This paper introduces Age-Indexed Basic Income (AIBI) as an original institutional design and evaluates it as a life-cycle-sensitive alternative to Universal Basic Income (UBI) for welfare states facing demographic ageing and technological disruption. While UBI promises administrative simplicity, its flat-rate structure generates fiscal pressures when set at poverty-reducing levels. Drawing on an illustrative fiscal exercise of the Finnish welfare state, the study examines whether an age-indexed universal transfer can consolidate existing categorical programmes while remaining financially viable. The analysis shows that AIBI aligns redistribution with predictable life-cycle needs, reduces exposure to non-take-up and administrative complexity, and can replace fragmented minimum-income schemes without abandoning unconditional access. The findings suggest that AIBI offers a more fiscally sustainable universal floor than flat-rate models, though its implementation raises political and institutional challenges related to programme consolidation and the protection of groups whose needs are not fully captured by age.
This article examines the role of Holocaust memory in British public discourse and political context during the late Cold War, focusing on attitudes towards the re-emerging Baltic States between 1988 and 1994. The research addresses the problem of how historical memory and debates on war crimes shaped reputational and moral evaluations of the Baltic States without directly determining British foreign policy decisions. The article aims to demonstrate that Holocaust memory functioned primarily as a normative and reputational framework within which political positions were articulated and legitimised. The study is based on qualitative analysis of British national newspapers, the Jewish community weekly The Jewish Chronicle, parliamentary debates, and diplomatic correspondence. The findings show that Holocaust memory significantly influenced public narratives and diplomatic caution towards the Baltic States, while official British policy was driven mainly by broader geopolitical, strategic, and security considerations.
Research ethics and the committees supervising adherence to ethical norms have been receiving increasing attention in academic institutions as they are tasked with ensuring responsible conduct and integrity in research practices. The main goal of the committees and their members is to assesses the compliance of planned research with research ethics requirements. They also assist researchers in planning their research in accordance with ethical principles, and provide relevant advice and methodological support. As research ethics has become an established standard in academic journals and scholarly publications, political science faces an imperative to align its practices with these evolving ethical expectations. The text presents a conversation with Professor Derica Lambrechts from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, who has been serving as a committee member for more than a decade. She shares her experiences and challenges in a local South African context while conducting her research on crime gangs in Cape Town. Her insights are based on personal experiences and should not be identified with the positions of the committee. The interview may prove valuable to committee members, lecturers reflecting on the ethical dimensions of their research, and students undertaking their first scholarly works.
This article draws on empirical material from in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews collected during a research expedition in the summer of 2024 to examine the causes of the electoral popularity of Remigijus Žemaitaitis, leader of Nemuno aušra, through the lens of the concept of political authenticity. On the one hand, the concept of perceived political authenticity — rarely employed in Lithuanian political science — offers a novel perspective on the factors underlying the rapid rise in popularity of certain new political forces in Lithuania and highlights the mechanisms of their interaction. On the other hand, the study expands the field of political authenticity research by providing a case analysis from a region that has received relatively little attention from this perspective and is characterized by comparatively low levels of political trust and party identification, as well as the frequent emergence of new parties. In doing so, it reveals in greater detail how the mechanisms of political authenticity operate in fostering a politician’s popularity in such a context. The article also, drawing on the most recent scholarship in the field, presents a more detailed account of the concept of political authenticity itself, as it is being integrated into Lithuanian political science research.
This article analyses an atypical case of Soviet legacy transformation in Kop & umacr;st & edot;liai (Ukmerg & edot; district), where a former Soviet missile base has become the home of Mi & scaron;ko broliai, a historical reenactment club reviving the memory of the 1944-1953 anti-Soviet freedom struggles. The article aims to understand how this legacy is reworked through the memory work performed by the club and draws on material collected during the author's ethnographic fieldwork in winter 2024-2025, including interviews withMi & scaron;ko broliai members and (non-) participant observation. The club's activities are enabled by a flexible approach to the site's legacy, seen not as a symbolic framework but as a material medium for shaping their own vision of memory, and by disappointment with state-led commemorative policies. Detached from institutional constraints, Mi & scaron;ko broliai create a heterogeneous and dynamic assemblage of people, narratives, meanings, and processes-transforming memory into an open-ended and living field.
