Open Research Repository

The Open Research Repository (ORR) is the official institutional repository of the Central European University. The repository provides access to the research output of the CEU community by collecting open access versions of scholarly works authored or co-authored by CEU faculty and students.

For more information, please contact us at: scholcom@ceu.edu

Recent Submissions

  • ItemOpen Access
    From Genocide to Colonialism:Memory Wars at the United Nations after the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine
    (2025-10) Labuda, Patryk I.; Department of International Relations
    Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has revealed contested memories of oppression in different parts of the world. Drawing on debates before several multilateral institutions, this article argues that different interpretations of five key historical events and processes—the Second World War, Cold War, colonialism, imperialism and genocide—have shaped inconsistent normative responses to the Russia–Ukraine war. While most governments embrace Ukraine-centric narratives about the Second World War and reject Russia’s attempts to analogize its invasion to the Soviet Union’s liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany, there is unease among non-Western states about the Russia–Ukraine war turning into another prolonged “Cold War” between rival camps. At the same time, various actors have increasingly used the vocabulary of imperialism, colonialism and genocide to make sense of Russia’s actions, but, some non-Western states are reluctant to facilitate reparations, sanctions and trials against Russia due partly to competing memories of injustice that have not, on their view, been adequately addressed by international institutions. Ultimately, contested global memories have shaped states’ stances on norms of non-intervention, human rights and accountability, but they do not map neatly onto binary “Global South versus North/West” or “West versus Rest” divisions of the world, underscoring the need for further research into the interplay of memory, norms and politics.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Cities, Towns and Market Towns in the Context of the Regional Disparities of the Kingdom of Hungary around 1500
    (2025) Romhányi, Beatrix F.; Szende, Katalin; Department of Historical Studies
    This paper examines the urban hierarchy of the late medieval Kingdom of Hungary, focusing on the distinctions and interactions between cities, towns and market towns around 1500. Based on a comprehensive database of historical–geographical research, the analysis reveals that economic functions, particularly trade and long-distance commerce, played a decisive role in the emergence of smaller urban centres, while the legal status of settlements (civitas, oppidum) only partially corresponded to their economic significance. The research highlights significant regional disparities: in some areas, such as the northeastern part of the kingdom, market towns served as dynamic reserves for urbanisation, whereas in the southwestern regions, they often remained stagnant. The findings also challenge previous assumptions by demonstrating that the distribution of smaller urban centres was shaped not only by economic potential but also by privileges granted centuries before, landownership patterns and external geopolitical pressures, including the Ottoman expansion. Additionally, the study identifies key methodological challenges, such as the integration of settlement networks and the role of rural communities in urban development. By reassessing the relationship between urban functions and spatial organisation, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of late medieval Central European urbanisation.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Do Individual and Joint Action Goals Modulate Imitative Response Tendencies?
    (2026) Marschner, Maximilian; Knoblich, Günther; Dignath, David; Department of Cognitive Science
    Coordinated social interaction requires people to control their tendencies to imitate each other's actions. Previous research suggests that imitative response tendencies become modulated by the goals to which one's own and others' actions are individually or jointly directed. However, an open question is how different levels of goal representation (ranging from higher-level goals that specify joint or individual action outcomes to lower-level goals encoding own and others' movement features) interact and shape imitative congruency effects during social interactions. To address this gap, we conducted two online experiments, in which participants selected one of two action targets in turn with a virtual co-actor to achieve either individual or joint task goals. We manipulated imitative congruency between both task partners' task contributions regarding their individual action goals as well as their lower-level movement goals. Our results showed that participants' task performance was driven by imitative congruency between their own and their partner's individual action goals, which modulated effects of imitative congruency between their own and their partner's low-level movement goals. Interestingly, these imitation effects were found to be present regardless of instructing participants to work towards individual or joint task goals. While supporting goal-directed theories of imitation, our findings suggest that modulations of imitative response tendencies may stem from domain-general action planning and control processes that operate across social and non-social task settings, and that instructions to pursue joint rather than individual task goals exert only limited influence on imitative action tendencies in interactive task contexts.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Green jobs, labour market transitions and social protection:Longitudinal analysis for Viet Nam
    (2026-01-13) Duman, Anil; Ananian, Sévane; Department of Political Science
    This article examines labour market transitions towards green employment in Viet Nam and their relationship to social protection. Using a task-based approach and longitudinal labour force survey data, we find that green jobs remain limited, accounting for only 15 per cent of total employment. Transition rates vary significantly by demographic characteristics: younger workers and women face greater difficulties in accessing green employment. Educational attainment is a key determinant, such that individuals with tertiary education are more likely to move into green occupations. Social insurance coverage is positively associated with transitions from brown or neutral jobs to green jobs among those with tertiary education, and negatively linked to the likelihood of moving from green to brown occupations. In contrast, it does not appear to facilitate transitions to green occupations for workers with lower levels of education. These findings highlight the need for integrated policy frameworks that combine social protection and education to promote inclusive green transitions in developing countries.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Enforcement of a Formal Conception of the Rule of Law as a Potential Way Forward to Address Backsliding:Hungary as a Case Study
    (2022-12) Bárd, Petra; Kazai, Viktor Zoltán
    The rule of law as a foundational value of European integration has been taken for granted in the Member States, along the presumption that “once a democracy, always a democracy”. This optimistic presumption proved to be wrong, when in the 2010s a top-down and systemic decline in the rule of law started, first in Hungary, then in Poland. Even though EU action against rule of law backsliding in the Member States is of existential importance for the whole European project, EU institutions seem to be either silent or too slow and inefficient when tackling the problem. In this paper we are focusing on the Court of Justice of the EU, which was emphasizing violations of a substantive understanding of the rule of law. Against this background we argue that adherence to a formal understanding or at the minimum incorporating arguments related to a formal concept of the rule of law would have been beneficial both in terms of speed and desired effect. Taking Hungary as an example we show that the lack of preliminary consultations and impact assessments during lawmaking, the enactment of significant legislative reforms in accelerated procedures without any adequate justification, the adoption of ad hominem laws, or the unclarity and unpredictability of legislation are all manifest violations of the formal understanding of the rule of law. There is significant potential in this approach that we believe the EU institutions have not exploited fully.
Show more

Communities in ORR

Select a community to browse its collections.