Politics and Governance

Illiberal governments have been widely associated with democratic backsliding, the erosion of the rule of law, and executive aggrandisement. However, their impact on the various domains of knowledge production has not received enough scholarly attention. Through what policies do illiberal actors ensure the reproduction of their narratives? Do illiberal political leaders see education and culture as ideological vehicles, or do they consider them as arenas for power distribution? The article addresses these questions through the educational and cultural policy changes in two crucial cases of illiberals in power: post-2010 Hungary and 2015–2023 Poland. The article distinguishes between overt and hidden policy agendas, i.e., initiatives and aspirations that are driven by values and social or economic goals vs. policies serving purposes that cannot be openly represented. Through the analysis of legislative changes, party programs, and party discourse, complemented with semi-structured expert interviews, the study finds that despite sharing similar policy agendas, Fidesz and PiS considerably differ in the extent to which they transformed educational and cultural policies during their reign. While the main feature of educational and cultural policies in Hungary has been radical political power concentration, these policies in Poland rather served the ideological goals of the illiberal culture war. The article concludes that these differences were caused by the latitude afforded to these parties by their respective legislative majorities, indicating that whether illiberals have a supermajority in parliament influences the extent to which they can abuse their power

Glossa Psycholinguistics

One kind of temporal inference in discourse operates over iconicity, such that inferred temporal order follows reported order. In two preregistered experiments (combined N = 930), we asked whether this temporal inference is predictably modulated by linguistic eventuality. Based on event-structural theories of temporal interpretation, stative descriptions, corresponding to cognitively less salient states in the world, should serve as backgrounds for eventive descriptions, locating states earlier in time. Participants read descriptions like Mary got/was married to John. She got/was pregnant and indicated which happened first. Eventuality type of both sentences and reported order were crossed. We find that states tend to be ordered before events, and longer states before shorter states. Our results support a model of discourse comprehension in which eventuality framing is crucial for (temporal) inferences

Acta Oeconomica

This essay offers an overview of the state and perspectives of comparative economics in Europe. The starting point is the publication of the collected works of Mario Nuti, but the overview covers several Handbooks and collections as well as individual contributions. The big picture of the post-transition period highlights the relevance of “old” comparative economics, especially when interpreting illiberal practices in the post-communist Europe and the debate on the nature and limitations of the Chinese market socialism

Ergo-an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

It can be tempting to read Iris Murdoch as subscribing to the same position as standard contemporary moral realists. Her language is often similar to theirs and they share some key commitments, most importantly the rejection of the fact-value di-chotomy. However, it is a mistake to assume that her realism amounts to the same thing theirs does. In this paper I offer a sketch of her alternative conception of real-ism, which centres on the idea that truth and reality are fundamentally ethical con-cepts. For Murdoch, I suggest, realism is a matter of doing justice to the objects one is confronted with—something that cannot be understood except in ethical terms

Sociologica-international Journal for Sociological Debate

In this short essay, originally presented at the Center on Organizational Innovation’s COI@25 25th Anniversary Conference, I discuss a number of predominant perspectives on the singular problems posed by liberal democratic polity over the last 50 years. I first provide an overview of the differing conceptions of the “problems of democracy” that have emerged and shifted since the 1970s. I then turn to an alternative, organizational approach to democracy, as a means of both understanding the genesis of, and relations between, predominant perspectives on the problems of democracy since the 1970s, and of analyzing democracy in the contemporary in terms of organizational innovation and failure

Review of Economic Studies

We develop a model of fragile self-esteem - self-esteem that is vulnerable to objectively unjustified swings - and study its implications for choices that depend on, or are aimed at enhancing or protecting, one's self-view. In our framework, a person's self-esteem is determined by sampling his memories of ego-relevant outcomes in a fashion that in turn depends on how he feels about himself, potentially creating multiple fragile "self-esteem personal equilibria."Self-esteem is especially likely to be fragile, as well as unrealistic in either the positive or the negative direction, if being successful is important to the agent. A person with a low self-view might exert less effort when success is more important. An individual with a high self-view, in contrast, might distort his choices to prevent a collapse in self-esteem, with the distortion being greater if his true ability is lower. We discuss the implications of our results for mental well-being, education, job search, workaholism, and aggression

European Journal of Political Research

Interest group networks are crucial for understanding European Union (EU) integration, policymaking and interest representation. Yet, comparative analysis of interest organisation networks across EU policy areas is limited. This study provides the first large-scale investigation of interest group information networks across all EU policy domains. We argue that interest groups prioritise access to trustworthy and high-quality information coming from partners with shared policy goals. Thus, interest organisations form network ties with other organisations if the latter are from the same country, represent the same type of interest, or are policy insiders. The effect of these three factors varies across policy domains depending on the extent to which the institutional setting assures equal and broad organisational access to decision-making. Our empirical analysis operationalises information ties as Twitter-follower relationships among 7,388 interest organisations. In the first step of the analysis, we use Exponential Random Graph Models to examine tie formation in the full network and across 40 policy domains. We find strong but variable effects of country and interest type homophily and policy insiderness on the creation of network ties. In the second step, we examine how the effect of these three variables on tie formation varies with policy domain characteristics. We find that shared interest type and policy insiderness are less relevant for tie formation in (re-)distributive and especially regulatory policy domains characterised by more supranational decision-making. Sharing an interest type and being a policy insider matters more for tie formation in foreign and interior policies where decision-making is more intergovernmental. The effect of country homophily is less clearly related to policy type and decision-making mode. Our findings emphasise the importance of institutional and policy context in shaping interest group networks in the EU

Eastern European Holocaust Studies

This interview is available as a Podcast in “Standing Up Against the Assault on Democracy” hosted by the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre. Talking to the artists Gabriela Bulišová and Mark Isaac about their current project, “The Landscape of our Memory”, and what challenges we face today when it comes to memory, genocide, and ecocide. The interview was conducted by Tali Nates, a member of the Advisory Board of EEHS (Eastern European Holocaust Studies), Bjorn Krondorfer, Steve A. Carr, and Andrea Pető editor-in-chief of EEHS

Assessing the impact of Donald Trump on state-level discourse

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 has often been characterized as part of a larger populist wave sweeping Western democracies. However, claims about populism’s pervasiveness often lack empirical support, particularly at the subnational level. This research note introduces the US Governors Populism Database (USGPD), providing the first quantitative measures of populist rhetoric among state-level officials in the United States. Analyzing 400 speeches from 100 governor terms across all 50 states, we find that a political system with a populist national leader is not necessarily associated with high levels of subnational populism. While Republican governors show higher levels of populist rhetoric than Democrats, this difference predates Trump’s presidency and shows no evidence of intensifying following his first election. By providing systematic evidence about populism’s presence and diffusion across different levels of government, this study demonstrates how populist rhetoric manifests differently across governmental tiers and contributes to scholarship examining populist discourse in multi-level political systems

Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies

To safeguard against technocracies and against bureaucracies what is truly human in humankind - to deliver the world to us in its human dimension, that is to say, as it is revealed to individuals who are at the same time interrelated and separate - this, I believe, is the task of literature, and what makes it irreplaceable. Simone de Beauvoir, 'What can literature do?' One evening in 1326, Manuel Gabalas (later, Matthew, Metropolitan of Ephesos), was overcome by the desire to read - no text in particular, simply the first book he found. The book he randomly selected from his shelves turned out to be Homer's Iliad. Upon reading, he found himself immersed in the narrative, despite its ostensible lack of moral edification. The Sirens of Homeric poetry called to him: at once willingly and unwillingly, Gabalas continued reading, appreciative of the poet's clever narrative arrangement and the characters' lifelike portrayal, particularly how subtly their outer appearance reflected their inner traits. After reading selected passages, Gabalas reflected on the poem's overall meaning, struck by its revelations about human life. The Greeks, he realized, had started a war over just one woman to ensure that nobody would ever slight them again. He lamented contemporary humankind's condition: while the ancient Greeks were stirred on account of a mere mortal woman, her beauty perishable, the people of his day had no such experience when their soul, its beauty eternal, was violated or captured by demons. Over a matter as important as their souls' very integrity, Gabalas observed, they hesitated to seek justice, although the prospective battle would not even require bloodshed