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From the Editors: I The 2023 Michael Henry Heim Prize in Collegial Translation is awarded to Christina Manetti for translating "Lustration: A Post-Communist Phenomenon" by Andrzej Paczkowski i . I The very title of Andrzej Paczkowski's essay "Lustration: A Post-Communist Phenomenon" perfectly illustrates the challenges its translator had to overcome. From the Translator: When Professor Paczkowski asked me to translate his long text on lustration, I didn't hesitate for a moment: having translated one of his books and other articles before, I knew that both the text and the author would be a pleasure to work with. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers information on the social movements of the twentieth century such as anti-colonial, national liberation efforts in India, anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Topics include examines that solidarity, after several years has not become an emblematic case of a social movement in the public discourse outside of Poland.

This article is part of the special cluster titled Generation '68 in Poland (with a Czechoslovak Comparative Perspective). This is the introduction to a special section "Generation '68 in Poland (with a Czechoslovak Comparative Perspective)." The author analyzes the concept of "generation" and introduces the articles that compose this collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neither in her cover letter, nor at any time during the long and laborious process of preparing this symposium for publication, did Nina Witoszek inform us of the previous publication of her paper. As we explain below in our editorial introduction, the idea behind the symposium printed in this issue was to give our authors, reviewers, and readers an insight into the peer review process. In our manuscript guidelines for authors, we state unequivocally: "We (...) discourage more than a minimal amount of "text recycling", the reproduction of an author's own text from a previous publication. [Extracted from the article]

In the nearly quarter century since the collapse of communism, a great many outcomes in East Europe and the former Soviet Union, from patterns of democratic consolidation to state–society relations, have been attributed to legacies of the past. Yet despite the common goal of understanding the influence of the past, there is little consensus on how to conceptualize historical legacies. Through a focus on post-communist outcomes and their relation to prior outcomes and causal precursors, this article assesses what counts as a historical legacy and how legacies differ from non-legacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Eastern Europe continues to be defined and redefined not just by the actual patterns of socio-economic and political reproduction of the distant and proximate regimes governing the region but also through the perceptions of such legacies as generating fundamental similarities. Such perceived similarities, whether or not closely mapped on the objective parallels among countries in Eastern Europe, facilitate intra-region diffusion that results in (further) spatio-temporal socio-economic and political similarities specific to the region. To illustrate this relationship between precommunist and communist legacies, intra-region diffusion, and the production of Eastern Europe, the article examines Slovakia’s diffusion entrepreneurship in the wave of electoral breakthroughs in Eastern Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This article contributes to the literatures on Eastern Europe and comparative democratization in two main ways. First, it adds to the work on the impact of spatio-temporal dependence on transition outcomes, such as democratization, in Eastern Europe. Second, by doing so, the article also documents the impact of an understudied set of democracy promoters—the Eastern European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including East European studies in the post-communist era, the influence of religious groups on public policy in post-communist polities, and the concept of historical legacy.

The essay introduces five principles of an approach that helps to combine context sensitivity with generalizing ambition necessary for any serious comparative work. It also offers a list of five areas where East European experts are or should be making major contributions to the “general” knowledge while remaining attentive to the “specificities” of their region. It emphasizes a dialogue among scholars of several theoretical and methodological persuasions. Such synthetic/syncretic studies—also in the study of power and politics—may and often do begin with the work of researchers who construct panoramic vistas (via large-N statistical work) and/or reconstruct mechanisms of individual decision making (via game theoretic models). Nevertheless, they cannot do without the work of those who delve into the details of social processes (via sociological analysis); those who decipher the intricacies of meaning creation, transmission, and decoding (via interpretive work); and those who are able to place all of this in proper historical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay outlines theoretical visions or paradigms that have underpinned empirical and historical work on the great transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Such paradigms shaped “sociological imaginations” and analytical lenses through which scholars generated important questions and developed their research interests and projects. The study of post-communism was influenced by three such paradigms: the first focused on the immediate communist past as the main constraint on post-1989 transformations; the second attempted to transcend the specificities of post-communism and integrate the study of the region with the general comparative politics enterprise; and finally, the third signified the return to a disciplined exploration of historical and cultural contexts and their role in shaping the outcomes of transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does Eastern Europe contribute to the debate over EU’s democratic deficit from an electoral perspective? Does Eastern Europe challenge our theoretical understanding of what motivates European citizens to participate and express their opinions in European Parliamentary elections? While there is no overarching consensus in the academic community regarding these questions, this essay aims to illustrate how a deeper understanding of one post-communist case and a bottom-up perspective on attitudes and political behavior in one locale, Romania, allowed the researcher to delve deeper into the taken-for-granted dynamics that European citizens from the South, East, and West engage in when voting in European Parliamentary elections. The approach of “ethnographic sensibility” mentioned in the workshop’s discussions and illustrated in several contributions to this volume (see e.g. Kubik 2013; Knott 2015) constitutes then a useful starting point in deconstructing conventional knowledge. Moreover, during the process of moving up the ladder of generality and building inferences from one case study to a region, Eastern Europe still shares enough characteristics to deserve its own dummy variable, so to speak, in large-N continent-wide analyses covering the 2004 and 2009 European Parliamentary (EP) elections. Yet, as Joshua Tucker (2015) mentions in his contribution, it is unclear whether the historical legacies discussed at the workshop and further elaborated on by Grigore Pop-Eleches (2015) will continue to play a role in a priori distinguishing Eastern Europeans’ political attitudes and behaviors from other EU citizens in the South or West in future EP elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that bottom–up, people-centered research which uses ethnographic and everyday approaches is crucial but underutilized in research on identity politics in Eastern Europe. In order to understand what concepts such as ethnicity and citizenship mean in the context of people’s everyday lives, it is vital to understand whether taken-for-granted political concepts are appropriate and the make-up of data such as census data. The article first introduces the methods of political ethnography and bottom–up interviews by discussing how they can be applied and their value within political science. The paper uses data gathered from interviews in Moldova and Crimea (when it was still a de jure and de facto part of Ukraine) to demonstrate the value of this approach. It shows how interview data can add significantly to the understanding of kin-state relations within political science by adding a richness of context and a bottom–up perspective that quantitative and elite-level interviews fail to provide. Lastly, the paper draws on experiences gained from research design to discuss how bottom–up research in political science can be conducted rigorously. The article argues that this approach can deepen the understanding of identity politics and kin-state relations or, more broadly, important post-communist questions such as democratization and Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing up in Bulgaria during the “transition” years, as a then fifteen-year old, I spent the summer of 1990 queuing up at the neighborhood newsstand waiting for the daily delivery of freshly printed newspapers. Shortages of goods, including food and gasoline, caused long lines in front of many stores, but the crowd waiting at the kiosk was eager to read about the latest political developments, and especially popular were the newspapers published by the newly established opposition parties. While there was no scarcity of political news via television and radio, there was always something special about the print media, much of which, including entertainment weeklies, were such a novelty. Twenty or so years later, I spent another summer among newspapers, in the archives of the National Library in Sofia, poring through the pages and—with no digitization of archives—collecting photographs of news articles published before each of the national legislative elections since 1990. Much has changed in the media environment since then, yet the study of media in post-communist societies and especially its relations to voters, parties, and politics in general is still in its infancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the contribution of Eastern European scholarship to the study of human rights and transitional justice? This essay takes stock of the most significant empirical and theoretical contributions of the study of Eastern Europe, specifically the study of the difficult case of the former Yugoslavia, to the scholarship on transitional justice. I identify three main challenges the scholarship on the former Yugoslavia has presented to the larger field of transitional justice: the political challenge of multiple overlapping transitions, the inability of international institutions to effect domestic social change, and the dangers of politicization of past violence remembrance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a critical analysis of the view that Marx’s critique of capitalism provides the analytical lenses necessary to understand post-communist transformations. The author examines the problematic premises underpinning this view—for example, that capitalism can be created by design, and that in the early 1990s the former “second world” constituted a tabula rasa—and insists that a proper answer to the question “How did capitalism emerge in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union?” is yet to be given. The text also identifies the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical difficulties that might ensue if analyses of post-communist politics are reduced to a critique of neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the study of post-communism has transformed comparative politics by adding a substantial role for external actors to existing theories of democratization. The big, overarching finding is dramatic: external actors can, under certain conditions, tip the balance in favor of democracy by offering strong rewards to elites, conditional on complying with tough requirements. External actors can also influence the performance of the state—and how the state treats its citizens. The main causal player is the European Union. This simple finding is consequential for all three major strands of democratization theory. The article goes on to explore how the leverage of the European Union has shaped the trajectories of political change in the new and credible future EU members in East Central and South Eastern Europe. The great variation among existing and candidate members can be largely explained by different domestic conditions, even though there are many areas where the EU’s use of its leverage could have been improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question “Whither Eastern Europe?” prompts the author to reflect upon the interplay of area studies and political power in the United States. Concerns about the future of East European studies tend to originate outside of academe: in the real or imagined declining relevance of Europe in the U.S. foreign policy orbit. Sadly, perhaps, as the region’s complex history and contemporary politics seem to attest, it is highly unlikely that it will lose its strategic importance anytime soon. Therefore, the most important dimension of East European continued significance might be the normative one. Whither to/for whom? Who are the audiences that we are addressing and what is our responsibility to them? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the theoretical rationale (and funding opportunities!) for considering Eastern Europe as a distinct region diminish as we move farther away from the momentous events of 1989, the value of including East-Central European countries in comparative studies has only increased. This article outlines how comparative studies of political behavior involving East-Central European countries have evolved in the author’s own research from comparative studies including Russia along with four East European countries, to more broadly based comparative studies including multiple East European countries and former Soviet Republics, to studies where behavior is analyzed in both East European countries and more established democracies, and finally to large cross-national studies focused on questions related to post-communist politics (namely, the legacy of communism on post-communist attitudes and behavior) but relying on the comparative analysis of survey data from countries around the world. In a way, the research has come full circle, from studies of East European political behavior to better understand East European political behavior, to studies including East European countries to better understand general questions of political behavior not specific to post-communist countries, to now the most extensive comparative studies that are, however, designed once again to better understand East European political attitudes and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe is again a divided continent. When it comes to governance, political economy, or values, two contrasting poles have emerged: one Western, liberal, and democratic, another Eastern, statist, and autocratic. The dividing line between them has become ever sharper, threatening to separate Europe into two distinct worlds. This new divide in Europe arises from a clash between two geopolitical concepts for the continent: One is the Western project of a “Europe whole and free,” an enlarging zone of economic cooperation, political interdependency, and democratic values. The other is the Russian project of a “Eurasian Union” to rival the European Union. This article shows how these two sides of Europe have grown further apart in their conceptions of the European space, their values, governance, and economic models. It explores the reasons for the belated Western responses to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s program to divide Europe. The Russo-Georgian war was a turning point, but the West took a long time to recognize the full implications of Putin’s policy. The current confrontation between Russia and the West is not exactly like the Cold War. Russia’s position is weaker. And the battle will be fought out primarily with economic instruments. However, it is clear that this conflict places Central and Eastern Europe back on the front lines of a divided Europe, raising any number of demons from the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two distinctive approaches for thinking about historical legacies in the post-communist context. The first approach, which builds on the work of Ken Jowitt, emphasizes the distinctiveness of Leninist socioeconomic and political legacies, while the second approach, rooted in the writings of Andrew Janos, highlights the significant and resilient pre-communist, communist, and post-communist diversity of the countries of the former Soviet bloc. The empirical evidence reviewed in this paper suggests that both types of legacies continue to matter after a quarter-century of post-communist transitions. Thus, whereas we can still discern a distinctive and fairly uniform communist imprint in areas such as primary education and the importance of the state sector in the economy, in other areas of socioeconomic development, either communism was unable to reverse longer-term intraregional differences (e.g., with respect to GDP/capita or the size of the agrarian sector) or its initially distinctive developmental imprint has been fundamentally reshaped by post-communist economic reforms (as in the case of the massive increase in income inequality in a subset of ex-communist countries). In political terms, there is an interesting contrast between institutional trajectories (such as regime type), which largely follow pre-communist developmental differences, and individual political attitudes and behavior, where communist exceptionalism generally trumps post-communist diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leninism and the central role that violence played in it is most commonly presented as a hindrance to democratic development in post-communist Eastern Europe. This paper reconsiders this proposition in light of the classics of comparative historical analysis. These classic works maintain that the long-term consequences of revolutionary violence sometimes counteract its short-term anti-democratic impact. Social change unleashed by revolution can contribute to the emergence of democracy in subsequent periods by removing pre-modern barriers to democracy. Two aspects of Leninist violence are highlighted as having such effects: forced modernization and the civilizing process. Communist modernization altered pre-modern social structures which had served as impediments to democracy prior to the Leninist seizure of power. The resulting social structures and the values reinforced by the communist version of the “civilizing process,” patterned on those of bourgeois conventions of the early twentieth century, helped some post-communist countries overcome obstacles to the introduction of liberal democracy encountered in earlier attempts in the region after World War I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Levels of both religiosity and of religious influence on public policy vary enormously across the countries of post-communist East Central Europe. This variation poses a challenge to existing explanations, which have focused on religious competition and alliances with political parties to explain religious participation and policy influence, respectively. The legacy of religious nationalism instead helps to explain both the vibrancy of religious participation and the influence of churches on democratic public policy. This variation also calls for greater scrutiny of “historical legacies”: while some patterns are durable and reach back centuries, others are recent innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines politics and government in Poland in 2010. It discusses the political consequences of the crash of a Polish Air Force plane on April 10, 2010, in which 96 passengers died, including Polish president Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and several Polish military and civilian leaders. The article details how the Polish government continued following the constitutional line of succession. The author argues that Polish government institutions functioned according to legal requirements. The article discusses the Polish constitution's dual-executive arrangement and previous disputes between Kaczynski and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk. The article also examines alleged animosity between Polish political parties, presidential succession, and the presidential elections of 2010.

Presented is a political survey of the country of Poland for the year 2009. It is noted that significant changes were made to cabinet posts following charges of political corruption leveled at the government. A number of other events and developments are discussed including the fact that Poland was the only member state of the European Union that enjoyed positive economic growth during 2009, the brief term in office of Andrzej Czuma as minister of justice, and undue government influence on legislation regulating the gambling industry.

The article presents an overview of political developments in Poland for 2008. It includes an analysis of the political motives of leading public figures, and commentary on trends in public opinion regarding the events described. Notable issues in national politics are discussed. It is said that the most interesting political news involved debates over the Polish constitution's framework for executive power. Polish President Lech Kaczynski is the head of state, while Prime Minister Donald Tusk is the head of government.

This article presents a summary of analyses addressing the changing patterns of voting behavior in post-communist Poland as a context for examination of the issue of the relationship between regions defined by history (eighteenth-century partitions, border shifts after WWII) and contemporary forms of voting behavior. In the 1990s, the dominant cleavage in Polish politics was the one between the post-Solidarity and post-communist camps, and the best predictor of voting behavior was one's religiosity. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this cleavage has been replaced by another, between the liberal, pro-European orientation and the more Euro-skeptic, populist attitudes. The empirical evidence seems to suggest that one end of the populist-liberal continuum is relatively well defined and represents the traditional system of values, which defines Polish national identity in terms of ethnic nationalism, strong attachment to Catholic dogmas, and denunciation of communism as a virtual negation of those values. The other end of this continuum is defined more by rejection of this nationalistic- Catholic "imagined community" than by any positive features. This article examines the relative role of identity-related factors (e.g., religiosity or region) and determinants based on one's socioeconomic (class) position in shaping voting patterns in the 2007 elections to the Polish Sejm and Senate. The empirical data come from a postelection survey, the Polish General Election Study 2007. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The author argues that political opportunism, an attitude common among communist party members before 1989, turned into both the blessing and the curse for post-communist parties in Poland. Once hopeful of secure careers in the authoritarian structures of the old regime, after the regime breakdown communists found themselves in a situation where the only chance for such a career could be associated with the party reinventing itself as a player in the field of pluralist democracy. Opportunistic attitudes of communist apparatchiks and nomenklatura members were instrumental in transforming them, individually and collectively, into effective actors in market economy and competitive politics. Yet the same attitudes doomed the post-communists once the opportunities associated with access to political power opened up widely. The same people who in the 1990s were so apt in turning the rules of democratic game into their collective advantage, in the 2000s acted with a sense of impunity and lack of any consideration for political accountability that in democracies arrives at the end of any election cycle. Plagued by corruption scandals, they lost their popular base: the economically disadvantaged groups to nationalistic populists, the urbane libertarians to liberal democrats. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents an overview of political developments in Poland as of December 2008. It includes information on the electoral fortunes of political parties such as Law & Justice, Civic Platform, and the Democratic Left Alliance. The government of Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, and his twin brother President Lech Kaczyński is discussed. National political issues involving the health care service, especially protests by nurses over low wages, are described. An effort by Catholic political activists to ban abortions is also noted.

The article discusses national politics in Poland in 2007. The coalition of the Law and Justice Party (PiS), Self-Defense and the League of Polish Families (LPR) collapsed in August 2007, the article states. The opposition, comprised of Civic Platform (PO), the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), and the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), could not unite in order to call a vote of no-confidence. Other topics include the dismissal of the Minister of Agriculture Andrej Lepper by Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński on July 9, 2007 and the 2006 Lustration Law involving the vetting of public officials.

The article discusses populism in Poland. The major political parties are the Law and Justice Party, Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland, League of Polish Families Party, Civic Platform, Polish Peasant Party, and Democratic Left Alliance/Left and Democrats. The different ideologies, the parliamentary-election campaigns, and decommunization are mentioned. The doctrines influencing Polish politics such as pro-market, anti-market, particularistic, and universalistic ideals are discussed in relation to the liberal-democratic, conservative or Christian-democratic, socialist or social-democratic, and populist movements. Statistics are given for six political parties in the parliamentary elections in 2001, 2005, and 2007.

The article presents an overview of political developments in Poland as of December 2007. It includes information on the agendas and electoral fortunes of political parties such as Law and Justice, Civic Platform, and Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej. The rise of identical twins Jarosław and Lech Kaczyński, the former of whom became Prime Minister and the latter President, is discussed. National political issues are also analyzed, involving legislation regarding military intelligence, the civil service, and the privatization of banking.

The article discusses the political events that took place in Poland in 2006. The victory of a single minority party led by identical brothers marked a first in modern democracy. Due to the perceived lack of experience and the immediate appointment of individuals of questionable characters and qualification, the new government faced competency issues. Parliament passed several defense and economic resolutions and legislation but it was overshadowed by the lustration law that requires the vetting of public officials with past links to communism. Polish politics also saw the formation of a majority coalition composed of parties with extreme ideologies, the cancellation of an annual summit over a disagreeable issue, and a sexual harassment scandal that fragmented a member coalition.

The article discusses democracy in countries in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. It describes the transitions of democracy in several countries including Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. The article provides a comparison of the political landscapes between Western countries and CEE countries. It discusses the political parties in CEE countries which are mentioned to focus more on cultural issues than socioeconomic problems. The article also provides an overview of democratic procedures in CEE countries.

The article focuses on politics in Poland in 2005. It talks about the 2005 parliamentary and presidential elections that may indicate a growing stability of the party system. It states that while two center-right parties dominated the presidential vote, the parties failed to form a ruling coalition, resulting in a minority government by the Law and Justice (PiS) party under politician Lech Kaczyński. It mentions that the competition for victory in the parliamentary elections was limited to the liberal-democratic Civic Platform and the PiS, both of which are successors to the Solidarity movement.

The article presents news briefs on political science, elections, the cabinet system, political parties, and practical politics in Poland under Prime Minister Marek Belka. Presidential candidate Lech Aleksander Kaczynski defeated rival Donald Franciszek Tusk in the second round of voting for presidential elections. The parliamentary elections saw a swing of votes from left to right.

The article looks at the government of Poland in 2004. Several national political issues are discussed, including Poland's accession to the European Union, the resignation of Prime Minister Leszek Miller, and his replacement by Marek Belka. The trial of film producer Lew Rywin, who was found guilty of fraud, is discussed. The actions of various political parties are reviewed, including the Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, the Civic Platform, and the Freedom Union. Changes made to the electoral process of the European Parliament are also mentioned.

Presents an overview of the political structure of Poland in 2004. Issues in national politics, including the country's accession to the European Union; Elections to the European Parliament; Adoption of the Law on Elections to the European Parliament by the Sejm.

Presents information on politics in Poland as of December 2004. Referendum on the membership of Poland in the European Union; Changes in the cabinet in 2003; Failure of the government's domestic policies; Ejection of the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) from the ruling coalition and dismissal of two PSL ministers; Scandals involving the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) leaders.

The article focuses on the voting pattern of the European Union (EU) accession referendum in Poland. Poland's quest for the membership of EU had enjoyed wide support since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989. Throughout the 1990s, Polish political elites and all the major political parties, from the post-communist Alliance of the Democratic Left to the centrist Freedom Union and the Electoral Action Solidarity on the right, shared a consensus in favor of quick accession to European and Atlantic structures. After the 2001 elections in Poland, the Euro-skeptical forces recorded significant gains.

Presents an overview of political issues in Poland in 2002. Acceptance of Poland as member of the European Union; Replacement of ministers Andrzej Celinski of Culture and Barbara Piwnik of Justice; Bribery scandal published by the "Gazeta Wyborcza" involving Wanda Rapaczynska, president of the company Agora, Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief of "Gazeta," and film producer Lew Rywin.

Looks into the deficiencies of state transformation in Poland, particularly on the subject of a procedural and a substantive interpretation of democracy. Evaluation of the Roundtable Accord of 1989; Case study of an imperfect consensus and political compromise; Analysis of the socio-political background of the institutional transformation in Poland.

The article discusses how political and social changes in Eastern Europe have impacted the journal since it was founded. The editors explore how the end of the Cold War changed former communist European states, discuss the revolutions in the region between 1989 and 1991, and explain that they will be adding the term and topic of "cultures" to the publication.

An introduction is presented in which the editors cite the 25th anniversary of the beginning of Eastern Europe's post-communist era and note several papers in the issue resulted from an invitation to former editors of the publication to reflect on the realities of the era relative to expectations.

This symposium offers EEPS audience insights to the process of peer review to which manuscripts submitted to the journal are subjected. It is composed of the original paper (titled "Re-enchanting Modernity in the East and West: Comparative Perspectives on the Legacy of 1968"), reviews and additional comments by the three reviewers, and the author's response. It illustrates the variety of criteria typically used by reviewers – and editors – in their assessment of submitted research papers and essays, as well as the options available to their authors in response. The symposium is also a contribution to the ongoing debates on the topic of the manuscript in question: the legacies of the tumultuous year 1968 and the contributions of the generation defined by those events to the intellectual, political, and other dimensions of public affairs in the East and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]