Croatia is regarded as a success story of the EU's enlargement policy. However, this narrative conflicts with the situation on the ground and with expert surveys, which depict incremental, yet ...persistent democratic backsliding in recent years. A shift towards illiberal practices, primarily focused on the liberal part of the liberal-democratic nexus, is taking place. This research aims to explore the prevalence and causes for the re-emergence of illiberal practices in Croatia by employing an interpretive method to evidence gathered from media articles and research reports published 2013-2019. The use of illiberal policies by the governing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in three areas of the political system - the capture of independent agencies, control of the judiciary, and the weakening of independent media - is found to be the driver of democratic backsliding. Causes are found in structural reasons linked to the dominant party. Without either internal power-sharing constraints or external EU conditionality pressure, the HDZ has been able to take advantage of structural weaknesses of the system it built and shaped during the 1990s.
U radu su predstavljeni stavovi i uvjerenja korisnika društvenih mreža (Twitter i Facebook) prema izbjeglicama i tzv. izbjegličkoj krizi, koja je posljednjih godina eskalirala na globalnoj razini. Od ...16. rujna 2015. do 3. svibnja 2016. godine kroz Hrvatsku je u tranzitu prošlo 658.068 izbjeglica te je, tijekom tog vremena, u javnosti predstavljen niz različitih stavova i interpretacije istih. Navedeni stavovi relevantni su za cjelokupnu situaciju povezanu s krizom u kontekstu utjecaja koji imaju na višerazinsku integraciju i položaj izbjeglica u hrvatskom društvu. U ovom radu ispitivani su stavovi prema izbjeglicama, posebno se fokusirajući na povezanost iskazanih stavova i socio-demografskih obilježja ispitanika, njihova nacionalnog identiteta, učestalosti kontakta, spremnosti na pomoć izbjeglicama, te političkog opredjeljenja. Istraživanje je provedeno na prigodnom uzorku, putem online upitnika kojim su relevantne varijable ispitane kroz tri skupine pitanja, koja su mjerila ugroženost i jednaki tretman, te socijalnu distancu. Rezultati pokazuju kako ispitanici imaju pretežno pozitivne stavove prema izbjeglicama unatoč manjoj količini kontakta, te kako iskazuju nisku percepciju ugroženosti zbog dolaska izbjeglica i vjeruju kako za sve osobe u Hrvatskoj trebaju postojati jednake životne prilike. Zanimljive korelacije dobivene su u pogledu nacionalnog identiteta, te spremnosti pružanja pomoći. Rad se bavi navedenom tematikom kroz fokus na stavove ispitanika u suvremenom hrvatskom kontekstu, a relevantan je u pogledu mogućeg utjecaja koji mišljenje građana i potencijalne predrasude imaju na uspjeh procesa integracije onih osoba koje će svoj život graditi u Republici Hrvatskoj.
The paper presents attitudes and opinions of Croatian social network users (Twitter and Facebook) towards refugees and the so-called refugee crisis, which globally escalated in recent years. Croatia was, for the first time since the early 1990s, directly influenced by the refugee problem, migrations as well as with all the challenges that follow it. Since September 16th 2015 until May 3rd 2016 Croatia saw 658 068 refugees transiting it to reach the Western countries. During that time the public was under influence of diverging attitudes and interpretations of what repercussions that transit would entail. These attitudes are relevant for the current situation connected with the so-called refugee crisis in the context of its influence on the multidimensional integration and the support of the Croatian society towards refugees. This paper analyzed attitudes toward refugees, focusing especially on the link of attitudes shown and socio-demographic characteristics. We focused on their national identity, frequency of contact with refugees, willingness to help and political positions. The research was undertaken through an online questionnaire. The relevant variables were gauged through three main factors – feeling of danger, equal treatment, and social distance. The results show that our sample has dominantly positive attitudes towards refugees despite a lack of contact. They show low perception of the feeling of danger and believe that there should be equal opportunities for all individuals living in or coming to Croatia. We obtained interesting correlations concerning national identity and the willingness to help. This paper focused on the attitudes of citizens in the contemporary Croatian context. It is relevant concerning potential influence that citizens’ attitudes (together with prejudices exposed) have on the success of the integration process of those individuals that decided to continue their lives in Croatia.
The last decade saw a rise in the use of direct democracy in Croatia. The proliferation of citizens' initiatives and referendums was meant to activate politically passive citizens and to strengthen ...their role as controllers of the executive. Our research, based on the qualitative analysis of the legal framework on citizens' initiatives and referendums in Croatia, as well as post-2010 initiatives, showed that this was not the case. Instead, political and social entrepreneurs, both long established, like trade unions, and newly formed, like conservative civil society organizations, used the tools of direct democracy to promote their particular anti-minority, anti-government or anti-establishment agendas. They succeeded in both constraining the power of the elite through the process of getting to the referendum and wresting control over the agenda-setting process post hoc. The added value of this paper lies in showing that citizens' initiatives can succeed in getting their demands met even when they are not successful in organizing referendums, which is due to weaknesses in the legal framework surrounding referendums and initiatives.
U posljednjih deset godina učestala je uporaba instituta izravne demo- kracije u Hrvatskoj. Pretpostavlja se kako bi povećanje broja građanskih inicijativa i referenduma trebalo potaknuti značajnije aktiviranje politički pasivnog građanstva i ojačati njegovu ulogu kontrolora izvršne vlasti. Naše istraživanje, utemeljeno na kvalitativnoj analizi pravnog okvira koji uređuje pitanja referenduma i građanskih inicijativa u Hrvatskoj i samih inicijativa nakon 2010, pokazalo je da nije tako. Politički i društveni poduzetnici – bilo da je riječ o etabliranim akterima, poput sindikata, bilo o novim akterima, poput konzervativnih udruga civilnog društva – koristili su mehanizme izravne demokracije kako bi promicali partikularne interese utemeljene na agendama usmjerenima protiv manjina, vlade i političkog establishmenta. Ti su akteri uspjeli zauzdati moć vlade, odnosno političke elite ante hoc, i ograničiti njezin monopol u kontroli dnevnog reda post hoc. Postojećoj literaturi o tim temama ovaj rad pridonosi tako što pokazuje kako se zbog slabosti u pravnom normiranju građanske inicijative vlada, odnosno političke elite mogu natjerati da pristanu na uvjete inicijatora čak i onda kada je inicijativa neuspješna u svojemu izvornom naumu – održavanju referenduma o nekom pitanju.
Hrvatsko politološko društvo (HPD) priključilo se politološkim institucijama i organizacijama diljem Europe u znanstvenom (re)valoriziranju dosega pada Berlinskog zida i rušenja komunističkih režima ...u Srednjoj i Istočnoj Europi. Na Politološkim razgovorima 2019, koji su 7. i 8. studenoga 2019. održani na Fakultetu političkih znanosti u Zagrebu, okupili su se politolozi i predstavnici drugih društvenih znanosti, ponajviše sociologije, koji su kroz politološku, sociološku, ekonomsku, historiografsku i filozofsku prizmu analizirali utjecaj promjena nakon 1989. na političke sustave, javne politike, teorijske pravce i cjelokupna društva na hrvatskoj, europskoj i općoj međunarodnoj razini.
This paper examines the response of the members of the European Council towards the EU's sanctions policy against Russia following the 2014 Russian occupation and annexation of Crimea and the ...continued Ukraine crisis. The case is analysed to answer the question on the traits of the politicisation of the EU's Russia sanctions policy. Concretely, the main research question is: what does the interplay of actor range, salience, and polarisation tell us about politicisation of CFSP in the case of sanctions policy? The secondary research question deals with how actors interact when contesting a sanctions policy to boost their success. Considering that the European Council, as the main actor in CFSP, is something of a "black box", the paper heuristically focuses on statements (N = 223) on the sanctions policy given by its members from March 2014 till the end of 2019. The analysis shows how the politicisation of the sanctions policy seemingly entrenched itself into EUFP politics after it skyrocketed and fell in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea. Finally, a latent class analysis indicates the existence of two latent coalitions with opposing views on the sanctions policy.
On 10 November 2017, the annual conference of the Croatian Political Science Association was held at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb.
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