Sabrina P. Ramet

"Since the crash of communism in Central and Southeastern Europe in 1989, almost everything in the region has changed--from politics to economics to popular culture to religion. There have been new challenges to confront and new dilemmas. This volume examines the political engagement of religious associations in the post-socialist countries of Central and Southeastern Europe, with a focus on disputes about property restitution, revelations about the collaboration of clergy with the communist-era secret police, intolerance, and controversies about the inclusion of religious instruction in the schools. Each of the countries in the region is analyzed with research grounded in on-site interviews, as well as extensive use of literature in local and Western languages"--

The years since the collapse of communism in 1989 have witnessed a dangerous renewal of religious intolerance and nationalist demands across Eastern Europe. In this provocative application of moral philosophy to contemporary political processes, Sabrina P. Ramet draws upon the literature of Natural Law to demonstrate that liberal democracy depends on a delicate balance between individual and societal rights. Appeals to the collective rights of national and religious groups rest on spurious claims, as Ramet convincingly shows in her analysis of the situations of Hungarians in Slovakia, Albanians in Kosovo, theoretically inclined Catholic bishops in Poland, Serbs in Croatia, and contending forces in post-Dayton Bosnia. What Ramet calls the doctrine of collective rights actually subverts the liberal democratic project, legitimating instead intolerance and group exclusivity.

The collapse of socialist regimes across Southeastern Europe changed the rules of the political game overnight and led to the transformation of these societies, immediately affecting the status of women. The contributors to this volume contrast how the status of women in the post-socialist societies of the region evolved and address three central questions: First, in what ways have the situations of women and of sexual minorities changed since 1989/90? Second, to what extent have the dominant religious organizations in the region and local nationalists succeeded in promoting traditional values, how have their neo-traditional narratives challenged women and impacted sexual minorities, and how have local feminists and gay activists responded to such narratives? And third, how have the values of local citizens changed since the end of socialism, as regards gender-related and sex-related matters?--

"In 2009, when the first edition of this book was put to bed, the challenges in Central and Southeastern Europe looked formidable enough. The old order had collapsed across the region in the course of the years 1989-91, although the War of Yugoslav Succession (1991-95), the War for Kosovo (1998-99), and the Albanian Insurrection in Macedonia (2001) created additional complications for the Yugoslav successor states. But, as of 2009, the consensus among those watching the region was that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia at least seemed to be heading in the direction of liberal democracy, in spite of some bumps on the road in the cases of Slovakia and Slovenia and, in some quarters, also a cautious optimism that the entire region would, over time, accept European Union (EU) standards, deal effectively with corruption, and establish traditions of free and fair elections. But throughout the region, there were problems with corruption, subverting political processes, diverting public funds into private pockets, and corrupting the privatization process. Religiously inspired intolerance of gays and lesbians was, and has continued to be, a problem, especially in Southeastern Europe. But in 2004, the EU admitted 10 new members--among them, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Romania and Bulgaria were admitted to the EU in 2007 (followed by Croatia in 2013)"--

"Sabrina Ramet, a veteran observer of the Yugoslav scene, traces the steady deterioration of Yugoslavia's political and social fabric in the years since 1980, arguing that, whatever the complications entailed in the national question, the final crisis was triggered by economic deterioration, shaped by the federal system itself, and pushed forward toward war by Serbian politicans bent on power - either within a centralized Yugoslavia or within an "ethnically cleansed" greater Serbia."--BOOK JACKET.

"An original work of historical synthesis by an esteemed international scholar, this book offers the first comparative analysis of the four different types of collectivism (communism, Fascism; Nazism; anarchism) in twentieth-century Europe which aspired to create an 'alternative modernity'. The author presents not only the authoritarian alternatives to democracy of the past century, but also the experiment with anarchism undertaken in Spain in the late 1930s. The concept of the analysis is to show how these political systems are driven by rival visions of alternative modernity and how the prioritization of values plays out in politics. Each political concept discussed in the book found support among broad sectors of its respective population at one time or another, and were championed by professionals in the countries in which they took hold. The political vision which guided the construction (or in the anarchist case, attempted construction) of an alternative to democracy, oriented to an alternative future, is discussed in a balanced and erudite manner in each case. Debates within the participants in these projects are also focused. The book ends with a defense of liberal democracy, exploring departures from it in contemporary Hungary and Poland, but also the US"--