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New democracies are uniquely positioned to promote democratic values and have a competitive advantage in the global democracy assistance industry. This book examines the attempts of one group of young democracies, from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), to channel this pro-democracy agenda into both national and European foreign policy and development support. It looks at how CEE is ‘upstream’ changing the EU on crucial policy issues as part of the common foreign and security policy. Furthermore, it tracks the process whereby imported ideas and norms are recycled for further export ‘downstream’, and how these concepts are received in countries outside of the EU including the post-Soviet space, the Western Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa region and Central Asia. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of democratisation studies, European Union studies, comparative politics, international relations, international development, European politics, as well as area/regional studies.
Offers a fresh perspective on recent human rights history by reconstructing debates around dissent and human rights across four countries.
With Russian shells raining on Kyiv and tanks closing in, American forces prepared to evacuate Ukraine's leader. Just three years earlier, his apparent main qualification had been playing a president on TV. But Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly retorted, 'I need ammunition, not a ride.' Ukrainian forces won the battle for Kyiv, ensuring their country's independence even as a longer war began for the southeast. You cannot understand the historic events of 2022 without understanding Zelensky. But the Zelensky effect is less about the man himself than about the civic nation he embodies: what makes Zelensky most extraordinary in war is his very ordinariness as a Ukrainian. The Zelensky Effect explains this paradox, exploring Ukraine's national history to show how its now-iconic president reflects the hopes and frustrations of the country's first 'independence generation'. Interweaving social and political background with compelling episodes from Zelensky's life and career, this is the story of Ukraine told through the journey of one man who has come to symbolize his country.
This edited volume brings together critical insights that address the multifaceted problems of governance and democracy in the developing regions with specific reference to Africa. It explores both the externally prescribed and home-grown governance initiatives geared toward democracy and development, and suggests alternative strategies to improve the processes and institutions of governance. The chapters in the book deal with major concerns related to governance, including the strengths and limits of existing policies and practices and the structure and role of state and non-state institutions in promoting democracy and participation. All these issues, in general, have great significance for realizing an authentic and enduring mode of democratic governance in the developing world.
This latest and final report in the Kremlin Playbook series explores how the United States and its European allies can protect the religious beliefs and values of their citizens from malign influence at a time when transatlantic societies are grappling with the speed of societal change. Societal anxiety and fear related to these rapid economic, demographic, and generational shifts—and the subsequent politics and political figures that seek to capitalize on them—have fueled societal divisions around the so-called cultural wars in Western societies. Through two main channels, the Orthodox world and the traditional values ecosystem, the Kremlin has taken advantage of these fears to accentuate societal wedges in Europe and Eurasia.
The year 2017 has been an uneasy one for the EU, with so-called Brexit on the horizon and the rise of populist euroskepticism in a number of Member States. This year, with the tenth anniversary of the Romanian and Bulgarian accession to the Union, is a good year to pause and reflect over the life and future of the Union. In this work, we envision the next decade with Europe 2020 strategy and review the fruits of the 2004 accession in Central and Eastern Europe. What has the Union achieved? Which policy areas are likely to change and how? How successful, and by what measure, has the accession of the 10 Member States in 2004 been? Reviewing European Union Accession addresses a wide range of issues, deliberately without any thematic constraints, in order to explore EU enlargement from a variety of perspectives, both scientific and geographical, internal and external. In contrast to the major works in this field, we highlight the interrelated, and often unexpected, nature of the integration process – hence the subtitle, unexpected results, spillover effects and externalities.
The 2010’s was a critical period in the continuing, established trend of the spread of democracy worldwide: from the Arab Spring countries of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen to the unfolding turmoil of Myanmar and Ukraine, by way of the upheavals in Burkina Faso, Senegal and Ivory Coast, social mobilisation against autocratic, corrupt, or military regimes has precipitated political transitions that are characteristic of "democratisation." This book examines the state of democratisation theory and practice that reopens and revives the democratic transition debate, exploring the factors that lead to the demise of autocracy, the pathways and processes of change, and the choice for an eventual...
Written by a leading international expert on European integration, this volume examines the European Union in a period of hesitation about future integration in the early twenty-first century.
This book explores the substance and strategies of democracy promotion conducted by the Visegrad Group states (V4) – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. As these states are currently deemed to face democratic backsliding over thirty years after their own democratic transformations, the book discusses how democracy promotion is related to the four countries’ understanding of liberalism and democracy and to their political cultures. It also addresses the question of what motivates the V4 states to engage in the politically sensitive activities of democracy assistance and how they intend to share their own experience and know-how of the democratic transformation process. The book concludes by discussing the possible future developments in the respective states’ democracy promotion agendas. Examining the strategies, substance, and the domestic discourse related to the Visegrad states’ democracy promotion policies, the book presents a much-needed reflection on a niche subject in the foreign policy agendas of these post-communist states for academics and practitioners alike.
This edited collection addresses the dynamics of the post-Communist transition in Central Eastern Europe. Its contributors present a detailed analysis of the events unfolding during the last three decades in the region, focusing in particular on identity-building processes and reforms in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The contributors outline reasons why some of these states accomplished a decisive break with the Communist past and became members of European and transatlantic structures, while some opted for pseudo-transition and fostered hybrid political regimes, jeopardizing their genuine integration with th...