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1
Kuznetsova, Maria. "Adjustment of Families with Children Adopted from Eastern Europe." VCU Scholars Compass, 2011. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/2556.
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The purpose of this study was to examine the adjustment of older children and adolescents adopted from Eastern Europe and the impact of their preadoption history and family’s functioning on their adjustment. This is a follow-up study of families first surveyed in 2005 with an addition of new families. One hundred and forty-five families reporting on 194 adopted children (9 to 19 years; 104 girls) participated in this study at Time 2. The project was conducted as an internet-based survey. Parents and adopted children reported on children’s emotional, behavioral and social problems (CBCL and YSR), as well as family environment (FACES-III and PEQ). Children also reported on their attachment to parents (IPPA) and their preoccupation with adoption (ADQ). Results revealed that children adopted as infants or toddlers (18 months and younger) evidenced lower problem behaviors and higher competence scores than children adopted at later ages. History of preadoption abuse and/or neglect also played a role. Children without such history scored better on all problem and competency scales than their peers with reported history of either abuse or neglect. Relationships with the adoptive parents and family environment also contributed to better adjustment in this sample of adopted children. Children from more cohesive families displayed lower levels of internalizing and externalizing problems. Additionally, less conflict between adolescents and their parents was associated with lower levels of these problems. Adolescents with higher attachment levels to their parents self-reported lower internalizing and externalizing problems. Adolescents’ interest in their adoptions is a healthy thing; however, excessive preoccupation was associated with higher levels of internalizing behaviors, such as anxiety and depression. Preoccupation with adoption was not related to externalizing behaviors, as reported by children. This study replicates findings of previous studies of intercountry adoption of children from Eastern Europe. Implications of these findings are discussed.
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Birch, Sarah. "The social determinants of electoral behaviour in Ukraine, 1989-1994." Thesis, University of Essex, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.242231.
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Kozlova, Alexandra. "Family support for meeting the needs of families with children in Eastern Europe (Lithuania, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669818.
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Lau, Garrett. "Roma Education in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Pathways for Intervention to Reduce Incidents of Social Exclusion." Thesis, Boston College, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:106782.
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Thesis advisor: Peter SkerryThe post-communist political shift to liberal democracies in Eastern Europe has given new hope to Romani communities scattered across the region. However, plagued by a history entangled with episodes of slavery, persecution, and extermination, many Roma remain wary about this transition, lacking faith that it truly extends beyond a nominal domain. This paper first offers a critical exploration into unpacking Roma culture – specifically their material disadvantage and discrimination – from both an abstract and realist perspective. By properly understanding the relationship between their experience with poverty and desires for cultural autonomy, forming a rational, multi-level plan to intervene becomes more accessible. Ultimately, this leads to a series of policy interventions, particularly in the realm of primary and secondary education. Looking closely at this one area of the Roma experience with non-Roma institutions could provide key insights into their interaction with other overlapping exchanges, help to break down the centuries-old legacy of distrust and antagonism between the two sides, and promote a healthier environment for cooperation
Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2016
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Scholar of the College
Discipline: International Studies
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Dynner, Glenn. "Yikhus and the early Hasidic movement : principles and practice in 18th and 19th century Eastern Europe." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=27940.
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Yikhus--the salient feature of the Jewish aristocracy--may be defined as a type of prestige deriving from the achievements of one's forbears and living family members in the scholarly, mystical, or, to a lesser degree, economic realms. Unlike land acquisition, by which the non-Jewish aristocracy preserved itself, yikhus was intimately linked with achievement in the above realms, requiring a continual infusion of new talent from each generation of a particular family.A question which has yet to be resolved is the extent to which the founders of Hasidism, a mystical revivalist movement that swept Eastern European Jewish communities from the second half of the eighteenth century until the Holocaust, challenged prevailing notions of yikhus. The question relates to the identities of Hasidism's leaders--the Zaddikim--themselves. If, as the older historiography claims, the Zaddikim emerged from outside the elite stratum, and therefore lacked yikhus, they might be expected to challenge a notion which would threaten their perceived right to lead. If, on the other hand, the Zaddikim were really the same scions of noble Jewish families who had always led the communities, they would probably uphold the value of yikhus. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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Erdemir, Burcu. "The Specifity Of The Eastern Enlargement:." Master's thesis, METU, 2005. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/2/12606138/index.pdf.
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This thesis analyses the Eastern enlargement of the EU in comparison with the past four enlargement rounds, as a result of which it proves that Central and Eastern enlargement (CEE) is a unique experience for the EU. After the fourth enlargement, the EU turned its face to the CEECs, which witnessed unexpected events of a historic nature, with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This date symbolises a great change for the CEECs, such as the end of communism, transition to open market economy, democratisation and stability. A special focus is given to the inclusion of the CEECs into the EU necessitating to make adjustments both in the EU and in the CEECs. The specifity of the fifth enlargement derives from all the changes and challenges that it poses to the applicant countries and the Union but also to its neighbours. It concludes that the factors of uniqueness of the Eastern enlargement will strengthen the probability of the inclusion of the future applicants in the Eastern part of the continent. This enlargement is a positive development for the old and the new member states, it is one of the most important &lsquopolitical necessities&rsquo
and &lsquo
historical opportunities&rsquo
that the EU is facing since its establishment, because it will not only ensure the unification, stabilisation, security, economic growth and general well-being of the continent but also because it has opened the way of membership to the future possible applicants in the Eastern part of the continent.
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Radin, Dagmar. "Too Ill to Find the Cure? - Health Care Sector Success in the New Democracies of Central and Eastern Europe." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2006. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5348/.
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This study examines the factors that have contributed to the success of some Central and Eastern European countries to improve their health care sector in the post communist period, while leaving others to its demise. While most literature has been focused on the political and economic transition of Eastern Europe, very little research has been done about the welfare aspects of the transition process, especially the health care sector. While the focus on political consequences and main macroeconomic reforms has shed light on many important processes, the lack of research of health care issues has lead to consequences on our ability to understand its impact on the future of the new democracies and their sustainability. This model looks at the impact of international (World Bank) and domestic institutions, corruption and public support and how they affect the ability of some countries to improve and reform their health care sector in the post-transition period.
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Tomescu, Irina. "Social structure, redefinition of the past, and prospective orientations a study of the post-communist transformation in Poland /." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1164816458.
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Temple, Paul R. "Social capital and institutional change in higher education : the impact of international programmes in Eastern Europe." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2004. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020464/.
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This thesis examines institutional change in higher education, through case studies of aspects of two broadly similar institutions in Poland and Romania. It finds that, during the 1990s, international programmes supported institutional change in these cases to a significant extent, although probably not with the results that the funding organisations anticipated. The case studies suggest that such programmes have been most effective in supporting change when they have encouraged relatively small-scale, academically-led initiatives, in contrast to national-level, externally-driven programmes. It is proposed that this difference in effectiveness in promoting sustainable organisational change relates to the extent to which international programmes have assisted in the formation of social capital within the institutions. Organisational social capital is formed through intense, local engagement in the activity concerned, leading to individual and institutional learning. Social capital created in one context may then be available to support other aspects of organisational development. Social capital theory thus provides insights into the process of organisational change, particularly in the complex structural and procedural circumstances of higher education. This thesis examines why social capital is an important, if often overlooked, factor in understanding change in these settings, particularly in Eastern Europe, where political arrangements before 1989 were not generally conducive to social capital formation. The particular organisational arrangements of the universities there are also important factors in understanding institutional change. A theoretical account of social capital formation and organisational change in higher education is offered, with proposals as to how this may be relevant to structural and operational matters in higher education institutions in transitional countries more widely. The thesis draws conclusions about how international projects in higher education might be designed so as to create social capital more effectively, and thereby to support sustainable institutional change.
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Pikhardt, Hynek. "Social and psychosocial determinants of self-rated health in seven countries of Central and Eastern Europe." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2000. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1349438/.
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Life expectancy in countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CCEE) is substantially shorter than in Western Europe, and similar divide exists in self-rated health. The project described in this thesis was set up to study the effects of socio-economic factors (such as material deprivation, education and inequalities) and psychosocial factors (perceived control, psychosocial work environment) on self-rated health (a predictor of mortality in prospective studies). Cross-sectional surveys were conducted in seven CCEE: Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary. Data were collected by interviews in randomly selected national samples in all seven countries (total 7,599 subjects), and by questionnaires in random community samples in 4 countries (total 6,642 subjects). The data included socio-economic and psychosocial factors, self-rated health (SRH) and behavioural risk factors. Overall, 17% of men and 23% of women rated their health as worse than average. In the national samples, perceived control, material deprivation and education were strongly related to poor SRH. In the pooled data, adjusted odds ratio (OR) of poor health for 1 standard deviation (SD) increase in perceived control was 0.59 (95% Cl 0.54-0.63). The OR for 1 SD increase in the material deprivation score was 1.35 (95% Cl 1.26-1.46). The ORs for vocational, secondary and university education, compared with primary education, were 0.75,0.58 and 0.53, respectively. We also examined the ecological effects of income inequality; the OR for the most versus the least unequal populations (using the Gini coefficient of income inequality) was 1.88 (95% Cl 1.55-2.28). In multivariate analyses, however, the effect of inequality was eliminated by adjustment for material deprivation and perceived control. In the community samples, the results were similar. Among psychosocial factors at work, the effort-reward imbalance appeared to be the strongest predictor of self-rated health; work variety was also a predictor of self-rated health. Job strain was not associated with SRH. Our results suggest that (a) the prevalence of poor SRH in CCEE is high, and (b) socioeconomic and psychosocial factors are strongly related to self-rated health in these populations. The gradients were present in all populations, and were of the same direction and similar magnitude as in the West. Prospective studies are needed to address the problems of temporality and reporting bias, which are the major problems of these results.
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Avlijaš, Sonja. "Explaining variation in female labour force participation across Eastern Europe : the political economy of industrial upgrading and service transition." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2015. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3341/.
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This thesis proposes a theoretical model to explain the variation in female labour force participation (FLFP) across post-socialist Eastern Europe. The model is then tested empirically on 13 post-socialist Eastern European countries during the period 1997- 2008 using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Embedded in insights from economics and comparative political economy literature, my theoretical model moves beyond linear causal relationships and suggests how different components of post-socialist economic restructuring in Eastern Europe have affected one another and have translated into specific FLFP outcomes. The model specifies the following three components: industrial upgrading, educational expansion and growth of knowledge intensive services and theorises their relationship to each other and to FLFP as the dependent variable. The model suggests that those countries that embarked on the trajectory of economic development driven by re-industrialisation and industrial upgrading created a vicious cycle for FLFP. This took place because industrial upgrading that was driven by foreign direct investment led to the defeminisation of manufacturing. Such a trajectory of economic restructuring also shaped these countries’ education policies and impeded the development of knowledge intensive services, which would have been more conducive to female employment. The virtuous cycle of FLFP, on the other hand, occurred in those Eastern European countries that turned to reforming their educational sector towards general skills and expansion of tertiary education, with the aim of transforming themselves into knowledge economies. Such a transformation required an active social investment state and growth of knowledge-intensive public and private sector employment, which provided greater employment opportunities for women. This development path created a positive causal loop for FLFP.
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Ovseiko, Pavel Victor. "The politics of health care reform in Central and Eastern Europe : the case of the Czech Republic." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2009. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d8f1c4d3-9dda-4a2b-94d1-5afcb0cf5c87.
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This thesis examines the political process of health care reform between 1989 and 1998 in the most advanced sizable political economy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – the Czech Republic. Its aim is to explain the political process bringing about post-Communist health policy change and stimulate new debates on welfare state transformation in CEE. The thesis challenges the conventional view that post-Communist health care reform in CEE was designed and implemented to improve the health status of the people, as desired by the people themselves. I suggest that this is a dangerous over-rationalisation, and argue that post-Communist health care reform in the Czech Republic was the by-product of haphazard democratic political struggle between emerging elites for power and economic resources. The thesis employs the analytical narrative method to describe and analyse the actors, institutions, ideas and history behind the health policy change. The analysis is informed by welfare state theory, elite theory, interest group politics theory, the assumptions of methodological individualism and rational choice theory, and Schumpeter’s doctrine of democracy. Its focus is on the interests of health policy actors and how they interacted within an unhinged, but fast-consolidating, institutional framework. The results demonstrate that, while historical legacies and liberal ideas featured prominently in the rhetoric accompanying health policy change, in Realpolitik, these were merely the disposable, instrumental devices of opportunistic, self-interested elites. The resultant explanation of health policy change stresses the primacy of agency over structure and formulates four important mechanisms of health policy change: opportunism, tinkering, enterprise, and elitism. In conclusion, the relevance of major welfare state theories to the given case is assessed and implications for welfare state research in CEE are drawn.
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Tezcan, Seden. "European Union's Relations with South Eastern Europe: A Case Study of Bosnia and Herzegovina&the Implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Process." Thesis, Linköping University, Department of Management and Economics, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-2710.
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Since the beginning of the 1990s important changes took place, such as the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Consequently, the European Union (EU) has faced a new agenda in SouthEastern Europe. The EU policies towards this region were not very well coordinated in the first half of the 1990s. From the second half of the 1990s onwards, the EU has become more focused in its policies towards South Eastern Europe. Since 1999, the Stabilisation and Association Process is the new institutional framework of the EU towards this region. The main purpose of the Stabilisation and Association Process is to promote peace, prosperity and stability in this region.
This study aims to explore the EU relations with South Eastern Europe with a single case study of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Process. The main research questions are: What are the main aims and dynamics of the EU’s relations with South Eastern Europe? What are the main problems concerning the implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Process in the case of Bosnia? How do the norms, values and culture of Bosnia affect the implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Process?
The focus of this study is on democratization as an open- ended process. Thus, it is relevant to apply democratization theories, with a focus on the Transition Approach as a theoretical framework. Democratization theories aim to explain how authoritarian regimes change into liberal democratic ones. The transition approach makes a clear distinction between democratic transition and democratic consolidation phases, and identifies the necessary conditions for the success of each phase. New Institutionalism is another theoretical orientation that will be applied to this study. New Institutionalism is used in this study to discuss the concepts of institutional change and democratic governance, and to further study both the formal and informal institutions in Bosnia and how they limit the implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Process.
This study comes up with the conclusion that South Eastern Europe remains one of the priority regions for the EU. The dynamics of EU-South Eastern Europe relations is based on a number of different factors, such as political and economic considerations, concerns about peace, prosperity, and stability at the doorstep of the EU. The implementation of EU policies in this region is related to the debate on the future of the EU as well. The conclusions about Bosnia and Herzegovina point out that the country has moved forward a considerable amount after the 1992-95 Bosnian War. Democracy is beginning to emerge in the country. However, the implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Process is constrained by the complex formal institutional structure as laid out in the Dayton Peace Agreement. Moreover, the informal institutions in Bosnia limit the implementation. For instance, the path-dependent authoritarian legacy of former Yugoslavia, exclusive ethnic nationalism, and distrust among the major ethnic groups in Bosnia are obstacles in front of the effective implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Process. The level of international community involvement in the country is still very intensive. Bosnia has not become a self-sustainable democratic state yet. Strengthening the civil society in Bosnia and Herzegovina and promoting an inclusive civic identity that will lead to the enhancement of democratic values in the country can be recommended as solutions for the current problems of the country.
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Aidukaite, Jolanta. "The Emergence of the Post-Socialist Welfare State - The Case of the Baltic States : Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania." Doctoral thesis, Huddinge : Södertörns högskola, 2004. http://www.diva-portal.org/su/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=270.
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Day, Stephen Robert. "The process of social-democratization : from Leninist to Social-Democratic parties in Central and Eastern Europe (a comparative based approach focusing specifically upon the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland - SdRP)." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.300210.
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Orr, Scott David. "Democratic identity the role of ethnic and regional identities in the success or failure of democracy in Eastern Europe /." The Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1117652333.
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Vickers, Paul Andrew. "Peasants, professors, publishers and censorship : memoirs of rural inhabitants of Poland's recovered territories (1945-c.1970)." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2014. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4821/.
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This thesis investigates the phenomenon of memoir competitions in communist-era Poland, focusing on contributions to them by Poles of rural origins inhabiting the lands – known as the Recovered Territories – acquired by the postwar Polish state from Germany in 1945. I explore the history of the memoir method in postwar Poland, the processes involved in producing published volumes of competition memoirs – including editing and censorship, and the use of these sources in communist-era and post-1989 sociological, historiographical and interdisciplinary studies. I focus on existing research both on the Recovered Territories, particularly Polish settlement of those lands and the development of new communities there, and also on postwar peasants’ lives, particularly where theories of social advance are applied. In this respect, this investigation adds to existing literature in social history on early postwar Poland. My study also contributes to work in censorship studies by considering Polish censors’ approach to quite exceptional sources. Because in many cases original competition entries are available, it is possible to establish where editors, publishers and censors have intervened, something that is rarely possible with standard works of literature or academic scholarship produced under communism. I consider what strategies different scholars used in presenting published sources and circumventing restrictions imposed. Subaltern studies approaches to speaking and its critique of nation-centred historiography are, meanwhile, applied in investigating the intersection of peasant autobiographies, academic research, scholars and Party-state institutions and their discourses, as I consider how the published communist-era compilations of competition entries framed peasant writing, experience, culture and consciousness, and how these frames potentially conflicted with the authors’ own interpretations of their experiences and social reality. This investigation also contributes to memory studies, a discipline whose approach to communist and totalitarian states is particularly problematic as many studies assume significant restrictions were imposed not only on publication but also on autobiographical memory expressed in usually unrecorded private and local spheres. I explore whether memory studies’ typical approach, based in notions of competing claims might also apply to Poland under state socialism. Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism prove useful in exploring the history of memory under communism, rather than the memory of it – as is commonplace today in oral history-based studies, for example. It is in respect of censorship studies and memory studies that this thesis makes its most substantial original contributions to research. My research draws on substantial archival research conducted in Poland, where I explored censorship archives in Warsaw and Poznań, Party and ministerial archives, and the Polish Academy of Science archive, since numerous memoir sociologists and rural sociologists were based there. I also used archives housing original competition entries, the main locations being: The Institute of Western Affairs in Poznań (Instytut Zachodni – IZ), the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Science (Instytut Historyczny PAN – IH PAN) and the Museum of the History of the Polish Peasant Movement (MHRPL in Piaseczno, near Tczew). I consider published volumes alongside original sources where possible, although substantial losses have occurred to the store of popular autobiography. Chapter 1 outlines the background of Polish memoir sociology and the main methods and theories used in this investigation, ranging from subaltern studies through Bakhtin to autobiography studies. Chapter 2 focuses on memory studies, including the field’s approach to communist and postcommunist countries, before outlining aspects of censorship studies relevant to this investigation. I end Chapter 2 on a case study of the memoir compilation Miesiąc mojego życia [A Month in my Life – MMŻ; (1964)] and its treatment by censors. Chapter 3 explores recent English- and Polish-language historiography on the Recovered Territories, concentrating on, firstly, how historians have used the memoir resources in considering the early postwar years, and, secondly, how peasants are represented within the recent wave of works exploring Polish communism through nationalism and popular legitimation. I end on a case study of one particular memoir by a female settler to the new Polish lands, highlighting the value of the competition entries as thick descriptions. Chapter 4 investigates the mainstream communist-era memoir movement where the leading analytical concept for approaching peasants and social change was ‘social advance’, developed from Józef Chałasiński’s prewar sociology. I explore how the nine-volume series Młode pokolenie wsi Polski Ludowej [The Young Generation of Rural People’s Poland – MPWPL; (1964-1980)] and other memoir-based studies approached peasants and the Recovered Territories, which were often framed as a site of quicker and more intensive social advance and urbanisation. I also explore the autobiographies of Poles who lost their homelands in the prewar eastern borderlands in the context of today’s assumptions that ‘repatriants’, as the eastern Poles were known under communism, were largely absent from communist-era publications. 4 Chapter 5 considers the academic sociology of the Western Territories, developed at IZ, and how materials from its 1956/57 memoir competition on settlers were used alongside fieldwork. I explore the sociological frameworks developed for analysing migration, settlement and community development, noting that some studies from the 1960s can today be considered forerunners of migration studies and memory studies. Chapter 6 specifically considers the publication Pamiętniki osadników Ziem Odzyskanych [Memoirs of Recovered Territories Settlers – POZO; (1963)], investigating original entries alongside published materials to explore editors’ and academics’ role in censorship, while also investigating how the volume was received in the press. Chapter 7 explores the production of the four-volume series Wieś polska 1939-1948 [Rural Poland 1939-1948; (1967-1971)] by historian-editors Krystyna Kersten and Tomasz Szarota, who treated these previously-unpublished texts written in 1948 explicitly as historical sources, thus contrasting with previously dominant sociological approaches while also posing specific problems for censors as the editors employed a unique method of summaries in an attempt to make the entire set of some 1700 texts available to readers. Exploring different approaches to memoir publication, I aim to illustrate the diversity of the published sphere in People’s Poland, while demonstrating the heterogeneity of ordinary Poles’ memories submitted to different competitions between 1948 and 1970. While the value of the archived sources should be quite evident, exploration of censorship and editing processes should demonstrate the value of compilations and indeed communist-era scholarship, which is often overlooked today. By avoiding totalitarian schools of historiography and memory studies, I aim to demonstrate that competition memoirs illustrated ordinary Poles’ agency within historical and social processes, while also stressing their agency over their memories and autobiographical narratives which at the same time were, as in any society, cultural and social constructs.
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Akyurek, Engin Ahmet. "Changing Conceptions Of European Identity And Shifting Boundaries." Master's thesis, METU, 2004. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12604993/index.pdf.
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In the end of the 1980s and in the beginning of the 1990s Europe and the world witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the mid-1990s the member states of the European Union decided to enlarge the Union towards the Eastern Europe. Thus European integration entered into an unprecedented phase. Integration of the Eastern Europeans with the Western Europe contributed to the debates on the notions of European identity and the idea of Europe. Adherence of the East Europeans to the ideals of the Western European civilization brought up some questions about the changing identities and shifting boundaries of Europe. Various theories deal with the problems of identity in general and European identity in particular. However to a great extent they are limited within a rigid description of self-other relationship. They do not intend to investigate the real motives or purposes behind these transformations of the prevailing identities and shifting of the boundaries of Europe. So, it will be argued that, in order to understand construction/reconstruction process of the new European identity, one should also take into consideration the more dynamic effects on changing European identity and shifting borders of Europe.
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Filipova, Rumena Valentinova. "The differential Europeanisation of Central and Eastern Europe, 1989-2000 : a constructivist study of the foreign policy identities of Poland, Bulgaria and Russia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:430c07fc-8979-4ce0-9340-f20ac9c3c30a.
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The thesis addresses the puzzle of the differential integration of former communist states in the Euro-Atlantic community of nations between 1989 and 2000. Notwithstanding the predominant universalist-rationalist assumption that the adoption of an institutional-administrative blueprint for reform could lead to convergence between East and West, countries such as Poland, Bulgaria and Russia did not converge similarly (or at all) on the West European normative model and framework of international relations. To account for this divergence, the thesis examines the impact of the culturally-historically informed, Polish, Bulgarian and Russian identities and conceptions of 'Europe' (as opposed to the formal-institutional transition from one system to another) on the process of foreign policy transformation. The doctoral research employs Constructivism, Social Psychological insights and an interpretivist methodology, drawing on 75 elite interviews. The main argument states that differential Europeanisation can be understood on the basis of differentiated levels of inclusion and establishment of relations of mutual recognition and belongingness - substantiated by a differentiated extent of ideational affinity (i.e., normative compatibility), which are (re)enacted in the interactive, mutually constitutive process of identification between Self and Other (i.e., between Poland, Bulgaria and Russia and (Western) Europe). Three propositions of 'thick', 'ambivalent' and 'thin' Europeanisation are derived from the argument (whereby the comparative benchmark of Europeanisation is an ideal-typical model of European-ness). Key contributions focus on the development of a refined Constructivist theory and a systematic empirical comparison of Polish, Bulgarian and Russian foreign policy identities. Also, the study's conclusions reinvigorate and reconfirm the importance of the continuity (rather than just constant flux) of culturally-historically shaped patterns of group self-understandings and sub-regional identifications as well as Constructivism's greater plausibility in accounting for the research puzzle than (Neoclassical) Realism through the stipulation of a mutually constitutive relationship between international and domestic factors and between ideational and interest-based considerations.
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Lipska, Katarzyna. "The effects of 2004 European Union enlargement on mortality development for joining countries." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Sociologiska institutionen, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-92578.
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The life expectancy development during the past 150 years has been remarkable in many parts of the world. These developments, however, have been very different across countries. In Europe, the diverse historical and political changes lead to clusters of regions that followed different mortality developments. The aim of this study was to examine how countries that entered the European Union in 2004 and 2007 differ in terms of mortality from continuous members of the EU and from Eastern European countries that have never joined the EU. Moreover, I studied a possible convergence in mortality indicators between these groups of countries. The data used to explore mortality conditions in those groups of countries was derived from two sources: The Human Mortality Database and European Health for All Database. Descriptive statistics and calculations of average yearly pace of change for groups of countries have been applied for each mortality indicator. Furthermore, regression models have been conducted to estimate the impact of belonging to a country group on mortality indicators, adjusted for some macro-level indicators of economic progress and health expenditure. The results verified previous research implying the importance of period factors which can affect mortality in the short term. For all mortality indicators, accelerated improvements between 1995 and 1999 have been found in countries who became EU members in 2004. Moreover, life expectancy convergence was observed for life expectancy at birth but not for the older ages which could imply that the positive progress affected older ages to smaller degree. My findings confirm the importance of social environment and imply that the process of joining the EU possibly could reduce social stress and affect mortality conditions positively.
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Öhlén, Mats. "The Eastward Enlargement of European Parties : Party Adaptation in the Light of EU-enlargement." Doctoral thesis, Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap, 2013. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-28635.
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The aim of the study is to map out and analyse the integration of political parties from Central and Eastern Europe into the main European party families. The prospect of eastern enlargement of the EU implicated opportunities and above all challenges for the West European party families. The challenges consisted of integrating new parties with a different historical legacy. The study focuses on mainly how the European party families handled these challenges and what motives that have driven them in this engagement. At a more general level the thesis sketches two alternatives interpretations of the process: Western neo-colonialism and contribution to democratisation. The method used for the study is comparative case-study method and the main sources that have been utilised are party documents and in-depth interviews. The study is delimited to the three main European party families: the Christian democrats, the social democrats and the liberals. The countries of interest in Central and Eastern Europe are those postcommunist countries that became EU-members in 2004 and 2007: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The time-frame is limited to the first party contacts in 1989 to the final inclusion of the new parties in 2000-2006. The results suggest that the European parties have responded with ambitious means to the challenge of integrating new parties from a postcommunist context. They have set up new coordinating bodies and organised educational programmes for the applicant parties, mainly directed to young politicians. The Christian democrats and the social democrats have also used parallel organisations as buffer-zones, which provided certain flexibility. As for motives, the Christian democrats stand out as the party family with the clearest power-oriented motives. At the other end, the liberals stand out as the party family that is most steered by ideology and identity. The social democrats went through a change with ideological considerations dominating the early phase and became increasingly poweroriented as the EU enlargement drew closer. When it comes to the two alternative interpretations of this process, the main conclusion is that they are intertwined and more or less impossible to separate from each other.
22
Scheiring, Gabor. "The wounds of post-socialism : the political economy of mortality and survival in deindustrialising towns in Hungary." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/288875.
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Background: In this dissertation I examine the political economy of the post-socialist mortality crisis as experienced in deindustrialising towns in Hungary. I develop and apply a relational political economy of health framework, putting emphasis on the economic institutions of post-socialist dependent capitalism in Hungary, as embedded in the semi-periphery of the global economy, their gendered implications and their cultural construction. Methods: I follow a mixed-method strategy combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. I rely on a novel dataset comprising data on settlement, enterprise, and individual levels. 260 companies and 52 towns were analysed in two waves. I group towns into severely and moderately deindustrialised categories (1989-1995); as well as into dominant state, domestic private and foreign ownership dominated categories (1995-2004). Population surveys in these towns collected data on the vital status and other characteristics of survey respondents' relatives. I assess the relationship between deindustrialisation, dominant ownership and the mortality of individuals by random intercept multilevel discrete-time survival modelling. I also investigate the health implications of the lived experience of economic transformation in four towns with diverging privatisation and deindustrialisation histories through a qualitative thematic analysis of 82 in-depth semi-structured interviews. Findings: Severe deindustrialisation is associated with a significantly larger odds of mortality for men between 1989 and 1995 (OR=1.12; 95%CI=1.00-1.26; p=0.042). On the other hand, prolonged state ownership is related to a significantly lower odds of dying among women, compared to towns dominated by domestic private ownership (OR=0.74; 95%CI=0.62-0.90; p=0.002) or towns dominated by foreign investment (OR=0.79; 95%CI=0.65-0.96; p=0.019) between 1995 and 2004. The multi-sited semi-structured qualitative interviews revealed that companies are central institutions in the cognitive maps of workers and that the fates of these companies affected the health of workers in multiple ways, whereas state involvement was perceived as a cushioning mechanism. Interpretation: Severe deindustrialisation was a crucial factor behind the post-socialist mortality crisis for men, whilst prolonged state ownership was associated with the protection of life chances for women. The indirect economic benefits of foreign investment do not translate automatically into better health. Rapid economic transformations threaten health; they should be avoided where possible, but if this is not possible, strong safety nets should be in place.
23
Duffield, Lee R. "Graffitti on the Wall. Reading History Through News Media: The role of news media in historical crises, in the case of the collapse of the Eastern bloc in Europe 1989." Thesis, James Cook University, 2002. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/3904/1/3904.pdf.
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The thesis reviews the engagement of news media in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, most vividly represented by the opening of the Berlin Wall. It uses field observations of the author as a jouralist of the time, extensive interviews with other news correspondents, a review of historical writing on the period, and an exhaustive review of the coverage given by six major news outlets. The work sees the change in Europe being driven by mass social movements, but also examines conventional, institutional politics at work, and describes the engagement of news media in the historical situation as it unfolds. It determines that the daily coverage by leading Western news media judged in terms of accuracy and perspective was successful, validated by later evaluations. It is informed by theoretical writing on mass social movements and on journalistic news values. It concludes by suggesting that the approach followed, a review of history from the perspective of news media of the day, could be applied to many other situations.
24
Zachar'in, Dmitrij B. "Von Angesicht zu Angesicht der Wandel direkter Kommunikation in der ost- und westeuropäischen Neuzeit." Konstanz UVK-Verl.-Ges, 2005. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2671856&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.
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Shahrani, Shahreena. "In Pursuit of `Good Society’: Navigating Politics, Marriage, and Adulthood in Contemporary Jordan." The Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1471545445.
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Alpan, Basak. "Changing Conceptions Of." Master's thesis, METU, 2004. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12605214/index.pdf.
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Departing from the idea of a slippery ideological surface over which the term &ldquoEurope&rdquo
is conceptualized, which is continuously susceptible to shifts and redefinitions, this thesis is devoted to the attempt to outline the differences between the two ways of the conceptualization of &ldquo
Europe&rdquo
in Central Eastern Europe in two specific periods and political contexts. The first period mentioned is the early 1980s, or pre-1989 period, punctuated with the Central European intellectuals&rsquo
(the so-called dissidents&rsquo
) discourse on the &ldquo
European&rdquo
affiliation of the region-especially in cultural terms. The transformation literature is also mentioned in order to pose the counter-factual arguments of this intellectual strand. The second period mentioned is the late 1990s and early 2000s, where the idea of &ldquo
Europe&rdquo
is identified with the EU and the EU accession. In this respect, Poland and Hungary are chosen as the sample countries for the scrutiny of the second period. Euro-discourses of the political parties and the concept of &ldquo
party-based Euroscepticism&rdquo
are scrutinised. The Polish and Hungarian media and the public opinion are also investigated to understand how and with what references &ldquo
Europe&rdquo
is conceptualised in late 1990s and early 2000s in the political space of Central Eastern Europe. Thus, in this study, the basic claim is that the intense debates and the literature on the &ldquo
Europeanness&rdquo
of Central Europe and on the transition that these countries have to realize in order to be &ldquo
European&rdquo
do not have a substantial basis in the conceptualization of &ldquo
Europe&rdquo
in the current political spaces of Poland and Hungary.
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Justus, Hedy Melissa. "The Bioarchaeology of Population Structure, Social Organization, and Feudalism in Medieval Poland." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1515117429918966.
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Tunkis, Peter Jan. "Strength in Numbers: Social Identity, Political Ambition, and Group-based Legislative Party Switching." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1524563343963192.
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Ozdemir, Burcu. "Enlarging The Eu Further Eastwards: The Prospective Eu Membership Of The Western Balkans." Master's thesis, METU, 2006. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12607408/index.pdf.
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The main aim of this thesis is to analyze EU-Western Balkans relations with regard to the prospective EU membership of the Western Balkans, and to make an analysis of the EU&rsquos Western Balkans enlargement strategy and the scope of membership conditionality imposed on the Western Balkans from post Dayton period (1995) to present (2006). This thesis examines how the EU membership conditionality worked in the Western Balkans&rsquo
preparatory stages for pre-accession, and to what extent it is different from the CEE enlargement process. Lastly, considering the discussions on rediscovered absorption capacity and the commitment of EU for further eastward enlargements after the CEE enlargement of 2004, it is looked into whether there has been a shift in EU&rsquo
s Western Balkans strategy. This thesis argues that the dominant factor determining the dynamics of the EU-Western Balkans relations are preferences, priorities and internal dynamics of the EU. The comparison between the CEE&rsquo
s and Western Balkans&rsquo
EU integration process reveals that EU tailored a long term and flexible enlargement strategy with increasing conditionality within SAP framework for the Western Balkans. Hence as long as the EU does not feel a sense of urgency straining the stability and EU integration of the region, a motivation for presenting an immediate enlargement platform will not emerge. In this sense, after the CEE enlargement, EU rediscovered its absorption capacity as a main membership condition and further differentiated the regional countries in terms of their own merits in fulfilling EU&rsquo
s conditionality and standards.
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Saar, Maarja. "The answers you seek will never be found at home : Reflexivity, biographical narratives and lifestyle migration among highly-skilled Estonians." Doctoral thesis, Södertörns högskola, Sociologi, 2017. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-32794.
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Det övergripande syftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka förhållandet mellan migration, reflexivitet och social klass. I fokus för den empiriska analysen står högt kvalificerade estniska emigranter. Reflexivitet har hittills inte varit ett viktigt begrepp i migrationsstudier. Även om vissa studier använt ordet reflexivitet, har det i huvudsak fungerat som bakgrundsbegrepp. Det finns en påtaglig brist på empiriskt orienterade studier av reflexivitet i migrationsstudier. Avhandlingen består av fyra artiklar med något olika inriktning. Den första undersöker det empiriska fallet i sin helhet utifrån en survey-undersökning om estniska migranter. Den andra artikeln diskuterar den brittiske sociologen Margaret Archers sätt att analysera migration och argumenterar i hennes efterföljd för ett socialpsykologiskt synsätt på de skiftande motiven att migrera. Den tredje artikeln utmanar tanken på att migranters återvändande i huvudsak kan förstås som saknad efter sociala relationer och känslor av hemlängtan. I den fjärde artikeln föreslås ett sätt för livsstilsorienterade migrationsstudier att hantera frågan om reflexivitet. Här positioneras livsstilsmigranter teoretiskt till andra typer av migranter och hur variationer ilivsstilsmigration kan analyseras. Trots inbördes variation har samtliga artiklar en gemensam nämnare.This thesis focuses on issues around reflexivity and highly skilled migration. Reflexivity has been an underused concept in migration studies and incurporating it has been long overdue. By reflexivity this thesis understands the capacity of an actor to evaluate his or her position in relation to social structures, to take action in managing those structures and, finally, to critically revise both the position and action taken. There are multiple reasons as to why incorporating reflexivity is a useful endeavor to migration studies. On one hand, using reflexive types in order to understand different migration motivations offers an alternative to otherwise mainly class based explanations behind migration objectives. Migration research has long relied on the idea that migration motivations can be coupled with societal and class background. Similarly, return migration has been described almost unanimously as a result of a homing desire. Both positions, as claimed in this thesis, are oversimplifications. On the other hand, I argue that, reflexivity helps to analyze the importance of class or even society on migration in 21th century. This is why I suggest to analyze all three in concurrence – migration, reflexivity and class. In the following pages I analyze how reflexivity can be operationalized for studying migration. So far, reflexivity has been either used as background concept – mobility studies or for explaining particular kind of migration – lifestyle migration. I argue, that with careful operationalization reflexivity could be useful tool for explaining wide-variety of migrations – family, labour, lifestyle etc. Three articles in this thesis focus on providing such operationalizations, analyzing the relationship between migration motivations and reflexivity. Finally, the first article in this thesis analyzes the background of my particular group of migrants – Estonian highly skilled migrants and positions them in relation to other groups in Estonian society. Moreover, the article also underlines that self-development and lifestyle, if you will, is an important motivation for Eastern European migrants as well.
31
Roger, Ludwig. "De l'Europe du Sud-est à la Région Mer Noire : une Süd-Ost Politik pour la Commission européenne? De l'endiguement de l'Union Soviétique à l'élargissement de l'Union européenne." Phd thesis, Université de Cergy Pontoise, 2014. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01067138.
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Réinscrivant le processus d'intégration européenne dans une Histoire de la Guerre froide et post-Guerre froide et plus généralement dans une histoire européenne plus longue que le seul XXe siècle, cette thèse explore l'histoire des relations de la Commission européenne avec la périphérie sud-orientale du continent. La longue période chronologique étudiée permets de mettre en exergue les " forces profondes " qui se tiennent derrières les actions de l'exécutif de la CEE/UE dans une région critique pour l'Europe. Pour se faire, nous nous sommes basés sur les archives de la Commission européenne, du Conseil, du Département d'État américain, des Ministères des affaires étrangères français et britannique, de la bibliothèque de Cluj-Napoca en Roumanie et d'entretiens.Divisée en quatre parties, chacune se centrant sur une période chronologique, ce travail analyse l'action de la Commission face aux changements qui ont bouleversé l'Europe du Sud-est entre 1960 et 2010. L'adaptation constante de la politique de la Commission, de la " doctrine de l'Association " à la Synergie de la Mer Noire, nous ont amené à développer l'idée d'une Süd-ost politik qui se met en place dès le début des années 1960. Cependant, contrairement à l'Ostpolitik de Bonn, il ne s'agit pas pour Bruxelles d'aller vers les États communistes du Sud-est européen ou l'Union soviétique, mais plutôt de lutter contre leur influence. La Süd-Ost politik communautaire est clairement anticommuniste et antirusse.La Communauté fait barrage à Moscou en étendant le modèle de la démocratie libérale capitaliste dans la zone autour des Détroits. La situation stratégique d'Athènes, d'Ankara et plus tard de Tbilissi ou Kiev n'est pas oubliée par Bruxelles. Ainsi, la Commission s'inscrit dans une plus longue histoire, son action fait écho à la lutte entre Paris, Londres et Saint-Pétersbourg pour le contrôle des Détroits, aux tentatives des États de la région de copier les modèles nationaux d'Europe de l'Ouest et à la politique orientale des Puissances occidentales après 1918.Cependant, la Commission doit ménager des État membres qui lui rappellent sans cesse que ces actions doivent rester limitées aux traités. L'Avis sur la Grèce en 1976 marque le point culminant de ce débat entre Conseil et Commission. Parallèlement, au cours des années 1970, Bruxelles veille à ne pas laisser émerger dans sa périphérie des organisations qui pourraient la concurrencer. Il en sera ainsi de la Conférence pour la coopération et la sécurité en Europe et de son volet méditerranéen mais aussi de la Coopération Balkanique.Si la chute de l'Union soviétique fait naitre des hésitations sur la conduite à suivre vis-à-vis de l'Europe du Sud-est et sa nouvelle extension vers le Caucase et dans les anciennes républiques soviétiques. Bien vite la Commission revient à sa politique d'extension du modèle européen. Cependant, le centre des préoccupations communautaire n'est plus la Grèce ou la Turquie. Avec l'effondrement de l'Empire soviétique, le champ d'action de la Communauté -devenue Union- s'est élargi à l'ensemble de la Région Mer Noire.Pourtant, la non résolution du problème de Chypre, l'instabilité financière de la Grèce, les crises politiques turques, le maintien hors de Schengen de la Roumanie et de la Bulgarie sont des exemples des difficultés rencontrées par la Communauté dans la région.La guerre en Géorgie et l'annexion de la Crimée par la Russie à la suite de la révolution à Kiev illustrent que le processus " doux " d'inoculation des valeurs du Traité de Rome ne va pas de soi du moment que celui-ci rencontre une opposition " dure ". Nous achevons notre réflexion en nous posant la question de la capacité de l'Union et de la Commission à absorber à terme l'ensemble de la Mer Noire ce qui mettrait la Mésopotamie et l'Asie centrale en contact direct avec le processus d'intégration européenne.Il s'agit maintenant de savoir si la Mer Noire deviendra un " lac Européen".
32
Rammelt, Henry. "La mobilisation sociale en Europe de l'Est depuis la crise financière de 2008 : une analyse comparative de l’évolution des réseaux militants en Hongrie et en Roumanie." Thesis, Lyon, 2016. http://www.theses.fr/2016LYSE2168/document.
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La crise financière a démystifié le système capitaliste aux yeux de larges segments de la population d’Europe de l'Est, exacerbant le décalage entre les attentes suscitées par le processus de démocratisation et la situation, souvent difficile, d’un nombre important de citoyens. Dans ce contexte, l'indignation que certains d’entre eux expriment s'est dirigée contre la classe politique, donnant naissance à de nouvelles formes de mobilisation. Cette thèse analyse ces mobilisations dans un cadre comparatif incluant des réseaux militants en Hongrie et en Roumanie, sur la période 2008 - 2014. Quelles sont les caractéristiques des récentes vagues de protestations ? Ces protestations s’inscrivent-elles dans la continuité de répertoires d’action plus anciens ? Si la Roumanie et la Hongrie sont « en transition », quelles sont les mutations qui affectent les conditions de mobilisation ? Comment expliquer les différences de dynamiques que l’on observe dans les deux pays ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons essayé de bâtir des passerelles entre deux champs de recherche, celui de la transition démocratique et celui des mouvements sociaux. En Roumanie comme en Hongrie, la prise en compte des transformations systémiques induites par la transition semble en effet essentielle à la compréhension des phénomènes de mobilisation récents. L'analyse détaillée des processus d'accumulation de capital social relationnel et cognitif qui en résulte - à l’origine de l’émergence de nouvelles générations d’activistes – constitue l’apport principal de notre travail. La démarche diachronique que nous avons adoptée nous a par ailleurs permis d’identifier et de caractériser les influences qu’un réseau militant peut avoir sur un autre et l’impact d’une protestation sur la suivante. Soucieux de produire des informations précises et circonstanciées sur l’environnement politique, économique et culturel dans lequel naissent les mobilisations étudiées, nous avons interrogé, à partir d’un sondage en ligne, des spécialistes de la société civile, des médias et de la vie politique des deux pays. Parallèlement, nous avons réalisé 26 entretiens approfondis avec des activistes en Hongrie et en Roumanie pour parvenir à définir les processus de mobilisation des ressources, les canaux de mobilisation utilisées, les caractéristiques des réseaux et des organisations en présence, mais aussi l’identité des activistes et, subséquemment, leur perception du contexte d’action dans lequel ils s’inscrivent. En prenant en compte l’ensemble de ces éléments, nous avons pu montrer comment l'accumulation d’expériences de mobilisations nourrissait les mouvements suivants, plus nombreux et plus visibles au fil du temps. Dans cette dynamique, les réseaux sociaux en ligne jouent un rôle essentiel. La socialisation politique sur Facebook a notamment contribué au développement d’une identité commune et à la transformation de l'indignation personnelle en engagement collectif. La multiplication des interactions sociales, une certaine similitude de goûts et de visions du monde, ainsi qu’un effort de réseautage ont permis à l'activisme en ligne de se transformer en activisme de rue. La nature et l’intensité de cet engagement diffèrent selon les deux pays. En Roumanie, « un militantisme récréationnel » puisant ses racines dans la simultanéité de la consommation culturelle et de l'implication civique est observable. A l’inverse, en Hongrie l’enthousiasme civique semble s’essouffler. Confrontés à un pouvoir politique stable, soutenu par la majorité de la population et capable de s'opposer fermement aux initiatives de la société civile, les mouvements de contestation hongrois n’ont pas réussi à déstabiliser le pouvoir en place. Cet exemple montre qu’une culture de protestation relativement vivace ne débouche pas automatiquement sur un fort niveau de mobilisation citoyenne. Par contraste, le cas de la RoumanieIn Eastern Europe the financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the gap between expectations concerning the new configuration of liberal and capitalist states on the one hand, and the social realities on the other. Waves of contention followed, which were provoked especially by austerity measures implemented by the respective governments. These were in their majority directed against the post-communist elites, which were held responsible for the perceived slow progress regarding economic performance and the democratization process in the years before. With the purpose of analyzing new forms of collective action and protests that appeared following this crisis, this dissertation is dedicated to study, in a comparative manner, activist networks in Hungary and Romania between 2008 and 2014.The following questions are in the center of the study: Are those recent waves of mobilization different from forms of protests prior to the crisis or can we observe a continuation of repertoires of contention? If Romania and Hungary are considered to be countries still located in the transition process, without having reached the “goal” of consolidated democracies, are the conditions and forms of collective action also undergoing profound transformations? If so, how can we explain the different dynamics in those two countries?Given the fact, that the analysis of social movements is becoming a multicentric subfield of social sciences, the present study draws on a diversity of analytical angles, not only stemming from approaches to investigate social movements and regime change, but also including additional theoretical avenues, in order to answer these main questions. Taking into account the transformation background of Romania and Hungary seems the appropriate perspective to understand recent mobilizations. For this purpose, this study analyzes processes of the accumulation of cognitive and relational social capital, shaping a new generation of activists. By doing so, the emphasis could be put on observing the effects of protests on subsequent mobilizations and the spillover/ interaction between activist networks over time. In a first step, I gathered comparable data on the political, economic and social environment, in which these networks arose, by carrying out expert on-line surveys in both countries. For a better understanding of mechanisms of resource mobilization, mobilization channels, network characteristics and organizational features, I conducted 26 in-depth interviews with activists from both countries. As a result, I was able to highlight the significance of protest-specific experiences for future mobilizations. Online social networks appear to play a key role in this dynamic in contemporary social movements, mainly through their capacity of generating a collective identity and transforming personal indignation into collective action. The nature and the intensity of this dynamic vary in the two countries. While I observed a growth of, what I called “recreational activism” in Romania, resulting from the concomitance of patterns of cultural consumption and civic involvement, a certain protest fatigue can be attested for the first years after the crisis in Hungary. Confronted with stable political configurations and a government that is widely supported by the electorate, movements contesting the power of Fidesz were not able to destabilize existing power structures in Hungary. Hence, this study shows that a longstanding culture of protest and of civic engagement does not necessarily lead, in different circumstances, to high levels of political activism of challengers to political power. Furthermore, the Romanian case suggests that rather the absence of such a culture, combined with a lack of precedent and experiences for both, engaged citizens and authorities can open spaces for renegotiating rules and provoke (lasting) political and cultural changes
33
Salapatas, Dimitrios Filippos. "The Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius : quest for truth, quest for theology, quest for unity : an exploration of Eastern Orthodox and Anglican ecumenical theological and ecclesiological relations from 1927 until 2012." Thesis, University of Winchester, 2016. http://repository.winchester.ac.uk/316/.
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This thesis aims to examine the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, an ecumenical body that promotes relations between various Christian denominations. Despite being founded on the grounds to promote relations and dialogue between the Anglicans and the Orthodox, it has widened this scope, introducing new churches in its life, conferences, publications and history. In the first and second chapters of this thesis the first eighty five years (1927-2012) of its history are explored, identifying the Society’s strengths and weaknesses in achieving its objectives, whilst studying its theological approaches to the reunion work, understanding that this body has been a progressive fellowship, theologically and ecclesiastically. The third chapter investigates the life and the theological, philosophical and historical views of Nicolas Zernov, who had as a life goal to foster relations between the churches, whilst also promoting Orthodox and Russian topics to a Western audience. The final chapter examines two themes by two important members of the Fellowship, Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia’s ideas on deaconesses and women priests and former Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams’ views on icons. These two topics are interesting and current for the continuation of the relations between the Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion, trying to further understand each other in order to eventually achieve what many in the Fellowship profess and what the Bible promotes, ‘that they all may be one’ (John 17:21). The conclusion of the thesis assesses the work of the Fellowship, whilst also looking into the post 2012 objectives and achievements of the Fellowship and the future goals of the Society. Therefore, this paper is a quest for truth, a quest for theology and a quest for unity.
34
Vimont, Michael. "The anthropological construction of Czech identity : academic and popular discourses of identity in 20th century Bohemia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bb316968-60a1-472c-bee4-b8de3af5ebbd.
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Through close textual analysis of 20th century Czech anthropological texts from the Revivalist and Socialist periods and contemporary social research conducted after the Velvet Revolution, I demonstrate certain prominent discourses of identity developed in early Bohemian anthropology and their continuities in present day popular discourses. In each period, identity is deeply intertwined with teleological theories of history with Czech populations at the apex of cultural evolutionary development. In the Revivalist period this apex was believed to be the democratic nation state, transitioning to a Marxist nation state in the Socialist period, and in the contemporary period is conceived of as a neoliberal nation state. A major function of anthropology in the Revivalist and Socialist periods was to legitimate either period’s respective teleological theory and Czech possession of relevant values as 'objective' and 'natural' fact, a general mode of discourse which continued in the contemporary period in numerous editorials in the 1990s on the advantages of capitalism. The contemporary manifestation has particularly noteworthy consequences for the Roma minority, which I argue has provided Czech discourses with an ethnic category 'anti-thetical' to their own identity, providing a 'repository' for negative Czech self-stereotypes emerging from collaboration in the Socialist period.
35
Morelon, Claire. "Street fronts : war, state legitimacy and urban space, Prague 1914-1920." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2015. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6148/.
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This thesis examines daily life in the city of Prague during the First World War and in its immediate aftermath. Its aim is twofold: to explore the impact of the war on urban space and to analyse the relationship of Prague’s inhabitants to the Austro-Hungarian and then Czechoslovak state. To this end, both the mobilization for the war effort and the crisis of legitimacy experienced by the state are investigated. The two elements are connected: it is precisely because of the great sacrifices made by Praguers during the conflict that the Empire lost the trust of its citizens. Food shortages also constitute a major feature of the war experience and the inappropriate management of supply by the state played a large role in its final collapse. The study goes beyond Czechoslovak independence on 28 October 1918 to fully grasp the continuities between the two polities and the consequences of the war on this transitional period. Beyond the official national revolution, the revolutionary spirit in Prague around the time of regime change reveals the interplay between national and social motives, making it part of a broader European revolutionary movement at the time.
36
Schucknecht, Katja. "Die Positionierung ostmitteleuropäischer Städte im Kontext einer europäischen Kohäsion." Doctoral thesis, Universitätsbibliothek Chemnitz, 2012. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:ch1-qucosa-101426.
Full textAbstract:
Die vorliegende Dissertation möchte einen Beitrag zur Entwicklung eines Instrumentariums leisten, das Schlussfolgerungen hinsichtlich sich angleichender ökonomischer und sozialstruktureller Entwicklungen von Städten im Rahmen europäisierter Gesellschaften erlaubt. Anhand soziologischer und regionalökonomischer Theorien werden relevante Dimensionen abgeleitet, um ökonomische und soziale Strukturen von Städten im Städtesystem globalisierter und europäisierter Gesellschaften vergleichen bzw. bei wiederholter Analyse auf die Chancen einer EU-intendierten Konvergenz der europäischen Städte schließen zu können. Am Beispiel der Städte Ostmitteleuropas (Tschechiens, der Slowakei, Polens, Ungarns und Sloweniens) wird daran anschließend geprüft, inwieweit mit den bisher verfügbaren Daten der europäischen Statistik – insbesondere der Urban-Audit-Datenbank – eine empirische Überprüfung der theoretisch abgeleiteten Referenzdimensionen gelingt und welche Positionen die Städte in einem ostmitteleuropäischen Städtesystem einnehmen. Ein weiterer Fokus liegt auf den Wechselwirkungen, die sich am Beispiel der Analyse der ostmitteleuropäischen Städte zwischen ihren ökonomischen Positionierungen und ihren Sozialstrukturen zeigen.
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RYZNER, Janusz. "Legacies and incentives : a comparative analysis of post-communist minority policy in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary." Doctoral thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/13300.
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Defence Date: 24/11/2009Examining Board: Rainer Bauböck (EUI); Michael Keating (EUI) (Supervisor); Gwendolyn Sasse (University of Oxford); Mitja Zagar (University of Ljubljana)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
The study attempts to fill a gap in the research on the legacies and incentives of minority policies in four Central Eastern European countries by comprehensively examining post-communist minority policy developments from the perspective of internal factors as well as external impacts. The main objective of the study, which encompasses four countries - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - is to identify policy incentives and historical legacies that influenced the current minority policies. In addition, it also aspires to adjust existing typological theories which aim to explain the development of minority policies in the four countries after 1989. By comparing minority policies in the light of three hypotheses on their main factors, namely the historical, international and domestic, it is argued that in spite of different initial policy directions, the minority policies in the four countries gradually converged. The early post-1989 minority polices were shaped primarily by historical legacies and domestically conceptualised strategies, which reflected the importance of both domestic minority issues and kin nationals in neighbouring states. Together with the appearance of stronger international incentives (particularly the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) and the European Union assessment during the accession processes), the countries gradually modified their positions, framing their policies around the norms provided by the FCNM. In the conclusion, the thesis argues that existing theories on the development of minority policies in CEE could partially explain the preference for particular policy directions in the four countries. However, in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the contemporary shape of the minority policies, any further explanatory attempts should also carefully address the legacies of previous policy choices and the role of international norms on minority protection.
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TOMASZEWSKI, Wojciech. "Multidimensional poverty and social exclusion in Europe : a cross-national perspective." Doctoral thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/13299.
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Defence Date: 2 October 2009Examining Board: Jaap Dronkers (EUI) (Supervisor); Martin Kohli (EUI); Christopher Whealan (University College Dublin); Krzysztof Zagorski (Kozminski University)
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The main scope of this dissertation is the analysis of multidimensional poverty and social exclusion in Europe from a cross-national perspective. The multidimensional approach means that in addition to income, other more direct indicators of livingstandard deprivation are taken into account. Using empirical data from the European Community Household Panel and European Social Survey, the thesis explores crosscountry differences in the patterns of poverty and social exclusion and explains them in terms of the characteristics of societies and welfare systems. The research also explores the interrelations between various aspects of disadvantage and identifies its most severe forms. A number of more specific research questions are also addressed in three empirical chapters of the dissertation. The first of these chapters investigates the cross-national differences in the risk of multidimensional poverty among low skilled workers and the unemployed, as well as the level of protection against poverty offered by different patterns of labour participation within households (dual earner, single earner, and so-called one-and-a half-earner models). It finds that more redistributive countries, and those spending more on social protection, perform better in terms of lowering the risk of poverty among people with relatively vulnerable positions in the labour market, even when controlling for the size of economy. The second investigates the cross-national differences in the circumstances of certain groups particularly at risk of poverty: older people, single parents, large families and people with poor health. The evidence suggests that welfare regimes differ in their ability to protect these risk groups from multidimensional poverty, and that their performance depends on the type of risk represented by specific category. Countries of social-democratic and conservative regime types are found to offer good protection for those affected by labour market-related risks, but they perform relatively poorly in the case of more individualized, biography-related risks. The last empirical chapter shifts the focus from poverty to social exclusion by investigating the relationships between lack of resources, poor social participation and dissatisfaction with life, the focus again being on cross-national differences in the revealed patterns. The results demonstrate that the poor are relatively more likely to be socially detached and dissatisfied with life in more affluent societies. Also, lack of social participation is found to have an effect on dissatisfaction with life independent from poverty, and the effect is found to be stronger in more prosperous countries. Overall, the research demonstrates a substantial variation in the prevalence and the patterns of multidimensional poverty across Europe, with Southern-European countries having the highest rates and the Nordic countries and The Netherlands performing best. However, the research also provides evidence for a greater polarization between the poor and the non-poor in the countries where the incidence of poverty is less frequent. It is suggested that these greater contrasts may stem from different patterns of selection into the category of poor operating in those more affluent countries.
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PIOTROWSKI, Grzegorz. "Alterglobalism in postsocialism : a study of Central and Eastern European activists." Doctoral thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/18406.
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Defence date: 5 July 2011Examining Board: Prof. Donatella Della Porta, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Don Kalb, Central European University (External Supervisor); Prof. László Bruszt, European University Institute; Prof. Grzegorz Ekiert, Harvard University
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
Alterglobalism in Postsocialism. A Study of Central and Eastern European Activists' is a doctoral thesis that presents the development and the characteristic of the Global Justice Movement in Poland, the Czech Republic and in Hungary. Using tools and approaches derived mostly from anthropology this thesis is supposed to give an insight into the movement in Central and Eastern Europe, but it also relies on the tradition of sociology (in particular social movement studies) with some references to postsocialist and historical studies. Although far from being complete, it is one of the first comparative ethnographies of the movement and of the activists in the region. One of the main ways to explain the specificity of the movement in this part of the world is the existence of the postsocialist condition – a set of factors that have shaped the ways of organization of contentious politics. This thesis also attempts to analyze the movement from various perspectives by looking at its relations with the civil society, subcultures and countercultural milieus and with other actors of the global movement. At the core of the analysis are the repertoire of actions used in the region and the frames used to link local protests with more global struggles. In particular I was interested how do the social activists manage to deal with the notion of postsocialism and how do they adapt the frames derived from activism in other parts of the world to their own cases. I have tried to analyze these processes by looking at the practices of the activists in order to get a more realistic image of the movement, not biased by the self-imaginations of the activists.
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DIGOL, Diana. "Emerging Diplomatic Elites in Post-Communist Europe." Doctoral thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/6941.
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Defence date: 23 March 2007Examining board: Prof. John Hemery (Centre for Political and Diplomatic Studies, Oxford) ; Prof. Jacek Wasilewski (Warsaw School of Social Psychology) ; Prof. Jaap Dronkers (European University Institute)(Supervisor)
The aim of this study is to explore the process of diplomatic elite transformation in the post-communist countries within the context of political elite transformation and to analyse whether the process of circulation or reproduction prevailed among the diplomatic elites during the first decade and a half after the change of the political regime (1989-2004). I focus upon the entry-level diplomats to a greater degree than in the older works on political elite and diplomacy. The key to capturing the process of circulation/ reproduction among diplomatic elites is through analysis of the general characteristics of diplomats as well as the system of personnel selection. I argue that a better understanding of the transformation processes could be achieved by looking at people at the entry level into political elite, i.e., by looking at newcomers. The thesis is further set out to show how the historical, political and cultural legacy of the past and geographical realities shaped the emerging diplomatic elites. The analysis presented in the thesis is based on a survey that I conducted. Several conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of diplomats in 27 countries. The composition of the emerging diplomatic elite across countries shows some striking similarities and some striking differences. The areas of important similarities are education, social origins and channels of recruitment. The differences mainly occur in age, gender, recruitment channels, previous professional experience, type of residence and additional jobs performed. Particularly illuminating in this respect is the division of respondents by geographical criterion into the CEE/FSU countries. A more meticulous analysis shows that the revolutionary political transformations were not followed by a revolutionary transformation of elites, or of diplomatic elites in particular. There was a modest degree of circulation from the lower classes into the elite role (in particular, into the diplomatic elite), but it did not transcend the socially desirable and socially stabilising moderate level. It was certainly not a revolutionary degree of circulation into the diplomatic elite. Nor was there a full-scale reproduction of elites.
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GRZYBOWSKA-WALECKA, Katarzyna. "International party co-operation before and after 1989 : the Polish and Hungarian (post-) communists and the Western social democrats." Doctoral thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/13287.
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Defence date: 30 November 2009Examining Board: Attila Agh (Corvinus University, Budapest); Michael Keating (EUI) (Supervisor); Paul G. Lweis (Open University, Milton Keynes); Peter Mair (EUI)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis examines the impact of the changing dynamics of the international cooperation among communist (or post-communist) parties and Western social democratic parties on democratic transitions and on party change. This is done through an in-depth comparative study of the inter-party contacts between the communist and later post-communist parties of Poland and Hungary, on one hand, and the German SPD and the British Labour Party on the other. The thesis analyzes the scope of these contacts, the activity of bilateral groups, and the support offered to the Polish and Hungarian post-communist parties before and after 1989. The literature on democratization in post-communist Europe and that on post-communist parties in particular has neglected this issue, and the importance of inter-party contacts therefore tends to be overlooked. This study shows that the period prior to the system collapse in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was not a tabula rasa in terms of contacts between the parties from East and West. Relying on extensive interviews and unprecedented primary research in archival documents, it broadens the discussion, unearthing new material concerning the pre-1989 inter-party contacts and the reasons behind these contacts, as well as offering an original analysis of party goals and strategies of cooperation in the Cold War environment. It brings in international factors to offer a fuller explanation of the post-communist parties’ successful accommodation to the new reality, emphasising the importance of their antecedent socialization in the social democratic environment long before the collapse of the communist system. It points to the different trajectories of inter-party cooperation and the diverse policies pursued by parties in CEE and in Western Europe and explains these in terms of geographic proximity and their respective foreign and domestic policies. It further traces how personal links between individuals were maintained despite the communist regime collapse and party competition in post-1989 Hungary and Poland. More generally, this thesis emphasises the importance of taking these particular aspects of party activity and development into account within the context of the democratization research.
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GUGUSHVILI, Alexi. "Trends, covariates and consequences of intergenerational social mobility in post-socialist societies." Doctoral thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/32131.
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Defence date: 27 February 2014Examining Board: Professor Fabrizio Bernardi, European University Institute (Co-Supervisor) Professor Martin Kohli, European University Institute/Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (Supervisor) Professor Ellu Saar, Tallinn University Professor Martin K. Whyte, Harvard University.
This dissertation studies the trends, covariates and consequences of intergenerational social mobility in post-socialist societies. The existing literature does not provide an answer if crossnational differences in social mobility levels are determined by socialist legacies or by the divergent paths these countries followed in their transition from socialist to capitalist system. In addition to the industrialisation thesis and the role of income inequality, I study the implications of political democracy and economic liberalisation for intergenerational status reproduction. Individual-level consequences of mobility are explored using the socialpsychological concept of the self-serving bias in causal attribution, which implies that people are more likely to explain individual success as resulting from their own abilities and efforts. Market-based democratic systems, almost by definition, emphasise the importance of selfdetermination in shaping an individual's life chances. Thus, upwardly mobile groups are expected to show greater support of unequal reward distribution. The hypotheses are tested using multivariate and multilevel statistical methods based on data from the European Values Studies and Life in Transition Survey. Although I find evidence of the decisive role of social origin in predicting educational and occupational attainment, particularly during postsocialism, cross-country variation in intergenerational social mobility can largely be explained by the institutions that were in place immediately after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The findings suggest that while strong, positive links exist between social mobility and democracy levels in Western Europe, the economic liberalisation that took place in the early 1990s is the strongest predictor of why some post-socialist states have higher social mobility rates than others; subjective perceptions of mobility have stronger implications on attitudes than the objective mobility experience; upwardly mobile individuals do in fact demonstrate more support for inequality, democracy and market economy, but the strength of these links is mediated by macro-contextual variables.
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Velitchkova, Ana. "Cosmopolitan priming for change transnational social movements in communist Eastern Europe /." 2010. http://etd.nd.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-04162010-104051/.
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CEPIĆ, Dražen. "Class, friendship, and the postsocialist transition : identity work and patterns of stability in Central Europe - East and West." Doctoral thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/27181.
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Defence date: 26 March 2013Examining Board: Professor Martin Kohli (EUI), Supervisor Professor László Bruszt (EUI) Professor Graham Allan (Keele University) Professor Jörg Rössel (University of Zurich).
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In this thesis, I analyze the emergence of class boundaries in postsocialism in the realm of sociability and friendship making. The goal of this study is to provide a dynamic account of the ways actors draw symbolic boundaries toward people of different social status, as well as to explore the mechanisms of shifting those patterns across different "orders of worth”. At the same time, by using qualitative network analysis, it is addressed how these processes affected the actual choice of friends. I explored these issues by conducting indepth 105 interviews with upper middle class and working class respondents in Croatia and - in an asymmetric comparison - the upper middle class in Austria. The topic of class formation in postsocialism has been researched with qualitative, experience-near approach to friendship and identity building, as well as specific mechanisms through which these processes took place: the rise of private schooling, transnationalization, and the new entrepreneurial networks, sometimes crossing the bonds of legality, and entering the gray field of corruption and nepotism. At the same time, it is observed how the new influences were contradicted by the existing path dependencies - both in the form of the social hierarchies which managed to survive the project of destratification, and on the other hand, by legacies of the old regime in the form of egalitarian values. Finally, the area perspective does not represent a purpose to itself: even though postsocialism has stood in the center of this research, this study also contributes to the broader discussions about the nature of class divides in different contexts. Given the comprehensiveness of the theoretical and conceptual framework, this concerned several disciplinary fields: friendship studies, social network analysis, the scholarship on boundary maintenance, and even more abstract discussions on the role of actors in the times of social change. Despite the primarily empirical nature of my approach, this study also attempts to offer theoretical and methodological contributions in the broad field of study bound by cultural sociology, social anthropology, economic sociology, sociology of worth, and qualitative approaches to social stratification.
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Valkov, Nikolay. "Three essays on metamorphoses of social capital and associational culture in Eastern Europe." Thèse, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/4259.
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Ce triptyque d’essais présente le caractère versatile et évasif du concept
moderne de capital social à plusieurs niveaux – global, national et régional,
ainsi que dans le présent et dans le passé.
Le premier article conteste l’hypothèse prédominante selon laquelle il y
a une cohabitation entre l’engagement civique et la démocratie. Malgré sa
validité au niveau général, la relation n’est pas confirmée si les catégories
hétérogènes sont désagrégées. Pour les pays post-communistes de l'Europe, la
relation entre le type de régime et la tendance de s'associer ressemble à celle
des démocraties latines consolidées si la participation dans les associations
volontaires est choisie comme mesure de la vitalité du capital social. Par
conséquent, la vie civique moins intense ne prédit pas de difficultés pour la
démocratie.
Le deuxième article est une compilation originale de plus de 100
organisations classifiées selon les standards contemporains et une collection de
présentations d'une douzaine d'organisations bulgares, les plus populaires
depuis le XIXème siècle. Cette contribution importante à l’historiographie de la
vie associative bulgare jusqu’à 1944 est le résultat d'un travail qui combine des
entrevues avec des historiens et une recherche dans les archives. Le panoptique
organisationnel sert de réfutation empirique de l’hypothèse qui attribue la
faiblesse organisationnelle présente du poste-communisme à la pénurie de vie
organisationnelle développée par le passé.
ii
Les mérites du troisième article sont doubles. Au niveau empirique on
démontre que l’organisation culturelle la plus importante en Bulgarie a apparu
comme une institution nationaliste imitant les organisations similaires des
autres pays Européens. Elle s’est développée graduellement par une adaptation
des expériences étrangères aux conditions locales. La collection des références
bulgares est unique et représente le produit d’un travail méticuleux sur les
documents et les entrevues. Au niveau abstrait, on confirme l’applicabilité de la
théorie du transfert de la politique publique à un cas historique existant avant la
théorie elle-même. Finalement, l’analyse détaillée des précurseurs du cabinet de
lecture bulgare représente une contribution à la sociologie politique de l’histoire
de la lecture.
Mots clés: Europe de l’Est, poste-communisme, démocratie, société
civile, engagement civique, organisations volontaires, troisième secteur,
affiliation, transfert d'idées, apprentissage organisationnel.A triptych of essays presents the versatility and the evasiveness of the trendy concept of social capital on several planes – global, national, and regional, as well as in the present and in the past. The first article challenges the influential hypothesis that there is cohabitation between civic engagement and democracy. While valid at a general level, the relationship is not confirmed once heterogeneous categories are disaggregated. For the European post-Communist countries, the pattern of the relationship between the regime type and the propensity to associate closely resembles the one in Latin mature democracies, provided that membership in voluntary associations is chosen as a measurement of social capital. Less intensive civic life does not bode for predicaments in democracy. The second article is an original compilation of more than 100 organizations classified according to contemporary standards and a collection of narratives about a dozen of the most popular organizations in Bulgaria since the 19th century. This invaluable contribution to the historiography of Bulgarian associational life until 1944 is the result of field work which combined personal interviews with historians of the organizations and archival research of original documents. The organizational panopticon serves as an empirical refutation of the hypothesis inferring that present organizational weakness of post- Communism is due to the lack of developed organizational life in the past. The merits of the third article are twofold. On empirical level it is demonstrated that the most important cultural organization in Bulgaria emerged iv as a nation-building institution modeled initially by imitating similar ones in other European countries and later by adapting foreign experiences to the local specific conditions. The collection of original Bulgarian references is unique and it is again a product of meticulous work with documents and personal interviews. On a more abstract level it confirms the applicability of the voluminous and unstructured theory on policy transfer to a historical case existing before the appearance of the theory itself. Last, but not least, the overview of the major European precursors of the Bulgarian reading club represents a modest tribute to the less known field of political sociology of history of reading. Keywords: Eastern Europe, post-Communism, democracy, civil society, civic engagement, voluntary organizations, Third sector, membership, transfer of ideas, lesson-drawing.
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AVRAM, Silvia. "Economic disadvantage in Central and Eastern Europe : what difference does social assistance make?" Doctoral thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/24615.
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Defence date: 17 January 2013Examining Board: Professor Martin Kohli, European University Institute (Supervisor) Professor Chris de Neubourg, UNICEF-IRC (External Co-supervisor) Professor Fabrizio Bernardi, European University Institute Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, University of York.
The present study analyses the impact of social assistance programs on poverty, broadly construed as economic disadvantage, in eight Central and East European countries during the mid-2000s. It does that by examining cross-national & cross-temporal variation program features and specificities to identify patterns of association with outcomes of interest such as poverty levels, individual long-term income, earnings and assets. The main data source used throughout the study is the 2007 longitudinal component of the European Union-Survey of Income and Living Condition (EU-SILC). Social assistance programs in CEE are a marginal component of the social protection system in all eight countries. They serve small populations, spend relatively little compared to needs and the benefits they award are largely a top-up for their clients. Both the ability of the programs to reach the poor and, the ability to provide them with sufficient resources to bring them above the relative poverty threshold are found lacking. However, the more extensive and liberal programs achieved higher effectiveness in reducing poverty, and directed a greater share of their resources to the very poor. Contrary to theoretical expectations, no link was found between generosity and efficiency. Discretion has been linked to very poor targeting performance, suggesting arbitrariness in entitlement and spending decisions. No conclusive evidence of a work disincentive effect of social assistance programs could be discerned. Most importantly, any work disincentives that the programs might create could not be linked to the benefits they provide. Instead, lower future incomes appear to be related to program participation as such rather than disbursed benefits. Finally, social assistance programs could not be shown to impede asset accumulation among low-income households. With the exception of debt management, there are no indications that the income floor implicit in the programs represents a disincentive to saving.
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Rossbach, David Otto. "Cleavages, social engagement and trust in post-communist euroupe." 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-3233.
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This dissertation addresses generalized trust in Post-Communist Europe. I
examine trust stressing two sets of factors: the impact of attitudes associated with
cleavages coming out of transition to democracy, and the importance of informal
interpersonal association over more formal, structured forms of association. I argue that
the classic list of cleavages suggested by Lipset and Rokkan (1967) have less importance
to trust since those cleavages developed under the communist one-party state and were
therefore less connected to the party system. As a result, these classic cleavages did not
have the same mobilization functions as they did in Western Europe. Instead, I argue
that cleavages that have developed out of the transition to democracy and a free-market
economic system bear greater importance to trust.
I further argue that due to the experience of forced group association during the
communist era, and lingering distaste for formal political participation, the familiar
Western models of the benefits of social engagement underestimate the importance of
informal association in the post-communist states. Informal association was a key
component of survival during the communist era and continues to be a valuable means
of conferring information and forming political judgments. The first contribution this dissertation makes is that it brings together theories of
political cleavages with theories of trust and social capital development. The
dissertation bridges the gap between societal divisions and the position of the individual
within these divisions. A second contribution of the dissertation is the testing of
established theories of formal social engagement in post-communist states. The
secretive nature of association during the communist era differs greatly from the open
nature of association in the West. Theories of trust and social capital development must
take this fact into account when exploring post-communist states.
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Augustine, Daniela Christova. "At the crossroads of social transformation : an Eastern-European theological perspective." Thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/655.
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The present work examines the crossroads of social transformation from the contextual standpoint of the "Second World" - a political and socioeconomic term descriptively pointing to the unique location of the Former Eastern-European Block countries - in between worlds. The work involves in a dialogue some of the major trends within the contemporary Eastern-European philosophical environment: dichotomized between Neo-Marxism and Neo-Freudianism on the one hand, and Postmodernism on the other.
While examining the most significant elements between the dialectical paradigms for social change of the above theories (and their ethical foundations), the text strives towards a theological paradigmatic formulation for an authentic social transformation that draws its dialectical content and passion from the hopeful eschatological vision of Christ and the Kingdom as an embodiment of the Christian alternative for human emancipation and liberation. In light of this, the work attempts to establish the following thesis: the radical Christian praxis of the eschatological reality of the Kingdom in light of the Cross is the Church’s alternative to contemporary philosophies and initiatives for social transformation. This praxis affirms the revolutionary, history-shaping force which makes Christianity relevant to the problems of Modernity and Postmodernity through its self-identification with the Crucified God. It marks the moment of conception of an authentic, liberating, life giving, transforming hope as a source of humanization and redemption of social order.
Christianity is concerned with the birth and formation of a new socio-political reality - the Kingdom of God, and its embodiment on earth (through the Holy Spirit) in a new ethnos: the Church, the Body of Christ, the communion of the saints. Therefore, it is the Church's calling and obligation to exemplify the reality of the Kingdom, being a living extension of the living Christ and thus, the incarnation of the eschatological future of the world and its hopeful horizon in the midst of the present.
Recognizing the vital need for a relevant Christian response to the spiritual demands of the Post-modern human being and his/her desacralized, pluralistic socio political context, the work concludes with a conceptual outline offering a strategy for the Church in the Postmodern setting.Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology
D.Th. (Theological Ethics)
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Minagawa, Yuka. "The social consequences of the fall of Communism : a sociological analysis of the health crisis in Eastern Europe." 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/21250.
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Sociological interest in the relationship between the social structure and health began with the classic work of Durkheim, who first identified socially constructed patterns of suicide rates in Western European countries. Drawing on this structural tradition, a large literature has investigated how health is influenced and shaped by societal factors. Despite a great deal of research on the social causation of health, however, the potentially adverse effects of social structures have been rarely studied. If people's health is linked to broader social conditions, then it follows that health is also subject to societal disruption, especially in the wake of the breakdown or failure of the existing social structure. This dissertation advances our understanding of the relationship between the social structure and health at the population level, focusing on post-communist Eastern Europe as a case study. There are three interrelated goals in this dissertation: first, to elucidate differences in health and mortality outcomes between East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union; second, to numerically substantiate the association between drastic social change and the risk of death due to suicide; and third, to reveal the structural factors related to overall population health status in Eastern Europe. Using aggregate-level data for Eastern European countries for the post-communist period, I find that (1) there are growing inequalities in life expectancy and infant mortality between East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, and mechanisms associated with disparities vary by gender and age; (2) consistent with Durkheim's theory of suicide, drastic structural change is related to increased suicide death rates for the period immediately after the collapse of communism; and (3) the malfunctioning of the social structure is inversely associated with the health status of populations. Taken together, fully understanding the health consequences of communism's fall in Eastern Europe requires research that looks beyond individual-level risk factors to incorporate the broader characteristics of the social structure in which populations are embedded.text
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Cerami, Alfio [Verfasser]. "Social policy in Central and Eastern Europe: the emergence of a new European model of solidarity? / Alfio Cerami." 2005. http://d-nb.info/974405647/34.
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