This article aims to assess the Lithuanian population’s punitive attitudes towards juvenile delinquents, to discuss them from the perspective of authoritarianism and to connect them to Lithuania’s ...communist past. This study was a cross-sectional population-based study, administered in 2021. Multistage stratified sampling techniques were used to create a representative sample of 1,508 Lithuanian residents aged eighteen years and older. A measurement of attitudes was created by the authors based on the ideas about the tripartite attitude structure: measuring multiple attributes from the areas of affect (feelings towards juvenile offenders), cognition (explanations of the causes of juvenile offending), and action (measures for reduction of juvenile delinquency). The study revealed that almost half of Lithuanians hold punitive attitudes towards juvenile delinquents. These punitive attitudes correlate with negative feelings towards juvenile delinquents related to common stereotypes and inaccurate explanations of the causes of juvenile delinquency. Punitiveness was also connected with fears of “bad” Western influences such as the perceived overvaluing of children’s rights and disapproval of violence against children and authoritarian parenting. The statement “Is juvenile delinquency in Lithuania increasing because of the bad influence of the West” divided the Lithuanian population into two almost equal groups: “Pro-Westerners” and “Anti-Westerners.” “Anti-Westerners” were more likely to hold authoritarian views, while “Anti-Western” attitudes were more prevalent among older, less-educated, and lower-income citizens.
The Ukraine crisis is usually treated either as Russia's return to the old-style empire-building (the right) or as a clash of two imperialisms (the left). However, the essence of this crisis can be ...understood only from the dual perspective of the consequences of the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the fate of the modern global capitalism. The most rotten sections of the Soviet bureaucracy moved the society to capitalism. However, this effort could secure only a peripheral (Ukraine) or at best semi-peripheral (Russia) position in the capitalist world-system as a provider of cheap raw materials. Meanwhile, modern capitalism led to world economic crisis. In these conditions, the capital of the core capitalist countries obviously decided to strengthen its control over the periphery, and Russia's aspirations to secure its domination over the former Soviet space were in the way. To thwart them, Western powers decided to provoke a Ukraine crisis, exploiting Ukrainians' justified indignation at the backwardness and corruption inherent in their own peripheral capitalism. Hence, a study of the properties of the post-Soviet societies and their place in the world hierarchy is the key to understanding the Ukraine crisis.
This study provided a theoretical framework explaining center-right opposition parties’ evolution in former Eastern Europe. It answered why post-communist center-right parties lacked consistent ...success and either became marginalized, altered their ideologies, or ceased to exist in the long run. By taking the Democratic Party of Albania as one of the exceptions to the rule and comparing it to the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats, we showed the discrepancy with much of the other center-right parties. We followed a most different systems design, where the dominant center-right party of Albania and the dominant one in Lithuania were compared. Although much different in history, political culture, and institutions, they had similar successful trajectories as dominant center-right parties. We argued that the success of these parties depends upon the durability of party labels as a critical determinant of a party’s success historically, which takes priority over party strategy, mobilization power, social base, and the behavior of the center-right party toward political institutions. Overall, we emphasized party labels as cues of party identification and success.
Over the past decade, Slovakia has witnessed the dismantling of public human rights institutions and gender equality policies and incessant efforts to limit sexual and reproductive rights. While ...these processes have been mostly discussed in relation to the transnational anti-gender movement, this article conceptualizes them as part of an illiberal turn. We argue that recent rhetorical, institutional, and policy processes in Slovakia have been enabled by a discursive shift positing a new subject: conservative people and their rightful demands. Our argument is bolstered through two analyses. Quantitative content analysis of media articles published between 2002 and 2020, firstly, traces the increased emphasis on the signifiers “conservative” and “liberal.” This examination demonstrates that the anti-gender discourse in the 2010s accelerated and normalized this specific discursive frame. Furthermore, it underscores how the carriers of the conservative label shifted away from institutions towards individual politicians and, more importantly, toward a collective subject—people. Qualitative discourse analysis, secondly, focuses on the anti-gender discourse, understood here as a Laclauian populist practice. It posits three types of demands entangled in an equivalential chain—demands dealing with cultural recognition, material redistribution, and political representation. This analytical approach enables us to show how the construction of the conservative/liberal divide goes beyond the struggles for so-called traditional values, but is embedded in broader socioeconomic processes, and how it led to calls for political representation of the “conservative people” and for a “conservative” (in fact illiberal) transformation of political institutions.
In this article, we seek to provide a new line of sight referring to specificities of the neoliberal turn in post-socialist societies and corresponding transformations of space. By employing the ...methodological approach that side-by-side explores two mutually exclusive strategies of analytical and empirical survey, we intend to tackle the question of irreducible antinomies pertinent to architectural research methodologies. Block 23 of the Central Zone of New Belgrade, designed by Branislav Karadžić, Božidar Janković, and Aleksandar Stjepanović (1968), has been widely recognised and aptly studied as one of the highlights of modern urban planning and design, conceived and realised in the period of late socialism in Belgrade (Serbia, former Yugoslavia). Featuring a notion of a “parallax gap,” we presume that the reading of Block 23 through two close yet clearly distinctive perspectives can bring a new scope of knowledge and point to the gap inscribed in the buildings themselves. The first point of view is empirical, centred on the notion of everyday life, and concerns the interpretation and use of space by its inhabitants. The second one is analytical, determined by the work of the architect and architectural theoretician, Branislav Milenković. We start from their point of contact and seek to find a shift in the diverging discursive positions producing a parallax gap. By way of architectural drawing, we explore and theorise new possibilities opened up by the actual buildings: interstitial, intermediary, transitional spaces, and spatial in-betweens. We hope to demonstrate the pursuit of both meticulously planned and dynamically conceived spaces open for the unpredictable was not only a way to respond to specific Yugoslav socio-political realities, but that it fostered the capacity of architecture to accommodate the future population and socio-economic transformations.
This article highlights the (post) transitioning urban context as an emerging market for powerful international real-estate development companies, supported by an authoritarian planning trend aiming ...to secure foreign investments. Such a pattern is particularly noticeable in the implementation of the large-scale redevelopment project Belgrade Waterfront in the Serbian capital city, causing many controversies due to state-led regulatory interventions, investor-friendly decision-making, and a general lack of transparency. Although proactive but fragile civil society organizations in Serbia failed to influence the implementation dynamics of this megaproject, it inspired contestation by professional and civic organizations elsewhere, which finally led to significant disputes over similar developments. This study highlights similarities of this project to the initiatives emerging in other cities of the ex-Yugoslav countries: Zagreb Manhattan, announced to settle on the waterfronts of the Croatian capital, and more recently the Novi Sad Waterfront in the second largest Serbian city. The article concludes with a general overview of the effects and consequences characterizing the emerging trend in the production of space and highlights the rising role of the civil sector in more inclusive and democratic urban planning in ex-Yugoslav cities.
This study provides evidence of the challenges faced by women journalists in Albania after the fall of communism based on a nationwide survey of 295 journalists. Despite an increase in the number of ...women journalists, their emancipation in journalism is not necessarily implied. Women journalists tend to be confined to reporting on “soft news” sections or cultural and social topics, reinforcing traditional gender roles. Many women journalists conform to societal expectations and adopt gender stereotypes to exert influence while facing obstacles such as a male-dominated hierarchy, self-censorship, and pressures from family and editorial supervisors. Female journalists who make a name for themselves often cover male-dominated topics, following a masculine logic to gain respect and struggling to maintain their femininity. The study sheds light on the challenges and complexities women journalists face in Albania, providing insights into the gender dynamics within the media industry.
This paper aims to analyze the way religious identification and practices influence family practices in the division of labor in childcare and housework in contemporary Lithuania. The analysis is ...based on a quantitative survey (n = 3000) representing the last Soviet generation born between 1970 and 1985. The sample was distributed across five groups according to religious identification and practices—devout religionists, somewhat devout religionists, traditional religionists, cultural religionists and secularists. Statistical data analysis showed devout religionists and secularists were applying equal childcare and housework division practices. Meanwhile, the other three groups were practicing more traditional types of childcare and housework division practice where the main role is played by women. The results also show that religious identity is not relevant in explaining the way couples share housework duties. The results show that religious identification may lead to diverse family practices regarding childcare and housework divisions: reflexive and practiced (non)religious identification leads to more egalitarian family practices.
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