The growth of illiberal and authoritarian political parties and governments has given the notion of patriotism fresh political impetus. This article explores how Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, used patriotic discourse during Hungary’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union from July to December 2024. It draws from an analysis of Orbán’s speeches and interviews from this period that shows patriotism was used as a powerful signifier of illiberal ambition. We ask whether the Presidency was utilised by Orbán to further his stated aim of ‘conquering’ the EU on behalf of a European political right. The example of Hungary, though historically, culturally and geographically specific, provides insights into permutations of patriotism and its use in political discourse. The analysis contributes to understanding the intersection of nationalism and populist-patriotism in illiberal and authoritarian states.
The article investigates the political and institutional factors that shape the initiation, participation and outcomes of interstate wars. It highlights the importance of political regimes and systems of government, or institutional design. While democratic peace theory has long argued that democracies are less likely to fight and more likely to prevail, this study broadens the perspective by examining the impact of parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems as forms of institutional design. The analysis relies on a dataset of 59 wars involving 153 states between 1919 and 2020, defined according to a threshold of 50 military deaths or 600 personnel per side, which distinguishes substantive conflicts from minor incidents, and assesses the correlations between political regimes, institutional designs and warfare through comparative and statistical methods. The findings indicate that the system of government has no statistically significant effect on the likelihood of initiating war. Yet, parliamentary and parliamentarised systems emerge as the most frequent participants and as the most frequent victors, particularly within democratic settings. The study therefore enhances both the empirical and theoretical understanding of war by showing that the combination of a parliamentary institutional design and a democratic regime is linked to greater military success, at both global and regional levels. While the analysis deliberately excludes other factors such as economic variables or alliance membership to focus specifically on domestic political and institutional effects, it identifies consistent correlations rather than causal mechanisms, thereby providing a basis for future research into the link between internal political/institutional structures and international conflict behaviour.
The psychological willingness to fight for one’s country has become an increasingly important issue in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and the ongoing war near the eastern flank of Europe. This article presents three new analyses of the seventh wave of the recently completed World Values Survey that are designed to shed light on the features and factors that play a role in citizens’ attitudes toward defending their own country. Our goal was to find individual and societal characteristics that may help to explain variation in willingness to fight globally, as well as between and within two countries on the eastern flank that we use as case studies: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In the conclusion, we explore some of the limitations of these studies, as well as some of their most important implications. Before reporting on and discussing our findings, we set the context for the rationale for our selection of material and methodology by briefly describing some of the relevant literature on the willingness to fight for one’s country.
Although upper chambers play a key role in democratic systems, little is known about how citizens actually perceive their functions. The Czech Senate offers an instructive case due to its ambiguous institutional position and relatively low public visibility. This paper examines how Czech voters perceive the Senate and how these perceptions have evolved over time, distinguishing three main conceptions: an oversight institution within the horizontal separation of powers, a representative of territorial interests and an independent, elitist ‘Chamber of wisdom.’ The analysis draws on a large, original dataset covering all Senate elections from 1996 to 2022, including newly constructed variables capturing candidate characteristics and constituency-level features. Candidate-level regression models identify which types of candidates are most successful and what this implies for perceptions of the Senate’s role. The findings reveal effects of variables connected to all three alternative perceptions of the Senate. They also suggest that the Senate’s independent and less partisan character has gradually strengthened, demonstrating that institutional meanings can evolve in practice even without formal constitutional change. By combining comprehensive electoral data with novel measures, the study contributes to broader debates on the relationship between formal institutional design and citizens’ perceptions, and on electoral behaviour in second-order elections.
The article contributes to the scholarly work on factors influencing women’s parliamentary representation by exploring the relationship between gender, gender quotas and the assignment of electorally viable list positions. Drawing on the insights from the existing scholarly work and feminist institutional literature, I investigate the impact of the introduction of legislated gender quotas in Poland in 2011 on the distribution of winnable positions on electoral lists in the European Parliament (EP) elections. I also analyse the role of incumbency advantage and national political experience in this regard, examining heterogenous effects between female and male candidates. The regression analysis relies on the original individual-level dataset created for this article, encompassing all EP elections in Poland to date (2004–2024). I find a negative relationship between female gender and the allocation of viable list position, suggesting a possible gender bias of party selectorates. This bias diminishes when accounting for incumbency and national political experience, implying that women’s underrepresentation in winnable list positions is largely attributed to the unequal, gendered distribution of political and electoral capital. National political experience and incumbency advantage emerge as critical factors in the assignment of secure ballot spots, benefiting both male and female candidates equally.
Next to parliamentary elections, presidential elections in Poland are regarded as the key arena of political competition in Poland. On the one hand, the specific nature of the political system dictates that the significant, albeit negative, role of the head of state in shaping the law and the President’s relatively broad prerogatives regarding the conduct of public business as compared to the standards of the parliamentary-cabinet system should be pointed out. On the other hand, the limitation of the real power of the President compared to the position of the Prime Minister does not provide an incentive for the leaders of the key political parties in Poland to abandon the struggle for the position of the head of government in favour of the presidency. This text addresses the issue of the nomination of candidates for the analysed office, attempting to answer the question of why it is not the party leaders who face off against each other, but rather the arena of competition between candidates from the second row of party structures. Conclusions from the case study suggest that the reasons for this are that party leaders, burdened by the negative consequences of political power, fear that they will not be able to surpass the ‘glass ceiling’ of party support. Thus, they fear that they will not only suffer a personal loss, but reckon with the consequences for the party as a whole. For each of the main parties, fielding a different candidate is seen as an opportunity to reach beyond the committed party electorate and escape the high negative sentiment around each of the two main leaders.
This study examines Hungarian foreign policy attitudes and assesses the influence of public perceptions and societal interests on policymaking. Using theoretical frameworks, secondary sources and an opinion poll, it analyses Hungary’s foreign policy orientation since 2010, decision-making structures, the patterns of public perceptions and the impact of societal influences. Findings reveal a multi-layered model of foreign policy formation in which institutional centralisation, control over policy networks and dominance in communication enable the government to monopolise decision-making. This top-down control coexists with selective representation of public preferences and limited pluralism, allowing the government to pursue its strategic interests while maintaining the appearance of majority consensus. Theoretically, the article challenges the binary notion that democratic systems promote pluralism while autocracies suppress alternative policy ideas. Instead, it argues that Hungary’s competitive authoritarian regime represents a hybrid configuration in which diverse foreign policy preferences exist across both elites and the public, but have limited influence on policymaking due to high levels of centralisation and constrained participation.
This comparative analysis scrutinises the distinctive features of the 2015 MENA and 2022 Ukrainian refugee crises in the Czech Republic, revealing notable differences in threat perceptions and stakeholder engagement while answering who was finally portrayed as the victim and by whom. Hence, the MENA crisis prompted EU-level action and migration system reform, and the Czech government was the leading securitisation actor; meanwhile, the Ukrainian crisis differs. Cultural and religious dimensions influenced negative perceptions of Muslim migrants, contrasting with the positive reception of Ukrainian refugees rooted in cultural affinities with the West rejection of Russian aggression. Despite that, during the Ukrainian case, the shift in threat perceptions from sovereignty to socio-economic concerns marked the latter. Our study shows that this was not done by the Czech government but by the opposition party groups. With a potential new MENA crisis on the horizon, both opposition and government persist in securitising migration. The 2025 parliamentary election is expected to spotlight migration, necessitating further exploration of evolving securitisation in Czechia.
This study examines political narratives surrounding the European Green Deal (EGD) in seven Central European countries, revealing four separate dominant framings of the EGD, as well a pattern of strategic narrative convergence and interpretative polarization. Analysing 351 Facebook posts from 82 MEPs from 2019 to 2024, I identify four distinct meta-narratives: a strongly anti-EGD narrative, an uncritical pro-EGD narrative, a critical pro-EGD narrative advocating for greater ambition, and an opportunistic, pragmatic pro-EGD narrative that strategically co-opts populist and far-right themes. Despite varying national contexts, all narratives converge within these four dominant framings, indicating a strategic focus on mobilization rather than intergroup engagement and dialogue. The method used was an original synthesis of framing analysis, narrative analysis and affective analysis, focused on the general stance towards the EGD, the characterizations used, and emotional appeals of the posts. This research contributes to understanding the nuanced dynamics of climate policy discourse and the challenges of fostering constructive debate.
This article contributes to debates on the politics of European Union (EU) enlargement to the Western Balkans (WB) in the 2020s. During the 2010s, the enlargement process stalled due to a lack of progress on the EU’s fundamental requirements of ‘rule of law’ and ‘democracy’. Since 2022, Russia’s protracted war against Ukraine suggests that geopolitical considerations have become more important in the politics of EU enlargement. In order to overcome the enlargement impasse, the EU has recently proposed a gradual approach to integration, particularly with regard to market integration, which is to be facilitated by a new growth plan for the Western Balkans. This article argues that this ‘carrot’ and greater flexibility in general are intended to re-legitimise the EU-WB relationship. The EU can demonstrate its ongoing commitment to the region in a political process that remains open-ended, while WB governments can benefit from new opportunities and new budgets. Despite the ‘new momentum’ in EU enlargement policies, I argue that Serbian political discourse and action have become more violent in recent years and that a negligence of the security needs of the most fragile WB states has the power to derail the enlargement process. Reinforced commitments to KFOR and EUFOR Althea as well as reinvigorated EU assistance efforts in the fundamental requirements are needed to make full WB EU membership eventually happen.
The rise of authoritarian populism and hybrid regimes has become a pressing challenge to liberal democracy, raising urgent questions about the role of law in these political transformations. This paper examines how authoritarian regimes reshape legal systems by creating and deploying what will be termed ‘authoritarian law’. The study applies a comparative and theory-oriented approach, systematically engaging with major conceptual frameworks to examine how authoritarian regimes manipulate legal structures for the purpose of political consolidation. The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the process of how authoritarian regimes manipulate legal structures and legislative processes, the aim is to identify the specific ways in which populist governments bypass or erode democratic norms. The paper is based on the theoretical investigation on five conceptual traditions: authoritarian legalism, which highlights the emergence of a distinct authoritarian conception of law; the dual state theory, which distinguishes between normative and prerogative forms of law; populist constitutionalism, which uncovers constitutional paradigms departing from liberal norms; the Unitary Executive Theory, which reveals transatlantic dimensions of authoritarian law; and the concept of constitutional dictatorship, which emphasises the use of exceptional measures. Results indicate that authoritarian regimes use law not to safeguard democratic institutions but to erode them through political instrumentalisation and weaponisation of legal processes. The paper concludes that law itself becomes a central institutional framework for stabilising authoritarian rule, undermining its own normative integrity.
The article explores Poland’s socio-economic support for Ukrainian women during the war in Ukraine, emphasising how this assistance has enabled their integration into the workforce. The article explores Poland’s socio-economic support and presents the socio-economic dimension of Poland’s support for Ukrainian women amid the war in Ukraine, highlighting how this support has facilitated their participation in the workforce. The aim of the article is to analyse the decisions of the Polish government and local authorities, as well as the actions of employers, nongovernmental organisations and the Polish public in providing assistance to Ukrainian women who fled the war in Ukraine. It addresses the following research questions: What actions have the Polish government and other entities taken to provide socio-economic support for Ukrainian women? What factors have influenced the establishment of sole proprietorships in Poland by Ukrainian women? Were there any barriers hindering the professional activity of Ukrainian women in Poland? The research reported in this paper covers the years 2022–2023 and focuses on Ukrainian women, who represented the largest demographic group among refugees. Due to various barriers, most were employed below their qualifications. However, some demonstrated significant creativity by establishing their own businesses.
This article is based on understanding political trust as a relational concept. In the frame of liberal democratic thought, the article refers to the relationship between citizens and political institutions, and the role played by political trust as the crucial glue that holds it together, thereby enabling the democratic political system to function successfully. Based on a narrative literature review, we have developed a conceptual model that illustrates the complex relationship between trust in artificial intelligence (AI), political trust and the broader context in which these relationships are co -constructed by various actors.
Recent changes in European countries have stimulated the search for multilevel policy interventions to restore citizens’ trust and engagement, focusing specifically on democratic innovations. Our paper presents the results of a survey conducted in 2025 as part of the Horizon TRUEDEM project, focusing on the views of civil society organisations’ leaders and activists on the Italian case. Despite positive experiences, such as local initiatives and referendums, the paper highlights the crisis of trust weighing on democratic participation in Italy, testified by rising abstention rates and disaffection with institutions. By analysing the opinions that emerged in focus groups, we identify significant differences between the various stakeholders and propose concrete actions to revitalise democratic practices, including the need for civic education and the creation of spaces for dialogue. The paper highlights the complexity of the interactions between democratic innovations and political trust in Italy and proposes an integration of perspectives from different levels of civil society to address the current crisis.
This article examines how citizens engage with political actors on Facebook across twelve European countries, focusing on the nature and intensity of user interaction. Drawing on a dataset of over 70,000 Facebook comments on posts by national -level political leaders, we conduct a comparative content analysis to categorise digital expressions such as clicktivism, civic engagement or political participation. We also assess how political actors use Facebook to promote interaction and participatory behaviour. Our findings reveal that while Facebook provides a platform for political communication, most user engagement consists of low -effort, expressive behaviours with limited deliberative depth. Substantive forms of civic engagement and political participation are comparatively rare. The analysis also shows that few politicians use Facebook to encourage citizen participation or engage in two -way communication. These findings highlight the discrepancy between the platform’s participatory affordances and their actual utilisation. Rather than driving transformative political participation, Facebook serves primarily as a space for symbolic and affective expression. By mapping variations across countries and political roles, this study contributes to a more grounded understanding of digital engagement in contemporary democracies.
This paper examines the association between personality traits and trust. In this paper, trust is divided into two types: interpersonal and institutional. Both are fundamental for cohesion, reduction of social fragmentation, effective governance and institutional legitimacy. The literature primarily identifies personal experience and anticipated adherence to norms as key drivers of trust. In this context, understanding whether and how personality influences trust is crucial, as trust may be partially hereditary and thus only partly shaped by behaviour. This suggests that some population segments may remain distrustful, regardless of the efforts to build trustworthiness. Hence, this paper examines the effect of personality on trust in diverse entities. Personality traits are operationalised through the Big Five personality model. Effect of personality on both types of trust, i.e. institutional and interpersonal, is measured.
The article analyses the political and economic context of the growing distrust in politics in Slovenia over the last 15 years. Focus is given to the changes in the power relations, policy changes and roles of different national and international institutions. It is established that the fundamental element of the specific class trade -off which underpinned the broader political legitimacy from the early 1990s up until 2008 – a strong welfare state and low economic inequalities – was partly dissolved after the crisis of 2008. However, no new joint programme emerged to replace it due to the weakening of the trade unions, the EU’s stronger role in policymaking processes coupled with the shrinking differences between political parties in their social and economic policies. These changes are not only seen in the high levels of political distrust in public opinion surveys or decreasing voter turnout, but in the instability of the party arena as well.
Political representation and democracy in several European countries have faced considerable challenges in recent decades. Especially worrying are the decline in electoral turnout and party membership, along with the decline in political trust and growing dissatisfaction with the functioning of representative democracy. These are all linked to the quality of democracy. Many scholars believe that a possible solution to such problems is democratic innovations, largely due to their participatory nature. Although in recent times democratic innovations have been put into practice, and analysed from multiple perspectives in multiple European countries, this has not happened with regard to Central and Eastern European countries. Based on face- to- face interviews conducted in 2024 with policymakers as well as representatives of civil society organisations in four Central and Eastern European countries, exploratory analysis reveals (different) views, rhetorical stances, sentiments and narratives concerning the meaning and importance of democratic innovations, including for maintaining/increasing political trust. The analysis points not only to differences among countries, but also between the groups of respondents.
The article examines the impact of collective narcissism, trust and populism on conspiracy mentality among citizens aged 65 and older in Poland. Understanding their behaviours and attitudes is crucial for at least two reasons. First, demographic shifts are leading to a growing proportion of seniors in European societies. Second, as life expectancy increases, older adults remain socially and politically active for longer. This article presents findings from two waves of a longitudinal study (N = 379). Our model confirms that collective narcissism and populism drive generic conspiracist beliefs, while interpersonal and institutional trust have no significant effect.
