"This book examines the economic, social, and literary effect of the end of communist domination and accompanying cultural subsidies in Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. The end of the communist regime has made the position of writer less lucrative and prestigious within these four countries. The countries' respective publishing markets are struggling to adjust to a new economy"--Provided by publisher."This book examines the economic, social, and literary effect of the end of communist domination and accompanying cultural subsidies in Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. The end of the communist regime has made the position of writer less lucrative and prestigious within these four countries. The countries' respective publishing markets are struggling to adjust to a new economy"--Provided by publisher.

More than 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, European integration remains a work in progress, especially in those Eastern European nations most dramatically reshaped by democratization and economic liberalization. This volume assembles detailed, empirically grounded studies of eleven states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and the former East Germany—that went on to join the European Union. Each chapter analyzes the political, economic, and social transformations that have taken place in these nations, using a comparative approach to identify structural similarities and assess outcomes relative to one another as well as the rest of the EU.

The book provides an innovatory internationally comparative causal analysis of the variation in political and economic outcomes of post-communist transformations after the first decade, using multi-value qualitative comparative analysis and TOSMANA software. This analysis includes a critical revision of received dichotomies (e.g. on gradualism versus "shock therapy") about post-communist transformation, a discussion of the counterfactual scripts of post-communist transformation, and contributes to current debates on the varieties of post-communist capitalism. This conceptual framework is applied in case studies of the transformation in the Baltic States, with special consideration given to the possibility of alternatives to the Lithuanian way and the challenges of populism in this country's politics. Book jacket.

An exploration and survey of the activities of right-wing extremist parties in the region stretching from Germany to Russia. It seeks to show that radical right activities can have pernicious effects even if right-wing extremists do not themselves succeed in obtaining seats in government.

Informative, broad-ranging, this title sheds new light on the life and literary art of one of the last century's most celebrated authors. The first volume to be authorized by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust, "Dangerous Edges of Graham Greene" brings together writers, journalists and scholars to investigate as well as to assess Greene's prolific oeuvre and intense personal interests. Here the reader may explore everything from Greene's Vienna at the time of the filming of "The Third Man" to his sometimes fraught relationship with Evelyn Waugh, from Greene's unconventional fictional treatment of women to his "believing skepticism". While Greene often informed friends that "a ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system", critics of his literary art have found it extraordinarily difficult to define the content of this "ruling passion". Perhaps this is because Greene's own character seems so paradoxical, ironic even. Moreover, in believing that sin contains within itself the seeds of saintliness, he consistently loiters on what Robert Browning calls "the dangerous edge of things". In exploring this "dangerous edge", this book covers the full breadth of Greene's life and literary career.

This book compares media and political systems in East-Central as well as in Western Europe in order to identify the reasons possibly responsible for the extensive and intensive party control over the media. This phenomenon is widely experienced in many of the former communist countries since the political transformation. The author argues that differences in media freedom and in the politicization of the news media are rooted in differences in party structures between old and new democracies, and, notably, the fact that young parties in the new members of the European Union are short of resources, which makes them more likely to take control of and to exploit media resources.