Politics in Central Europe最新文献

{"title":"Novel technologies and Geopolitical Strategies: Disinformation Narratives in the Countries of the Visegrád Group","authors":"Lilla Sarolta Bánkuty-Balogh","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the current media environment of growing information disorder and social media platforms emerging as primary news sources, the creation and spread of disinformation is becoming increasingly easy and cost-effective. The projection of strategic narratives through disinformation campaigns is an important geopolitical tool in the global competition for power and status. We have analysed close to 1,000 individual news pieces from more than 60 different online sources containing disinformation, which originally appeared in one of the V4 languages, using a natural language processing algorithm. We have assessed the frequency of recurring themes within the articles and their relationship structure, to see whether consistent disinformation narratives were to be found among them. Through frequency analysis and relationship charting, we have been able to uncover individual storylines connected to more than ten overarching disinformation narratives. We have also exposed five key meta-narratives present in all Visegrád Countries, which fed into a coherent system of beliefs, such as the envisioned collapse of the European Union or the establishment of a system of Neo-Atlantism, which would permanently divide the continent.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45047122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Disintegration of Czech Parliamentary Parties: The Network Analysis of Co-Voting Strategies of the Parliamentary Party ‘Renegades’","authors":"Dušan Brabec","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The main objective of this study is to capture and analyse the dynamics of the co-voting ties among the members of the parliamentary political party groups in two specific Czech cases, where some members of these parliamentary groups left their former party and joined new political entities. The study is of a quantitative nature, but the main findings are connected to qualitative insights as well. Network approach and methods were used for the analysis. The emphasis was put on the detection of possible rivalling communities in the constructed network of co-voting between deputies belonging to the analysed parliamentary party groups in respective periods. The co-voting was treated as a proxy indicator of possible relationship indicating either co-operation or rivalry between the deputies belonging to the political party suffering from an internal crisis. The primary outcome of the study was the identification of the co-voting strategies and dynamics of the co-voting between deputies who stayed in their former party, and renegades who switched.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48324262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Relations Between Turkey and Hungary in the Democratic Party Period (1950–1960)","authors":"Bilal Tunç, Orsolya Falus","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The decennium historical process in Turkish political history between 1950 and 1960 is called the Democratic Party (DP) era. During this period, important issues took place in Turkish foreign policy. Our aim is to reveal the political, commercial and social relations between Turkey and Hungary in the light of archive documents within the scope of important events in Turkish foreign policy. The aim of this article is to emphasise how the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 affected the relations between the two countries and to prove with documents that Turkey supported Hungary during the revolution. This study has been created by benefiting from archive documents, national newspapers and copyrights from both target countries. The study also commemorates the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which erupted 65 years ago this year. Finally, this article entitled Relations between Turkey and Hungary during the Democratic Party Period (1950–1960) is a qualitative study prepared using the document analysis technique.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41421337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Experts and Questions: Exploring Perceptions of Corruption","authors":"Aneta Pinková, Jakub Jusko","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article is a contribution to the ‘know your data’ approach to the issue of measuring corruption, in two specific areas: the impact of the way questions are formulated on the results of surveys on corruption perception; and the potential pitfalls of using businesspeople as expert respondents in surveys measuring corruption. The article first presents and analyses the sources of two most frequently used indicators to measure corruption perceptions – the Corruption Perception Index and the Control of Corruption, one of the Worldwide Governance Indicators. Based on this analysis, hypotheses are posed on how the formulation of the questions will influence the out-comes of surveys, and what differences there will be between studies conducted on the general public and businesspeople. These are tested using data obtained from two original survey experiments conducted concurrently, one on a representative sample of the public and another on businesspeople.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48175892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bush’s ‘Beyond Containment’ strategy toward the Eastern Bloc in 1989 within the US Foreign Policy context","authors":"D. Mareček","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the foreign policy of US President George H. W. Bush and his administration towards the Soviet Union and the other countries of the Warsaw Pact. The article also focuses on two historically significant American foreign policy strategies that were implemented during the earlier years of the Cold War: containment and détente. The rapidly changing international environment and Bush’s Beyond Containment policy which, aimed to respond to these changes, became the basis for the following research questions: 1) How did American conception of foreign policy approach to Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary or Poland change under the Bush administration in 1989 in comparison to the period of implementation of the containment or détente? 2) How did the American perception of the retreating Soviet power within the bipolar international structure affect American diplomatic relations with the Eastern European governments? The aim of the paper is to put Bush’s foreign policy in his first year in office in the American ‘Cold War’ foreign policy context and to compare the classical American political strategies with Bush’s foreign policy in 1989.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44425012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Riders on the storm: the role of populism in the global crisis of democracy and in the functioning of electoral autocracies","authors":"I. Benedek","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is my contention that populism could be an appropriate framework to describe, explain and connect the phenomena of global crisis of democracy and functioning of electoral autocracies. In order to substantiate this claim, with the method of literature review, I examine first the characteristics of these phenomena. Then I focus on the nature of the relationship between them, in particular on the complex system of new types of autocracies’ stability, in which populism could play a crucial role. Populism, understood as an autocratic (re-)interpretation of democracy and representation, could be a particularly dangerous Trojan Horse for democracy. First and foremost, because its idea of a single, homogeneous and authentic people that can be legitimately represented only by the populist leader is a moralised form of antipluralism which is contrary to the pluralist approach of democracy (i.e. polyarchy). For precisely this reason, populism could play a key role in autocracies, especial in electoral autocracies which may use its core elements. Namely, the Manichean worldview, the image of a homogeneous people, people-centrism and the autocratic notion of representation are very compatible with electoral autocracies, since these regimes hold general elections and their power is built largely upon the alleged will of the people. By using populism, it is possible for these regimes to camouflage and even legitimise their autocratic trends and exercise of power behind the formally multi-party but not fair elections and democratic façade. As a radical turn towards closed autocracies (without de facto multiparty elections) would be too expensive, electoral autocrats need manipulated multi-party elections and other plebiscite techniques that could serve as quasi-democratic legitimation. Because of this, they tend to use the political logic of populism which could transform political contestation to a life- and- death struggle and provides quasi-democratic legitimation and other important cognitive functions. Therefore, populist electoral autocracies, as a paradigmatic type of electoral autocracies, could remain with us for a long time, giving more and more tasks to researchers, especially in the Central and Eastern European region.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49190184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Participation of the Czech Republic in NATO Peace Support Operations: Analysis of Necessary and Sufficient Conditions","authors":"Lucie Konečná","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract NATO, as one of the most important security organisations, has been involved in a large number of operations of all kinds since its establishment. Peace Support Operations are the most common type, as they include conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and humanitarian operations. Some states participate in these operations very often, others only rarely. This study aims to examine the participation of the Czech Republic, a small state that has a small but well-trained and specialised army. The research aims to determine the most common reasons for Czech participation in NATO’s Peace Support Operations. The work uses qualitative comparative analysis to determine the necessary reasons or sufficient conditions for the participation of this state. Five types of reasons – political reasons, security reasons, economic reasons, institutional reasons and normative reasons are tested. The analysis points to the fact that security reasons are the most important reasons.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41837602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Russian Influence in the Czech Republic as a Grey Zone Case Study","authors":"Josep Baqués-Quesada, Guillem Colom-Piella","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent years, the concept of grey zone has been popularised to analyse the activities a State can use to influence the decisions and to limit the strategic choices of another State below the threshold of war. This article presents a case study, aimed at verifying if the Russian activities in the Czech Republic may constitute a grey zone. The paper commences by introducing the concept of the grey zone and developing the appropriate theoretical framework to identify its main characteristics. It continues by examining the Russian influence in the Czech Republic by using open sources, local sources and documents from the Czech intelligence services. It concludes by asserting that the analysed case meets most of the requirements to classify it as a ‘limited grey zone’. This new theoretical development may help to assess similar situations that may occur in this or other nations.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48425543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Municipalities without elected councils. Causes of insufficient fulfilment of candidate lists in some municipalities in local elections in 2018","authors":"P. Dvořák, Stanislav Balík","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract By means of a qualitative analysis of the sixteen municipalities in the Czech Republic in which additional elections were held in 2019, five variables were identified which may explain why additional elections occurred. For analysis, we used data from the Czech Statistical Office (municipal elections 1994 to 2019), the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic and information on individual municipalities from media analysis. We have identified the following possible variables which may affect whether additional elections are held: end of elites, non -stand as a candidate again, the end of municipal representatives, incumbent decides not to defend mandate (variable Non -defend mandate) and personal disputes within the municipality. Conversely, the financial situation of the municipality, the age of the representatives, the voter turnout in the municipality, the number of voters, the number of candidate lists or associations and candidates proved inconclusive in most municipalities. A significant increase in new candidates is a consequence rather than an explanation of the holding of additional elections.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45664725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sustainable development through morphogenetic analysis: The case of Slovenia","authors":"T. Golob, Matej Makarovič","doi":"10.2478/pce-2021-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pce-2021-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article addresses Slovenia as a case of a post -communist country in terms of its sustainable development. It deploys an in -depth historical analysis and extensive empirical data while exploring Slovenian society through the analytical lens of morpho-static/morphogenetic approach (Archer 2017). The focus is on (1) the country’s structural and cultural settings in each selected period in order to explore whether there has been a mutual reinforcement of the levels of both, contributing to the sustainable development; (2) ways in which agents respond to such changes reinforcing or changing the structural settings. The selection of quantitative structural indicators of sustainable development is based on the indicators of sustainable development that have a direct reference to the Sustainable Development Agenda of the United Nations 2030 and also adopted by the current Strategy of Development of Slovenia. The selection of survey data was based on their connection with the same sustainability issues and their availability for a longer period, particularly close to the time points of the cycles observed. The findings show that in terms of contributing to sustainable development, the presence of morphogenesis in the selected cycles turns out to be rather limited, and there is a severe lack of political reflexivity (cf. Al -Amoudi 2017) among actors.","PeriodicalId":37403,"journal":{"name":"Politics in Central Europe","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41911519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}