This paper investigates the migration of highly skilled slovak professionals to czechia, an understudied form of intra-regional mobility within central europe. In contrast to migration research that prioritises long-distance or global movements, this study examines mobility between two culturally, linguistically, and historically proximate societies. Situating slovak mobility within a post-czechoslovak and central european context, the analysis draws on demographic and educational data as well as semi-structured interviews with highly skilled slovaks living and working in czechia. The findings demonstrate that this migration flow is shaped by both proximity and persistent boundaries. Shared language and cultural familiarity significantly ease mobility, integration, and labour market entry. Yet slovak identity continues to function as a marker of symbolic difference, producing moments of perceived foreignness in professional and social interactions. While many slovaks do not self-identify as migrants, subtle forms of czech centrism and hierarchical representations contribute to differentiated experiences of belonging. By foregrounding an intra-regional mobility often presumed to be socially and politically neutral, the paper challenges dominant assumptions in migration studies and political science. It shows how processes of migratisation operate even within highly similar societies and argues that identity, symbolic hierarchies, and centre–periphery dynamics remain salient in shaping mobility and belonging in the czech–slovak context.
This study presents the results of an agent-based simulation of the effects of social pressure and network topology on the persistence of the voting norm. It aims to examine how variations in network topology and the degree of reduction of social influence shape the persistence of intended turnout. The decision rule for an agent/voter is an extended calculus of voting by Riker and Ordeshook, considering social pressure and the mechanism of internalisation of the sense of civic duty. The model includes networks generated using the Watts-Strogatz algorithm, which differ in rewiring probability. The model assumes two phases of voting norm spreading: a mobilisation phase (full social pressure), in which intended turnout increases, and a reduction phase (pressure fully or partially suppressed), in which turnout decreases and then stabilises at a level appropriate to the network. In the mobilisation phase, differences in intended turnout between the studied networks mainly depend on the structure of connections between individuals, and in the reduction phase, on the degree of suppression of social pressure. Even a small social influence can lead to a dynamic increase in intended turnout and maintain it at a relatively high level if the network is highly clustered and contains few random edges.
The attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on 15 May 2024 represented a turning point in the country’s political and media landscape. As an extraordinary act of political violence, it not only disrupted the domestic political agenda but also sparked an intense wave of public communication and discursive framing. This study examines the political communication on Facebook in the weeks following the attack, with a particular focus on the narratives that political actors used to interpret the event, shape public opinion, and mobilize their supporters. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative methods, the research identifies sixteen recurring narratives, analyses their frequency and communication effectiveness, and maps their use across the political spectrum. The findings show that emotionally charged and polarizing narratives – particularly those invoking ideological antagonism, cultural conflict, and blame attribution – were not only the most frequent but also the most engaging for audiences. Coalition-affiliated actors, especially from the SMER-SD party, dominated both in narrative intensity and communicative reach. The study argues that in the Slovak context, political violence becomes a powerful symbolic event, rapidly transformed into a discursive battleground for legitimacy, identity, and influence. The research contributes to the broader understanding of political communication in moments of crisis, especially in fragile and polarized democracies.
This paper focused on the disinformation activities of Štefan Launer and Andrej Lanštják against the nation-forming activities of Ľudovít Štúr and his associates in the late 1840s. The first part of the paper focuses on Štúr's programme of the relationship between "individuality” and "commonwealth" of language nation-forming modernisation in Slovakia and Launer's and Lanštják's idea of Czech as the most practical and natural language tool of the Slovaks. The second part of the study focuses on Štúr's and Launer's conception of the future ethno-modernisation path of the Slavic peoples. The third part is the dominant part of the study, in which the author analyses the polemics, criticisms, renegadeism, and some ways of conscious disinformation and subversive activities of Š. Launer and A. Lanštjak in relation to the nation-forming activities of Ľ. Štúr and his collaborators. Despite the negative activities of Š. Launer and A. Lanštjak, it turned out that the path of national identity development through a funda
This article critically re-examines the Democratic Peace Theory (DPT), a long-standing tenet of liberal thought in international relations, which posits that democratic states are less likely to wage war against one another. While DPT has informed both scholarly discourse and policy-making, this study challenges its theoretical assumptions, empirical foundations, and normative implications through a multi-theoretical and methodologically reflective lens. The paper systematically proceeds in three analytical stages: 1.) a conceptual critique of DPT’s definitional coherence and causal claims, 2.) an empirical assessment using historically documented cases of inter-democratic conflict and aggressive interventions by democracies, and 3.) a theoretical juxtaposition of liberal, realist, and constructivist interpretations of peace and conflict. Particular attention is paid to methodological limitations such as selection bias, endogeneity, and Eurocentric framing. By dissecting both mainstream support and prominent
Political communication in the Slovak political space has its own specifics, but it follows the trend of many democracies towards coarser vocabulary, vulgarisation, and escalation of political conflict. The aim of this study is to identify the messages that the leaders of the elected parliamentary parties addressed to the public via Facebook in the period after the parliamentary elections. The period is bounded by the assassination attempt on the Prime Minister Róbert Fico in May 2024. Qualitative research using grounded theory is the collection of data to reach a theoretical concept. We used NVivo qualitative software to code the data, in our case messages public on FB profiles of individual party leaders. Grounded theory is often used in political communication and helps us to create a theoretical concept. There are 6 main Themes that emerged as a result of political communication after parliamentary elections: Domestic Policies, Foreign Policies, Criticism of the Government/Opposition, Criticism of Others, Presidential Election and Positive Messages. Negative campaigning significantly influences affective polarization. Based on an analysis of 632 Facebook posts by leaders of Slovak parliamentary parties, we conclude that negative campaigning constitutes the largest share of all analyzed posts. Combined with a strong presence of anger, aggression, insults, and vulgarity, political campaigning via Facebook contributed to an increasingly polarized atmosphere, which culminated in the 2024 assassination attempt on Prime Minister Fico.
The systematic development of civic engagement and partnership with stakeholders within the biosphere reserve is a key to support the sustainability and resilience of the territory and development of its potential. The aim of the paper is to identify the authorities of the Poľana Biosphere Reserve and its relations with stakeholders, developed based on the concept of participatory governance and results of empirical research. The theoretical part of the paper explains the concepts of biosphere reserve and participatory governance. The practical part is focused on the analysis of the current state of the governance of the Poľana Biosphere Reserve and their legislative anchoring and functioning. The paper presents the results of surveys conducted with residents and selected stakeholders in the territory. The conclusion identifies opportunities to develop and strengthen community and stakeholder engagement within the Poľana Biosphere Reserve and propose a model of its governance.
This paper investigates whether the Chinese economic footprint, proxied by bilateral trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), is associated with the gradual emergence of a debt trap in Western Balkans countries during the period from 2011 to 2022. By employing the dynamic panel data estimation, the research reveals that increasing Sino-Western Balkans trade and FDI intensity seems to contribute to rising debt levels in the Western Balkans. Despite the benefits of trade and investment agreements with China for infrastructure development in these countries, they also seem to heighten financial dependence, potentially jeopardizing the region’s economic stability through unconditional low-interest loans. Given the Western Balkan countries’ candidate status for EU membership, understanding of such Chinese involvement and its implications is crucial for their progress toward further integration.
Over the years, NGOs have accumulated significant experience and developed expert knowledge in many fields, contributing to their growing prominence. On the one hand, the third sector has been perceived as market-based actors, delivering high-quality services. On the other hand, NGOs play a crucial role in decentralisation and democratisation processes. This change reflects a broader shift from government to governance. As a result, the third sector has moved from a traditional focus on project-based work centred on ‘doing’ to a more ‘influencing’ role. This paper aims to examine the role of the third sector in youth participation through two cases: Tampere (Finland) and Lublin (Poland). The issue of youth participation in decision-making is a cross-cutting topic, particularly in light of declining voter turnout and a systematic decrease of civic engagement among young people. This paper analyses both the theoretical framework and the practical outcomes of the empirical research conducted in the investigated cities. Data were gathered through desk research and semi-structured interviews with NGOs, decision-makers, public officials, teachers and young people. The research outcomes suggest that in both cities, the pivotal role of most NGOs is still in service provision and advocacy. In both Tampere and Lublin, NGOs also take on an additional roles as interpreters or mediators, though these remain narrow and limited. However, in Lublin, the third sector plays a more developed role that extends beyond mere facilitation.
The RF’s conventional military operations against Ukraine are accompanied by a “fake news” powerful information influence on three objects, specifically “We” – Russia, “They” – Ukraine, and “The third party” – the West and other countries. In the RF’s war in Ukraine, “fake news” reflects the strategic orientation of the Kremlin to manipulate the information space. The study aims to find out the dynamics and prevailing topics of the RF’s “fake news” and to decode its intentions in the war time. The findings help conclude that 1) the dynamics of the number and topics of “fake news” in the Russian information campaign during military operations in Ukraine shows changes in Russia’s priorities and tactics during the war; 2) topics of “fake news” that prevailed during the various stages of the war in Ukraine reflect the constant and changing aspects of the RF’s information campaign; 3) the intentions coded in the “fake news” reveal the strategic and tactical objectives of the Russian information campaign and military operations in the context of the war in Ukraine. Analysis of the RF’s “fake news” intentions discloses a general strategy aimed at delegitimising the Ukrainian government, justifying Russia’s aggressive actions and splitting the anti-Russian coalition.
This article analyses the emotional rhetoric of the populist radical right parties in Slovakia - the Slovak National Party (SNS) and the People's Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) - in their 2016 and 2020 election manifestos. Emotional rhetoric, or pathos, consists of emotional appeals, and this article looks specifically at four discrete appeals to emotions: retrospective anger and enthusiasm; and prospective fear and hope, and connects these emotional appeals with topics according to their relevance. This research utilises qualitative content analysis drawing categories from the field of political psychology. Unexpectedly, it is found that positive emotional appeals are generally more common than negative ones in the election manifestos of the populist radical right. The second finding is that populist radical right parties with government experience apply a very different strategy in their emotional rhetoric. The more extreme ĽSNS, without government experience, relies more on the negative emotional appeal of anger, and SNS, with extensive government experience, relies on the positive emotional appeals of hope and enthusiasm. Furthermore, these cases confirm the hypothesis that a populist radical right party that uses more appeals to anger has greater success in general elections.
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine by the Russian Federation provided new impetus for the EU and NATO to develop and later also intensify cooperation in hybrid threats. This unique process, that happens between two actors who have different histories, aims or membership structures, is analysed from the institutionalist perspective, which served as a framework to understand the development. The main aim of the article is to assess interinstitutional cooperation between the EU and NATO in the area of hybrid threats: especially in the area of capacity building, strategic communication, crisis management, counterterrorism or WMD use, and civil protection. The author concludes that both the EU and NATO successfully developed cooperation in hybrid threats and created mechanisms that enable similar perceptions of the threats and better coordination of the responses. The article serves merely as an exploratory study dedicated to the development of cooperation between the EU and NATO in this challenging area in the period between 2014 and 2022.
The literature on corruption-related attitudes tends to focus on developing countries, test rational-choice theories, overlook religious influences, and neglect post-Communist but developed nations such as Slovakia. Academically, this article aims to test the validity of the “Hellfire and Deviance” and political-socialization theories of attitudes toward bribery by performing multivariate, Logistic regression analysis of the Slovak subsample of the 2022 World Values Survey. In particular, this study intends to find out whether: 1. an increase in belief in the afterlife drives opposition to bribery and 2. more frequent church attendance reduces support for bribery. This article finds that tolerance of bribery decreases with belief in the afterlife. Religious attendance also reduces pro-bribery views, but only among elderly Slovaks who grew up under Communism. Affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church or another Christian denomination seems to dampen enthusiasm for corruption indirectly by boosting church attendance and belief in the hereafter. Overall, these results strongly support the first theory and weakly confirm the second. The findings suggest that religion holds promise as a way to combat the scourge of political corruption in post-Communist, democratic Slovakia.
The article analyses the development of the COVID-19 pandemic situation in Slovakia, Czechia and Slovenia in the frame of expert, political and administrative narratives. The argumentative part mainly focuses on the development of the narrative in Slovenia and uses the examples from the Czech Republic and Slovakia as the reference frame. Information was collected from the various national media outlets and organized into the comparative time frames and compared with the epidemiological data. Slovenian inconsistencies in communication patterns developed into the complete disintegration of the pandemic crisis management and into the struggle for the supremacy of personal political agenda. As a case study, the article shows the constructivist relativism through the comparison of data and government-media narrative. Thus, the article addresses the issues of relativism on the one hand and of narrative absolutism on the other. The main aim is a critical presentation of “a crisis event” in connection to the government authorities spin on an event according to their political goals. The given case, due to a rather short period, strong media coverage and high data availability, shows inconsistencies of epidemiological data interpretation, resulting in multiple realities, causing multiple responses that paralysed effective decision-making as well as effective policy measures.
