Search results for "Post communist"
showing 10 items of 10 documents
Social Commentary as Biographical Work: Post-Communist Autobiographies in Latvia
2010
(2010). Social Commentary as Biographical Work: Post-Communist Autobiographies in Latvia. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies: Vol. 25, The Work of Life Writing, pp. 249-263.
Socio-economic differentiation in the post-communist rural Baltics : the case of three kolkhozes
2016
ABSTRACTThis paper uses longitudinal quantitative data to examine socio-economic differentiation in the rural Baltic areas after decollectivization. It argues that the rural social structure in the post-Soviet Baltics is best determined by two criteria: source of income (income from farming entrepreneurship or income from salaries) and land holdings. Four rural groups are identified: people getting their main income from farming can be differentiated into large landowners engaged in the commercial production of agricultural goods and people with small or medium-sized farms; and people earning their main income from wages can be separated into people with no farming activities and people who…
The politics of mourning in post-communist Romania: unravelling the thanatopolitics of grievable deaths
2019
National days of mourning are state-sponsored rituals of collective grief enacted in the public sphere by political authorities to symbolically mark and emotionally cope with a socially significant...
Regional Inequalities, Decentralisation and the Performance of Local Governments in Post-Communist Romania
2011
Abstract The economic growth that has occurred in post-communist Romania has polarised society and greatly increased existing inequalities. The aim of this paper is to investigate regional disparities, to underline the role of governmental mechanisms in smoothing out territorial inequalities, and to examine the possible effects of regional economic disparities on the performance of regional administrations in delivering public services, in the light of the new regionalisation debate. The conclusion is that Romanian counties' institutional performance does not completely correlate with regional wealth; but regional disparities and the mechanisms used to smooth out inequalities have to be tak…
A Glimpse over the Rising Walls
2009
The authors focus on societal perceptions of the Polish post-communist transformation as reflected in the rising discourse of gated communities. Guarded, (video-) controlled and/or walled housing estates have been on the sprawl in the Polish metropolises throughout the 1990s and 2000s. However, only recently they have been discursively constructed—under the banner of “gated communities”—as a social and political issue in the country. The authors look at this issue from a vantage point offered by Laclau and Mouffe's theory of discourse, which allows the authors to combine a spatial and a linguistic analytical perspective. The analysis emphasizes the manner in which societal perceptions of b…
Territorial fragmentation in post-communist Romania: the not so curious case of a de-amalgamation reform
2021
Abstract The efficiency-driven trend towards amalgamation characterising local government reforms in Europe seems to have escaped Romania, which displays a significant increase in the number of local governments post-1989. This is the result of rural first-tier local governments splitting into smaller units. The paper examines objective factors and subjective motivations that have shaped the behaviour of both national and local actors in dealing with territorial reform. First, it explores the rationale and rationality of a central government initiative to facilitate municipal splits against a set of criteria derived from the literature. Second, it examines the municipal splits occurring bet…
Explaining the Formation Rates of Post-Communist Interest Organizations: Density Dependence and Political Opportunity Structure
2020
This article presents an analysis of the formation of organized interest groups in the post-communist context and organizational populations over time. We test two theories that shed doubt on whether vital rates of interest groups are explained by individual incentives, namely, the political opportunity structure and population ecology theory. Based on an analysis of the energy policy and higher education policy organizations active at the national level in Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia, we find that while the period of democratic and economic transition indeed opened up the opportunity structure for organizational formations, it by no means presented a clean slate. Communist-era successor…
’Civilising’ the Transitional Generation: The Politics of Civic Education in Post-Communist Romania
2019
Abstract The paper examines the introduction of civic education in post-communist Romania as an educational means of civilising in a democratic ethos the children of the transition. Particularly close analytical attention is paid to a) the political context that shaped the decision to introduce civic education, b) the radical changes in both content and end purpose of civics brought about by educational policies adopted for accelerating the country’s efforts of integrating into the Euro-Atlantic structures (NATO and the European Union), and c) the actual consequences that these educational policies betting on civics have had on the civic values expressed by Romanian teenagers. The analysis …
Employee ‘voice’ and working environment in post-communist New Member States: an empirical analysis of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
2008
This article examines employee ‘voice’ in workplace health and safety in three Baltic New Member States by means of a cross-national survey. The data point to unresolved problems of voice in the context of rather poor working environments. These present opportunities for collective renewal by trade unions, but paradoxically are more likely to be addressed by employers in the context of significant labour shortages created by a post-European Union accession labour ‘exit’.
Transitional Politics of Memory: Political Strategies of Managing the Past in Post-communist Romania
2017
The article develops a typology of political strategies of coming to terms with the past as a theoretical frame of reference against which it assesses the transitional politics of memory pursued in...