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The common critique of media- and ratings-driven politics envisions democracy falling hostage to a popularity contest. By contrast, the following book reconceives politics as a speculative Keynesian beauty contest that alienates itself from the popular audience it ceaselessly targets. Political actors unknowingly lean on collective beliefs about the popular expectations they seek to gratify, and thus do not follow popular public opinion as it is, but popular public opinion about popular public opinion.This book unravels how collective discourses on “the popular” have taken the role of intermediary between political elites and electorates. The shift has been driven by the idea of “liquid control:” that postindustrial electorates should be reached through flexibly designed media campaigns based on a complete understanding of their media-immersed lives. Such a complex representation of popular electorates, actors have believed, cannot be secured by rigid bureaucratic parties, but has to be distilled from the collective wisdom of the crowd of consultants, pollsters, journalists and pundits commenting on the political process.The mediatization of political representation has run a strikingly similar trajectory to the marketization of capital allocation in finance: starting from a rejection of bureaucratic control, promising a more “liquid” alternative, attempting to detect a collective wisdom (of/about “the markets” and “the people”), and ending up in self-driven spirals of collective speculation.
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This study analyses the context in which the Security Sector Reform (SSR) has taken place in Albania since the fall of the communist regime. It has been conceptualised in three main periods, based on the social, political and economic perspectives that featured each phase during the process of Security Sector Reform. In this perspective, the beginning of the first period coincides with the collapse of communist regime in 1991 and ends with the 1997 crisis. Although Albania was never involved in the armed conflict and border reshuffle that featured the Former Yugoslav countries during the 90s, it largely suffered from backwardness and isolation, a legacy from the Cold War. This period was mostly characterised by the establishment of first generation reforms: the establishment of new institutions, structures, and chains of responsibility for the security sector. Nonetheless the process of first generation reform was not nalised, due to the crisis in 19971 which led to the collapse of the government. This represents the beginning of the second period: from 1997 to 2000. The third and final period efforts, namely the period from 2000 until 2009, seem to be more benefiting and realistic for the country considering the pace of SSR, contributing in the consolidation of the security sector institutions and governance.
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In 1948 in his seminal study “The Jewish Question in Hungary After 1944” István Bibó did draw attention to the role of Hungarian society at large in the implementation of the logic of the Holocaust. Bibó bravely suggested “that the anti-Jewish legislative measures were supported, if not by a clearly visible majority, then at least by a force more massive than their opponents.” What Bibó saw to be a “slippage” from the 1930s onwards resulted in the events of 1944, which Bibó interpreted as evidence of “the moral decline of Hungarian society.” Bibó claims that the opportunities for upward mobility that ‘non-Jews’ seized in 1944 Hungary provided “an appalling picture of insatiable avarice, a hypocritical lack of scruples, or at best cold opportunism in a sizeable segment of this society that was profoundly shocking not only to the Jews involved, but also all decent Hungarians.” This question of postwar remembrance of the Holocaust is of continuing relevance. History is a subject of interest not simply to historians; it has contemporary implications. Whether the Holocaust in Hungary is remembered as a part of or apart from Hungarian history has important implications for the kind of past Hungary remembers. (Tim Cole in Hungary and the Holocaust/Confrontation with the Past/Symposium Proceedings/Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2001)
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The book contains three Holocaust narratives. They are the recollections of ordinary people whose experiences comprise their sole writing, story and message. The three pieces are not just the narratives of three different fates, but also present three different sociological backgrounds, all characteristic of Hungarian Jewry. And emphasis is placed on three different stages in the Holocaust narrative. Pál Kádár’s story (“A körgyógynapszámos” [The seasonal healer]) presents the life of a village doctor and his family – until their deportation to Auschwitz. The narrative featured in the collection’s title (Kornélia Terner: “Az út szélén” [At the edge of the road]) describes all three stages: the uprooting of a Jewish rural household, the events at Auschwitz, and the emotional difficulties of readjusting to ordinary life under the communist system, as well as the wounds that would not heal and finally the outburst after the last political upturn in 1989. Júlia Fodor-Wieg’s piece “Ezekből az emlékekből fogok élni” [I am going to live on these memories] describes the Holocaust as it was experienced by upper-middle-class Jews. The other great Hungarian narrative on the Holocaust is the hunt for men in the jungle of Budapest. The focus of her story continues until her departure from Hungary in 1957. She tells of the demise of a plundered Jewish middle-class, a great and credible document of the will and capacity for life. All three pieces bring us closer to ordinary people who are also heroes. Visual records of the destroyed world illustrate the book. In the epilogue The Holocaust as Narrative, János Kőbányai, who collected the memoirs, analyses and typifies the Hungarian Holocaust as a historical and cultural phenomenon on the lines of Imre Kertész’s “great narrative”.
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Książka jest pierwszą w naszej literaturze przedmiotu autorską próbą analizy przemian w życiu międzynarodowym po zimnej wojnie. Roman Kuźniar nie uchyla się przy tym od ocen. Polityka bowiem, podobnie jak inne sfery ludzkiej aktywności, nie dzieje się poza dobrem i złem. Książka ma przy tym charakter systematycznego wykładu, który obejmuje wszystkie regiony świata oraz główne dziedziny i problemy stosunków międzynarodowych w tym okresie. Punktem wyjścia rozważań jest konsekwentne przedstawienie przebiegu zimnej wojny. Następnie autor opisuje wydarzenia i procesy z okresu dwóch następnych dekad – istotnie różniących się od siebie. Od kryzysu 2008 datuje zaś nową epokę.Książka adresowana jest w szczególności do studentów stosunków międzynarodowych, ale jest też niezastąpioną lekturą dla wszystkich interesujących się problemami współczesnego świata.
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Wiktor Woroszylski followed a path characteristic for many Polish intellectuals in the second half of the 20th century: from entanglement in communism to active opposition to it. He was not only a witness but also a participant of many events of key significance for the post-war history who also influenced them.It is a chronicle of a non-conformist group, written down at a time when keeping such records required great courage, and, at the same time, an expressive portrait of that group, strengthened internally by friendship and mutual loyalty, which has finally become a timeless example of freedom.Crowds, people released from jail, the whole group, one can hardly work out, probably more than one hundred people, press, talks about what has happened, and euphoria again. I was not imaginative enough to realize what happened; I treated the whole work of the Workers’ Defence Committee, etc., in the past years more as a way to save our souls and perhaps create some islands of internal freedom but I did not take into account the prospects of social victory on such a scale.
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Three months which changed Ukraine written down through the testimonies of individuals: recordings, diaries, memoirs, blogs or Facebook entries. The multitude of experiences makes up a universal story of the phenomenon of Ukrainian breakthrough which started with a peaceful rally in defence of pro-European orientation of the country and ended with the revolution in Kiev and the overthrow of a criminal president. It was the time when the Ukrainians started speaking with a full voice about their right to free choice, about honesty, truth, and dignity, and finally took to the streets in their defence at any cost.
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Three months which changed Ukraine written down through the testimonies of individuals: recordings, diaries, memoirs, blogs or Facebook entries. The multitude of experiences makes up a universal story of the phenomenon of Ukrainian breakthrough which started with a peaceful rally in defence of pro-European orientation of the country and ended with the revolution in Kiev and the overthrow of a criminal president. It was the time when the Ukrainians started speaking with a full voice about their right to free choice, about honesty, truth, and dignity, and finally took to the streets in their defence at any cost.
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For years it has been emphasised that after the Operation “Storm” at the start of August 1995, some 250 000 Croatian citizens of Serb nationality were expelled from Croatia, probably in order to highlight the sheer scale of the drama of that moment and of the people who fled. Unfortunately, the number is far greater: more than 400,000 Serbs left Croatia during the 1991-1995 war that raged on the territory of this former Yugoslav Socialist Republic. In the beginning, ever since the HDZ party came to power in 1990, they had been coming in Serbia quietly ”with two suitcases and a back¬pack“. They started coming after the first layoffs, after threats below their windows and nasty looks from their neighbors, from anonymous tele¬phone calls and graffiti on the walls containing the letter “U”. It was a time of nationalist triumphalism, a time of invoking ”Croatia within its historic and ethnic borders”, a time when (the first Croatian president) Franjo Tuđman cried out a sentence that is still quoted today, that the ”NDH was also an expression of the Croatian people’s historic will”.
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A man can be deprived of his house and land, he can lose money and health and homeland, but something will always remain to provide strength and will for a new start. But take away a man’s dignity and there will appear an emptiness that nothing can assuage, and it will fill him with disappointment and anxiety. Thus he will lose the last foot¬hold from which he has drawn the strength needed to overcome all the trials and tribulations, to stay and survive.
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“It is not easy to predict the future course of events, which will depend to a large extent on the overall political situation in the USSR” is the cautious evaluation of the confidential expert report for the North Atlantic Council in October 1989. In 1988‒1991, the relationship was fundamentally transformed between the Western alliance system led by the United States and the East European socialist bloc dominated by the Soviet Union. The military, political, cultural, and ideological confrontation – with the weakening of Moscow and the collapse of its empire – was replaced during a few months by a new type of cooperation of the parties separated previously by the Iron Curtain. The eight reports from the NATO Archives (formerly classified confidential), published in the present volume for the first time in English, illuminate the East European events of these four eventful years from the perspective of expert advisors of the alliance. How were these dramatic changes in Eastern Europe perceived and interpreted in Brussels?
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The fourth volume of the extensive (ten-volume) monograph by Polish Slavic studies scholars (with contributions from scholars from a number of foreign research centres), made possible by an NCN OPUS grant (2014/13/B/HS2/01057). In terms of form, the monograph is a lexicon, the main body of which consists of entries-articles on the history of 27 selected ideas that anticipated and shaped the processes of modernization in the region: agrarianism, anarchism, capitalism, clericalization, confessions, conservatism, culture, education, enlightenment, evolution, history, homeland, humanism, liberalism, modernity, nation, politics, progress, rationalism, reformation, religion, revolution, schooling, secularization, socialism, tradition, and universalism. Their semantics, changeable as it was in response to local conditions, was investigated separately for each of the seven current states of the southern Slavdom: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Volume 4 presents the three ideas – modernity, secularization, and progress – that are at the foundations of global political, cultural and even religious imagery. The book contains many synthetically expressed, original, and source-based insights on the southern Slavic cultures’ struggles with modernity.
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The fifth volume of the extensive (ten-volume) monograph by Polish Slavic studies scholars (with contributions from scholars from a number of foreign research centres), made possible by an NCN OPUS grant (2014/13/B/HS2/01057). In terms of form, the monograph is a lexicon, the main body of which consists of entries-articles on the history of 27 selected ideas that anticipated and shaped the processes of modernization in the region: agrariarism, anarchism, capitalism, clericalization, confessions, conservatism, culture, education, enlightenment, evolution, history, homeland, humanism, liberalism, modernity, nation, politics, progress, rationalism, reformation, religion, revolution, schooling, secularization, socialism, tradition, and universalism. Their semantics, changeable as it was in response to local conditions, was investigated separately for each of the seven current states of the southern Slavdom: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Volume 5 presents the three ideas – culture, schooling, and humanism – that are at the foundations of the European discourses of modernization and anti-modernization, of the European imaginary of the human intellectual condition as the key to the formation of societies. The book contains many synthetically expressed, original and source- -based insights on the southern Slavic cultures’ struggles with modernity
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The sixth volume of the extensive (ten-volume) monograph by Polish Slavic studies scholars (with contributions from scholars from a number of foreign research centres), made possible by an NCN OPUS grant (2014/13/B/HS2/01057). In terms of form, the monograph is a lexicon, the main body of which consists of entries-articles on the history of 27 selected ideas that anticipated and shaped the processes of modernization in the region: agrariarism, anarchism, capitalism, clericalization, confessions, conservatism, culture, education, enlightenment, evolution, history, homeland, humanism, liberalism, nation, modernity, politics, progress, rationalism, reformation, religion, revolution, schooling, secularization, socialism, tradition, and universalism. Their semantics, changeable as it was in response to local conditions, was investigated separately for each of the seven current states of the southern Slavdom: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Volume 6 presents the three ideas – education, tradition, universalism – that are at the foundations of the European discourses of modernization and anti-modernization, of the European imaginary of the human intellectual condition as the key to the formation of societies. The book contains many synthetically expressed, original and source-based insights on the southern Slavic cultures’ struggles with modernity.
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The seventh volume of the extensive (ten-volume) monograph by Polish Slavic studies scholars (with contributions from scholars from a number of foreign research centres), made possible by an NCN OPUS grant (2014/13/B/HS2/01057). In terms of form, the monograph is a lexicon, the main body of which consists of entries-articles on the history of 27 selected ideas that anticipated and shaped the processes of modernization in the region: agrariarism, anarchism, capitalism, clericalization, confessions, conservatism, culture, education, enlightenment, evolution, history, homeland, humanism, liberalism, modernity, nation, politics, progress, rationalism, reformation, religion, revolution, schooling, secularization, socialism, tradition, and universalism. Their semantics, change able as it was in response to local conditions, was investigated separately for each of the seven current states of the southern Slavdom: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Volume 7 presents the three ideas – clericalization, confessions, reformation – that are at the foundations of the European discourses of modernization and anti-modernization, and of the European imaginary of the human intellectual condition as the key to the formation of societies. The book contains many synthetically expressed, original and source-based insights on the southern Slavic cultures’ struggles with modernity.
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The ninth volume of the extensive (ten-volume) monograph by Polish Slavic studies scholars (with contributions from scholars from a number of foreign research centres), made possible by an NCN OPUS grant (2014/13/B/HS2/01057). In terms of form, the monograph is a lexicon, the main body of which consists of entries-articles on the history of 27 selected ideas that anticipated and shaped the processes of modernization in the region: agrarianism, anarchism, capitalism, clericalization, confessions, conservatism, culture, education, enlightenment, evolution, history, homeland, humanism, liberalism, modernity, nation, politics, progress, rationalism, reformation, religion, revolution, schooling, secularization, socialism, tradition, and universalism. Their semantics, change able as it was in response to local conditions, was investigated separately for each of the seven current states of the southern Slavdom: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Volume 9 presents the three ideas – agrarianism, anarchism, and socialism – that are at the foundations of the European discourses of modernization and anti-modernization, of the European imaginary of the human intellectual condition as the key to the formation of societies. The book contains many synthetically expressed, original and source-based insights on the southern Slavic cultures’ struggles with modernity.
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The tenth volume of the extensive (ten-volume) monograph by Polish Slavic studies scholars (with contributions from scholars from a number of foreign research centres), made possible by an NCN OPUS grant (2014/13/B/HS2/01057). In terms of form, the monograph is a lexicon, the main body of which consists of entries-articles on the history of 27 selected ideas that anticipated and shaped the processes of modernization in the region: agrarianism, anarchism, capitalism, clericalization, confessions, conservatism, culture, education, enlightenment, evolution, history, homeland, humanism, liberalism, modernity, nation, politics, progress, rationalism, reformation, religion, revolution, schooling, secularization, socialism, tradition, and universalism. Their semantics, changeable as it was in response to local conditions, was investigated separately for each of the seven current states of the southern Slavdom: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Volume 10 differs from the nine previous instalments of the Lexicon in the character and function of the studies it contains, termed “subordinate entries”. They supplement the “primary entries” (from Volumes 1 through 9) with the presentation and analysis of events and tendencies which were deemed worthy of exploration due to their multidirectional and multivalued functionalizations within collective imageries, but which – due to spatial limitations – did not fit in the main texts. The headwords of the 92 arbitrarily chosen subordinate entries belong to the heterogeneous order of common-sense thought characteristic of the studied cultures of the Slavic South; they are sui generis “sites of memory”, stored in the lapidaria of cultural consciousness. The variety of discourses and ways of talking about the world brought together in the volume illustrates the contingency associated with the production of local ideas about the so-called cultural universals of modernity.
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