This study focuses on nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe. Anchored in theories that this region historically has been characterized by a nationalism that is based on the ethnic group rather than on liberal or civic concepts, it is the purpose of this study to explore whether these theories still apply in recent times when the region has been liberalized, for example manifested in the entry to the European Union. The research question has been tested through analysis of the constitutions of a number of Central and Eastern European countries in order to investigate what type of nationalism that the states have codified in their basic political documents. The results show that some of the states give expression to the historical ethnic nationalism in their constitutions, which indicates that the theories still are relevant.

Why are national constitutional courts able to affect the actions of national legislatures? The roles and relationships of both constitutional courts and legislatures are defined in the national constitution. Although there is variance across countries, in general constitutional courts are empowered to ensure that laws conform to the principles and values enshrined in the constitution. National legislatures are, at least to some extent, required to conform legislation to the decisions of the constitutional court. Yet both the constitutional court and legislature could alter or avoid these roles. Constitutional courts can expand or contract their duties by applying the constitution in either a broad or restricted manner. Similarly, national legislatures can expand or contract the influence of the constitutional court by complying with or ignoring past and future constitutional court decisions. This dissertation builds on the works of Fish and Kroenig (2009), Schimmelfinning (2006), Maveety and Grosskopf (2004), Finnemore (2003), and Stone (1990) to explain the balance of power between national constitutional courts and national legislatures in the protection and extension of fundamental rights and democracy. By creating a measure of constitutional court autonomy and using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this dissertation will seek to demonstrate that national constitutional court and legislative autonomy must be viewed from both the national and supranational perspective and that a reduction in national legislative autonomy may increase national diffusion of democratic norms and the protection of human rights.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1995. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-280).

The thesis analyses Czechoslovak-Jewish relations in the twentieth century using the case study of the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in London and its activities during the Second World War. In order to present the research in a wider perspective, it covers the period between the Munich Agreement, when the first politicians left Czechoslovakia, and the Communist Coup in February 1948. Hence the thesis evaluates the political activities and plans of the Czechoslovak exiles, as well as the implementation of the plans in liberated Czechoslovakia after 1945. In comparison with previous contributions to the theme, this thesis is based on extensive archival research. It examines how the Czechoslovak treatment of the Jews was shaped by resurgent Czech and Slovak nationalism/s caused by the war and the experience of the occupation by the German army. Simultaneously, the thesis enquires into the role played in the Czechoslovak exiles’ decision making by their efforts to maintain the image of a democratic country in the heart of Europe. An adherence to western liberal democracies was a key political asset used by Czechoslovakia since her creation in 1918. Fair treatment of minorities, in particular the Jews, became part of this ‘myth’. However, the Second World War brought to the fore Czechoslovak efforts to nationally homogenize the post-war Republic and rid it of its ‘disloyal’ minorities. Consequently, the thesis evaluates how the Jews as a minority were perceived and constructed. The thesis is divided into five chapters, following the developments in chronological, as well as thematic order. The first chapter analyses the influence of people in occupied Czechoslovakia on the exiles’ policy towards the Jews. Chapter two and three document the exiles’ policy towards the Jews during the war, including the government’s responses to the Holocaust. Chapter four enquires into the wartime origins of the post-war Czechoslovak policy towards the Jews. Finally, the last chapter analyses the influence of public opinion abroad on the Czechoslovak policy towards the Jews during and after the war.

abstract: In the countries of Eastern Europe, the recent history of the communist regimes creates a context rich in various and often times contradictory remembering practices. While normative discourses of memory enacted in official forms of memory such as museums, memorials, monuments, or commemorative rituals attempt to castigate the communism in definite terms, remembering practices enacted in everyday life are more ambiguous and more tolerant of various interpretations of the communist past. This study offers a case study of the ways in which people remember communism in everyday life in Romania. While various inquiries into Eastern Europe's and also Romania's official and intentional forms of memorializing communism abound, few works address remembering practices in their entanglements with everyday life. From a methodological point of view, this study integrates a grounded methodology approach with a rhetorical sensitivity to explore the discourses, objects, events, and practices of remembering communism in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. In doing so, this inquiry attends not only to the aspects of the present that animate the remembering of communism, but also and more specifically to the set of practices by which the remembering process is performed. The qualitative analysis revealed a number of conceptual categories that clustered around three major themes that describe the entanglements of remembering activities with everyday life. Relating the present to the past, sustaining the past in the present, and pursuing the communist past constitute the ways in which people in Romania live their relationships with the communist past in a way that reveals the complex interplay between private and public forms of memory, but also between the political, social, and cultural aspects of the remembering process. These themes also facilitate a holistic understanding of the rhetorical environment of remembering communism in Romania. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Communication 2014

abstract: Piano Quintet> is a three movement piece, inspired by music of Eastern Europe. Sunrise in Hungary starts with a legato song in the first violin unfolding over slow moving sustained harmonics in the rest of the strings. This is contrasted with a lively Hungarian dance which starts in the piano and jumps throughout all of the voices. Armenian Lament introduces a mournful melody performed over a subtly shifting pedal tone in the cello. The rest of the voices are slowly introduced until the movement builds into a canonic threnody. Evening in Bulgaria borrows from the vast repertoire of Bulgarian dances, including rhythms from the horo and rachenitsa. Each time that the movement returns to the primary theme, it incorporates aspects of the dance that directly preceded it. The final return is the crux of the piece, with the first violin playing a virtuosic ornaments run on the melody. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.M. Composition 2014

During the twentieth century, trends in childlessness varied strongly across European countries while educational attainment grew continuously across them. Using census and large-scale survey data from 13 European countries, we investigated the relationship between these two factors among women born between 1916 and 1965. Up to the 1940 birth cohort, the share of women childless at age 40+ decreased universally. Afterwards, the trends diverged across countries. The results suggest that the overall trends were related mainly to changing rates of childlessness within educational groups and only marginally to changes in the educational composition of the population. Over time, childlessness levels of the medium-educated and high-educated became closer to those of the low-educated, but the difference in level between the two better educated groups remained stable in Western and Southern Europe and increased slightly in the East.

No description available.

The dissertation examines transitional justice mechanisms implemented in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. The question of how to deal with the legacies of communist repression has been an important source of political divisions in the region. The post-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe had an array of choices to consider when addressing demands for retrospective justice: from criminal prosecution of important officials, to restitution of property, or declassifying of secret files for public inspection. The two most common paths taken in the region have consisted of lustration laws and the decisions surrounding public access to secret police files. Lustration laws involve the disqualification of certain categories of former communist officials and secret police collaborators from public positions under the new regime. The dissertation explores differences in lustration laws and access to secret files across four cases that represent variation along a spectrum of outcomes: the Czech Republic having the strongest type of lustration, Poland and Hungary having a weaker form, and Romania lacking institutionalized lustration. The extant literature has focused on instances where such laws have been instituted, but has little to say about cases where it failed. The dissertation pays special attention to the case of Romania, with the goal of explaining its failure to enact lustration in spite of repeated attempts. The analysis is organized in two main sections. The first evaluates the existing patterns of lustration in the region. The second offers an in-depth analysis of the understudied case of Romania with the intent of filling the vacant niche in the existing literature. Primary sources examined include the proposed projects of lustration laws, the final drafts of laws, parliamentary debates and media reports on the issue. The dissertation concludes that differences in lustration patterns can be fully explained only by simultaneously considering the impact of several factors: the pervasiveness of security apparatus during the last phase of communist rule, the type of regime change, and the extent to which political actors embraced the lustration agenda.

L’exil, au XXe siècle, devient une véritable condition humaine. Il ne s’agit plus d’une peine réservée à certaines personnalités comme par le passé. Pourtant, l’état de l’art sur le sujet a tendance à omettre cette nouveauté et à confondre exil et émigration, cette dernière étant non pas condition, mais trajet, parcours, cheminement que l’on peut suivre sur une carte. La géographie demeure ainsi la métaphore d’une condition dont l’essence échappe en conséquence à l’analyse. C’est à travers les expériences respectives de quatre hommes de lettres d’Europe de l’Est que nous cherchons à contribuer à la recherche contemporaine sur l’exil. Exil et émigration vont souvent de pair. Les deux concepts étant distincts, ils forment un couple conceptuel. Il s’agit, à l’aide de ce couple conceptuel exil-émigration, de travailler les articulations entre géographie et condition et de dégager la pertinence contemporaine des expériences du XXe siècle : en quoi les expériences spécifiques à l’Europe de l’Est, dont la nostalgie de l’Europe centrale qui caractérise nos quatre hommes de lettres, permettent-elles de mieux comprendre nos questionnements actuels les plus urgents ? / Exile, in the twentieth century, becomes a genuine human condition. It is not a punishment reserved to well-known individuals. Nonetheless, bibliography tends to omit this novelty and confounds exile with emigration. Emigration is not a condition, but a route, a journey, a movement one can follow on the map. Thus geography remains the main metaphor of a condition, and the very essence of exile continues to be evasive within research on the topic. It is by thinking through the respective experiences of four East European intellectuals that I propose to contribute to current research. Exile and emigration often go together. The two concepts being distinct, they form a couple of concepts. My aim is to use this couple, exile-emigration, to analyse connections between geography and condition and to shed light on the contemporary relevance of past experiences: these experiences, peculiar to Eastern Europe, nostalgic about Central Europe – nostalgy that the four intellectuals actually share – allow us to specify in a more accurate way our more than contemporary questionings.