Since 2010, Hungary has become a prime example of democratic backsliding. Our research analyzed this process based on Habermas's theory. We selected a corpus of parliamentary debates from 1998 to 2020. Our chosen method, structural topic modeling identifies thematic clusters and communicative patterns. We explore the communicative rationality potential of the parliamentary public sphere along its potential for deliberative control over nepotist, corrupt systems. Results: economic policies are gradually being taken out of parliamentary control; discourses of crisis are gaining ground; procedural and communicative indicators of democratic civil culture are decreasing; and language relying on hostility is becoming more prevalent.
This paper discusses the potential scenarios for the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) once Vladimir Putin has ceased, for whatever reason, to wield power in Russia. This paper assumes that the utility of the ROC as a legitimacy provider and promoter of the state sanctioned discourse is what shapes its options in a post-Putin reality. Thus, as this paper argues, future scenarios for the ROC are determined less by the fate of Vladimir Putin than that of Putinism, i.e. the ideological agenda co-created and promoted by the Church leaders. This assumption leads to two main scenarios - the 'continuator' and the 'challenger.'
This article analyzes the role of Ukraine's recent decolonization legislation as a state strategy for managing ontological security amid heightened existential threats. It examines major legislative initiatives introduced following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, highlighting a transition from decommunization to decolonization and illustrating how legal measures are employed to stabilize and affirm a sovereign Ukrainian Self. By characterizing Russia as a transhistorical colonizer, the legislation establishes a narrative of historical continuity and resistance, positioning Ukraine's experience within a decolonial framework. The analysis also addresses the inherent tensions and contradictions within this legislative approach.
While research on gender stereotypes in politics has typically examined issue expertise or personality traits separately, and focused on Western democracies, we study their joint influence in a post-communist context. Using a representative survey experiment in Slovakia (n = 2,009), we analyze how these dimensions interact. We find that feminine traits increase evaluations, particularly for male politicians, while effects for women vary by issue specialization. Voters with traditional gender attitudes tend to favor male candidates, while women gain support when conforming to feminine stereotypes. These findings highlight the importance of context in shaping gendered political evaluations.
How do authoritarian restrictions affect transnational advocacy? This paper addresses this question by examining transnational environmental activism in Russia. While the space for transnational activism was closing in Russia years before, after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine these connections became nearly impossible. This paper examines how these networks have changed since 2022 through analysis of in-depth interviews with transnational ENGOs, international funders, and environmental activists. By documenting their diverse responses, this paper uncovers how increased repression can both rupture and transform transnational networks. The findings contribute to literature on transnational advocacy, authoritarian backlash, and environmental activism in Russia and beyond.
Central Asia has historically been a contentious region for water, stoking tension and cooperation. This paper explores how the water experiences of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan impact public opinion on environmental views, using the World Values Survey. This paper finds, using ordered logistic regression, that in upstream Tajikistan, nationalism is associated with environmentalism, yet no conclusive findings can be found in Uzbekistan. While these outcomes are limited to the relationship between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in a specific time period, such findings offer a potential model for understanding how riparian geographic positioning can influence environmental views through nationalism.
This article examines the wave of antiwar petitions that appeared in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Within nine days, nearly a hundred petitions gathered over 1.5 million signatures before repression curtailed the movement. Although they did not affect state policy, their scale and urgency raise questions about why people engaged in a form of action seen as ineffective and risky. Drawing on 91 antiwar petitions, as well as interviews with initiators and signatories, we show that petitions served primarily relational purposes: affirming values, expressing solidarity, and reinforcing communities under conditions of moral crisis and political danger.
Western support has long shaped environmental governance in the post-Communist region. This article examines Russia's environmental nonprofit sector in 2023 amid international isolation and the absence of foreign funding. It asks how the consolidating state power has reshaped civil society behavior in Russia. Using an original dataset of 41 leading environmental NGOs, the study visually compares behavioral strategies across different NGO types. Findings reveal that higher levels of state engagement are associated with more clientelist behavior, while independent NGOs continue to display constrained resilience through depoliticized service provision.
This article analyzes the portrayal of the late 18th-century Chechen religious figure Sheikh Mansur during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. It focuses on historians' depictions of Mansur and his movement. Several key conclusions can be drawn from this study. Throughout the Soviet period, Mansur's image repeatedly shifted, from a national hero to a "Turkish agent." The period of Ichkeria's de facto independence marked the peak of Sheikh Mansur's exploitation by politicians. In modern Chechnya, authorities successfully use the life story of Sheikh Mansur for their own political goals.
This article examines how and why labor migration has been framed as a security threat in contemporary Russia. Drawing on securitization theory, the study traces major shifts in Russia's public discourse, policy, and legislation on migration. It analyzes both discursive and non-discursive mechanisms of securitization, identifying key actors, their goals, referent objects, and targeted audiences involved in securitization moves. This paper contributes to the existing literature by reevaluating the theoretical assumptions of the securitization framework, which is typically rooted in democratic settings, for their application in autocratic contexts.
This article analyzes how biographical narratives of Kazakh statehood in school history textbooks function as mechanisms of ontological security. Grounded in ontological security theory, the study combines discourse analysis of textbooks with semi-structured interviews with experts and textbook authors. It identifies three narrative constructions that reproduce continuity and historical depth. The article argues that in response to recognition denial and external challenges, these narratives operate as state-led efforts to stabilize national identity through claims of uninterrupted statehood. The study contributes to debates on identity, narrative, and security in post-Soviet international relations.
This study examines electoral behavior during Hungary's 2021 opposition primaries. Using a unique election day poll and supplementary survey data, we analyze the socio-demographic and attitudinal profiles of primary voters and compare them to the broader opposition electorate. Findings suggest that in a de-democratizing regime with a dominant party, voter behavior is shaped less by policy preferences and more by sociological attributes such as age, gender, and ideological position, and to a lesser extent partisanship. Challenges for opposition coalition building stem less from programmatic disagreements and more from bridging sociological and identity-based divides.
The outbreak of Russia's conflict in Ukraine in February 2022 has triggered a series of harsh targeted sanctions against Russia's political, business and military elites, leaving Russia as the most sanctioned country in the world. The current article focuses on the U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia in February-March 2022 and their representation in conservative and liberal Russian digital media. Based on the Copenhagen theory of securitization and the social constructionist theory of social problems, the study aims to deconstruct the discursive strategies of securitization and desecuritization of U.S. sanctions in the Russian digital media space.
Demolishing and rebuilding monuments often provoke controversy, as shown by the case of Prague Marian Column. Torn down in 1918 and reerected in 2020, it became a new religious landmark in a country with minimal religious affiliation. This article analyzes discursive patterns in the 2012-22 debates surrounding the monument. A critical discourse analysis of City Assembly minutes and media reports shows that reducing the conflict to Protestant-Catholic tensions along with their political implications is insufficient. Additional semantic structures reveal ideological foundations shaping collective memory, national identity, civic engagement, and disclose hegemonic anti-communist framings of the Czech public discourse.
Through an analysis of discussions in the 1980s regarding Central Asian migration, I analyze the history of Soviet experts' ideas in the Late-Soviet period and what kinds of arguments and logic they offer to understand the migration from Central Asia to Russia that had begun and was predicted, and how these explanations transformed and created a new discourse around the future of the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet project. I am interested in three concepts around which the debate over the possibility and desirability of migration developed: labor surplus, immobility, and survival rates.
Whereas parties with transnational ties can influence domestic protest mobilization, the mechanisms for how this happens are not clear. I elucidate these mechanisms by drawing on resource mobilization and international party assistance literature and analyzing a likely case for this to occur: Euromaidan in Ukraine. Mechanisms through which transnational connections enhance the capacity for mobilization include (a) leveling the political field (b), socializing parties (c), membership conditionality requirements and (d) direct messages of empathy and support. In 2013-14, transnational ties provided important avenues for the challenger coalition to access resources in resistance to the increasingly authoritarian regime.
This paper examines the institutionalization of sociology in Kyrgyzstan from the Soviet era to the present, identifying five stages: emergence, marginalization, survival, marketization, and reestablishment. Initially shaped by Soviet ideology, sociology persisted through the post-independence period with support from international donors, though often guided by external agendas. Drawing on archival materials, academic literature, and dissertations, the study shows how Kyrgyz sociologists have worked to align their research with local social issues such as migration, civil society, and gender. The paper highlights the tension between global influences and the development of locally rooted sociological knowledge.
Given a low level of perceived capacity to demand public goods among ethnic minorities in Georgia's Kvemo Kartli region, how can we explain the lack of interethnic difference in perceptions of public goods supply? I examine this puzzle through the lens of distributive politics and ethnic kin state relations. After demonstrating the gap in perceptions of public goods demand and supply through analysis of survey data, the article describes the substitutive role of Azerbaijan in supplying resources to the region's Georgian Azerbaijani community and employs a multi-methods approach to analyze elite and non-elite evaluations of this relationship.
