The leading question raised by the rhetoricians of classical antiquity was how to speak with maximum persuasive force. You must find the means, they answered, to enable your readers to see what you are arguing. This initially gave rise to a preoccupation with visual metaphors and other so-called figures of speech. Much later, with the development of the printed book, this also led to the practice of inserting actual figures into books to provide visual summaries of their arguments. Here, one pioneer was Thomas Hobbes, and this article offers an interpretation of the frontispieces he included in his two main works of political philosophy, De cive and Leviathan. The moral Hobbes aims to convey is that we have no alternative but to submit to the protecting power of the sovereign state if we wish to live in security and peace.

After a long quarrel scattered with persecutions, uprisings, dismissals and replacements of religious authorities, deaths, military expeditions, confiscations and attempts of assassinations in Greece, Italy and other European areas, the Council of Nicaea, in 787, imposed the victory of the iconodules in the Byzantine Empire. The West, especially the Kingdom of the Franks and the Lombards ruled by Charles, later known as Charlemagne, tried to take an official position in the synod of Frankfurt in 794 and in an odd and complex treatise, comprising four books, entitled Opus Caroli, or Libri Carolini, which were recently attributed by Ann Freeman to Theodulf of Orleans, one of the greatest intellectuals of his time. In this work, which we could call the first western treatise on images, the icon is freed from its ritual and cult value, and returned to its artistic use, thus determining, according to some scholars, the larger freedom of figurative representation that characterizes western religious art as compared with the Orthodox one. This stance is followed by a lively debate, involving many authors, the materials of which have not yet been translated and put into full circulation in historical-artistic research.

The ravages of two world wars and a desire to develop a politically and economically united Europe led to the establishment of the Eurozone in January 1999. The European Monetary Union was a grand experiment that brought 11 European nations under a single currency, the euro. Complexities associated with the implementation of effective fiscal, budgetary and banking coordination left the bloc vulnerable to asymmetries in the productivity and factor markets of its members. This article analyses how adoption of the euro, which prevented nominal exchange rate adjustments, impacted on the competitiveness and real economies of member states, thereby undermining the European Union’s key priority of creating balanced economic growth and productivity.

This Plenary Lecture summarizes the seismicity of Mars recorded by the NASA InSight mission, which landed on Elysium Planitia on 26 August 2018. Equipped with a highly sensitive seismometer, the lander has been successfully recording the seismicity of Mars for over three years. Different types of marsquakes have been identified, including low-frequency events with mantle-going phases and shallow high-frequency events characterized by crustal propagation. More recently, a few meteoric impacts have also been identified. Over a thousand events have been recorded, with magnitudes reaching up to MW 4.7. Here we review the techniques used by the MarsQuake Service to locate and characterize marsquakes and the active crustal processes in different areas of the red planet, and we discuss the different types of marsquakes.

In 2014, the new Ukrainian authorities decided to adopt a pro-Western foreign policy course. The EU supported this ambition: an Association Agreement with Ukraine was signed. This paved the way for the use of economic incentives, conditioned by the introduction of specific reforms. Besides acting within the EU, the Polish government also proposed independent support, mainly in the form of development assistance. Thus, this article aims to evaluate the efficacy of the Polish economic incentives, as well as to identify the factors that either strengthen or weaken such effectiveness. In this process, multiple variables are applied in the contexts of Polish policy goals and the situation in Ukraine. The article concludes that the applied incentives are properly aligned with the objectives that have been set. They could be effective despite the political obstacles in both Poland and Ukraine.

Inspired by the well-established trope of Eastern Europe’s in-betweenness, this article uses the notion of liminality to explore the images of Eastern Europe during the Cold War in the works of three American authors: John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth. Not only do these works map Eastern Europe as liminal in the imagological sense of the term, that is, as oscillating between competing narratives of otherness and familiarity; empathy and hostility; the East and the West, but also the very experience of venturing behind the Iron Curtain is charged with potentiality: the Eastern-European cityscape becomes the contact zone between cultures and the locus of self-discovery for the American characters. The resultant imaginative geography is at once contemporary and allochronic; political and personal, as it reiterates the Cold War balance of power while at the same time recycling existing representations of the area and reflecting the authors’ sensibilities.

The EU’s latest decision on adopting the recovery fund was revolutionary, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It would also dominate the EU’s economic governance of the decade of the 2020s. This article is an attempt to evaluate whether the EU’s recovery fund was the right policy answers to the post-COVID-19 EU economy or not, and explore its meanings and implications for European integration. This article argues that COVID-19 hit the EU at a time of health and social precariousness, and proved the conventional economic governance unsustainable. Necessities for game-changing in the post-COVID-19 economic governance were justified on both practical and moral grounds. Judging with these yardsticks, the EU’s recovery fund was evaluated as a welcomed paradigm shift in both the ideology and methodology of its economic governance. Beyond a contemporary economic rescue package, the recovery fund implied laying the cornerstone of completing a fiscal union in the Eurozone, for enhancing institutional functions of the European Commission, and for rediscovering the nature of European integration as the rescuer of national states, through the newly-forming consensus between Eurosceptic nationalists and pro-EU integrationists. This article reminds us that the COVID-19 crisis was a crucial opportunity for EU leadership to legitimize the EU’s existence in the post-Brexit era. If well implemented, the recovery fund could usher in a new chapter of European integration. If it fails, European integration would be at risk of further fragmentation and entrench into an ever-stronger anti-EU populism.

Turkey’s inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative in 2015 has raised the expectations of Turkish businesses and government concerning growth-generating investment from China. Existing studies on Chinese investments in Turkey lack sufficient data on the volume of investment, types of firms, and sectoral composition. Based on a novel dataset of Chinese investments in Turkey, this article contributes to filling this gap. We show that although Chinese investment in Turkey has increased considerably in recent years, it remains quite modest compared with investments from the West. Moreover, despite the expanding activities of Chinese technology companies, more than half of Chinese investment in Turkey consists of low value-added manufacturing, extraction of raw materials, and marketing of Chinese products. Overall, the developmental potential of Chinese investment in Turkey has not been radically different from other countries’ investments.

Many observers were casting doubts about the existence of a strategic partnership between Russia and the European Union long before the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent strained relations between the two blocs. Nevertheless, the main challenge of this article is to prove that there was indeed a positive effect regarding the strategic partnership on bilateral trading – together with such factors as the growth of the Russian and EU GDPs per capita, the devaluation of the Russian currency and the oil price increase – by applying the Gravity Model. Based on this model, it was also confirmed that there was a negative effect of the geographical distance and sanctions between parties on the EU–Russia trade flow. Moreover, we tried to predict by means of the Error Correction Models how EU–Russia bilateral trade would have changed according to a scenario wherein the parties continued being strategic partners, and had the sanctions not been imposed. As such, and by the method described, not only was it empirically confirmed that the major partners would have received the most benefit from the strategic partnership with Russia but even Russia’s smaller trading partners are incurring significant welfare losses from sanctions, along with Russia itself.

One of the most important problems facing Greece is the long-term and high-level unemployment rate. The Economic Adjustment Programmes (EAPs) focused on the supply side of the economy, aiming at the adjustment of prices and wages, draw on the classical economic model, as it is widely accepted that internal devaluation policies keep inflation low. This article attempts to examine whether the Keynesian theory and the Phillips Curve, which shows the relationship between unemployment and inflation, apply in the case of the Greek economy. We use descriptive statistics, ordinary least squares (OLS) and VAR Analysis to examine the relationship between the variables. According to the results, there is a negative correlation between unemployment and inflation in Greece, thus confirming the Phillips Curve hypothesis. Finally, results show that unemployment is less dependent on inflation compared with the past, and there are numerous other decisive factors affecting unemployment.

Corruption is a phenomenon that affects societies. It lowers trust in public institutions, lowers trust among people, undermines economic development, undermines democracy, and has implications for political participation. This article contributes to current debates on the impact of corruption by looking at other possible consequences of corruption. Specifically, this article looks at the impact of the perception of corruption on the approval of public protest meetings and demonstrations because, if corruption leads to these non-institutionalized forms of political participation, this may lead to security problems or a direct outbreak of violence. This study analyses this relationship by using seven post-communist countries that have undergone specific developments in terms of corruption. These developments were largely due to large-scale privatizations, politicized state administration, and the linking of politicians to the private sector. This research was conducted with individual-level data. The module ‘The Role of Government V’ from the International Social Survey Programme was used. Descriptive charts have revealed that in six out of the seven countries, most respondents considered politicians to be very corrupt. Around 80% of respondents in all seven countries approve of the organization of public protest meetings. Around 70% of respondents in all seven countries approve of demonstrations. Regression analysis revealed that there is a relationship between the perception of corruption among politicians and the approval of protest activities. Specifically, the more politicians are corrupt, the more people approve of holding public protest meetings and demonstrations.

Pope Gregory the Great (s. 590–604) wrote two letters to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles, reproaching his acts of iconoclasm that had led to schism in his community. These short documents are considered to contain Gregory’s theory of art as a book for the illiterate and have been criticized for destroying the aura of sacred art to all subsequent Western developments. Here, I argue that the pope’s fundamental contribution is to offer instead a theory of iconoclasm. Relying on previous ideas about the pedagogical and communicative power of art and its ability to reach a larger audience beyond the elite, Gregory defends the rights of the community of ‘gentiles and illiterates’ who find in portable painted panels an expression of their identity in the church at Marseilles. Serenus’s wish to impose a superior orthodoxy on the pious if incorrect habits of his flock cannot justify his resorting to iconoclasm. The pope’s vigorous condemnation protects the vulnerable minority and sets an important precedent against any acts of iconoclasm in the West.

Scientific fraud still lacks a precise, universally accepted definition: the borders between unambiguously established fraud, errors, misconduct are uncertain: this frequently complicates decisions on whether or not cases of questionable behaviour can be classified as true fraud. In this article we have listed the behaviours which establish that true fraud has occurred. The most important is undoubtedly the intentionality of the behaviour, aimed at creating fictitious support of a theory or of a hypothesis. The fraudulent behaviour must have violated the standards of the time in which it occurred: this is an important point, as these standards may have been different in different times. Also important is the fact that the assessment of the seriousness of suspected cases is incremental: it goes from simple misconduct cases that would border on negligence, to cases of evident fraud, e.g. the fabrication or falsification of data or results, and/or the appropriation (plagiarism) of another person’s ideas or data without giving appropriate credit. In recent times, scientific fraud has become widespread, but it was known in the distant past as well: it has involved scientists who are real icons in the history of science. This article analyses the most important cases, dissecting with great attention the particular aspects of the accusations that had been levelled at them. With one exception, it clears them all of the accusations.

This article explores how Poland’s cultural landscape has been cleared of the material legacies of communism between 1989 and 2019. By studying political discourses, legal regulations and social practices aiming to rename streets and remove monuments associated with communism, it argues that the Polish de-communization project has undergone a major transformation: from a popular need expressed in a variety of decentred initiatives to a political programme revolving around one centrally organized idea. The persistence of the material legacies of communism in Poland’s cultural landscape reveals both the mobilizing potential as well as the limits of anti-communism, it demonstrates how difficult it has been to provide for a legally binding and practically effective definition of communism and it exemplifies a broader struggle over the question of who should play which role in shaping Poland’s public realm.

In this article, I summarize the justification for Ukrainian state sovereignty, in spite of Russia’s claim of the non-existence of such sovereignty. The Russians invaded Ukraine claiming their right to justify their interests. The occupation of Crimea by Russian forces and their declaration of its annexation to Russia was an act of aggression disapproved of by the United Nations (2014). I also outline the nature of the limited war between Ukraine and Russia that is managed by ethnic Russians living in the Donbas region and Russian emissaries.

This article focuses on the relationship between political parties and interest groups in contemporary democracies. Although this is a key topic for assessing the evolution of representative political systems and the quality of democracies, the theoretical and empirical studies have not developed a cumulative body of knowledge. As well as the lack of an integrated perspective, we argue that the literature on this topic has remained conceptually fuzzy and has failed to elaborate a common approach to examine how parties and interest organisations interact. Although some researchers point to a weakening of relations between parties and interest groups, the most current data point not to disappearance but to a change in the way both political actors interact. This article contributes to updating the research on the topic and also sheds light on why the literature has remained segmented. The study shows that the variety of conceptualisations, approaches and typologies has led to incongruent – and often non-comparable – results. The final section identifies a number of research gaps and suggest new topics and approaches that can unify this object of study in the near future.

The identity of young people, and the state of a school’s fulfilment of its tasks, as presented in the article, are based on the results of the author’s own field explorations carried out in the school year 2003/2004 and repeated in the same territory of the Silesian Voivodeship in the zone of intensive social and economic development in 2016/2017. The results of the research conducted have shown that schools brought young people with different personal and social resources, and living in different historical and socio-cultural contexts, to a similar value of identity capital. The study, conducted in two stages with an interval of 13 years, has revealed the greatest shifts in the following areas: extension of the range of interactions (change 13.2%); ambivalence (change 8.1%); revitalization (change 7.7%); and ethos (change 6.8%). The least change occurred in the provision of offers of identification (1.7% change). A slight decline was noted in the extension of the developmental moratorium (1.5% change). The identified, described and empirically verified tasks of a school form a specific map of educational activities, which can be successfully used as a matrix to describe and interpret a school’s participation in the shaping of young people’s identities.

This article looks at the careers of two school-founding Hungarian historians and university professors, the reconstruction, interpretation and comparison of their perceptions of history, their views on the role of the historiographer, and their opinions on the history of Jews in Hungary. Since both openly professed to be Hungarian Jews, I also try to find out what that meant for them. My interpretive frame follows the ‘speech-act’ approach of the Cambridge contextual school of the history of ideas, the description of notions of meaning/attribution of meaning, and the ‘drama triangle’ (the identification of the traumatized roles of the victim, persecutor and rescuer) in the literature of trauma elaboration.

Scientific fraud has increased dramatically in recent times. The main reason has been the exponential increase of the number of researchers, that has greatly exceeded the increase in available resources. This has generated a situation of extreme competition that has dramatically increased the tendency to commit FFP acts. In comparison with the situation in the (distant) past, described in the accompanying contribution (Part I), in which scientific misconduct as a rule concerned research on themes of great significance, today the misconduct generally concerns petty fraudulent acts meant to give the fraudster personal advantages that are frequently illusory. Other factors, more technical in nature, are also having roles in today’s great increase of misconduct cases. Important among them are the ease with which they are now discovered thanks to impressive technological advances in their detection, and the appearance and rapid proliferation of open access predatory journals which do not follow the established peer review publication rules. Cases that deal with themes of great general significance do still occur, and some are examined in this article. At variance with those analysed in Part I they are now rapidly solved by the technical resources available today.

The aim of this article is to propose the methodological and conceptual tool of ‘recursion’ as a means of understanding the production of historical continuity and discontinuity between different forms of nationalism in Bulgaria. The recent case of the demolition of the socialist-modernist monument ‘1300 Years of Bulgaria’ and its replacement with an earlier memorial from the authoritarian period of the 1930s forms the point of departure for this examination. Adopting a media and cultural studies perspective, the text focuses on the symbolic function of lions in both monuments and how they are engaged in the production of nationalist rhetoric and imagery. In line with Ann Laura Stoler’s (2016) proposition that the method of ‘recursive analytics’ can allow us to overcome the impasse formed by attempts to postulate either continuity or rupture between present and past, I first account for the histories of the erection of both monuments before proposing to read the ‘Bulgarian lions’, featuring in both of them, as recursive figures.