This article provides a comparative analysis of laws on youth policy and patriotic education in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine (as a control case), as well as model laws developed by the Commonwealth of Independent States. These laws are aimed at educating young people and transferring values of loyalty and obedience to authoritarian rule, as well as love and patriotic devotion to the Motherland, as means to legitimise and sustain authoritarian regimes. The article identifies similarities, differences and cases of 'authoritarian legal harmonization' in these laws. To compare the similarities and differences in the laws, we use plagiarism software. The software detects words and phrases which are the same or similar, in order to establish the extent to which the texts of laws are harmonised. Our research indicates that levels of legal harmonisation have fallen as new amendments and laws have been introduced, signalling a weakening of Russia's influence.

In January 2022, at the height of violent nationwide protests against the government of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Kazakhstan, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)sent 2,500 troops from its Peacekeeping Force to help stabilize the situation and preserve Tokayev’s power.1 The intervention was a frst for the military alliance, which was created in 2002 by Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Members had called on the CSTO to intervene during ethnic unrest in Kyrgyzstan in 2010,2 during a border confict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 2022,3 and during the war in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, but in each case its leadership refused on various grounds. January 2022 appeared to signal a sea change for the CSTO, pointing to a more interventionist future.

The COVID-19 pandemic altered the functioning of societies and people’s behavior in many areas of daily life. Studies of political participation during the pandemic do not constitute an extensive body of research, focusing mainly on Western European countries. Under these circumstances, we know very little about political participation in post-communist countries during the pandemic. This special issue aims to understand the dynamics of political participation in post-communist Europe through both qualitative and quantitative analyses. It proposes several innovative concepts and analytical frames that can be used to understand who participated, why, and with what consequences. This topic has often been surrounded by discussions referring to empirical matters much more than around general arguments and theoretical explanatory models. One of the special issue’s aims is to enrich the theoretical debate about political participation in new democracies and transition countries during the pandemic.

Political participation increased and diversified in the post-communist world in the last decade. This may create great expectations in terms of societal impact. This Special Section seeks to understand the complexity of this picture by analyzing instances in which the promises of political participation reach boundaries in post-communist countries. It aims to achieve two theoretical and empirical objectives. It outlines several theoretical frameworks that can be used to understand who participates and why they do so, and to identify and explain various ways in which individuals engage in politics, what are their reasons and with what expectations. The articles in this Special Section cover a range of post-communist countries in the form of comparative perspectives across countries with contextualized case studies (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia and Hungary) and use both qualitative and quantitative analyses. 

Starting with the third decade of post-communism, the emergence of many anti-establishment parties in Central and Eastern Europe reshaped the political landscape. Political parties remain key actors through their functions of representation, but it is unclear how they are responding and adapting to recent challenges and developments. At the same time, the behavior of voters in such agitated times remains a puzzle. This special issue aims to outline several theoretical models of party and voter adaptation to political realities, and to identify and explain various ways in which anti-establishment parties promote their discourse and how voters respond to it.

The aim of this dissertation is to examine the influence of the international actors i.e. the OSCE, Council of Europe, EU and Russia, on policy and legislative adaptation in two post-Soviet countries since 1991. These are Estonia and Ukraine. The central concept analysed in the dissertation is stateness. It is defined following Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996) as congruence between the territorial definition and the right of citizenship in the state, which has the monopoly on the legitimate use of force in the territory, and an effective state bureaucracy. For the analysis, certain policy areas are chosen which operationalise the dimensions of stateness: monopoly on the use of force (borders, army and police), state identity (citizenship, national minorities and language), and basic administration (public administration, education and information). In the democratisation and state-building literature, stateness is a neglected concept, as is the international influence on it. Surprisingly so, as it is an important condition for state and regime stability, especially democracy. To address this gap, the dissertation clarifies the definition of the concept of stateness and analyses the international influence on it in the two countries. This dissertation centres on the impact of the international actors as the causal factor in consolidation of stateness. To investigate this, it analyses in a systematic manner the influence of their policy demands and expectations on adaptation (i.e. policy adoption and change) in the policy areas operationalising stateness in Estonia and Ukraine. As part of the analysis, it provides a detailed overview and comparison of the policy- and legislation-making in both countries after their independence in 1991. The method chosen is a cross-case comparison carried out according to a time-periodisation approach. The analysis illustrates the converging yet context-contingent impact of the international actors in the policy areas operationalising stateness. Therefore, the main finding confirms the emerging consensus in the literature that the international actors have an increasing yet differential impact in traditionally domestic policy areas. The dissertation’s contribution is twofold. First is the theoretical and conceptual contribution to state-building in comparative European politics by clarifying the definition of the concept of stateness. Second is the empirical contribution by providing an applicable operationalisation of the concept through policy areas, which permits its empirical analysis.

Avhandlingen undersöker det inflytande som olika internationella aktörer – såsom OSSE, Europarådet, EU och den Ryska Federationen – har utövat på två postsovjetiska stater, Estland och Ukraina. Mer specifikt är det sådant inflytande som rör utformningen av lagstiftning och policybeslut som hamnar i fokus, i relation till politikområden som kan kopplas till begreppet ”stateness”, det vill säga en stats förmåga att kontrollera sitt eget territorium och population, samt förmågan att fungera som en suverän stat bland andra stater i världen. De politikområden som undersöks i avhandlingen är kontrollen över landets gränser, statens våldsmonopol, politiken kring medborgarskap, minoritetsrättigheter och språkrättigheter, samt offentlig förvaltning, informationsspridning och utbildning.

I forskningen om demokratisering och statsbyggande är den internationella aspekten av en stats förmåga till ”stateness” underutforskad. Det tas för givet att ”stateness” är en central förutsättning för en lyckad demokratisering och för regimstabilitet, men det tas också för givet att denna förmåga i allt väsentligt bestäms av inhemska faktorer. Denna avhandling lämnar ett bidrag till den existerande forskningen på området genom att undersöka vilken betydelse externa aktörer har för en stats förmåga till ”stateness”. Bidraget handlar både om att förtydliga begreppet ”stateness” på ett teoretiskt plan, och om att empiriskt undersöka hur två postsovjetiska stater, i relation till externa aktörer, har kunnat hantera frågan om ”stateness” i det egna landet, från 1991 och framåt. Den komparativa undersökningen visar att de externa aktörerna har en märkbar påverkan på Estlands och Ukrainas lagstiftning inom politikområden som rör medborgarskap och minoritetsrättigheter, i synnerhet i Estland, men att de externa aktörernas inflytande är mer blandat när det gäller lagstiftning kring språkfrågor och utbildningsfrågor. Undersökningen visar också att Ryssland, som en extern aktör, har kunnat påverka förmågan till ”stateness” negativt när det gäller politikområdena informationsspridning och kontroll över statens gränser. Avhandlingen kan på så vis visa att det finns en påtaglig extern aspekt när det gäller olika länders förmåga att hantera sin ”stateness”.

The book covers direct democracy (referendums in particular), deliberative democracy practices and e-participation – forms which are salient in practice because they match the political realities of our time. Expert contributors show how the recent actions of ordinary citizens in several Central and Eastern European countries have challenged the contemporary political order, and grassroots movements and diverse forms of mobilization have challenged the notion of weak civil societies in the East. The empirical evidence presented attempts to deepen citizen involvement in political contexts sometimes quite different from the democratic political systems in the Western world. Using lessons from a still largely underexplored part of Europe, the book both complements and revises theoretical approaches, or complements empirical results in existing studies on democratic innovations.