Vol. 22 No. 1, Summer 2022 – General issue

by Claudiu Tufiș,

This general issue includes five articles, all of them covering countries in Central and Eastern Europe: two case studies on Romania, one case study on Slovakia, a comparative analysis of democratic consolidation in the region, and an analysis of the Russian propaganda in the context of the war in Ukraine.

The first article, by Cristina Stănuș, studies local government compliance with transparency regulations. Developing a context-specific measure for it, Stănuș shows that particular characteristics of the local political and institutional environment – status, size, financial autonomy – influence compliance in Romania.

The second article, by George Ștefan and Raluca Andreea Popa, analyzes the relationship between demand-driven clientelism, county-level economic disparities, and preferences with respect to public expenditures. Combining survey data and budgetary data, the authors show that economic difficulties at the local level are associated with a higher chance that individuals are involved in a clientelistic relationship with a local political actor. This association is stronger around local elections than around national elections.

The third article, by Michal Mádr, tests the explanatory power of the modernization theory in the case of post-socialist democratic consolidation against four competing theories – early developed institutions, natural resource abundance, cultural heritage, and international trade. The results are mixed, and Mádr discusses the role the middle class played in the democratic transitions in the region.

The fourth article, by Beáta Mikušová Meričková, Mária Murray Svidroňová, Michal Lendvorský, and Bohumír Krátky, addresses the role of civil society in offering alternative solutions to the corruption problems in the case of Slovakia, using information from two of the main anti-corruption NGOs in Slovakia: the Stop Corruption foundation and the Against Corruption civic association.

The last article in the issue, by Gabriel C. Gherasim, analyzes Russian propaganda in the context of the war in Ukraine. Gherasim distinguishes between different approaches that can be extracted from the official and unofficial discourses: de-Nazification as de-Westernization, de-Nazification as de-Ukrainization, and de-Nazification as Russification.

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  • IPSA
  • GESIS
  • CIAONET
  • EBSCO
  • CEEOL
  • EPNET

International
Advisory Board

  • Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (chair) Hertie School of Governance
  • Larry Diamond Stanford University
  • Tom Gallagher University of Bradford
  • Alena Ledeneva University College London
  • Michael McFaul Stanford University
  • Dennis Deletant Georgetown University
  • Helen Wallace London School of Economics and Political Science

Editorial Board

  • Claudiu Tufiș
  • Bogdan Iancu
  • George Jiglau
  • Ingi Iusmen
  • Gabriel Bădescu
  • Andrei Macsut
  • Laura Voinea

Published by:

Societatea Academica Romana