Moscow’s decision on 24 February 2022 to invade Ukraine constituted a culmination in the militarisation trajectory of Russian foreign policy since 2008. At the same time, the war has exposed the weaknesses of the military reform launched by Moscow in 2008. The high losses of the country’s...

Stateness is the capacity of the state to exercise its fundamental functions. The collapse of the socialist system prompted the former USSR countries to ‘re-invent' their stateness. The paper focuses on factors that impede or smooth stateness transformations in post-socialist countries. First,...

This paper argues that a new scientific framework (Science II) has been slowly emerging, rivaling the Descartes-Newtonian perspective (Science I) dominant for several hundred years. The Science II framework places a great deal of emphasis on evolution, dynamism, chance and/or pattern...

This paper seeks to test if the disillusionment theory developed by Sokolov et al. (2018) to explain the rise of anti-Americanism in post-Soviet Russia, can also explain the recent growth of Euroscepticism in East-Central Europe (ECE). We provide anecdotal evidence of anti-EU disillusionment in...

This paper revisits the relation between democracy, liberalization, and prosperity in transition countries, using a panel of 25 countries over 19 years. Earlier investigations found political and economic liberalization to be positively correlated whereas the relation between political...

This paper exploits five waves of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) to investigate issues of social and political capital in rural Viet Nam. I analyse membership of the Communist Party, 'mass organizations' (Farmers' Union, Women's Union, etc.) and other voluntary...

We develop a theory of endogenous regimes transitions (with a focus on democratic consolidation), which emphasizes the role of political culture and of its interaction with political institutions. Political culture reflects the extent of individual commitment across citizens to defend democracy...

Natural resources are generally associated to negative effects on the political environment of a country. This paper explores the impact that oil revenues have on the establishment of a given political system. Based on previous literature, a political economy perspective is employed. A simple...

The Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, are very successful in transformation. From 1991 to 2015 they regained independence and transformed their economies from socialist central planning into functioning mar-ket economies, joined the EU in 2004 and became member of the Euro zone....