Part I. Introduction: 1. Do rules matter? 2. Classifying electoral systems 3. Evaluating electoral systems Part II. The Consequences for Voting Behavior: 4. Party systems 5. Social cleavages 6. Party loyalties 7. Turnout Part III. The Consequences for Political Representation: 8. Women 9. Ethnic minorities 10. Constituency service Part IV. Conclusions: 11. The impact of electoral engineering.

Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior

Practical Reason On The Theory Of Action

Social networks have interesting properties. They influence our lives enormously without us being aware of the implications they raise. The authors investigate the following areas concerning social networks: how to exploit our unprecedented wealth of data and how we can mine social networks for purposes such as marketing campaigns; social networks as a particular form of influence, i.e.., the way that people agree on terminology and this phenomenon's implications for the way we build ontologies and the Semantic Web; social networks as something we can discover from data; the use of social network information to offer a wealth of new applications such as better recommendations for restaurants, trustworthy email senders, or (maybe) blind dates; investigation of the richness and difficulty of harvesting FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) information; and by looking at how information processing is bound to social context, the resulting ways that network topology's definition determines its outcomes.

Social networks applied

This study used basic personal values to elucidate the motivational meanings of ‘left’ and
‘right’ political orientations in 20 representative national samples from the European Social
Survey (2002-3). It also compared the importance of personal values and socio-demographic
variables as determinants of political orientation. Hypotheses drew on the different histories,
prevailing culture, and socio-economic level of 3 sets of countries—liberal, traditional and post-communist. As hypothesized, universalism and benevolence values explained a left orientation in both liberal and traditional countries and conformity and tradition values explained a right orientation; values had little explanatory power in post-communist countries. Values predicted political orientation more strongly than socio-demographic variables in liberal countries, more weakly in post-communist countries, and about equally in traditional countries.

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Basic personal values and the meaning of left‐right political orientations in 20 countries.

What conditions help stable patterns of party support to emerge? Using pooled time-series cross-section data on election results from 15 East European democracies, the empirical analysis finds that (1) right after a regime change electoral volatility increases while the trend is reversed after democracy has endured for about a decade; (2) ethnic cleavages have no effect on stability while social cleavages affect electoral stability only during economic downturns; (3) both institutions and economic performance influence the stability of party support; however, the effect of the latter diminishes over time when democracies mature.

The Development of Stable Party Support: Electoral Dynamics in Post‐Communist Europe

1. Central and Eastern Europe and the Idea of the East 2. Central and Eastern Europe in a Center-Periphery Perspective 3. Dependence Doxa: Western Hegemony and its Naturalization in Central and Eastern Europe 4. Intelligentsia Doxa: A Hegemony of the Intelligentsia and its Naturalization 5. Post-colonial Theory in a Central European Context 6. The Kresy (Old Borderlands) Discourse and its Critics 7. The New Borderlands Discourse 8. Constructing New Identities for Eastern Poland 9. Belarussian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Reactions to Polish Discourses on the East 10. Conclusions: Critical Theory in a Central European Context

Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe

(2000). Politics in the Periphery: Political Cleavages in Poland Interpreted in their Historical and International Context. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 851-873.

Politics in the Periphery: Political Cleavages in Poland Interpreted in their Historical and International Context

The article deals with negative aspects of Russia’s representations in Polish public discourse and the mechanisms of their reproduction It is not as much focused on the historical roots of Polish images of Russia as on the functions they play in the logic of Polish national identity Additionally, the article attempts to theorize certain aspects of the production of Russia’s image in Poland A particular reference is made to the center-periphery paradigm and the psychological notion of the inferiority complex In the conclusion, functions of the image of Russia in Polish discourse are interpreted in the framework of the theory of capitals of Pierre Bourdieu

Uses of Russia: The Role of Russia in the Modern Polish National Identity

The main aim of this paper is to show that behind the complex and fluid surface dimension of the Polish political scene it is possible to reveal a relatively stable two-dimensional structure of deep political identities. The study is based on the analysis of ecological data — the results of elections from 1990 to 1997. The results prove the exceptional stability of the Polish electoral geography and appear to be consistent with other studies based mainly on the survey data. The use of the spatial data allowed us to reveal the historical and spatial determinants of electoral behavior in Poland.

Hidden dimensions: the stability and structure of regional political cleavages in Poland

This article aims at integrating the phenomenon of the Central and Eastern European intelligentsia into the application of the theory of cultural capital of Pierre Bourdieu to the analysis of societies of that region. This is done by critically reevaluating the model of evolution of the post-communist countries of Central Europe proposed by Gil Eyal, Ivan Szelenyi, and Eleanor Townsley, in their “Making Capitalism without Capitalists.” The present article argues for supplementing their approach with an analytical distinction between the concepts of intellectuals (as masters of the critical discourse culture) and the intelligentsia, which in countries like Poland have an important component of post-gentry culture. The identity and images of the intelligentsia are analyzed as important though highly contested aspects of cultural capital in Poland. Wide implications of discursive battles on the status of intelligentsia in contemporary Poland are exemplified in the case of the debates over the so-called Rywin Affair in Poland and the role played in that affair by the major Polish intellectual Adam Michnik. The political discourse related to the affair and to the status of Michnik are studied in context of the structure of the Polish political scene and related to the academic debates on the intelligentsia, whether it is a “really existing” and significant social group or merely a marginal one and “outdated discourse.”

Tomasz Zarycki

Papers

Ideologies of Eastness in Central and Eastern Europe

Politics in the Periphery: Political Cleavages in Poland Interpreted in their Historical and International Context

Uses of Russia: The Role of Russia in the Modern Polish National Identity

Hidden dimensions: the stability and structure of regional political cleavages in Poland

The power of the intelligentsia: The Rywin Affair and the challenge of applying the concept of cultural capital to analyze Poland’s elites