Danijela Dolenec

Youth Participation in Eastern Europe in the Age of Austerity

This chapter explores ways in which austerity policies have influenced patterns of youth political participation between the core and periphery of the European Union (EU), focusing on Eastern Europe. The varied impact of austerity across the EU is reflected in the finding that young people in the Eastern periphery tend to refrain from both conventional and unconventional modes of political participation. While aggravating socioeconomic conditions have resulted in the rise of unconventional political participation activities among young people in Southern Europe, the same has not been the case in Eastern Europe. On the contrary, our findings suggest a retreat from politics that cuts across the distinction between conventional and unconventional modes of political participation.

Exploring Commons Theory for Principles of a Socialist Governmentality

Acknowledging that the concept of the commons is increasingly considered valuable for uniting left struggles, we develop the theory of the commons by strengthening its link with a Marxist critique of capitalism. In order to do so, we draw parallels between the work of Elinor Ostrom on principles of sustainable governance and Branko Horvat’s theory of self-management developed in the context of socialist Yugoslavia. We employ Foucault’s concept of governmentality to address the need for a socialist political rationale and governing principles, drawing our starting points from Ostrom and Horvat. First, we leave behind commons theorizing that relies on “exodus” strategies, instead drawing inspiration from Yugoslav self-management as an attempt of linking up the firm to wider social relations aimed at creating egalitarian, radically democratic, and materially sustainable societies. Second, we propose that the search for alternatives to capitalism and etatism goes beyond a change in ownership regime, and into principles of governance. While much of the contemporary progressive political agenda is concerned with distributional issues, we propose that devising governance principles to disable the formation of class control is the crucial innovation needed to advance a socialist governmentality. Finally, formulating the principles of socialist governmentality requires abandoning our reliance on indefinite economic growth which is seriously threatening the material base of human life.

Još uvijek teorijska fantazija: egalitarni sindrom Josipa Županova

U ovom tekstu analiziramo empirijski hommage Štulhofera i Burića (2015, 2016) Županovljevoj teoriji o egalitarnom sindromu (TES). Pokazujemo da autori preskaču neke fundamentalne korake u dizajnu istraživanja, kao što je zahtjev da propozicije vlastite teze uklope u postojeće znanje o nekoj temi. Nadalje, autori ne vode dovoljno računa o implikacijama višedimenzionalnosti konstrukta TES za svoju konceptualizaciju, a ni prilikom odabira statističkih analiza. Pokazujemo zašto podatke koje imaju ne bi trebali koristiti za analize koje poduzimaju. Nasuprot tome, naša analiza percepcije legitimne razine dohodovne nejednakosti sugerira da smo u europskim i globalnim okvirima sasvim prosječno egalitarno orijentirani. Dapače, stanovnici Njemačke ili Švicarske više teže uravnilovci nego stanovnici Hrvatske. Ovaj nalaz dovodi u pitanje interpretacije prema kojima je zahtjev za smanjenjem dohodovne nejednakosti atavizam socijalističke prošlosti, kao i one koje tvrde da takvi zahtjevi koče razvoj društva. Uzevši u obzir sve navedeno, zaključujemo da egalitarni sindrom i dalje ostaje teorijska fantazija. Ključne riječi: teorija egalitarnog sindroma, modernizacijska teorija, dizajn istraživanja, dohodovna nejednakost, Hrvatska

Green Flash in the Croatian Pan: Green Party Survival in Post-socialist Europe:

This article explores the subject matter of new political parties’ survival by analysing the recent trajectory of the Green party ORaH in Croatia. ORaH emerged in October 2013; it won 9.4 percent of the vote at the 2014 European Parliament election and subsequently rose to 18.5 percent of public support in October 2014, only to collapse to 1.7 percent of the vote at the parliamentary election held in November 2015. In order to explain ORaH’s initial meteoric rise and its later equally rapid demise, we will employ studies on new and niche parties while we further elaborate our analysis of ORaH’s programme by profiling ORaH’s voter base. We also address a recurrent weakness in political party research by analysing the role of the European level of competition in increasing the chances of a new party’s survival by developing a framework that better integrates domestic and international dynamics of political party development. Our main finding is that despite its success in the 2014 European Parliament elections, and even though its electorate shares important features of the European Green voter, ORaH failed to secure parliamentary representation because of the inability of the party’s leadership to steer the party away from its initial contender status and define OraH’s policy niche.

The Implausible Knowledge Triangle of the Western Balkans

Within the broader process of European integration, which is the pre-eminent political project in the Western Balkans, the Bologna process and the Lisbon Strategy ‘introduced a new and spectacular dynamic into the affairs of higher education in Europe’ (Neave 2002, p. 186), carrying the potential of transforming higher education ‘as fundamentally as the nation state changed the medieval universities’ (Corbett 2005, p. 192). In this analysis, Bologna and Lisbon are taken to further the same four basic objectives—mobility, employability, attractiveness, and competitiveness (see Neave 2002). While Bologna aims to reorganise higher education systems through three-cycle structures, comparable degrees, and qualification frameworks, the Lisbon Agenda focuses on making Europe a more attractive place to invest and work in, making knowledge and innovation the heart of growth, and creating more and better jobs.

We Need to Change. Ideas of Growth and Development in a Time of Crisis of Fossil Energy and Capitalism

The purpose of this paper is to lay the groundwork, and provoke others to dig it up, for the holistic understanding of the economic hopes and geophysical drivers behind the themes of green economy and degrowth. It first fights for the voice in which to frame the warning of global civilizational collapse, its physical and historic drivers and experiential instantiations. The paper surveys the opinions of scholars from environmental science, biology, history, leftist social theory and economics addressing the notion that the global civilisation as we know it is facing a collapse of human societies and practices sustaining it1. Whilst there are historical narratives that evoke hope for a technological overcoming of this problem, in the text I endeavour to show how such a gamble is based on ontological confusion about the fundamental elements of the modern developmental success. The paper elucidates how the key collapse-mitigating model is not a matter of small life-style changes reliant on technological transcence of physical constraints, but a matter of serious social restructuring that would replace the missing technological fix. But for that to become democratically acceptable, the societies must renegotiate the indicators and definitions of what wellbeing consists in, whilst humanity must redefine what its endurance is to consist of, not hope for the miracle of green economy.