In recent decades, Western countries have witnessed democratic backsliding, often manifested in efforts to restrict the power of the judiciary. Israel, too, has displayed elements of democratic backsliding, peaking in 2023 with an intense public debate over the judiciary's status, driven by the government's reform plan to curtail its power. In this context, the role of civic education, particularly in Israel, where it holds an exceptional place in the national curriculum, becomes critical. Yet, the absence of a shared, consensus-driven understanding of democracy and its institutions, especially the judiciary, among the general population, suggests that civic education has not fulfilled its unifying potential. This article examines key themes, namely, democracy, constitution, and institutions, in the official civics textbooks. The contradictions found between the textbooks regarding the perceptions of these themes reflect the broader divisions within Israeli society regarding the democratic framework and may, in turn, reinforce them. These findings have broader implications for other polarized societies; when fundamental principles are contested, civic education, in its current form, is unlikely to achieve its primary goal of fostering a shared democratic identity. To address this challenge, we argue that elected institutions must first work to establish a minimal consensus on core democratic principles, which can then be reflected and reinforced through civic education.
In light of the growing polarization of European (party) politics and the concerns about its potential impact on the stability of European democracies, this study seeks to explore the dynamic relationship between party system polarization and political trust. It focuses on how party system polarization affects political trust by asking how ideological polarization and political trust are correlated. To this end, the Eurobarometer data on political trust and the data from the Manifesto Project on how different political parties within thirty European countries express their ideological stances over time (between 1990 and 2019) were utilized. Combining these data, a panel dataset of 155 observations was created. The analysis employed a fixed-effects (FE) model, regressing the outcome variables on the quantitative measure of ideological party polarization. When estimating the models, the causality from party system polarization to political trust was assumed. The research finds that average European party system polarization is increasing slightly over time, with the "political system", "welfare and quality of life", and "fabric of society" domains appearing to be the drivers of this upward trend. The research also suggests that there exist significant relationships only for two ideological domains, "freedom and democracy" (negative and significant estimates for the outcome variables trust in parties and parliaments) and "social groups" (positive and significant estimates for the outcome variables trust in parties, parliaments, and the government).
An extensive strand of literature demonstrates that citizen evaluations of political institutions that serve as the foundation for political trust judgments are frequently formed based on mediated political information obtained from news media channels. Despite the richness of the literature, two conceptual limitations persist. First, many studies operationalize media influence as a direct relationship between exposure to specific media sources and trust. Second, political trust itself is often operationalized as a unidimensional outcome-an aggregated index of confidence in political institutions. The present study addresses these gaps by proposing an integrated, two-stage heuristic model of media influence on political trust. On the predictors side, the paper distinguishes between media consumption patterns that capture structural conditions under which political information reaches the users, and media-related attitudes that determine how incoming information is evaluated and processed. On the outcome side, the analysis moves focus from the influence of media on political trust level to the normative interpretation and foundations that underly the political trust judgement where a distinction is made between skeptical, cynical and compliant trust types. The findings show that media predictors operate differently across these two outcomes. Trust in media and perceived media impartiality are consistent positive predictors of the aggregated political trust index, suggesting that confidence in the information environment is closely linked to institutional confidence. However, the trust-type models reveal a more ambivalent pattern. Traditional media use and positive media evaluations reduce cynical mistrust but mainly strengthen compliant rather than skeptical trust. By contrast, sustained exposure to political news increases the likelihood of skeptical trust, whereas reliance on multiple information sources strengthens cynical mistrust and weakens both skeptical and compliant trust. Skeptical trust therefore does not appear to emerge from a general spillover of social trust or from confidence in media as a heuristic shortcut. Rather, it is more closely associated with cognitive resources and sustained political information exposure. The findings suggest that media do not only affect how much citizens trust political institutions, but also whether such trust reflects a skeptical, compliant, or cynical judgement.
Presidential elections in Poland are considered the most important election, next to parliamentary elections. This is because the President is elected by universal suffrage and has a strong popular mandate. It seems, therefore, that this office should be the culmination of a political career. The main objective of this paper is to define the place of the office of the President of the Republic of Poland on the model path of political careers of Polish politicians. In order to realize the main objective, two specific objectives have been identified: (1) to identify the model of the political career path of Polish presidents before taking office; (2) to identify the model of the political career path of Polish presidents after the presidency. A case study analysis of the political careers of successive presidents after 1989 was used in the analysis. Conclusions from the considerations indicate that while holding the office of the President of the Republic of Poland ends a political career, the only common feature of presidential candidates before winning the elections is their affiliation with one of the two largest political parties during the period of struggle for the presidency. In addition, the evolution over time shows that successive elections are won by candidates with less and less political experience so the election, although crucial, is basically another part of the party competition and a plebiscite between political groupings.
This article investigates how social media use and elite-driven disinformation impact citizens' ability to make rational judgments about political trustworthiness. Drawing on data from three Eurobarometer waves (2021-2023) across all 27 EU member states and paired with macro-level governance indicators, we distinguish between political trust and trustworthiness, the latter conceptualized as alignment between public trust and objective institutional performance. We categorize respondents into four trust types of judgments on political trust: skeptical trust, skeptical mistrust, credulous trust, and cynical mistrust. Subsequently, we examine how traditional media and social media use influences these judgments. Results show that frequent social media use is associated with higher probability of irrational judgments. This association appears stronger in environments where political elites use social media to disseminate disinformation or hate speech. These findings challenge the optimistic assumptions of the "virtuous circle" thesis in the digital context and highlight the polarizing influence of algorithm-driven and elite-manipulated online environments.
This study investigates the role of American think tanks in analyzing Russia's war against Ukraine, focusing on their methodological approaches, funding influences, and mechanisms of policy impact. Through a systematic examination of publications from seven leading U.S. foreign policy think tanks- the Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, American Enterprise Institute, and the Institute for the Study of War-the research highlights significant variations in their analytical frameworks, policy recommendations, and institutional strategies for conflict assessment. The study employs content analysis of reports, policy briefs, and media citations, alongside an evaluation of funding transparency, to assess the correlation between financial backers and policy advocacy. Key findings reveal that 78% of major U.S. foreign policy think tanks receive funding from defense contractors, with defense-funded institutions being cited 85% more frequently in media discussions on Ukraine policy. This suggests a potential link between funding sources and policy visibility. A notable case study is the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which, despite its relatively recent establishment, has gained substantial policy influence through specialized conflict analysis methodologies and real-time intelligence assessments. The research underscores how institutional funding, methodological rigor, and media engagement collectively shape think tanks' impact on U.S. foreign policy debates. Ultimately, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between knowledge production, financial dependencies, and policy influence within the ecosystem of American think tanks, offering insights into their role in shaping democratic discourse on international conflicts.
This article examines the relationship between immigration and political trust in European democracies during a period marked by overlapping political, economic, and geopolitical crises. Building on performance-based theories of political trust and the distinction between trust and trustworthiness, the study argues that citizens' confidence in political institutions depends less on the salience of immigration as a political issue and more on evaluations of how effectively governments manage immigration. Using original cross-national survey data from the TRUEDEM Online Survey 2025 covering 24 European Union member states (N approximate to 29,000), the analysis combines descriptive statistics, country-level scatterplots, and Spearman rank-order correlations. The findings reveal substantial variation in institutional trust across Europe, with generally moderate to low trust levels even in longestablished democracies. While the perceived importance of managing immigration displays heterogeneous and often weak associations with political trust, evaluations of national governments' performance in managing immigration are consistently and positively correlated with trust in political institutions across all countries examined. These results provide strong support for performance-based legitimacy models and highlight the conditional nature of immigration's impact on political trust. The study contributes to debates on democratic resilience by demonstrating that immigration does not inherently undermine political trust. Instead, trust is shaped by citizens' judgments of institutional trustworthiness in addressing complex and contested policy challenges. The findings underscore the importance of effective, transparent, and accountable governance for sustaining political trust in times of crisis
This article examines the issue of political trust in Slovenia, noting its considerable importance for the democracy-political system relationship. A range of empirical data show Slovenia is one of those countries where structurally low political trust is part of a long-running trend of decline, or at best it fluctuates in a way that reveals no trends. Qualitative data gathered in interviews with 14 politicians from different political institutions, show that Slovenia is similar to several other European countries, notably those in Central and Eastern Europe. It seems the performance perspective holds greater explanatory power than a critical citizen perspective. The findings of a cross-country survey and interviews conducted with politicians indicated many similarities among Slovenian citizens and politicians regarding these aspects, such as the importance of keeping one's campaign promises and being honest. The interviews also emphasize the importance of politicians being perceived to act professionally and the influence of the media, together with differences in trust across institutions and governance levels, with local-level accessibility proving to be especially relevant.
This paper explores democratic innovations in Ukraine, examining their development from Ukraine's independence to the present day. Amidst a global "democratic malaise," democratic innovations serve as correctives to representative gaps. As democratic innovations were designed to bridge the gap between citizens and the state, in the situation where elections are not held due to the military situation, these innovations are crucial. The study uses online focus groups conducted with civil society representatives in June 2025 to identify systemic barriers and develop strategies for enhancing their effectiveness. The findings reveal that while Ukraine demonstrates significant "digital resilience," the implementation of these tools faces multifaceted challenges. These include socio-psychological barriers such as "small person syndrome" and Soviet-era paternalism, educational gaps in civic awareness, and institutional limitations like imperfect regulatory framework. Furthermore, the war has introduced infrastructural damage, alongside complex migration dynamics that threaten community cohesion. According to the results of our research, dissatisfaction with the government's performance acts as a motivator for engagement, as citizens use participatory tools to show the authorities how things should be done. The paper concludes by offering strategic recommendations to bridge the gap between participation and tangible results. These include tying innovations to everyday local issues, implementing hybrid online-offline communication models to ensure inclusion, and fostering a "shared language of cooperation" through the education of both youth and civil servants.
This study examines how climate policies are presented in the electoral programs of sovereigntist candidates in the 2024 Romanian presidential elections, by comparison to those of Donald Trump in the 2024 U.S. elections. In Romania, climate policies follow the framework of the European Green Deal, whereas in the United States they are associated with the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act. Through a comparative approach, the study highlights transnational alignments in sovereigntist discourse on climate policies. The research strategy is qualitative, employing document analysis and comparative analysis as methods. The findings indicate that climate policies are included in the programs under review and are instrumentalized as a campaign issue in both Romania and the U.S., frequently being countered by the proposals advanced by sovereigntist candidates. The conclusions reveal that climate policies acquire the function of consolidating political agendas and collective identities within the electoral platforms of sovereigntist candidates in both Romania and the United States.
This paper aims to qualitatively analyze the electoral platforms of the seven Romanian parties that exceeded the 5% electoral threshold, in both the European Parliament and the Romanian Parliament elections, in 2024. These are the four pro-European parties (PSD, PNL, USR, UDMR) and three populist parties (AUR, SOS-Partidul SOS Rom & acirc;nia, and POT). The objectives of the paper are, therefore, to identify the extent to which the approach to the European issues in the political programs of the aforementioned parties reflects both the ideology of the party and the ideological orientation of the political group to which they belong in the European Parliament; the degree to which these political parties understand the obligations that Romania's membership entails in the multilevel governance of the EU, but also the danger that ignoring these obligations may pose to democracy at national and European level.
The Romanian presidential elections of 2024-2025 marked a turning point in the country's post-communist political trajectory, given their annulment and rerun as well as the ideological polarization they revealed. Central to the electoral discourse was the Republic of Moldova, whose EU candidacy and strategic relevance were instrumentalized by candidates across the political spectrum. This article explores how Moldova emerged as a theme in Romanian political messaging, while examining the interplay between historical sentiment, identity politics, and foreign policy narratives. Through a discourse analysis of campaign materials, speeches, and electoral data, the study tests three hypotheses: that Moldova's EU trajectory shaped pro-European messaging; that nationalist candidates used Moldova as a symbolic issue to mobilize support; and that Moldovan citizens with Romanian dual citizenship significantly influenced the electoral outcome. The findings confirm that Moldova was framed either as a strategic partner or a nationalist cause, depending on ideological orientation. Candidates such as Nicusor Dan emphasized pragmatic cooperation and democratic resilience, while George Simion and other nationalists invoked themes of reunification and cultural erasure. The article also highlights Romania's concrete contributions to Moldova's EU integration, including financial aid, infrastructure projects, and diplomatic support. Ultimately, the study reveals Moldova's dual role as both a foreign policy concern and a domestic electoral tool, reflecting tensions in Romania's regional positioning amid rising populism and hybrid threats.
Regional development, a process with multiple economic, social and environmental facets, is determined by a complex interaction of factors that shape its trajectory. Development models are intrinsically linked to local history, the strategic use of existing resources, the cultivation of economic opportunities and the enhancement of human capital, and their application often generates contradictory results. The determinants of regional development vary in type, some of which are considered essential in economic, social and territorial cohesion policy due to the extent to which they can influence social values and collective aspirations. A wealth of specialist literature also highlights their influence on electoral processes, party strategies and election results. In this context, the study aims to identify the main categories of factors determining the development process in a region and how they shape the preferences of voters in four counties belonging to the North-West Development Region (Bihor, S & abreve;laj, Satu Mare, and Maramures). The analysis focuses on the second round of the presidential elections in Romania and aims to highlight the behavior of those who voted on 18 May 2025, compared to that defined by Dumitru Sandu in 2014.
Recent presidential elections in Romania reveal not only institutional and political tensions, but a deeper anthropological and epistemological crisis: the erosion of discernment as a condition of freedom. Electoral choice, traditionally understood as a rational act of deliberation, increasingly functions as a form of affective recognition, borrowing symbolic legitimacy from religious language rather than from argument and knowledge. We propose a social-theological and epistemological analysis of this phenomenon, structured around five interconnected dimensions: the post-totalitarian fragility of freedom and the delegation of judgment; the absolutization of political charisma and the logic of false recognition; the role of digital technologies in accelerating post-rationality and cognitive fatigue; the illicit symbolic transfer between religion and politics; and, finally, an anthropological diagnosis of the post-totalitarian mind, marked by the loss of epistemic humility. Our central argument is that contemporary political dysfunction cannot be explained solely by manipulation or institutional failure, but by the weakening of the subject's capacity to know. Where truth is reduced to affective intensity or sacralized authority, freedom survives only as procedure, not as lived responsibility.
The article analyses international reactions to Romania's presidential elections, focusing on the annulled vote of November 2024 and the rescheduled election in May 2025. It underscores how these developments were interpreted by Western democracies and by the revisionist authoritarian regime of the Russian Federation. One of the most contentious moments in Romania's democratic evolution since 1989, the elections prompted reactions from the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy, reflecting the wider geopolitical tensions in Europe, the dynamics of international relations, and the ideological competition among major global powers during a period of profound transformation. Our hypothesis is that the external impact and attitudes of global actors toward the recent presidential elections in Romania functioned as a "mirror", reflecting hybrid warfare, significant turbulence in international politics, Russia's revisionist ambitions, and the ongoing redefinition of relations among major powers. For an area located on the geopolitical periphery of NATO and the European Union, the collapse of democratic institutions, liberal values, and the pro-Western trajectory would have sent a profound and disquieting message to the surrounding region and to Europe at large.
This study provides a critical analysis of the 2025 Romanian presidential elections, focusing on their unfolding and public reflection within the Republic of Moldova. Interest in these elections grew significantly among Romanian citizens residing in Moldova. The May 2025 vote followed a prolonged and intricate electoral process that began in 2024 and concluded with the annulment of the second round in December of that year. Intense public debate, the sustained visibility of the issue on the national agenda due to its implications for the Republic of Moldova, and the controversial ascent of the nationalist-sovereigntist movement collectively contributed to a marked increase in voter turnout. This study aims to analyze the voting behavior of Romanian citizens residing in the Republic of Moldova during the 2025 presidential elections. It further seeks to explore the significance, public perception, and impact of these elections - both in terms of their influence on the electoral process and their implications for the Republic of Moldova's European trajectory.
This study seeks to elucidate the complexities of the heterogeneous diaspora vote in the 2025 Romanian presidential elections through the examination of secondary data from the Romanian Permanent Electoral Authority. The study seeks to identify trends in the voting data, and to analyze these patterns. The study is at the intersection of diaspora studies and electoral studies, using research from both areas. As historical data shows, in presidential elections, the Romanian diaspora has typically voted for change and for other candidates than internal voters. Our research explores the voting patterns of two different Romanian diasporas in the 2025 Romanian presidential elections, focusing on the cleavage based on votes in EU/Schengen+UK vs non-EU/Schengen+UK countries.
This study explores the impact of nationalist parties on the sustainability of democracy, focusing on Romanian students' perceptions in the context of the 2024 European Parliamentary elections. The rise of nationalist and populist parties across the European Union has sparked concerns about the potential erosion of democratic values and stability. Using a descriptive exploratory research design, data were collected via an electronically distributed questionnaire from 417 students representing diverse educational and socio-demographic backgrounds. The analysis revealed significant associations between students' socio-demographic factors and their trust in nationalist parties, as well as their perceptions of these parties' impact on democracy. Higher education levels correlated with more pronounced negative perceptions of nationalist parties. Age, gender, residence, education, and socioeconomic status also played crucial roles in shaping these perceptions. The findings highlight a moderate awareness among students regarding the under-mining effects of nationalist parties on democracy, with significant concerns about misinformation, political polarization, and the erosion of democratic institutions. The study underscores the need for enhanced civic education and reliable information to foster informed political opinions and sustain democratic values amidst the rising influence of nationalism
This article investigates the factors shaping voter preferences in Romania's 2025 presidential election, focusing on the runoff between a centrist and a nationalist-conservative-populist candidate. Using electoral data combined with regional indicators, the analysis assesses the relative importance of economic development and Covid-19 vaccination rates - considered a proxy for cultural contextual landscapes related to historical legacies, religiosity and traditionalism. As expected, economic and social development are associated with greater support for the centrist candidate. However, cultural factors also play a decisive role: Covid-19 vaccination rates at the county level, followed by support for traditionalism measured by attitude towards the 2019 "Family" Referendum, are both strong predictors of support for the conservative candidate. These findings highlight the persistence of cultural and attitudinal divides in shaping political preferences in post-communist Romania, and the need to account for them alongside socioeconomic explanations.
This article explores TikTok's role in shaping nationalist populism and affective polarization among Romanian youth during the 2024-2025 presidential elections. Drawing on theories of digital nationalism, populist communication, youth political engagement, and affective polarization, the study develops an integrative framework for analyzing how TikTok's algorithmic design promotes emotionally charged, influencer-driven political content. It argues that TikTok functions as an incubator of affective nationalism by amplifying far-right narratives and mobilizing youth through emotionally resonant media. The article calls for a hybrid methodology combining discourse analysis of platform content and survey data to assess how nationalist narratives circulate and gain traction among young voters.
