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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/13731

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The Beginnings of Anti-Jewish Legislation: The 1920 Numerus Clausus Law in Hungary
(CEU Press, 2023) Kovács, Mária M.; Other
The Nazi 1933 Civil Service Law and the 1935 Nuremberg Laws are often considered the first anti-Jewish decrees in interwar Europe. Mária M. Kovács convincingly argues that Hungary’s numerus clausus law of 1920, which introduced a Jewish quota at Hungary’s institutions of higher learning, was, in fact, interwar Europe’s first antisemitic law. By defining—and discriminating against—Jews as a separate “racial” or “national” group, it abrogated the principle of equal rights that had been enshrined into law; as such, it marked an abrupt reversal of Jewish emancipation in Hungary. Moreover, the numerus clausus law set the stage for subsequent “Jewish Laws” (in the late 1930s and early 1940s) that sought to solve Hungary’s “Jewish Question” by means of extraordinary legal measures that targeted Jews alone. This book examines the origins and implementation of the numerus clausus, as well as the attempts to dampen its impact on Hungary’s international reputation, focusing on the debates surrounding it promulgation (1920), its modification (1928) and its eventual application to other areas of Jewish life (1938–45).
A Task for Sisyphus
(CEU Press, 2019) Rostas, Iulius; Other
Despite an increasing number of EU and government initiatives in their favor, the situation of Roma in Europe has only worsened. This book explores the many miscalculations, misconceptions, and blunders that have led to this failure. Looking at Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania, Rostas shows how policy makers in each country have mishandled already confused EU policy, from failing to define “Roma” to not having a way to evaluate their own progress. Rostas further argues that the alleged successes of these policies were actually the product of poor information and sometimes outright deception. Examining perennial topics among Roma like school segregation and political representation, the author shows how often the so-called success of Roma policies can be fallacious and simply pave the way for further problems. Rostas maintains that when the EU’s Framework for Roma program comes to an end in 2020, there must be a fundamental shift in policy for there to be any real improvement for Roma. Policy makers will have to address Roma issues not only in terms of poverty and social exclusion but also in terms of the particular nature of Romani ethnic identity. This shift requires reconceiving Roma as a “politically insular minority” and rearranging the power dynamics of local government to ensure that when the new era of Roma policy begins Roma themselves will have a voice in its formulation.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Gender+ Inequalities in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia: The Heteronormativity of Anti- Pandemic Measures and Their Impact on Vulnerable Groups
(Czech Academy of Sciences, 2023) Černohorská, Vanda; Očenášová, Zuzana; Kende, Agnes; Democracy Institute
Various research studies suggest that women and other vulnerable groups are the ones who were impacted most and who continue to suffer from the economic and social effects of the pandemic. However, these groups have often been omitted from the measures mitigating the pandemic impact due to their invisibility in the policy-knowledge nexus. This article draws on the findings from the international RESISTIRÉ research project, which focuses on how COVID-19 policies impacted gendered inequalities in Europe. Building on feminist institutionalism and an intersectional approach, we contribute to the debate on how existent gender regimes have shaped anti-pandemic policies in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. While examining policy responses, we identified two main meta-frames that are present across the countries in our analysis and that increased gender+ inequalities: the neoliberal model of active citizens that ties the redistribution of aid to labour market activity and the heteronormative family narrative. This narrative has led to those who do not fit within its framework being ignored in policies and to attacks on those groups in an effort to reinforce the narrative’s hegemony. The impact of these frames was further amplified by practices of non-inclusive decision-making (in all three countries), where gender expertise was excluded as politicised and biased.
Beyond lawfare: An analysis of law's temporality through Russian-doll urbanization from Turkey
(Wiley, 2023) Civelek, Cansu; Democracy Institute
This article opens a discussion about how temporalities in spatial and legal spheres are interlinked and shape both policymaking and governance mechanisms and resistance practices. Taking a case study from Eskişehir, Turkey, the research examines several urban renewal attempts of a municipality on the same urban lands over two decades that used different laws and policy tools in each case while all of which were annulled by court suits. From a perspective of legal anthropology, the analysis shows the limits of lawfare discussions that remain incapable of explaining cases that cannot be categorized with domination and resistance. Instead of focusing on detecting who wins or loses, the article claims that such complex cases could be understood better by scrutinizing temporal dynamics: how do legal, spatial, and social temporalities intertwine and impact policymaking? More specifically, how does the law's temporality (re)shape urbanization? Even further, what political work do temporalities generate? The article offers Russian-doll urbanization as an analogy and ethnographic metaphor to examine several layers and endlessness of renewal initiatives within the broader process of urbanization. Studying the revelation of each layer unravels entangled temporalities of law and socio-spatial dynamics and their consequences in policymaking and resistance.
Ukraine's Patronal Democracy and the Russian Invasion: The Russia-Ukraine War, Volume One
(CEU Press, 2023) Madlovics, Bálint; Magyar, Bálint; Democracy Institute
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 jeopardizes the country's independence and its chances for Western-style development. However, the heroic attitude of the Ukrainian people, combined with a solidifying national identity, makes the domestic foundations for a western turn stronger than ever. After the invasion, building strong foundations of liberal democracy will be a top priority. In addition to alleviating immediate problems, the country must also address its post-communist legacy and address the constraints of patronalism. The authors of this edited volume, leading Ukrainian scholars supplemented by colleagues from Hungary, examine the chances of an anti-patronal transformation after the war. The book provides an overview of the development of Ukraine's political-economic system: color revolutions in 2004 and 2014 brought democratic transformation, but no change in the patronage system The result was patronal regime cycles instead of the emergence of a Western-type liberal democracy in the country. Building on the conceptual framework of the editors' The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2020), the 12 chapters examine the impact of the war on patronal democracy, the relational economy, clientelist society, and the international environment in which Ukraine operates.
Von Differenzlinien und moralischen Mehrheiten: Majoritäre Identitätspolitiken als soft-autoritäre Herrschaftspraxis
(Wiener Gesellschaft für interkulturelle Philosophie (WiGiP), 2022) Adam, Jens; Steinhauer, Hagen; Randeria, Shalini; Other Academic Units
This article examines the role of majoritarian identity politics in soft authoritarian attacks on democracy. Drawing on examples from France and Poland, we argue that in their struggle for cultural and political hegemony, right-wing actors use strategies like the demonisation of emancipatory politics, the problematization of difference and self-victimisation of »racial« or ethnoreligious majorities. Highlighting three political buzzwords (namely séparatisme, islamo-gauchisme and wokisme), our first case study traces shifts in French public discourse towards a conjunction and normalization of islamophobe, racist and anti-intellectual stances. Ethnographic observations about recent anti-LGBT discourses and restrictive border policies in Poland showcase the mobilization of political affects to transform the body politic into an exclusive identarian moral community. We close the article with a pledge to take seriously current attempts to redefine Europe as a closed formation with a fixed essence and stable identity.
The development of the conversation skills assessment tool
(SAGE Publications, 2023) Politis, Yurgos; Clemente, Ian; Lim, Zihyun; Sung, Connie; Other Academic Departments
Having a conversation with someone or even more within a group of people is complex. We are never taught at school how to do it, which implies we consider having a conversation as something simple and straightforward. Instead, we just learn from observing others. Some people are great conversationalists – it comes naturally to them – while others struggle. Some people may not fully understand how the process works, how turn-taking happens, don’t understand visual cues such as body language and facial expressions, and fail to comprehend that some topics may be appropriate or inappropriate. This can be the case for both neurotypical and neurodivergent people. The Conversation skills Assessment Tool has been developed in this first instance to help in assessing and examining conversation skills in an intervention with young autistic adults on a virtual platform (a virtual world). This paper will present the evolution of the new measure through the exploratory phase, the development phase and finally a detailed account of the inter-rater reliability process.
Which pathways to respond to the energy crisis? Recommendations on EU financial instruments
(Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development, Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, 2022) Bokhorst, David; Lutringer, Christine; Mexi, Maria; Monti, Luciano; Randeria, Shalini; Žarković, Jelena; Other Academic Units
At the EU and country levels, debates on the future of the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience (RRPs) and the capacity of existing plans to face the energy crisis have delineated different scenarios. Experts gathered during the Geneva Democracy Week workshop “Programming and managing public funds at time of crises: European scenarios” discussed the implications of the crisis on the management and expenditure of public funds in Europe.
A Post-Development Perspective on the EU’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences
(Cogitatio Press, 2022) Orbie, Jan; Alcazar III, Antonio Salvador M.; Sioen, Tinus; Other
Trade policy is generally considered to be a key leverage in the pursuit of labor norms, environmental standards, and human rights. This is even more so for the European Union (EU), which exerts an extensive market power and exclusive competences in trade while lacking a full-fledged foreign policy. In recent years, there has been a growing demand for making sustainable development provisions “enforceable” and for more frequently applying trade sanctions. Taking a post-development perspective, we interrogate the EU’s enforceability discourse around the trade–sustainability nexus. We focus specifically on the conditionality behind the Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP). The EU GSP regime bears the “carrot” (reduced tariffs), the “stick” (preferential tariff withdrawals), and increasingly intrusive “monitoring” mechanisms. Drawing on the post-development literature, we problematize the discourses that fundamentally enframe the EU GSP conditionality regime: development through trade, performance of power, and epistemic violence. Empirically, we analyze these frames by looking at public-facing texts produced by policy elites in the EU as well as in Cambodia and the Philippines during the two most recent GSP reform cycles since 2014. We argue that the dominant discursive acts of policy elites in the EU and the two target countries congeal into a global presupposition that there is no alternative to the EU GSP regime, thereby effacing counterhegemonic perspectives and stripping emancipatory notions such as “dialogue” and “partnership” of their radical potential. This formulation demands a genuine commitment to researching with the very people the EU is intent on regulating, reforming, and rescuing to unsettle taken-for-granted views about EU trade sanctions.
Political liberalism and the metaphysics of languages
(Taylor & Francis, 2023) Silva, Renan; Other
Many political theorists believe that a state cannot be neutral when it comes to languages. Legislatures cannot avoid picking a language in which to conduct their business and teachers have to teach their pupils in a language. However, against that, some political liberals argue that liberal neutrality is consistent with the state endorsement of particular languages. Claims to the contrary, they say, are based on a misguided understanding of what neutrality is. I will argue that this line of argument fails, for two reasons. First, the primary challenge to which political liberals should respond is not that of reconciling the promotion of languages with liberal neutrality but, rather, that of reconciling liberal neutrality with the fact that reasonable people disagree about the existence and nature of languages. Second, even if everyone accepted the existence of languages along essentialist lines, one should still doubt the possibility of state neutrality with respect to them, regardless of the conception of neutrality one prefers. The reason why is that human beings cannot care about or value languages so when a state promotes a particular language, it is not supporting the preferences of its citizens but, rather, acting on perfectionist or simply irrational grounds.
Steppingstones in larger struggles. How can we combine colliding struggles in the care crisis?
(University of Deusto, 2023) Sebaly, Bernadett; Other
The question of whether to increase the caregiver benefit is a controversial one among policy experts and movement actors. It is criticized as counterproductive to the emancipation of disabled people and women. At the same time, it becomes the goal of organizing campaigns as it provides immediate solutions, particularly to low-income families. This spotlights two questions: 1. How can activists fight for large-scale, transformative outcomes and achieve real, tangible changes in people’s lives? 2. How can a constituency fight for its liberation without leaving other constituencies behind? Drawing on the analysis of the Hungarian caregivers’ struggle, I reveal prospects for an emancipatory resolution of these two questions. I suggest seeing the struggles of affected constituencies as different dimensions of the care crisis and propose an organizing framework that engages with the deep structural underpinnings of capitalism and takes the issues of power and control inherent in care relations seriously.
The role of social media in facilitating minority mobilisation: The Russian‐language pro‐war movement in Germany amid the invasion of Ukraine
(Wiley, 2023) Sablina, Liliia; Other
This article examines the mobilisation of minority groups along ethnic and national lines through social media, an area that has not been fully explored. The study analyses the case of Russian‐speaking minority members who were mobilised in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 via the messaging app Telegram. By taking a bottom‐up perspective, the article reconstructs the pathways of the actors in these mobilisation processes and draws upon diverse literature in digital nationalism, social movements and media studies. The study suggests that social media facilitates minority mobilisation through three primary functions: It allows for the reproduction of ethnicised and racialised boundaries and homogenisation within ethnicised echo chambers and provides a ‘window of opportunity’ for micro, meso and macro levels of actor engagement in facilitating offline mobilisation. Overall, this article provides a theoretical foundation for understanding how social media enables and enhances minority mobilisation and introduces novel empirical data on the emerging pro‐war movement prevalent on Telegram and in offline networks of the Russian‐speaking minority in Germany. The study contributes to the developing field of user‐generated nationalism and highlights the need for more bottom‐up research on emerging patterns of online ethnicised mobilisation.
Representation of stable social dominance relations by human infants
(National Academy of Sciences, 2012) Mascaro, Olivier; Csibra, Gergely
What are the origins of humans’ capacity to represent social relations? We approached this question by studying human infants’ understanding of social dominance as a stable relation. We presented infants with interactions between animated agents in conflict situations. Studies 1 and 2 targeted expectations of stability of social dominance. They revealed that 15-mo-olds (and, to a lesser extent, 12-mo-olds) expect an asymmetric relationship between two agents to remain stable from one conflict to another. To do so, infants need to infer that one of the agents (the dominant) will consistently prevail when her goals conflict with those of the other (the subordinate). Study 3 and 4 targeted the format of infants’ representation of social dominance. In these studies, we found that 12- and 15-mo-olds did not extend their expectations of dominance to unobserved relationships, even when they could have been established by transitive inference. These results suggest that infants' expectation of stability originates from their representation of social dominance as a relationship between two agents rather than as an individual property. Infants’ demonstrated understanding of social dominance reflects the cognitive underpinning of humans’ capacity to represent social relations, which may be evolutionarily ancient, and may be shared with nonhuman species.
Empathy, emotional intelligence and interprofessional skills in healthcare education
(Elsevier BV, 2023) McNulty, Jonathan P.; Politis, Yurgos
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health professionals maintain the health of citizens through evidence-based medicine and caring. Students enroled in health professional programmes are required to have successfully attained all core learning outcomes by reaching key milestones throughout the course of their studies, demonstrating they have developed the required graduate skills and attributes upon completion of the programme. While some of the knowledge, skills and competencies that make up these learning outcomes are very discipline specific, there are more general professional skills across all disciplines which are difficult to define, such as empathy, emotional intelligence and interprofessional skills. These are at the heart of all health professional programmes that once defined, can be mapped through curricula and further evaluated. Literature will be presented on these three professional skills: empathy, emotional intelligence, and interprofessional skills, based on studies that focussed primarily in health professional programmes and highlight some of the key findings and issues at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The paper will present the need for these skills to be defined and then mapped through curricula so that students are better supported in their professional development. Empathy, emotional intelligence and interprofessional skills transcend the discipline specific skills and as such it is important that all educators consider how best these may be fostered. Efforts should also be made to further the integration of these professional skills within curricula to produce health professionals with an enhanced focus on person-centred care.
Editorial: Championing inclusion and diversity: Inclusive design practices and approaches for education
(Frontiers Media SA, 2023) Robb, Nigel; Politis, Yurgos; Boot, Fleur Heleen
Minimalist Storytelling: The Natural Framing of Electoral Violence by Mexican Media
(SAGE Publications, 2022) Schedler, Andreas
During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Mexico’s so-called drug war claimed around a quarter of a million lives. Adapting to this enduring epidemic of violence, the print media have adopted a minimalist reporting style that gives only thin, formulaic accounts of violent events. As I argue, established journalistic minimalism does more than provide little information about violence. With practised impassiveness, it frames violence in a way that creates a certain narrative: not of social actors to be understood but of natural events to be endured. Through a qualitative content analysis of over 1200 news reports, I examine the persistent force of this “natural” frame in the face of an extraordinary development: the unprecedented intrusion of political violence into the 2018 general elections, when forty-eight candidates were assassinated.
Rethinking Political Polarization
(Oxford University Press, 2023) Schedler, Andreas
The comparative study of political polarization has been central to current debates on the global crisis of democracy. It has been built on uncertain conceptual foundations, though. Established uses of the concept lack a distinctive semantic core as multiple meanings compete against each other. On the basis of a broad reading of the comparative literature, I seek to circumscribe the use and reconstruct the core of political polarization as an instance of extraordinary democratic conflict. In a first step, I delineate the basic parameters of debate by distinguishing between cluster-analytic and conflict-analytic approaches and by specifying the generic type of political conflict that characterizes the polarization of democratic polities. In a second step, I argue for political intolerance as the defining trait of both ideological and social polarization. In a final step, I introduce a third, democratic dimension into the debate: the breakdown of basic democratic trust that leads actors to view their adversaries as “enemies of democracy.” Such perceptions spell the end of democratic consolidation. When played among “democratic enemies,” democracy stops being “the only game in town.”
‘New eugenics,’ gender and sexuality: a global perspective on reproductive politics and sex education in Cold War Europe
(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Varsa, Eszter; Szikra, Dorottya; Other
The article addresses reproductive politics and sex education in Cold War Europe in light of novel historical research. Integrating sex education into reproductive politics it delineates four hitherto little discussed conceptual and topical areas in the field, and points to possibilities for further research. Most importantly, the article places the globalized character of post-World War II reproductive politics at the center of historical investigation. It sheds light on the position of (state socialist) Europe in the global processes that shaped fertility- and sexuality-related discourses, policies and practices during the Cold War, and the role of transnational agencies. Secondly, the article highlights the postwar persistence of eugenic thought in reproductive politics, still largely missing especially from the historiography of state socialist countries. It points to the ways in which “new eugenics” is related to its earlier manifestations in Europe as well as how it adapted to state socialist contexts. Third, the article discusses the important contribution of gender and intersectional scholarship on the history of sex education and reproductive politics in Europe to the social and welfare history of the region. Finally, the article pays specific attention to the role of the Catholic Church in the former “Eastern bloc.” It underlines how reproductive issues enabled the Church to affect politics and engage with the state in heterogeneous ways beyond opposition. The article suggests that further historical analysis could importantly contribute to a better understanding of the present rise of populist right-wing discussion focused on the demise of the traditional family and the fall of birth rates.
Stärkung der Demokratien durch eine breitere Beteiligung? Das Versprechen des Community Organizing-Ansatzes
(Springer, 2022) Sebály, Bernadett; Other
Community Organizing ist ein neuer Ansatz für die Entwicklung der Zivilgesellschaft im post-sozialistischen Osteuropa. Mit einem starken Fokus auf die „Macht der Menschen“ und fortschrittliche Werte kann sie die bürgerliche und politische Kultur effektiv verändern. Für Länder, die von demokratischen Rückschritten und Autokratisierung betroffen sind, bietet sie ein Rezept für den Aufbau partizipativer, egalitärer Demokratien, die über die formalen Bedingungen der Rechtsstaatlichkeit hinausgehen.
Making Sense of Electoral Violence: The Narrative Frame of Organised Crime in Mexico
(Cambridge University Press, 2022) Schedler, Andreas; Other
Since the inauguration of Mexican democracy in 2000, organised criminal violence had been leaking into the political arena. Yet, it escalated in the 2018 elections, when dozens of local candidates were killed. In most of these cases, the concrete perpetrators and motives remained in the dark. How did Mexican society make sense of this opaque, unprecedented wave of electoral violence? On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of over 1,200 news reports, I examine the structuring power of a shared narrative: the frame of organised crime. By conceiving candidate killings as economic violence within the criminal community, this commonsensical frame of interpretation permitted Mexican society to ‘normalise’ these killings as ‘business as usual’ by criminal organisations.

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