West European Model Research Articles

East versus West in Europe: Enchantment and Disenchantment

ABSTRACT This article addresses the issue of the fragility of Western liberal democracies, the divisions in Western society as a whole and within particular countries, and the loss of faith in the Western model of civilization. My focus will be (1) on the initial enchantment of the Eastern European countries (with special emphasis on Romania) with the West European models of freedom, democracy, lifestyle, and living standards, which explains why these countries overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining the European Union after the fall of Communism; and (2) on their subsequent disenchantment with how far liberal democracies could go, and their general discontent with the restrictions and preconditions imposed on them for obtaining EU funding for their economic development. In dealing with the issue of globalism, nationalism and identity, I will elaborate on the role of identity, personal and national, in the creation of roots, stability, self-esteem, hard work and progress, with reference to the manifestations of populism in Europe. Finally, I will consider the positive effects Eastern countries with their traditionalism and religious values could have on their Western counterparts, in order to revive and sustain their initial enchantment and diminish their disenchantment with Europe, the European Union, and Western civilization.

William G. Wagner (1950–2021): Pioneering New Fields

William G. Wagner (1950–2021)Pioneering New Fields Gregory L. Freeze The recent and premature passing of William G. Wagner (1950–2021) evoked deep sorrow among his colleagues, as is duly attested in the professional obituaries.1 This essay examines his contribution to the field, focusing on the three phases of his evolving scholarship: legal history, women’s history, and religious history. It includes his forthcoming monograph and draws upon his personal papers in the special collections at Williams College.2 After graduating from Haverford College in 1972 (with a B.A. in an independent major in Russian studies), Wagner studied at Oxford University, with a focus on Russian legal history, and earned a M.Phil. (1974) and doctorate in modern history (1981). In 1976, he published his first article on tsarist legal policies and four years later defended a doctoral thesis on tsarist law on property and inheritance after the judicial reform of 1864.3 The thesis [End Page 443] explores how the celebrated judicial reform of 1864 influenced civil law on property and inheritance, a sphere that affected far more people than the famous political cases. Wagner demonstrated that, in the tension between old law and new judiciary, the Cassation Department of the Senate—the supreme appellate court for civil law—gradually modified existing law through its activist interpretation. Deeply influenced by West European models, jurists expressed growing dissatisfaction with traditional patrimonial law, which they deemed to retard economic progress and growth of individual rights. Wagner came to a nuanced “pessimist” view of the reformability of the ancien régime: on the one hand, he recognized the incremental adjustments, while on the other he documented the inability to adopt substantial legislative reform. Only after 1907 did the government finally adopt some legislation to expand the proprietary powers of the owner. The thesis is a remarkable piece of research. It offers a systematic analysis of formal law and decisions by the Cassation Department, showing how a reformist judiciary labored—in the absence of new legislation—to modernize what the jurists regarded as an obsolescent corpus of civil law. The thesis is also comparative, emphasizing the radical difference between Russian and Western law on property and inheritance law. That comparative approach was de rigueur in postemancipation Russia among jurists, even those of a conservative bent.4 Finally, Wagner conducted massive research on the public debate about these legal questions, consulting not only legal journals and monographs but the general press (including newspapers like Novoe vremia). Indeed, the contemporary press accounts for the majority of titles in the 50-page bibliography. Because of strict limits on the length of a thesis at Oxford, Wagner could not include all this research in the final text and had to publish the missing chapter as a separate article.5 In the 1980s, Wagner showed a growing interest in a dimension that received only marginal treatment in his thesis—the impact of civil law on women and the family. Already in 1981, he delivered a paper at the national Slavic convention on “Women and Property and Inheritance Law in Russia” [End Page 444] and gradually took a growing interest in the field of women’s and family history.6 One important publication was “The Trojan Mare,” on women’s rights in the late imperial period.7 He also became active in the Association of Women in Slavic Studies, serving on the board in 1993–95.8 All that presaged a fundamental reconfiguration of his 1980 thesis when it was published in 1994 as Marriage, Property, and Law in Late Imperial Russia.9 As in the thesis, the monograph discusses the family and women in the first of two symmetrical parts. The argumentation for both parts follows that of the thesis, but the empirical data has been vastly expanded. Most striking is the inclusion of extensive quantitative data—29 tables on such topics as judicial personnel (education, social origin, landownership), the number of civil cases in district and higher courts, and divorces and separation. Moreover, Wagner now made extensive use of the central archives, the goal being to determine why the ancien régime had such difficulty adopting new legislation. Wagner offered a close analysis of...

СУСПІЛЬНА ПРАКТИКА ВИКОРИСТАННЯ МІСЦЬ ДЛЯ ПОХОВАННЯ У ГЕТЬМАНЩИНІ У ДРУГІЙ ПОЛОВИНІ XVIII CТ.

Статтю присвячено проблемі вивчення місць для поховання покійних у містах Гетьманщини у другій половині XVIII ст. З’ясовано, що функція майданчика навколо церкви не зводилася лише до місця для поховання. «Чистий» цвинтар контрастував із іншими територіями, де покійні могли знайти останній спочинок (присадибні поховання, скудельниці, «кладбищенские места» тощо).
 Наголошено на різниці між поняттями «цвинтар» і «кладовище». Особливо виокремлено значення цвинтаря у просторі ранньомодерного міста, коли «свої» мерці немовби отримували гарантію спасіння на Страшному суді, спочиваючи в освяченій землі. Визначено, що парафіяльний цвинтар перебував під контролем священника. Однак ця обставина не сприяла належному доглядові цієї території.
 Особливу увагу сфокусовано на спробі російського імперського уряду винести місця для поховання покійних за межі поселень Гетьманщини у намаганні наслідувати західноєвропейські зразки та організувати функціонування «добре регульованої держави». Для цього було створено відповідну імперську законодавчу базу, яка врегулювала облаштування спеціально відведених місць для поховання померлих («кладбищенские места»).
 З’ясовано, що діяльність імперського уряду з облаштування кладовищ і численні церковні вимоги упорядкувати території для поховання небіжчиків не були унікальним явищем для тогочасної Європи. Виявлено, що імперська влада зазнала певних труднощів у сфері організації кладовищ. Це було пов’язано з тим, що безпосередньо займатися цим мали священники. Однак самотужки вони не могли облаштовувати місця для поховання. На допомогу парафіян сподіватися не доводилося, хоча більшість покійників знаходили останній спочинок на цвинтарі. Варто зазначити, що деякі заможні віряни вдавалися до практики присадибного поховання і будували сімейний склеп, а найбідніші парафіяни потрапляли до скудельниць.
 Отже, в Гетьманщині існували інші місця для поховання покійних, а цвинтар був багатофункціональною територією. Імперська реформа мала на меті скорочення кількості варіантів місць для поховання померлих до одного згідно із загальноєвропейськими тенденціями, однак просувалася повільно. Її втілення навіть у містах розтягнулося майже на 100 років.

RESULTS OF THE WORKS OF THE LAST SEASONS IN THE SETTLEMENTS OF OUTSKIRTS OF KIEV

RESULTS OF THE WORKS OF THE LAST SEASONS IN THE SETTLEMENTS OF OUTSKIRTS OF KIEV

The Albanian Nationalism: between the National Revival and the Security Prospects in the Adriatic Region

The study will address the phenomenology and the processes that marked the Albanian independence movement, concomitantly illustrating it as an integrated stage into the Balkan trend of nation-state edification during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, hence enforcing the debate over the mechanism that had been used in administrating the territorial possessions of the quasi-defunct caliphate. On this occasion, the research will highlight the external involvement in supporting the Albanian independence movement, mentioning in this way the Italian Kingdom, the actor that assumed the role of protecting independent Albania as a result of Rome`s primordial interests in assuming a predominant role in the Adriatic security architecture.Simultaneously will be pursued Tirana`s nationalist projects and the points of tension from the relations with Greece and Yugoslavia as a result of overlapping the territorial expansionist ethnic agendas of these three states. Therefore, it will illustrate how the Albanian state`s interactions with proximity are influenced by the regional climate of state-building on ethnic backgrounds, with a major impact on the security perspectives over the divergent energies of militant nationalism. In this way, the paper will analyze both the Albania – Greece – Italy triangle, with Rome inoculating the moderation in the Athens – Tirana relationship and mentioning the main the Italian foreign policy objective of assuming the role of a Mediterranean power.Last but not least, the Albanian National Revival Movement is presented from the perspective of social history and ideology, legitimizing Albania's independence, highlighting the domestic lines of rupture and the societal manifestations that could be framed in post-Ottomanism. Differentiating from the Balkan space by Albanian Kemalism eradicated by Ismail Kemal, the Albanian nationalism marked also by a modernization dichotomy: on the one hand by the desire of building a state based on the West-European model, by the agrarian reform and by overcoming the religious differences, and on the other hand the outstanding nationalist conservative revolution of returning to Albania's national values under Skanderbeg`s flag of the two-headed black eagle.

In comparative perspective: The effects of incarceration abroad on penal subjectivity among prisoners in Lithuania.

This article looks at how global flows of people and policies affect penal subjectivity among prisoners in Lithuania. Those who had previously been incarcerated abroad perceive their punishment in Lithuania’s reforming penal system in comparative terms. We find that international prison experience may either diminish or increase the sense of the severity of the current punishment. Respondents often felt more comfortable in a familiar culture of punishment in Lithuania that emphasizes autonomy and communality. Moreover, internationalized prisoners perceive prison reform emulating West European models as a threat to this culture and are able to articulate comparative critiques of this reform and contest its effects.

Cold war isomorphism: communist regimes and the West European model of worker participation

ABSTRACTIn studies of cultural globalisation, the influence of communist regimes on Western Europe has remained under-theorised and little explored. Addressing this gap in research, this article puts forward the glocalisation grid of world-polity theory as a means for conceptualising and investigating how East European communist regimes helped shape the evolution of West European welfare states during the Cold War. The article re-traces the 1960s struggle over expert discourse within the International Labour Organization (ILO) in which communist regimes, including Yugoslavia and Poland, struggled to win the bureaucratic legitimacy of the ILO for their domestic policies. In focus are vertical, horizontal and temporal dimensions of glocalisation and the ensuing perceived or superficial similarity – so-called isomorphism – of legislation on worker participation in decision-making at the workplace. The article maps the timing of reforms across Europe, showing how East European reforms preceded and were co-constitutive to a pan-European process of policy isomorphism.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PRACTICES OF THE STATE YOUTH POLICY IN THE MODERN WORLD

In this article the author examines a number of foreign cases of practical realization of state youth policy for example the USA, Germany and the Republic of Kazakhstan. The choice of these cases is due to the fact that these countries have an extensive practice of state youth policy. The second factor in the choice of case studies is the fundamental difference between the political systems of countries and as a consequence of the institutional arrangements and the technological features of established models of state youth policy. And fi nally, the third factor is that these States represent different political and cultural traditions. These differences between the traditions have an impact on the diversity of the state youth policy (as the US are a classic example of Western «pluralist» system of youth policy; Germany – West European model of youth policy; Kazakhstan is a bright representative of an effective model of youth policy in the former Soviet Union). Special attention is given to General and specifi c features identified on the basis of comparative analysis, the study of foreign models of youth policy, as well as possible their application in the process of realization of the state youth policy of the Russian Federation.

Canadian Multiculturalism and the Absence of the Far Right

The far right has never been a prominent force in Canadian politics or society. Traditionally, they more resembled the North American than the West European model: ideologically dominated by right-wing populism and white supremacy, organizationally characterized by factionalism and sectarianism. The extreme right seems an almost negligible force today, in part reflecting a similar decline in the United States, while the radical right has so far been unable to build upon the recent upsurge of Islamophobia, as in Western Europe. We argue that the failure of the Canadian radical right is primarily the result of Canada's unique multiculturalism policy, which is based on a combination of selective immigration, comprehensive integration, and strong state repression of dissent on these policies. This unique blend of policies has led to a relatively low level of opposition to multiculturalism and has left little legal and political space for far right politics.

Rosja w poszukiwaniu modelu reżimu politycznego – „poliarchia zachodnia” czy „azjatycka demokracja”

One of the fields of interest of modern political science involves the process of transformation of political systems, understood as the transition from nondemocratic to democratic systems. One of the countries undergoing such a political transformation is the Russian Federation, which in the nineteen-nineties faced the need to reject the model of the socio-political system of the Soviet Union, and to adjust to the emerging global civilization dominated by the models originating in West European countries. The paper emphasizes that, on account of the difficulties related to the process of political transformation, at the beginning of the new millennium West European models began to be supplanted by the models of Asian countries enjoying impressive economic growth while maintaining paternalist and authoritarian mechanisms of power. The author of the paper stresses that the political system of the modern Russian Federation is a particular mix of European and Asian models. Its functioning does not resemble the political regimes of polyarchy as much as those described as ‘Asian democracies’. The author indicates that given the present developmental stage of the Russian Federation, this models appears to be more practical and adequate in the political and cultural reality of modern Russia.

Szent György Czéh Magyar Amatőrök és Gyűjtők Egyesülete (1909–1923). Egy sajátos magyar műgyűjtő és műtárgyközvetítő szervezet a 20. század elején

Abstract The auctions held yearly four or five times under the aegis of the society ensured monopoly for the Saint George Guild for many years owing to the special legal regulations. The economic processes during World War I put an end to this favourable situation by 1917 when several rich auctioneers appeared who went into business – on the West European model – instead of remaining within the frames of a society. The auction-house of the Ernst Museum that was active for decades had larger turnover in a single auction than the Guild had in a whole year. The society that was financially pushed into the background was hindered by the lost war and the 1919 half-year communist power that radically changed the social and economic situation. From 1920 an auction or two were still announced, but ever rarer and in 1923 it stopped this activity. By then the Saint George Guild had fulfilled its function: regular art auctions were institutionalized, art collection and art trade had now consolidated frames that alre...

Роль програми “Leader” у формуванні західно-європейської моделі сільського розвитку

Роль програми “Leader” у формуванні західно-європейської моделі сільського розвитку

Global Kinship: Anthropology and the Politics of Knowing

Global Kinship:Anthropology and the Politics of Knowing Michael Herzfeld Kinship has cast such a long shadow over anthropological analysis that students who have never confronted its more technical aspects still profess boredom with the topic and relief that they do not have to deal with it. But deal with it, surprisingly, they do—in a technically less demanding guise, to be sure—through the more fashionable medium of other topics that have become considerably more central to the discipline: nationalism, gender, warfare, bio-ethics, the ethnography of science, transnational mobility, memory and the uses of history. The technical virtuosity of kinship analysis has largely passed from the scene; what remains is a cluster of basic principles—the importance of the nuclear family, the use of nuclear family terms in nationalistic rhetoric, correlations of inheritance rules with kinship structure, and the expectation that kinship should ideally be a major source of affect and cooperation—that barely seem to need analysis and that seem, to a very large extent, immediately comprehensible even to those who are only familiar with West European models of the relationships thus grouped together. But are these principles really so transparent? Kinship—rather than kinship systems—has become a global phenomenon, in which surface homogeneity and an apparent reduction in complexity may nonetheless mask considerable [End Page 313] differences in use and interpretation. We can see the implications of this expansion especially well in the subtly contrasted but mutually complementary models of world diplomacy that Eleana Kim and Monica Konrad offer here in their respective essays on international adoption and the negotiation of biomedical knowledge; Konrad offers an especially subtle linkage between ideologies of shared (and exclusive) substance that characterize local kin groups on the one hand and the ethical and "diplomatic" aspects of transporting biomedical knowledge across the borders of nation-states on the other. The papers grouped together in this issue of Anthropological Quarterly indeed collectively illustrate both the persistence of kinship as a strong organizing principle of ramified relationships extending far beyond the face-to-face communities of anthropological yore and beyond the strongly Eurocentric bias, the latter being especially evident in the almost exclusive emphasis on the nuclear family and a rhetoric of parity between matrilateral and patrilateral kin that masks a continuing agnatic emphasis. This Eurocentrism now informs the extended (some would say metaphorical or at least metonymic) elaborations of local "moral communities" (Evans-Pritchard 1940; Campbell 1964) or, more conceptually, "moral worlds" (Kleinman 2006: 219) that we encounter in the rhetoric of most nation-states today. Imperceptibly, it seems, kinship, routed from the scenes of its computational glories, has insidiously slipped back everywhere, and its channels are numerous: from transnational migrations (Ho 2006; Watson 2005) to artificial insemination and the nation-state (Kahn 2000), kinship-in-general has clearly morphed into something still vital and important. Truth to tell, the capacity for such metaphorization (or metonymic extension) was always present; its lack of visibility is a direct consequence of a very unfortunate loss of vision, in which the relevance of older ethnographies to current concerns appears to have largely vanished. Yet we do not have to look far in order to recuperate the loss. The patrilineal idiom of the Bosnian and Kosovo wars builds on earlier models of patrilineal clan identity (see Herzfeld 1997; cf. Hammel 1968), anthropologically foreshadowed in Evans-Pritchard's (1940: 237-238) insistence that patriliny among the Nuer was as much a political idiom as a literal statement of genealogy; he subsequently extended this insight directly to the historical emergence of statehood in Libya, showing how it shaped the response to external pressure and particularly the impact of colonialism (Evans-Pritchard 1949). Loizos (1975: 254) had earlier shown us how ordinary people (in other words, electorates) conceptualized the interaction of politicians from different ethnic enclaves in terms of kinship and affinity, [End Page 314] sometimes seeming to take the most absurd claims at face value in defense of ultra-nationalistic, exclusionary positions. Kinship's importance in the self-representation of most nationalisms remains unabated. That association, which embarrasses anthropology by reminding it of the roots it shares with much (especially European) nationalism, may indeed explain why the...

‘Peak’ Employers’ Organizations: International Attempts at Transferring Experience

Employers’ organizations’ central role in social dialogue at national and supra-national levels is advocated and supported by supranational institutions. Yet some of the organizations, particularly outside Western Europe, face considerable membership and revenue generation challenges. West European national employers’ organizations are used extensively as models of ‘best practice’ for their counterparts in the developing world and especially in Central and Eastern Europe. This article examines how far West European models can be used in this way. International data are analysed to suggest that Western European models should only be used as exemplars under strict conditions, as a more context-sensitive approach is required. Moreover, measures based on high levels of state support may threaten organizational independence.

Development and prediction of the selected population movement indicators in the Czech Republic

  The paper is aimed at the presentation of findings obtained in the study of the developmental trends of the population reproduction indicators in the territory of the Czech Republic in the reference period 1993–2003. The analysis of selected indicators is also aimed at a short-term extrapolation prediction. Developmental trends are specified of the population composition according to the main age groups, live births and natural increase of population. The population development in the reference period under study demonstrated increasing qualitative changes in the demographic behaviour of population after 1989. A characteristic feature of this stage of social development is the transition to the west-European model of reproduction behaviour intensified in part of the population by negative impacts of the social and economic transformation. A marked decrease in the number of live births and its point prediction for 2005 can bring about further irregularities in the age structure of population together with the development in the number of dead and external migration. Methods of regression and correlation analysis and development trends were applied for the mathematical-statistical analysis.    

MOLDAVIA AND WALLACHIA IN THE EYES OF RUSSIAN OBSERVERS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Taking as its starting point the Enlightenment discourse about Eastern Europe, thc article examines the way Russian elites responded to the emergence of the West-East symbolic divide through discovery and appropriation of their own "Orient." The encounter of the Westernized Russian officer corps and diplomats with the Hellenized Romanian boyar elite of Moldavia and Wallachia in the course of the Russian-Ottoman wars provides an illustration of this phenomenon. Deriving from the classic oppositions between "Europe" and "Orient," "civilization" and "barbarity," the Russian discourse on Moldavia and Wallachia differed from West European models through the recognition of common religion and the similarities between the lifestyle of the Romanian elite and the old Muscovite ways. This interplay of "sameness" and "otherness" served the Russian imperial elite to monopolize the civilizing mission in the region and assert its European identity in the period when the latter became increasingly questioned both intemationally and domestically.

MOLDA VIA AND WALLACHIA IN THE EYES OF RUSSIAN OBSERVERS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abstract: Taking as its starting point the Enlightenment discourse about Eastern Europe, the article examines the way Russian elites responded to the emergence of the West-East symbolic divide through discovery and appropriation of their own "Orient." The encounter of the Westernized Russian officer corps and diplomats with the Hellenized Romanian boyar elite of Moldavia and Wallachia in the course of the Russian-Ottoman wars provides an illustration of this phenomenon. Deriving from the classic oppositions between "Europe" and "Orient," "civilization" and "barbarity," the Russian discourse on Moldavia and Wallachia differed from West European models through the recognition of common religion and the similarities between the lifestyle of the Romanian elite and the old Muscovite ways. This interplay of "sameness" and "otherness" served the Russian imperial elite to monopolize the civilizing mission in the region and assert its European identity in the period when the latter became increasingly questioned both internationally and domestically.

Agricultural adjustment and the diversification of farm households and corporate farms in Central Europe

Survey evidence from three Central European Countries (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) is analysed to identify the degree of non-agricultural farm diversification and the factors facilitating or impeding it in individual and corporate farms. The effect of diversification on rural job creation and household incomes is investigated. The results indicate that the level of diversification is relatively small and enterprise diversification by farmers is unlikely to generate sufficient new jobs to solve the problem of high rural unemployment. The attempt to transpose the West European model of agricultural diversification to the associated countries via the SAPARD programme is questionable, as non-farm centric rural policies appear to be more appropriate.

Europeanisation, Euroscepticism and Party Systems: Party-based Euroscepticism in the Candidate States of Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract In this article, we assume that we can usefully examine the emergence of party‐based Euroscepticism in the party systems of the candidate states and that we can account for (some of) the differences between the states by looking at their party systems. In order to do this we begin by offering a definition of Euroscepticism that differentiates between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ variants. We map these types of Euroscepticism in parties in the candidate states of central and Eastern Europe. Looking at the nature of party systems we suggest that there is a need to rethink how we conceptualise and categorise them if we are to extend our Western models to central and Eastern Europe, and we offer some suggestions of how this might be done. Using these models of party systems in relation to the candidate states of central and Eastern Europe we examine how this relates to the incidences of party‐based Euroscepticism and reflect on the issues involved in applying West European models to East European cases.

Europeanisation, euroscepticism and party systems: Party‐based euroscepticism in the candidate states of Central and Eastern Europe

In this article, we assume that we can usefully examine the emergence of party‐based Euroscepticism in the party systems of the candidate states and that we can account for (some of) the differences between the states by looking at their party systems. In order to do this we begin by offering a definition of Euroscepticism that differentiates between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ variants. We map these types of Euroscepticism in parties in the candidate states of central and Eastern Europe. Looking at the nature of party systems we suggest that there is a need to rethink how we conceptualise and categorise them if we are to extend our Western models to central and Eastern Europe, and we offer some suggestions of how this might be done. Using these models of party systems in relation to the candidate states of central and Eastern Europe we examine how this relates to the incidences of party‐based Euroscepticism and reflect on the issues involved in applying West European models to East European cases.