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This paper argues that analyzing education policies through the lens of affect theory provides possibilities for understanding how particular concepts are associated with certain affective ideologies. To illustrate this, the paper analyzes the case of a recent publication by the Council of Europe titled "Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture." The analysis shows how various concepts related to 'democratic competences' are invested with affective meanings, cultural connotations and political rhetoric. The paper argues that democratic competences are effectively conflated with emotional competences, opening up an analysis of democratic education as a form of individual and psychological therapy. The conclusion addresses the implications of this argument for education policy research and practice. In particular, it highlights the importance of paying attention not only to the ways that affect shapes the production of policy text, but also how a policy seeks to invoke certain affective dispositions at the point of enactment.

This paper examines transnational circulation of political and pedagogical ideas associated with "éducation permanente" with particular reference to post-war Western Europe. It offers a socio-historical reconstruction of pan-European dissemination and reception of policy repertoires articulated by governmental and non-governmental policy actors. It focuses on advocacy regarding permanent education as a pan-European repertoire associated with the Council of Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. The paper explores involvement of French and other francophone nationals in circulatory regimes, who were engaged in mediating partisan reform aspirations, exchange of information, and dissemination of innovative practices at national, transnational, and pan-European levels. The more specific focus of this paper addresses participation of 'rooted cosmopolitans' in policy formation, who are defined as policy actors rooted in specific national contexts, but who engage in regular activities involving their participation in transnational networks. The conclusions call for further research into circulatory regimes at local, sub-national, regional, national, bilateral, transnational, and pan-European during the 1960s and 1970s. Such research should focus on revisiting different expert, reformist, missionary, and militant networks responsible for building peripatetic 'scholar-militant-activist' coalitions that historically contributed to pan-European policy repertoires seeking to mobilise citizens to participate in the unfinished political project of pan-European cultural democracy.

This study, conducted within the interpretive paradigm, aimed to understand how democratic education is constructed around the theme of 'responsible and active citizen' in the national core curriculum in Northern Cyprus. An in-depth document analysis was conducted, to examine the extent to which the learning outcomes across the curriculum are aligned with the competence descriptors in the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC). This framework was used as a guide and a tool to obtain a European and global perspective. The findings revealed that there is alignment, to a certain degree, between the learning outcomes and the RFCDC competences. This confirms that some of the major concepts of democratic education are incorporated in the core curriculum. The findings also indicated that in this curriculum, democratic education focuses on knowledge and engagement at a basic level. In doing so, it undermines the experiential side of citizenship learning, and active participation in democratic life. The study also sheds light on the use and nature of the RFCDC.

Contemporary conflicts of sovereignty in Europe have gone beyond the clash between national and supranational sovereignty. Sovereignty conflicts are increasingly occurring within member states. This paper develops a conceptual framework that distinguishes between foundational, institutional and territorial conflicts of sovereignty, elaborating on this taxonomy with reference to the historical evolution of the concept of sovereignty in Europe. It provides an account of why we have seen a proliferation in conflicts of sovereignty within European states. This is due in part to the notion of "shared" sovereignty. Central to European integration, this notion has introduced considerable institutional indeterminacy into the political systems of member states, leading to many of the institutional conflicts of sovereignty we see in Europe today. The struggle of national party systems to institutionalize societal conflict via partisan competition is another contributory factor. This has displaced conflict onto the terrain of how popular rule is institutionalized within the national state. In developing this framework, the paper provides a method for distinguishing between political conflicts tout court and those touching specifically upon sovereignty. Moreover, the framework helps us distinguish between those conflicts of sovereignty most destabilizing for a polity and those which are less so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate who would vote 'none of the above' (NOTA) if this were available on the ballot paper using original data from eight European countries. In particular, we examine whether NOTA would be used by abstainers and voters to protest within the electoral process. We also test whether socioeconomic factors and specific and diffuse support for democracy and its institutions correlate with a NOTA vote. We find that having NOTA on the ballot would reduce invalid balloting more than abstention and much more than protest party voting. Our results also suggest that NOTA is related to socioeconomic status, political interest, political knowledge and distrust in political institutions and authorities, but not to broadly undemocratic attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the increasingly large amounts of abstention and invalid voting, as well as the growing distrust of political institutions, in democratic countries. They also hold lessons for electoral reformers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many argue populist radical-right parties to be the largest contemporary threat to democracy, much of the evidence either focuses on the rare case of a populist radical-right prime minister, or conflates right-populist prime ministers with right-populist government participation, with some asserting that it would be difficult for these parties to have any real effect without holding the prime ministership. In this paper I conduct a large-scale analysis of European nations to quantify the effect right-populist junior coalition partners have on liberal democracy. I argue that as junior coalition partners, they will indeed affect democratic quality, albeit in ways that differ from that of a right-populist prime minister. While previous literature has demonstrated that populist radical-right parties bring with them decreases in the level of democratic quality pertaining to institutional constraints on power and mass civil liberties, junior coalition partners are only able to effect the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to (a liberal) democracy can have an impact on both the political attention and visibility of the needs of marginalized populations, as well as the design of health policies that can influence the distribution of population health. This paper investigates the effect of exposure to democracy, that is, the number of years spent in a democracy as measured by democracy indexes, on various measures of inequality in self-reported health across European countries. We use an instrumental variable strategy to leverage the potential endogeneity of a country's exposure to democracy, drawing on both bivariate (socioeconomic) and univariate health inequality measures. Our estimates provide evidence that an additional year in a democracy reduces both bivariate (income-related) health inequality and overall (univariate) health inequality. Our preferred specification suggests a two-point rank reduction in inequality with an additional year under a democracy. The effect is mainly driven by a reduction of "health poverty" alongside other effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heraldic traditions in southeast European countries are similar, as are the histories of their state emblems and coat of arms. Their development could be classified into three periods: (1) from the founding of the states until the end of World War II; (2) the socialist period; and (3) the period of democratisation after the collapse of socialism. The focus of this work is the processes of the adoption of coats of arms. The descriptions are taken from the appropriate legal documents. This paper examines the emblems and coats of arms of modern southeastern European, or Balkan states, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Slovenia, and Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Theoria Journal for Philosophy / Theoria Casopis za Filozofiju is the property of Theoria Journal for Philosophy / Theoria Casopis za Filozofiju and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Judicial and political power are inextricably linked, but at this point in time that link seems more important, more pervasive, and more fragile than ever before. Courts are now under stress in many, even consolidated, democratic countries, becoming one of the most stimulating topics for understanding European politics. Indeed, bringing Courts back to the centre of political analysis is a privileged perspective for understanding how and why democracies change. By highlighting the characteristics of the complex political context of conflicting actors, institutions and political processes, this special issue of European Politics and Society reveals the different dynamics and patterns of the role of Courts in contemporary European politics. This paper presents the phenomenon of 'Courts under stress' and the related research questions. In addition, it introduces the articles that make up this special issue, which are indicative of the maturation of Courts as a crucial topic in European political science. Indeed, each article emphasizes different aspects of their role, bringing out new perspectives and complementary theoretical approaches and methodologies, thereby advancing comparative studies of judicial behaviour and constitutional jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Comparative Politics is the property of Journal of Comparative Politics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Tolerance has long been identified as a crucial feature of liberal democracies. Although the limits of tolerance are debated, the extent to which citizens are open and willing to accommodate others who are different from them is often regarded as a sign of a healthy and well‐functioning liberal democracy. The goal of this paper is to empirically investigate the state of political tolerance in Europe today. The main questions we ask are: What explains the different levels of tolerance across individuals in various countries? Which groups in society are the most likely targets of intolerance? We understand political tolerance as the willingness to allow the free articulation of interests and ideas in the political system of groups one opposes. Previous research emphasizes education, civic activism and threat perceptions as important determinants of tolerance. We redirect the debate to a set of novel correlates of tolerance. We argue that conspiratorial thinking and cosmopolitanism are critical factors that explain levels of tolerance among Europeans. The analysis employs original survey data collected as part of a mass survey conducted in 2017 in 10 European Union member states: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Our descriptive analysis shows that far‐right groups (i.e., fascists and neo‐Nazis) and Muslims are the most disliked groups in Europe. When it comes to the level of tolerance towards these groups, we find that more than half of the respondents in each country are willing to deny their most disliked group parliamentary representation. Moreover, we find that even after controlling for traditional determinants of tolerance, conspiratorial thinking and cosmopolitanism emerge as the most important predictors of political tolerance. Our analysis suggests that the recent rapid spread of various conspiracy theories related to the COVID‐19 pandemic is likely to have far‐reaching implications for tolerance as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Action Research is the property of Verlag Barbara Budrich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Civil society organizations (CSOs) are a cornerstone of democracy in Europe. Nonetheless, "civil society" and "political society" should not be equated as membership-based organizations are not necessarily politically engaged. This paper theorizes and empirically examines which membership-based CSOs engage in interest representation through sustained advocacy activity. We propose an incentive-theoretical framework on CSO investments in advocacy activities—a collective, non-exclusive incentive from which also non-members can profit—by organizations fundamentally dependent on member support. Theorizing how CSOs' own structural characteristics, resource dependencies, and government demand for CSO input affect how CSOs reconcile selective and collective incentive provision, we test our hypotheses using new data from four recent surveys conducted in four European democracies. In line with our framework, CSOs organizing individual citizens rather than corporate actors and those pursuing member interests are less likely to engage in advocacy, while CSO professionalization and state funding access enhance CSOs' propensities to do so. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the former structural CSO characteristics are similarly relevant for CSO advocacy across distinct country settings, while the role of resource variables is mediated by institutional context revealing an important source of inequality in democratic interest representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A global trend of populism affects established democracies in Europe and around the world. Instrumental to this wave is the notion of the People, harnessed by populists' rhetoric to their political advantage. Yet only little is known on the various, even contradicting meanings of the People in political discourse. Drawing on popular sovereignty theories and representation studies, in this paper I develop a theoretical framework of four key facets of the People—political, national, spatial, and abstract, and their two dimensions—concrete and diffuse. I argue that while elections are associated primarily with the political facet of the People, cross-temporal approaches to electoral representation highlight the People as a multifaceted construct. I explore these theoretical conjectures with computational text analysis of news media coverage of the 2016 American election. I find that the People is a multidimensional construct, with temporal dynamics that connect the political facet with the broader political agency of the People. However, this connection holds only before the 2016 election, and not after them. The results are discussed in relation to populism and the challenges democracies are facing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does Europe's transnational party system contribute to EU democracy? Existing debates on this issue have conventionally revolved around conflicting assumptions on the feasibility of supranational democracy in general, rather than examining the party system's structure as it is set up and regulated. In this paper we evaluate to what extent the transnational party system contributes to the democratic qualities of the EU by studying the regulatory framework for European political parties. We establish an analytical framework based on studies of party system governance, and focus on two specific characteristics: the contestability of the Europarty system and the extent to which it promotes citizen participation in European political parties. Our analysis demonstrates that the governance structure impedes rather than bolsters the democratic potential of Europarties, since the rules work to prevent new parties from entering the party system, and fail to provide incentives for a more active political participation of European citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to illustrate the attempts and the obstacles to reform the EU. Starting with an analysis of the increasing urge of renewing the EU legal structure, this article will highlight the rising interest within the European institutions to involve the citizens and the civil society in the process of renew through a new original tool; in a second step, it will briefly present the architecture of the CoFoE and its hybrid format which combines institutional negotiations and citizen participation. Hence it will focus on obstacles to the reforms proposed by the Conference. In the end, the article draws some critical conclusions regarding the future outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are de jure rules that formally shape democratic systems relevant for the actual condition of democracy? The authors pose this question with regard to post-socialist countries of Europe and Asia and their experiences with democracy since the beginning of their transition process, and the contribution consists in extending the focus to de jure institutions underpinning de facto democratization and economic performance of these countries. The empirical part employs panel data regression techniques to identify whether certain de jure rules of democracy established in the new post-socialist constitutions after 1989 were significant for these countries' 'democratic performance' during transition. The authors relate, in particular, to core components of electoral democracy, as well as to some aspects of its participatory dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of feminist democratic societal projects relies on the production of feminist knowledge and ideas within social movements, as well as academic, professional, and institutional settings. In the context of a rising opposition against democracy and gender, race, and sexuality equality at a global level, the European Union has launched the call Feminisms for a New Age of Democracy with the purpose of supporting knowledge production about opposition to gender equality in Europe and feminist democratic responses. The CCINDLE (Co-creating Inclusive Intersectional Democratic Spaces across Europe) project is one of the funded research projects under this call. CCINDLE's objectives include analyzing not only anti-gender politics and the problems that they create for democracy in Europe but especially feminist movements' and institutional responses to anti-gender and anti-democratic forces. The project aims to co-create feminist knowledge with the actors that are already working to counter the antidemocratic project that anti-gender movements and far right parties are trying to construct, and to envision feminist futures building on theories and practices of intersectional justice, inclusion, and participation in European democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlighting the strength of "partyism" in many democracies, recent scholarship pays keen attention to increasing hostility and distrust among citizens across party lines, known as affective polarization. By combining a conjoint analysis with decision-making games such as dictator and trust games, we design a novel survey experiment to systematically estimate and compare the strength of the partisan divide relative to other social divides across 25 European democracies. This design also allows us to investigate how the two components of affective polarization, in-group favoritism and out-group derogation, are moderated by the way parties interact with each other. We first find dominance of the partisan divide compared to other social divides that constitute traditional cleavages such as social class and religion. Second, we show that affective polarization in Europe is not primarily driven by out-group animus. Finally, we demonstrate that coalition partnership lessens affective polarization by reducing both in-group and out-group biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Relations & Politics is the property of Journal of International Relations & Politics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The research we present concerns the narratives of political and social identity of young adolescents sampled in Northern, Central and Southern Italy. Our qualitative analysis is based on constructivism and aims to enhance narratives by privileging the communication of meanings elaborated by the young people. Consistent with this perspective is our choice of the paradigm of pedagogical personalism, which places the human being as a 'person' at the center of reflection. The diverse universe of youth manifests multifaceted aspects that it is possible to bring out using interaction with deliberative, open, and non-pre-conceptual discussion. The link between semantic cores such as democracy, freedom, rights, interculturalism, and citizenship runs through the analyses of the entire research (based on the study by Ross's work in 2019, Finding Political Identities: Young People in a Changing Europe), examined here specifically in the Italian context. The article presents some contrasting aspects of the way young people living in Europe. They harbor uncertainties and discontinuities from the universe of values inherited from previous generations. However, from the tunnel of doubt young people show that they know how to emerge by outlining the forms of a promise of social commitment containing a hope for change, defined as the design of a future in which alternatives to the current situation can be found. In the background, the theme of democracy shows as an aspiration for something still struggling to be born. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The article investigates whether variety of democracy affects the probability to employ public subsidies for credit support by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) led by female entrepreneurs. Design/methodology/approach: Building on the literature on democracy and on gender differences, it leverages a large firm- and country-level dataset (SAFE) of 31 democracies in Europe (EU and non-EU) over the 2009–2014 period by using probit models and instrumental variable approaches. Findings: Results from the different econometric techniques and samples suggest that variety of democracy affects female-led SMEs in using public subsidies for credit support. The evidence is robust to endogeneity concerns. Research limitations/implications: The empirical evidence presents a time frame limitation. At the same time, SAFE is the only database that supplies information about the gender of firms and public subsidies for credit support, rendering it the only resource that allows the test of the hypothesis proposed. The article therefore offers insights for scholars to revisit our results in future studies that make use of datasets with a longer time span – when they will become available. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, the article is the first to study the effect of democracy on female entrepreneurial behavior in the use of public subsidies for credit support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response to reviews of the author's book "Liquid Nationalism and State Partitions in Europe" is presented. He explains the considerations to the relations between partitions and nation-state, societal homogenization and civic nationalism. He discusses factors transforming democracy, including globalization and claims for transnational civil rights. He also addresses the supposed consequences of not defining the term "nation-state."

Political science has long viewed education as an instrumental factor in developing support for democracy and beneficial for democratization. However, governments, both democratic and authoritarian, have substantial control over the curriculum and develop education institutions with the specific aim to instill in students the norms and values that underpin the regime. With this in mind, this study asks, does the effect of education vary by the political regime in which education was undertaken? We use a quasi-experimental approach exploiting European compulsory schooling reforms, implemented under both democratic and authoritarian regimes, to answer this question. We find that education has no effect on principle and functional support for democracy, but that education's effect on satisfaction with democracy is conditional on regime type. For those educated under a democratic regime, education led to greater satisfaction with democracy, whereas those educated under an authoritarian regime became less satisfied with democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Italian Journal of Health Education, Sport & Inclusive Didactics is the property of Edizioni Universitarie Romane and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The phenomenon of populism and its relationship with modern democracy has gained considerable attention in recent years. This article aims at advancing our understanding of how populism affects different models of democracy and tests the proposed arguments empirically. Building on a large scholarly literature on populism and democracy, we take stock of existing arguments and theorize which democratic models may be affected by populism in a positive or negative way. Moreover, we move beyond the normative debate and analyse the effect of populism in power on different models of democracy empirically. We do so by merging data on populist governments in Europe and Latin America from 1995 until today with the Varieties of Democracy dataset, which enables us to capture the relationship between populism and different democratic models in these regions. Despite mixed‐theoretical expectations, our results suggest a rather negative impact of populism on the electoral, liberal and deliberative models of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which party systems are ideologically and programmatically structured is central to democracy. This article analyzes differences in the extent and nature of programmatic structuration in Latin America and Europe, using a new original data source, the Chapel Hill Expert Survey-Latin America (CHES-LA), in combination with the long-standing CHES-Europe. First, we demonstrate the reliability of CHES-LA in relation to CHES-Europe, and substantiate its validity by comparing it to other expert, elite and party manifesto surveys in Latin America. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we then show that while party system structuration in Latin America is somewhat lower than in Europe, it is also of a decisively different nature. In Latin America economic and socio-cultural policy positions are largely captured in a single overlapping dimension; in Europe, by contrast, competition occurs overwhelmingly along two dimensions, each with distinct clusters of policy positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diversitas Journal is the property of Diversitas Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There is an unexamined paradox in the history of government in the West. The so-called absolutist monarchs of Europe overwhelmingly chartered republican corporations—e.g., towns, universities, and guilds whose members elected their leaders. Indeed, modern constitutional democracy is patterned after them. Yet, modern democracies themselves have overwhelmingly chartered authoritarian corporations—e.g., universities and business corporations whose subjects have no vote. After this Great Inversion, corporations, which once distributed power and wealth, now concentrate them, straining constitutional democracy. Against this backdrop, this article analyzes the major types of relation maintained between states and corporations: constitutive (states charter corporations), mimetic (states and corporations recurrently copy one another's organizational features), and instrumental (each leans on the other, and sometimes captures it, to better advance its own purposes). The article then examines the special challenges that corporate economies pose to constitutional democracy and considers whether a partial reversal of the Great Inversion could reduce them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After nearly eighty years as a key promotor of public international law, European law, and the values of individual human rights, democracy, and the rule of law more generally, why has the Court of Justice of the European Union ("CJEU" or "the Court")--with other European Union ("EU") institutions and Member States--rendered a series of decisions in the last five years dismantling one of the post-World War II public international legal system's crowning achievements in Europe: the system of investor-State investment dispute settlement ("ISDS") before independent arbitral tribunals? This piece argues that the Court, as well as the European Commission's, recent hostility towards ISDS, is in part a wellintentioned but potentially misjudged effort to bolster the EU against perceived threats to its "supremacy." These threats have been lifted to the CJEU's direct attention through the courant of Euroscepticism that has rushed across Europe since the defeat of the referenda on the draft European Constitution in the Netherlands and France in 2005 and culminated in Brexit and efforts in Poland, Germany, Hungary, and elsewhere to disregard the EU law principle of primacy. The Court's impulse to wield its jurisprudential might to block rule of law "backsliding" through strict application of Articles 267 and 344 TFEU and Article 19 TEU (which the CJEU deploys to delineate EU courts' "exclusive" jurisdiction over issues of EU law) and its application of this philosophy to ISDS can be witnessed through the similar reasoning and references present in the Court's "anti-ISDS" decisions Slovak Republic v. Achmea, Republic of Moldova v. Komstroy, and European Foods, as well as Portuguese Judges and other decisions aiming to curtail misbehavior of "backsliding" governments in Poland, Hungary, and other EU Member States. Despite the CJEU and the EU's seemingly positive intentions to reinforce the "rule of law" in the EU through these actions, this article queries whether the CJEU's increasing volonté to unilaterally expand the jurisdiction of EU courts and issue decisions that ostensibly violate bedrock principles of customary public international law, such as pacta sunt servanda, is a healthy development for the post-World War II international legal order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An institutionalized party system is often regarded as a precondition for a well-functioning democracy. Recent recesses in democracy and, in particular, in the liberal dimension of democracy in relatively established party systems, however, warrant a fresh look into how party system institutionalization shapes liberal democracy. We use a dataset that covers 58 European party systems over more than a century to assess how party system institutionalization in the governmental arena – closure – is related to more robust liberal democracy. Our results show that stable coalition combinations are conducive to higher levels of liberalism, while infrequent government changes and the exclusion of new parties from the governmental arena have a detrimental role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic legitimacy is sometimes measured by comparing what individuals expect of democracy with their evaluations of democratic performance. However, such composite measures hinder our understanding of whether any factors found to shape legitimacy do so through effects on expectations, through effects on evaluations or through effects on both. This article considers people's democratic expectations and evaluations separately. By modelling each – along with their combination in a measure of legitimacy – it identifies the factors that shape each outcome, and in particular whether any effects on legitimacy run through what people expect of democracy or through their evaluations of democratic performance. Models are run for four different dimensions of democracy to test whether the factors shaping people's attitudes vary between different aspects of the democratic system. The analysis is conducted using Wave 6 of the European Social Survey (2012-13) on populations across 16 west European countries. Analysis of individual country populations also enables us to identify whether the causes and mechanisms of democratic legitimacy vary between different national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to diagnose Europe's democratic vulnerabilities, we conducted experiments that probe Europeans' ability to recognize and punish politicians who undermine democracy. Across seven countries, we systematically detect two reservoirs of tolerance for authoritarianism: the illiberal right and the disengaged. Citizens in the first group support parties on the extreme, populist, radical, or nationalist right. Citizens in the second group do not vote, but, in several countries, they are dormant supporters of the illiberal right and exhibit just as much lenience toward transgressions against democracy. The root cause of the illiberal right's tolerance for authoritarianism appears to be not in how much it cares about its signature issues, like immigration or traditional values, but in how little it cares about democracy in the first place. Europe's authoritarian potential, both overt and hidden, is located on its electorates' far-right flanks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of the research of the European humanistic personnel management vision as a factor in humanocracy development acquires great importance in the modern era, since in organizations as in living systems, a person stands above everything, and this equates to humanocracy. For this, all management mechanisms should be changed from the bottom up in order to create an effective functional organization in which a person is the subject of all processes. It should be noted that today there are no companies in which humanocractic conceptual works, there are no step-by-step instructions on how to switch to the humanocractic mode. The purpose and formation of the goals in the article (statement of the task). The purpose of the article is to develop a humanistic and cross-cultural approach to the organizational management as a humanocractic factor. The object of research is organizational management phenomenon as a humanocractic factor. The subject of the research is a humanistic and cross-cultural approach managing the organization as a humanocractic factor. The research methodology is the use of systemic, structural-functional, and axiological analystic methods to manage the organization as a humanocractic factor. Thus, the systematic method helped to combine all the scattered facts into a coherent system, the humanistic approach helped to show the organizational human-dimensional factors, based on which man is the measure of all things; the crosscultural approach helped to provide a comparative analysis to the organizational management and to identify common and commonalities, peculiarities and differences in it; the axiological approach helped reveal the organizational management values as a humanocractic factor. The result of the research: 1. The humanistic approach to the organizational analysis as an inclusive factor, socially just and ecologically sustainable development was studied. 2. An analysis of the cross-cultural approach managing the organization as a complex sociocultural system is presented. The principles and approaches to the humanistic vision of managing the organization as a humanocractic factor have been formed. In organizations, humanism is usually considered indirectly from the corporate social perspective responsibility, diversity and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains far‐right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far‐right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far‐right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far‐right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far‐right protest mobilisation. But far‐right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far‐right success in advanced democracies. They show that far‐right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far‐right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This article explores how digital exclusion measured by citizens' occasional social media use and their skeptical social media attitude may affect their satisfaction with democracy (SWD), which is critical for public engagement and democratic stability in Europe. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs multilevel regression to test the hypotheses proposed in the context of Europe and uses cross-level data sources. Individual-level data, including social media use frequency and attitude and SWD, come from the 2012, 2014 and 2016 Eurobarometer surveys. Country-level data are derived from multiple pre-existing datasets. Findings: The empirical results suggest that digital exclusion measured by occasional use and skeptical attitude are negatively associated with the likelihood of SWD. Additionally, the negative effect of a skeptical attitude increases in importance over time. Finally, although government transparency can mitigate the negative effect of a skeptical attitude, its role in mitigating the negative effect of occasional use is effective only in countries with moderate or low transparency levels. Originality/value: This study preliminarily explores the direct, changing and conditional impacts of digital exclusion in social media on SWD. It also deepens our understanding of digital exclusion by differentiating between its physical and motivational aspects, which relate to public engagement and equity and then comparing their relative importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First World War in 1918 was considered as a manifestation of much deeper changes that had taken place in Europe since the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. This development could be evaluated differently. The thesis will present the perspectives of two prominent Czech intellectuals - Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Karel VI. Schwarzenberg. It will be shown how these two different, but in many ways similar personalities viewed the issue of freedom under the impression of more general social and political development in postwar Europe. Therefore it will be important to answer what was their ideal of freedom, what role freedom play, according them, in the life of individual and society and how it can be best secured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Political Science Review / Przegląd Politologiczny is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, authors attempt to provoke the need of renewed understanding and researching related to the mythologization of the Balkans in Postmodern period. In the midpoint of this article is postmodern critic of international experts for legitimacy in 'new state democracy' (for example Bosnia and Herzegovina). Authors will try to make distinction between what is reality on the ground and what is the desirable model of Bosnia and Herzegovina for Europe. Regardless of various processes that are ongoing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is not possible to move away from mythological narratives and concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, special attention has been devoted, within the framework of the constitutional conception of the separation of powers, to the systemic independence of judicial power. The main goal is to minimise the organisational and personal influence of executive power, that is, cabinets and ministries of justice. Immediately after World War II, the constitutional solution used by the French and Italians introduced the concept of "supreme judicial councils" as special central authorities of an administrative type. This is an institution that is essentially independent of executive power, generally made up of judges or other justice officials. The function of these institutions, which are in place in over fifteen constitutional democracies in Europe, especially comes into play during decision-making on the professional/personal matters of judicial candidates, during their training for their role and likewise when choosing them. In this sense, these "supreme judicial councils" decide on the selection criteria for judges essentially defined in every constitutional system via applicable laws. However, the councils have a fundamental role in the implementation of these criteria, as well as in judge selection itself. The constitutional systems in which these councils operate have also succeeded in minimising the influence of calculated personal politics by the executive power in relation to court functionaries, which is of fundamental importance above all for decision-making on judges' progression to the higher courts, but is also important for the actual appointment of judges for governing positions at every level of the court system. There is also a need to monitor the independence and essential autonomy of the court system when handling punitive and disciplinary matters relating to judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article aims to explain the variation in the electoral support for extreme-right parties (ERPs) in Europe. The extant literature on the far-right party family does not answer this question specifically with regard to the extreme-right variants for two main reasons. Firstly, theories did not expect the electoral success of these parties in post-war Europe due to their anti-democratic profiles and association with fascism. Secondly, despite the fact that they acknowledge the differences between the parties under the far-right umbrella – namely, the extreme and the radical – they normally do not take these differences into account, and if so, they focus on the radical-right parties. This article shows that electoral support for ERPs is associated with low quality of government and highly conservative mainstream-right parties. The former creates political legitimization for anti-democratic parties and the latter ideological normalization of extreme right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions pertaining to advancing strategic policies and democracy in the EU cannot afford to disregard a fundamental institutional dilemma of the EU's political system, the conflict between intense interdependence and power sharing in a multilevel polity for one, and autonomy of governments as a condition for democratic legitimacy of power for another. Conceiving the EU as a federal democracy draws attention to this dilemma. This concept suggests democracy‐preserving modes of governance instead of coercive coordination (policy adjustment to competition in the common market, joint decision‐making among governments, central regulation by law and court decisions), which so far predominate in most relevant policy fields. It also calls for procedures to cope with issues of distributive justice stemming from territorial disparities in resources and burdens. The article conceptualises these challenges and outlines feasible steps to advance federal democracy in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution assesses representation in the EU through the lens of demoicracy, focusing on how the demos and the demoi are represented and how this interacts with the executive‐legislative balance and party politics. As the Belgian polity is a living case for the EU but often as flawed as the latter when it comes to democratic standards of representation, we examine whether and how reform proposals for the Belgian polity can inspire future reforms at EU level. We demonstrate that the direction demoicracies should head for when strengthening democratic representation should include a balanced representation of the demos and demoi via a bicameral system, a polity‐wide constituency to represent the demos, involvement of the legislatives of the constituent units at the encompassing level, and a specific role for polity‐wide parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political representation theory postulates that technocracy and populism mount a twofold challenge to party democracy, while also standing at odds with each other in the vision of representation they advocate. Can these relationships be observed empirically at the level of citizen preferences, and what does this mean for alternative forms of representation? The article investigates technocratic attitudes among citizens following three dimensions—expertise, elitism, and anti‐politics—and, using latent class analysis, identifies citizen groups that follow a technocratic, populist, and party‐democratic profile in nine European democracies. Results show that technocratic attitudes are pervasive and can be meaningfully distinguished from populist attitudes, though important overlaps remain. We investigate differences in demographics and political attitudes among citizen profiles that are relevant to political behavior and conclude by highlighting the role that citizens' increasing demands for expertise play in driving preferences for alternative types of governance [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that an analysis of the conflict around the nature and limits of European integration that arose between Catholic and Protestant Christian Democrats in the post‐war era can shed new light on the expansionary dynamics that gradually came to characterize the project of European integration. Catholic Christian Democrats framed the unification of Europe as a relatively exclusionary cultural‐civilizational endeavour, while Protestant Christian Democrats favoured a more inclusive conception of Europe that prioritised free trade over cultural homogeneity. Focusing specifically on Germany, we suggest that the eventual resolution of the intra‐party struggle between the two camps in the early 1970s was a crucial enabler for including more and more countries into the European project. For it was only thereafter that Catholic Christian Democrats began supporting the expansion of European integration beyond the core Europe of the original Six, with geopolitical concerns gradually crowding out cultural ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]