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Bringing actors back in: The key take-away from a symposium on crisis and institutional change
By Lisa Walters, on 27 March 2025
By Dr Elodie Douarin, Associate Professor in Economics and Gerhard Schnyder, Professor of International Management & Political Economy, Institute for International Management, Loughborough University London.
What do hurricane Katrina, a sovereign debt crisis in Greece, military coups, and credit crunches have in common? They all cause crises that may fundamentally challenge established institutional, economic and political orders. While the ‘permacrisis’ our world increasingly seems to be engulfed in is certainly no cause for joy, for social scientists interested in institutions, it offers an opportunity, because crises open up a window to observe the interplay between formal institutions (like laws and regulations) and informal institutions (like social norms and cultural values) and their joint response to stressing factors. It allows us therefore to better understand the relationship between two spheres of human activity that are too often presented as opposed or alternative orders.
An illustration of crises including a hurricane, financial crisis, coup d’etat, with global impact visuals.
Loving Like Aitmatov
By Lisa Walters, on 20 January 2025
Written by Ksenia Sizonova, PhD candidate, UCL SSEES
Aitmatov’s lines are music. They must be heard.
Their resonating waves carry the mystery of love and divine anxiety…’
M. Gapyrov [1]
Discourses about the Kyrgyz author Chyngyz Aitmatov’s legacy are often centered around his coining of the term ‘mankurt’ — an enslaved person deprived of their memory through torture. Originally described in the 1980 novel The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, the word ‘mankurt’ has acquired a life of its own, prominently featuring in national identity debates not only in Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian states but in many societies of the former Soviet Union [2].
Calin Georgescu: Romania’s latest Medical Populist
By Lisa Walters, on 3 December 2024
By Jack Dean, PhD candidate
With the first round of the election having been explored on the SSEES Research Blog, the question that stood out to me was “Who is Calin Georgescu?”. Whilst most discussions in the media thus far center around the pro-Russia stances offered, it is worth exploring the Georgescu’s rhetoric relating to conspiracies and healthcare. I argue that Calin Georgescu is the latest Romanian political actor to utilize medical populism in the years since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic and suggest that Georgescu represents the latest iteration of a post-Pandemic, post-fact norm for the country.
The 2024 Romanian Elections: A political earthquake and its aftershocks?
By Lisa Walters, on 29 November 2024
By Dr Daniel Brett, Lecturer in Social and Political Science, UCL SSEES
The first round of the Romanian elections has produced something of a surprising result. The victory by the little known, party-less extreme far right candidate Calin Georgescu has caused a great deal of shock among some Romanians and commentators. However, the result is less surprising than we might think given Romanian politics over the last five years. That the election was won by a member of the far right is unsurprising, that it was Georgescu rather than the more well known AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) leader George Simion is surprising.
Unpacking the Global History of Monocultures
By Lisa Walters, on 14 November 2024
Dr Volodymyr Kulikov, Lecturer in Ukrainian History, reflects on a workshop held at UCL SSEES on 1 November 2024.
Walking down the aisles of a supermarket, you might think that variety defines modern agriculture. Rows of packaged foods suggest a wealth of choices, but behind this illusion lies a different reality: monocultures dominate global food production. Single-crop farming now underpins much of our agricultural system, building on the economies of scale that benefit consumers and makes agrochemical producers happy. Monoculture farming clears land for a single crop, meticulously killing anything that might compete with it. This approach, however, degrades soils and creates a breeding ground for diseases and pests that spread rapidly through one species. By putting all their eggs in one basket, producers risk losing everything to extreme weather events or diseases, reflecting the fragility of monoculture.
Czech presidential election: the oligarch or the general?
By Sean L Hanley, on 20 January 2023
Czechs again seem set to reject populism for moderate steady-as-you-go leadership, leaving bigger reform debates for another day, argues Seán Hanley.
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Petr Pavel [Photo: Martin Strachoň, CC BY-SA 4.0]
At first glance, the result looks puzzling. Voters in one of post-communist Central Europe’s most socially liberal democracies have opted for an unlikely-looking choice between an oligarch and a general. Conventional party-political candidates and issues were largely absent from the campaign which centred on personalities, particularly, on the divisive figure of Babiš. Opponents see the billionaire ex-PM, who was acquitted by a court of EU subsidy fraud in the long-running Storks Nest case mid-way through the campaign, as a corrupt populist with strong authoritarian leanings.
But the contest also reveals underlying continuities in Czech politics. Originally elected to parliament on an anti-corruption platform and promises to ‘run the state like a firm’, Babiš has long since shifted towards a loose social populism promising big public spending, generous pensions, and hikes in public sector salaries, which has seen him swallow up the electorate of Czechia’s once strong parties of the traditional left.
This was amply demonstrated in the first-round. Babiš promised to ‘help people’ and fend off belt tightening or taxes rises the current centre-right government may resort to cope with Czechia’s strained post-Covid public finances. Analysis of first round-voting patterns confirm that Babiš’s vote was strongest in poorer regions and smaller localities with lower standards of living and educational attainment, and higher levels of unemployment and consumer debt. Read the rest of this entry »
New Russian Exodus: Russians Protest With Their Feet Against Putin’s War in Ukraine
By Lisa Walters, on 21 October 2022
Written by Svetlana Ruseishvili[1], Oswaldo Truzzi[2] and scholars of the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Academic Chair for Refugees at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil. Svetlana Ruseishvili will be a Visiting Scholar at UCL SSEES for Term 2, 22-23.
Putin’s attack on Ukraine resulted in casualties, destruction, and large-scale migration. In Ukraine, the main demographic consequences of the war were the massive loss of life and the vast number of refugees and internally displaced persons. Since the war began, thirteen million people have been displaced from Ukraine, both internally and abroad. According to UNHCR estimates, 7.4 million Ukrainian refugees have been registered in Europe. About 3 million people left or were taken to the Russian Federation.
The scale of emigration from Russia itself became unprecedented. Although emigration from Russia for political and economic reasons occurred before the war, it was Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that triggered a massive flee to nearby visa-free countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Turkey, Armenia, Estonia, and Latvia. According to rough estimates, between 500,000 and 1 million people left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. Exact statistics are unavailable, as emigrants have left and continue to flee in an emergency, without de-registering in Russia, arriving in visa-free countries. This is a massive new exodus from Russia.
Researching Poland from Abroad: Challenges of Doing a PhD in Area Studies: Insights from the Polish Studies Group Northern Workshop in Manchester
By Lisa Walters, on 1 September 2022
Anna Stanisz-Lubowiecka and Carolin Heilig, current UCL SSEES PhD students
A PhD is a special but equally challenging period. For those in the midst of it connecting with others in a similar position can make you realise that your experiences are shared by others and for those just about to embark on the PhD journey, an exchange with more experienced PhD candidates can help to mitigate certain challenges from the get-go.
On 23–24 June 2022 during the Polish Studies Group Northern Workshop in Manchester we moderated a session dedicated to the needs of PhD students in Polish Studies. The aim of the session was to discuss challenges students have encountered at different stages of their PhD journey and share experience on how some of these challenges may be overcome. The discussion took place in a friendly and supportive atmosphere of a PhD student network and also invited PhD students at Manchester University researching other countries in the region. Students who attended our session were doing their PhDs at a number of British universities and represented different disciplines, but they had one thing in common: they were all doing research on some aspect of Poland. For many of us this was the first occasion to come together to discuss challenges of researching Poland from abroad. For this reason, we ended up focussing primarily on discussing the challenges themselves, rather than providing solutions.