

Mores and gains: The EU's influence on domestic violence policies among its new post-communist member states

Synopsis The EU indirectly affects its member states' social policy, and there is a long-standing debate about its direct causal effect on member states regarding non-economic matters. This article analyzes how the governments of new post-communist Central and Eastern European EU members and candidates reacted to pressures from the European Commission, while acknowledging that the broader context of other global, regional, and domestic actors also affects the establishment of new laws and norms related to domestic violence. The EU's influence is controversial and manifold in post-communist Central and East Europe: while it has rhetorically endorsed gender equality, it has only recently and selectively started to pressure members and candidates into implementing changes and monitoring progress.

In Pursuit of Liberalism: International Institutions in Postcommunist Europe – By Rachel A. Epstein

In Pursuit of Liberalism: International Institutions in Postcommunist Europe – By Rachel A. Epstein

Post-Soviet Latvia–A Consolidated or Defective Democracy? The Interaction between Domestic and European Trajectories

Recent developments in post-communist Europe and Latvia in particular have raised questions about political stability in new democracies there. This article argues for taking a long-term perspective on this problem in place of short-term judgments. In doing so, it makes special reference to the EU's political conditionality and its impacts on Latvia and then applies comparative lessons on democratic consolidation based on the concept of ‘partial regimes’. It becomes clear in this analysis that the consolidation process in Latvia has advanced over the past decade and more and, in this respect, the EU did have an important, though limited and rather specific, impact. Yet this process is still incomplete, with historical legacies being a major factor. The ethnic divide has also remained largely unresolved, party development problems have persisted and the public is still unconvinced by the actual democracy they see before them and is alienated by political elite behavior in particular. Hence, Latvia does not have a defective democracy as such, but further change is necessary before democratic consolidation may be achieved there.

The radical right in post-communist Europe. Comparative perspectives on legacies and party competition

What role do legacies of past mobilization under late communist rule play in the success of the radical right parties in Eastern Europe? This article considers two major legacies: the legacy of national-accommodative communism and the legacy of patrimonial communism. We investigate the effect of welfare retrenchment on vote support for radical right in 2000s. Social policy reform retrenchment in universalistic welfare systems has a highly incendiary potential for political conflict and radical parties. In countries with a legacy of national accommodative communism, early differentiation of major parties on socio-cultural issues and strategies of social policy compensation kept reform losers at bay, which limited voter success of radical parties. Highly polarized patrimonial regimes, on the contrary, are the most fertile breeding ground for the radical right due to the high levels of inequality and dissatisfaction resulting from a rapid dismantling of the welfare state. The ethnic composition of countries plays an important role in the radical right mobilization as well. Radical right parties benefit from a situation in which the titular majority faces a small ethno-cultural minority.

The Politics of Healthcare Reform in Postcommunist Europe: The Importance of Access

AbstractWhy do countries move from public to private financing of healthcare? This paper explores this issue by looking at the divergent reform trajectories of three postcommunist countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. While existing accounts emphasize veto points to explain changes in healthcare systems, the present analysis finds that moves towards private financing can be better explained by differences in access to the policymaking arm of the state. Specifically, a penetrable single-party government and weak bureaucratic capacities allow physicians to capture the reform process and implement their preferred policies. The results suggest that scholars of health policy should focus more attention on the actors seeking change and their access to policy makers.

When Left Is Right: Party Ideology and Policy in Post-Communist Europe

According to the classic partisan theory of spending, leftist parties are expected to increase government spending, and rightist parties are expected to decrease it. We argue that this relationship does not hold in post-Communist countries, where in the context of dual transition to democracy and to a market economy, leftist parties have had stronger incentives and better opportunities to enact tighter budgets, whereas rightist parties were compelled to spend more in order to alleviate economic hardships. We illustrate this theoretical argument with case studies from Hungary and Poland. We then test and find support for our theory by considering the influence of cabinet ideology on total, health, and education spending in thirteen post-Communist democracies from 1989 to 2004. We explore various alternative explanations and provide further narratives to support our causal argument.

Personality and Political Tolerance: The Limits of Democratic Learning in Postcommunist Europe

Can all citizens learn political tolerance through engagement in democratic politics? The lack of direct experience with democratic processes may account for a portion of the tolerance gap between mass publics in established and new democracies and suggests optimism about trends in tolerance within postcommunist Europe. Yet learning tolerance may be limited to individuals who are psychologically open to disagreement. Testing the conditional effect of political activism with the 1995 World Values Survey and a 1996 to 2000 Russian panel series reveals that the benefits of political activism are limited by psychological dogmatism and that dogmatists tend toward intolerance over time.

Informal Payments: A Side Effect of Transition or a Mechanism for Sustaining the Illusion of ‘Free’ Health Care? The Experience of Four Regions in the Russian Federation

AbstractInformal payments for health services are widespread in many transition economies in post-communist Europe and the former Soviet Union. Their existence complements and in some cases significantly contributes to the financing of their health systems. It has been suggested that they are the legacy of planned socialist economies and a temporary side effect of the transition from a planned to a market economy. This article discusses the findings of the study investigating the extent and nature of the informal payments and evaluates the policy options on offer. It asserts that despite the level of declared support for moderate cost-sharing by different population groups, it is unlikely that any legalised form of co-payment will affect or replace informal payments, as the government uses them to sustain the illusion of ‘free’ health care. The study argues that the utilitarian gain maximisation principle, calling for the greatest collective welfare in communitarian egalitarianism, and the satisfaction of individual preferences in libertarian economics enable the acceptance of informal payments as a viable policy option.

Minority Environmentalism and Eco-nationalism in the Baltics: Green Citizenship in the making?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: national minoritieseco-nationalismenvironmentalismGreen theoryBaltic states Notes Notes 1 In the following I will use the term minority to refer to national and ethnic minorities as well as indigenous peoples, except where specifically naming distinct groups is necessary for clearer understanding. 2 I recognize that the titular peoples of the Baltic republics were not minorities according to the Soviet constitution. I use the term here, however, since their approach to action in environmental politics was similar to that of minorities in politics in general. 3 The body of green political thought is very diverse, and it would be impossible within the scope of this essay to pay attention to all theories offered. I will therefore, with a few exceptions, refer to green political theorists with little discrimination as to which green theorists promote what theories. This unfortunate simplification is clearly only with the one purpose of making it accessible to the non-green reader. For any unwarranted mistreatment of presentations and arguments, I sincerely apologize. 4 Derek Bell argues for ‘green liberalist liberalism’ based on a compatibility of Rawls's political liberalism and environmentalism (2002). Mary Mellor similarly argues a strong case for green socialism (2006). 5 See website, http://www.lhn.dk/, accessed 28 May 2009. 6 See website, http://www.forvandle.de/. 7 Will Kymlicka (1995 Kymlicka, W. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) presents the best overview and the best examples of this development. 8 Shari Cohen has argued that a profound ideological vacuum fueled destructive tension throughout post-communist Europe (1999). Using Slovakia as an example of this historical amnesia she argues that communist socialization prevented people from tying their private stories to a larger historical narrative. Her analysis is probably correct with regard to Slovakia, but in my mind could not be applied to post-independence Baltic states. 9 While popular sovereignty became part of liberal ideology with the French Revolution, the right of self-determination of peoples is enshrined in Article 1 of the ICCPR. 10 for a critique of Dobson's arguments see Hayward (2006 Hayward, T. 2006. Ecological Citizenship: Justice, Rights and the Virtue of Resourcefulness. Environmental Politics, 15(3): 435–446. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).

On Memory Work in Post-communist Europe

Taking the memory of pronatalism in contemporary Romania as a case study, this article is an attempt to view the national politics of memory of contemporary Europe with regard to its communist past from an anthropological perspective. From 1966 to 1989, the communist regime imposed extreme policies of controlled demography in Romania, as it was imputed, for 'the good of the socialist nation'. Profamily measures were developed in parallel to the banning of abortion on request and the making of contraception almost inaccessible. The social remembering of such a difficult past is still a taboo in contemporary Romanian society. This general lack of public remembering, which is still playing a role in the current situation of Romania's reproductive health, is influenced by the interrelations between the different forms of pronatalist memory. The analysis is based on oral history fieldwork conducted between 2003 and 2008, and is theoretically informed by the interdisciplinary field of Memory Studies.

Europe and Culture

After the fall of the Iron Curtain a new concept of Europe as a socially relevant object of study emerged in the social sciences challenging the model of Europe as historical entity, or a philosophical or literary concept. This concept provoked an upsurge of interest in the study of European identity among anthropologists who began to study how Europeanness is constructed and articulated both by the architects of the EU themselves and at a grass-root level. Drawing on notions of European culture and identity, this text examines the image of Europe/the EU in post-communist Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic, from two different perspectives. First, how the institutionalisation of Europe as a cultural idea is viewed by some of the Czech political commentators, and second, from an ethnographically grounded anthropological perspective, focusing on how and at what levels a Czech local community identifies with Europe and the EU. Drawing on a broad range of data, the text attempts to provide new insights into the pitfalls of collective European identity in the making, with the emphasis on its cultural dimension in the post-communist Czech Republic.

(What about) the Further Enlargement of the EU? In between European Enlargement Fatigue and Balkan Instability Challenges

Despite an initial delay in post-communist reforms and opening the EU accession process, Bulgaria and Romania have already succeeded in becoming EU members while Croatia is just a ‘step away’ from full membership status. Although considerably behind these three, the remaining (Western) Balkan states have been progressing fairly well in the association negotiations (i.e. Stabilisation and Association Process) with the European Union since the early 2000s and expect to officially open negotiations for accession (as is the case with FYR Macedonia) or get full candidate status by the end of 2009 or in 2010 at the latest. However, on their way to Europe, these countries have still to overcome some challenges which the previous EU membership candidates from post-communist Europe faced to a significantly lesser extent or not at all. Focusing on the problems of the increased toughness of EU accession criteria due to the declining public support in the ‘old’ EU member states for further EU enlargement and on the interior political instability in the countries of the Western Balkans, caused primarily by their still ‘undefined’ statehood status, this paper investigates the character and strength of the remaining obstacles for further enlargement of the European Union into the Balkan region.

In Pursuit of Liberalism: International Institutions in Postcommunist Europe – By R.A. Epstein

JCMS: Journal of Common Market StudiesVolume 47, Issue 4 p. 930-931 In Pursuit of Liberalism: International Institutions in Postcommunist Europe – By R.A. Epstein LILIANA POP, LILIANA POP London Metropolitan UniversitySearch for more papers by this author LILIANA POP, LILIANA POP London Metropolitan UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 04 August 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2009.02026_13.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume47, Issue4September 2009Pages 930-931 RelatedInformation

Migrants and ethnic minorities in post-Communist Europe

Migration movements within Central and Eastern Europe and the development of related migrant diasporas are to date relatively underresearched topics. Also, little attention has been paid to the process of identity negotiation that takes place between post-1989 migrants, their co-ethnic minorities native to the host state and the host state national majority. This article looks into the development of diasporic identities among Ukrainian and Romanian migrants in Poland and Hungary, focusing particularly on members of the political elite of these recent migrations. The informants included in this study form part of a civically and politically active small elite among the recent migrants. They have a double importance for their diaspora group: they play a constitutive part in the making of the diaspora, as they are the ones to set up the diaspora institutions, and they are also the ones who bear the brunt for carving an identity space in the country of settlement: between the native majority and their co-ethnic native minority. Of particular interest is how these first-generation elite immigrants negotiate their national identity within the triangle of country of origin, country of settlement and co-ethnic national minority (native in the host country). The methodology of critical discourse analysis is used to analyse in-depth interviews with 10 first-generation immigrants in the two countries.