Introduction

Without a doubt, participatory budgeting (PB) is the most frequently used democratic innovation and the most popular tool for directly involving citizens in the process of public funds distribution. According to the PB World Atlas, there were roughly 11,690– 11,825 PBs worldwide in 2019, though the actual number is certainly much higher (Dias et al, 2019). Though PBs are something of a calling card for democratic innovation and radical democracy, they are a double-edged sword. Over the last 30 years, they have undergone dramatic evolution. In their infancy in Brazil, they were strongly leftist and even class-centric in orientation. The ambition of their initiators was to shake up the local political landscape, radically democratize it, change the rules of the political game, and empower the lower classes. PB aimed to break up the system in which the political elite, surrounded by a wreath of interest groups, made up the decision-making core (Baiocchi, 2005; Avritzer, 2006, pp 623– 37; Wampler, 2007; Baiocchi et al, 2011). Brazilian PBs were successful in pushing through the process of power redistribution and democratization. There, the leading example was Porto Alegre. A participatory revolution such as that had to meet a number of criteria. Firstly, it had to be holistic, not partial. The key to success was making public funds acquisition impossible outside of PB (Baiocchi, 2005). If not for that, it would have been impossible to eliminate the behind-the-scenes games of interests and political corruption.

Introduction

Russia's war against Ukraine since 24 February 2022 calls for a re-evaluation of the European Union's (EU) policies and concepts in different fields.1 On the political level, the EU's long-standing self-image as primarily a normative and soft power projecting its norms in post-Cold War Europe and beyond has been shaken (Manners, 2002). All efforts to integrate the Russian Federation in a common European space of peace and security seem to have failed in the face of Moscow's imperial turn, which defines post-Soviet states as a zone of special Russian interest. In its so-called Near Abroad (blizhnee zarubezh’e), states would have only limited sovereignty in various policy fields ranging from membership in transnational organizations such as NATO and the EU to domestic policies such as the citizenship regime.

The Russian rationale for the necessity of the war against Ukraine and its war aims call imperatively for revisiting some scholarly concepts as well. Vladimir Putin and other leading politicians and ideologues from the Russian Federation posit two main reasons for the war. The first is to safeguard the Russian population in the self-declared republics in eastern and southern Ukraine, in Crimea, and in the whole of Ukraine from acts of genocide perpetrated by Ukrainian Nazis. The second line of argumentation is more far-reaching, calling the very existence of the Ukrainian nation and state into question: once the Ukrainian regime is removed from power, the Ukrainian nation is destined to return to the common Russian cradle, and the state is doomed to be dissolved territorially and politically and to be incorporated into the Russian Federation.

Introduction

For most citizens in Europe, including young people up to the age of 30, voting is the predominant and most effective form of political participation. It is thus a central practice of citizenship. However, the aggregate turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections has repeatedly been low, with only half of citizens using their right to vote. In post-socialist countries that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 or later, participation is even lower. Here, turnout has consistently been around 20 percentage points below the EU-15 average (see Table 4.1). Moreover, a high vote share for Eurosceptic parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has raised concerns (Hobolt and de Vries, 2016; Hloušek and Kaniok 2020a).

In the 2019 EP elections, turnout rose for the first time since 1979, and participation in the post-socialist member states was significantly higher than in any previous election. At the same time, Eurosceptic parties across the continent were able to consolidate their results (Treib 2021), and there is a burgeoning body of research on the regional patterns of turnout and Euroscepticism (Schoene, 2019; Dijkstra et al, 2020).

Against this background, this chapter analyses regional patterns of (non-)participation and Eurosceptic voting in the 2019 EP elections in five post-socialist countries, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. These member states were selected because they share similarities in terms of history (including a socialist past outside the Soviet Union), regional location, economic structure, and culture, and because they all experienced democratization, economic liberalization, and EU accession after 1989.

Introduction

Since the 1990s both the Council of Europe and the European Union (EU) have contributed to fostering democratic change in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by, among others, defining and promoting new forms of education for citizenship (Huddleston, 2005, p 51; Olafsdottir, 2008, p 129). Though both European organizations are constrained in their legal capacity to enforce educational policies at national levels, they rely on informational and, to some extent, financial and organizational tools to influence national policies (Abs, 2021, p 330). As a consequence, educational policies and curricula in European countries increasingly include translations and implementations of supranational European policy initiatives on education for citizenship (Neubauer, 2012, p 82).

Considering that Europeanization has an impact on how citizenship education is conceived and carried out (Keating, 2014), in this chapter I investigate the concepts of citizenship promoted at the European supranational level within their educational documents and materials.1 My methodology consists of a qualitative analysis of teaching materials and implementation reports produced by the Council of Europe and the EU and is complemented by insights from the academic literature.

Given the ideological sensitivity of the concept of citizenship, reaching consensus on the aims and approach of citizenship education is challenging (Veugelers, 2021, p 25). In these supranational approaches, I question whether one model of citizenship imposes itself upon others or if we can detect influences from several models.

Introduction

In recent years, curriculum has become a fiercely debated issue in the systems of many countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The rise of so-called culture wars, fuelled by a polarized political climate and the rise of identarian populist parties (Sata and Karolewski, 2022; Zimmerman, 2022), has led to intense scrutiny of the role that school programmes play in shaping the values and beliefs of young people. These conflicts are contoured by a new importance attributed to knowledge for the transmission or disruption of political and cultural repertoires in contemporary societies. The social sciences and especially civic education as a field are traditionally concerned by these pressures (Bobbitt, 2019). Views on what civic values and history should be taught in schools have thus become highly polarized (Carretero, 2011; Taylor and Guyver, 2012; Karolewski, 2019). Haste et al (2017) argue that this is due not only to the modalities of populist politics but also to the expansive inherent dynamics of the field of civic education, which has fanned out in plural ways and therefore encompasses much more than preparing young citizens for conventional democratic participation (Haste et al, 2017). Issues of national identity and history, sexual citizenship, immigration, and secularism/religion and the debates that ensue are salient in many civic education systems. Thus, in numerous societies, civic and citizenship education have emerged as a pivotal battleground, seen in the controversial attempts to delineate which national values and historical narratives should be accentuated or de-emphasized when shaping the minds of young citizens (Evans, 2004).

Introduction

The book Rethinking Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe examines how citizenship is practised in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from an interdisciplinary perspective. Through the lenses of interdisciplinary citizenship studies, scholars from the fields of educational and political science provide insights into how citizenship interacts with political engagement and interrelates with practices of citizenship. The volume adopts a pluralist approach, acknowledging that citizenship can have different connotations depending on the theoretical context, methodological approaches, and specific research interests across the subdisciplines of educational and social sciences.

While the focus on the broader region allows for a comprehensive examination of shared challenges and trends, the decision to limit individual country analyses was intentional, aimed at highlighting overarching patterns and fostering comparative discussions within CEE. However, this choice also opens avenues for future research that could delve deeper into specific national contexts regarding citizenship education and youth citizenship.

This volume expands on prior research, including Treviño et al (2021), to deepen the discussion on citizenship. While that book provides a rich theoretical analysis of youth citizenship across diverse cultures, Rethinking Citizenship extends the discussion specifically within the CEE context, emphasizing unique historical, political, and social dynamics. It situates youth citizenship within local frameworks, allowing for a deeper understanding of how practices differ from those in a more generalized global context.

Introduction

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has long attracted citizenship scholars due to the post-1989 profound changes affecting state borders, constitutional frameworks, migration flows, and the statuses of nations and national minorities. The fall of communist regimes, the resurgence of nationalism, and the dissolution of formerly federated states, most notably the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, reignited fundamental questions about citizenship, including ‘who is in and who is out’ (Walzer, 1993, p 55) and ‘what binds citizens together into a shared political community’ (Beiner, 1995, p 3). Unsurprisingly, much of this scholarship has concentrated on citizenship as a ‘top-down’ mechanism that regulates the statuses and rights of citizens and defines the legal structures of newly established political communities. Notable works include Brubaker's (1992, 1994, 2000) analysis of citizenship changes in the new Baltic and post-Soviet states, Shaw and Štiks's (2013) exploration of the pivotal role of new citizenship regimes in post-Yugoslav state consolidation, and Baubock's (Baubock et al, 2009; Baubock, 2010) research highlighting the connections between transnational citizenship, migration, and minorities within ‘citizenship constellations’ in CEE, among others.

However, relatively less attention has been devoted to the transformation of citizenship as a lived experience and a bottom-up practice of enacting statuses and rights (Vasiljević, 2018). Without attempting to overstretch the concept (Heisler, 2005), we want to emphasize that citizenship is also an embedded identity or, better yet, a social practice that unfolds and is performed in one's local or national community alongside one's fellow citizens.

Introduction

Making up more than 80 per cent of the total territory of the European Union (EU) and constituting 30 per cent of its population, rural areas are a prime focus of EU policy (European Commission, 2018). In its endeavours to promote rural development, the involvement of the local population is particularly emphasized. This orientation is predicated on the idea that top-down approaches fail when they overlook the in situ communities while their involvement may further the success of rural development.

Whereas the role of citizens in rural development is widely discussed, another aspect has entered the agenda: the adoption of ICT in rural areas is considered as being beneficial in several respects. With regard to the challenges of rural areas, it is expected that digital applications can help to counteract the declining provision of public services and communal activities, to build social networks, and to improve the quality of life in general (Ko et al, 2019; Meyn, 2020). However, because the challenges differ from region to region, it is important to adequately address the diversity of rural areas in terms of both civic participation and ICT rollout. In this context, digital technologies are growing in importance, but so are activities aimed at improving the peculiar living conditions of rural residents.

Thus, the advent of digital applications has been welcomed to promote opportunities for actively involving citizens so to implement demand-driven rural development. Consequently, within the EU's financial framework, a number of initiatives have been brought forward geared towards actively promoting this approach, LEADER being one of the most robust and long-standing of such schemes.

This volume of the Bristol Studies in Comparative and International Education is the first in the series to focus upon Central and Eastern Europe. The key theme of the book concerns the interplay between citizenship and education; and the contributors document and critically examine the role of education and participation in shaping citizenship practices throughout the region.

The book draws upon extensive experience and collective expertise in educational research and political science. This is informed by the findings of a range of recent, externally funded research projects in tune with our series rationale, that emphasize the importance of context-specific approaches for research and for ‘cultivating responsible and engaged citizens’. This, as the Editors emphasize, addresses a gap in the current literature and a lack of systematic, interdisciplinary research on citizenship practices in Central and Eastern Europe.

Citizenship is understood as a complex and contested concept and this pluralist orientation ‘recognizes that citizenship can assume different connotations depending on the context … and the diverse practices of citizenship that are evident in patterns of education, political participation and civil society’.

Together, the chapters cover a wide range of specific issues, in formal, non-formal, and informal education contexts, and reflect upon citizenship practices in organizational and political settings across a revealing mix of micro, meso, and macro levels. This generates comparative insights into the challenges and opportunities facing citizenship and democracy and, in doing so, provides a ‘nuanced understanding of the complex and contested nature of citizenship in the region’.