Fighting and voting: Mapping electoral violence in the region of post-Communist Europe

Electoral disputes accompanied by violent outbreaks have become an emerging problem in societies under transformation, in authoritarian regimes, as well as in young democracies. The truth is that many politicians elected to office, their supporters, and political activists have altered their perceptions of electoral competition in a form of zero-sum logic with direct consequences for their opponents. After the fall of Communism in the beginning of the 1990s, Central and Eastern Europe stood at a crossroads. This period of imbalance and uncertainty affected the violent interaction in newly reformed electoral arenas with serious consequences for legitimizing democratic change. Despite the well-documented tension that existed in the region, the importance of violence in the electoral arena is rather neglected. The article approaches this gap as the first attempt to map electoral violence in a new typological environment where the process of transformation has affected political pluralism and the patterns of political contest. It argues that electoral violence is not a rare phenomenon in the region of post-Communist Europe and the dynamic varies on a great scale. Moreover, the article presents a picture of electoral violence occurring in different settings with potentially different contextual preconditions that need to be studied separately.     

The interplay between bystanders’ intervention styles: An examination of the “bullying circle” approach

This study explores correlations between bystanders’ intervention styles by means of the bullying circle model. Three aims were examined in this study. First, we reevaluated the number and type of bystander intervention styles in aggressive school incidents. Second, we examined the association between reports of relational aggression and victimization and bystander intervention styles. Third, we estimated relationships between the different bystander intervention styles, by examining two directional paths. Participants were 1,518 adolescents (61.9% boys, 38.1% girls) from 15 Israeli religious and secular middle and high schools. The data analysis indicated two new intervention styles: help-seeker and passive bystander. Two structural models, illustrating the path leading to and from provictim and antivictim bystander intervention styles are presented. The distinction between the “participant-role approach” and the bullying circle is discussed in order to address the theoretical difference between social categorization of fixed bystander roles as opposed to rating bystander intervention styles on a continuum.     

Between war and peace: a dynamic reconceptualization of “frozen conflicts”

Asia Europe Journal - Frozen conflicts, situations in which war ended yet stable peace did not materialize, trouble both Asia and Europe. Despite the clear policy relevance of this problem, the...     

Norm Entrepreneurs and Atlanticist Foreign Policy in Central and Eastern Europe: The Missionary Zeal of Recent Converts

The article discusses the role of norms in the foreign policy making of Central and East European states in the 2000s. It deconstructs the normative foundations of the so-called ‘Atlanticist’ orientation of Central and East European states, going beyond the standard ‘neorealist’ notion whereupon strategic and security concerns lead small states to align with superpowers. The case studies of the Czech and Slovak republics demonstrate that norms, such as human rights and democracy, have an autonomous and traceable effect on state behaviour. More specifically, we argue that norms have translated themselves into policy outcomes via the agency of influential ‘norm entrepreneurs’, such as ex-dissidents and their associates.     

Czechoslovakia and its Position within the Solidarity Network of Chilean Communism: A Reflection on the Coup and Resistance against Pinochet from a Country with Worn-out Revolutionary Ideals

The article will analyse the development of the Chilean cause in the politics of Eastern Europe countries since 1973, focusing on the Czechoslovak case. On the one hand, it will prove that during the communist government Czechoslovakia played an important role in the international campaign for the resistance against the dictatorship at a worldwide level. On the other hand, it posits that the propaganda aimed at Czechoslovakia, which sought to kindle society's belief in the revolutionary ideals strongly affected after the Soviet invasion in 1968, turned out to be much less effective.     

Effects of prior knowledge and expert statement on belief in recovered memories: an international perspective

We tested the hypothesis that beliefs in the purported attributes of recovered memories of child sexual abuse (CSA) are associated with knowledge of the "recovered/false memory debate", and that such beliefs will be related to assessments of the credibility of statements made by participants in a vignette about CSA. Participants from five countries (the United States, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Israel) responded to a questionnaire regarding beliefs about recovered memory as well as self-reported exposure to and knowledge of the debate. In addition, they assessed the credibility of statements made by a daughter (reporting recovery of memories of sexual abuse by her father), her father (denying the allegation and accusing the daughter's therapist of implanting in her false "memories" of abuse), and two experts (each supporting one of the two protagonists). We found that prior knowledge of the debate across countries was linked to beliefs in specific attributes of recovered memories and to a subset of the credibility assessments of statements made by the protagonists and their experts. For individuals, however, credibility assessments were unrelated to knowledge of the debate, but they were related to beliefs about memory recovery. Finally, credibility of the protagonists' statements was differentially associated with those made by the daughter's and the father's experts. The results suggest that whereas familiarity with the debate does not affect the credibility of the statements made by the complainant and the accused, expert testimony does, as has been found in prior research. The psycholegal implications of this conclusion are discussed.     

Curriculum Reform in The Common Core Era: Evaluating Elementary Math Textbooks Across Six U.S. States

Can a school or district improve student achievement simply by switching to a higher-quality textbook or curriculum? We conducted the first multi-textbook, multi-state effort to estimate textbook efficacy following widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and associated changes in the textbook market. Pooling textbook adoption and student test score data across six geographically and demographically diverse U.S. states, we found little evidence of differences in average achievement gains for schools using different math textbooks. We found some evidence of greater variation in achievement gains among schools using pre-CCSS editions, which may have been more varied in their content than post-CCSS editions because they were written for a broader set of standards. We also found greater variation among schools that had more exposure to a given text. However, these differences were small. Despite considerable interest and attention to textbooks as a low-cost, “silver bullet” intervention for improving student outcomes, we conclude that the adoption of a new textbook or set of curriculum materials, on its own, is unlikely to achieve this goal.     

Studying Chinese Foreign Policy Narratives: Introducing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Conferences Corpus

The paper presents an original corpus of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conferences. The dataset is a unique source of information on official positions and diplomatic narratives of China mapping almost two decades of its foreign policy discourse. The corpus contains almost 23,000 question – answer dyads from 2002 to 2020 ready to be used for analytical purposes. We argue the dataset is an important contribution to the scholarship on Chinese foreign policy stimulating further research using corpus based methods while employing both qualitative and quantitative strategies. We demonstrate possible applications of the corpus with two case studies: first maps the diplomatic discourse towards the US under the presidency of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping (employing quantitative tools), while second analyzes narratives concerning the South China Sea disputes (employing more qualitative approach).