Search

Why do citizens in democratic states allow governments to monitor them? Studies note that consent to surveillance to a large extent depends on trust in public institutions. But how is surveillance legitimised in states where this kind of trust is low, as in most of the European postcommunist countries? Using data from three former communist states, this study investigates the role of trust in close social networks. The results show that so-called 'particular social trust' may work as a substitute for trust in institutions. Particular social trust may produce legitimacy for policy measures, in this case, surveillance.

This article seeks to explain public attitudes to secret surveillance. Secret surveillance, for example wiretapping by intelligence agencies, is a controversial activity that affects fundamental civil liberties in any democratic system. Several large research projects have recently attempted to explain how people form opinions about surveillance in general. Thereby privacy concerns and institutional trust are often highlighted. In this article, we argue that earlier research uses a too narrow definition of attitudes to surveillance and that secret surveillance is particularly sensitive due to its opaque character. We introduce a two-dimensional concept that focuses on rationalistic and emotional responses to surveillance. Drawing on new data from three post-communist societies – Estonia, Poland, and Serbia – we show how institutional trust is mainly responsible for explaining acceptance of secret surveillance, but not how one feels about it. Instead, it is the level of ontological insecurity and privacy concerns that explains this second dimension. The results are theorised and implications for future research are discussed.

The present article concerns Estonian e-government, that is, the digitalization of government and public administration, and the way e-government produces a moral citizen. Although several case studies on e-government exist, they have seldom been sensitive to the local conditions shaping the functions and social meaning of digitalization. E-government involves producing knowledge, and the present article draws on a theoretical perspective that stresses the tight relationship between knowledge and power. In Estonia, the power–knowledge regime is characterized by centralization. Centralization is the condition for a firm national e-government policy, and within this policy, an image of the unique Estonian citizenry is produced. The Estonian moral citizen who emerges out of e-government is de-politicized and detached from a social context, on the one hand, and strongly politicized and attached to a specific ethno-national community, on the other.

This edited collection reports the results of a comparative study of video surveillance/CCTV in Germany, Poland, and Sweden. It investigates how video surveillance as technologically mediated social control is affected by national characteristics, with a specific concern for recent political history. The book is motivated by asking what makes video surveillance "tick" in three very different cultural settings, two of which (Poland and Sweden) are virtually unexplored in the literature on surveillance. The selection of countries is motivated by an interest in societies with recent experiences of authoritarianism, and how they respond to the global trend towards intensified technical means of control. With thorough empirical studies, the book constitutes an important contribution to security studies, surveillance studies, and post-communist area studies.

Surveillance is an important governance technique of modern societies and is linked to particular governmental rationalities. This article examines the Swedish policy on camera surveillance, using the analytical framework of governmentality, the art of government, in advanced liberal societies as its theoretical framework. The focus is on three features that characterise current developments in the Swedish policy. These are labelled situational prevention, generalisation of distrust and the significance of the informed citizen. The study shows how prevention, i.e. situational prevention, was successfully introduced as a main rationale for monitoring only after the technology had been in place for some years. Monitoring as a form of general situational prevention, the congruent generalised distrust that affects the public and the Swedish requirement to inform citizens about cameras are viewed as elements of a governmental rationality based on the notion of the autonomous, free and self-responsible subject. Accordingly, the popular idea that camera surveillance is an indicator of an expanding security state must be modified.

Surveillance is an important governance technique of modern societies and is linked to particular governmental rationalities. This article examines the Swedish policy on camera surveillance, using the analytical framework of governmentality, the art of government, in advanced liberal societies as its theoretical framework. The focus is on three features that characterise current developments in the Swedish policy. These are labelled situational prevention, generalisation of distrust and the significance of the informed citizen. The study shows how prevention, i.e. situational prevention, was successfully introduced as a main rationale for monitoring only after the technology had been in place for some years. Monitoring as a form of general situational prevention, the congruent generalised distrust that affects the public and the Swedish requirement to inform citizens about cameras are viewed as elements of a governmental rationality based on the notion of the autonomous, free and self-responsible subject. Accordingly, the popular idea that camera surveillance is an indicator of an expanding security state must be modified.

This article challenges the assumption that there is an essential difference between a West European 'civic' and an East European 'ethnic' conceptualisation of the nation. If there were such a distinction, one should be able to trace a distinctive 'ethnic' concept of the nation among the populations of East European countries. The article analyses public opinion in three East European countries - Latvia, Poland and Lithuania - using a survey of more than 1,100 respondents in each country. This data suggests, first, that we must question the model of a general East European definition of the nation as an ethnic unit. Second, it is evident that the respondents of each country define the nation differently. For example, Latvian respondents presented a specific concept of the nation - one with clear ethnic undertones. A certain number of the Latvian respondents defined members of the nation according to a single criterion: having Latvian as one's mother tongue. The article also shows how we can deconstruct the concepts of the ethnic versus the civic nation, and thus analyse their separate components. This makes the distinction less rigid, and encourages the discovery of different combinations of ethnic and civic arguments. The result should be more nuanced studies of concepts of the nation and of national belonging.

This article concerns Latvian school policy during the 1990s. It is argued that Latvian post-communist school policy bears great similarity with political practice during the time of Soviet rule. The defining feature of present-day Latvian school policy is the privileged status granted the Latvian language and the separation of Latvian children from Russian-speaking children. It is emphasized that the separate school system is a legacy of the Soviet era except that nowadays, official measures favor Latvian rather than Russian-speaking children. Current ethnic politics can thus be seen to exert a strong influence on Latvian society just as it did during the Soviet era and earlier.

Behandlar även Östen Undén