The ways in which minority street-level bureaucrats construe their identities as state representatives and as representatives of minority clients are known to inform their discretionary behavior toward clients, thereby shaping policy outcomes. While existing studies have examined race and ethnicity as shared identities between minority bureaucrats and clients, the role of “migrant” identity has been overlooked. Focusing on the so-called European migration crisis of 2015–2017, this study addresses this gap. Drawing on qualitative interviews with migrant bureaucrats, it examines how being simultaneously a migrant and a migration policy implementer shapes bureaucratic discretion. This article introduces the notion of “migrant representative” and identifies four profiles of migrant bureaucrats, each corresponding to different degrees of identification with the local migration management system and the migrant clients. In doing so, it contributes to the literature on representative bureaucracy and the debate on the linkage between passive and active representation.

We study how the electoral success of radical right populist parties (RRPPs) affects mainstream parties' defense policy positions. The success of RRPPs threatens the credibility of established left-wing parties with coalition and international partners due to substantive overlap between their and RRPPs' defense-skeptical position. We argue that left parties adopt more assertive defense positions to distinguish themselves from RRPPs, thus increasing mainstream consensus on defense policy. Examining 27 European countries between the end of the Cold War and Russia's occupation of Crimea (1990–2013), we test this argument based on a regression discontinuity design around electoral thresholds for obtaining parliamentary seats. We find that, in response to RRPP success, left parties adopt more assertive defense policy positions, whereas center-right parties stand their ground. This study yields evidence for an adversarial response to the radical right, often thought to have lost out to accommodation, and for mechanisms other than electoral incentives, in a highly consequential domain.

This article analyses the scholarly results concerning the social phenomenon of intermarriage. It specifically focuses on the similarities and differences in the latter in Europe, between migrants and host society members, and between national minorities and majorities. The study shows that while intermarriage between migrants and host society members is often seen as a vehicle for bridging social gaps and promoting social cohesion, intermarriages between national minorities and majorities is more likely to lead to erosion of minority identities and cultural traits. Common challenges faced by intermarried couples include resistance from family members and bureaucratic obstacles, with gender dynamics playing a crucial role, particularly in traditional societies where women often bear the brunt of cultural assimilation. Intermarriage also promotes the perspective of the integrative nature of nation-states without requiring intervention by the states themselves. The article underscores the importance of deepening the discourse on intermarriage and focusing on the impact of the latter on both migrant and national minority communities through both quantitative analyses and qualitative approaches. This may improve the understanding of the transformative potential and challenges of these unions.

Both Hungary and Poland have been in the spotlight regarding their democratic backsliding, with Executives exerting control over supposedly independent pillars of democracy, such as courts or the media. While the concerns about these countries also voiced by leaders of European institutions were similar, the resistance against the systematic erosion of judicial independence comes in different forms. Using comparative longitudinal case study methodology, this article shows that a defining characteristic in the potential, visibility and feasibility of what judges did or could do under the current threats depends on the role judicial associations, understood as representative collegial judicial bodies. More precisely, the format, organisation and operative tools of judicial associations contribute to their influence on prior judicial reforms and their capacity to withstand ongoing efforts in curtailing their independence from political actors. Empirically, the article reviews multiple judicial changes in the 1992–2015 period in both countries and assesses how judicial associations then shaped the divergent responses to recent attempts at limiting judicial independence. The differences in the legal framework, organisation and network reliance explains variance in resistance. Overall, the article broadens the theoretical and empirical framework for studying the role of courts and judges with considerations regarding professional association organisation and co-ordination, as a potential layer of studying judicial resistance.

This article critically examines the significance of the relationship between past and present for understanding liberal democratic values in the European context. The article starts by reflecting on the terms used to evaluate the apparent decline in the rule of law in Europe, including ‘backsliding’. It argues that these terms are indicative of a conceptual framework of analysis that includes a temporal dimension but is only partly historical, demonstrating a presentist focus and a perception of the past as a separate period. The article links this perception with the conceptual construction of the rule of law itself, as well as national and transnational narratives about it, which evoke Europe’s non-democratic past as a definitional point of reference that is distinct from the present. Using examples of the legacies of Europe’s dark legal past, the article highlights the artificial nature of this distinction for a range of systems with differing historical experiences. The article argues that interpreting the past in terms of segmented and sequential temporal periods is conceptually contestable and it draws on the philosophy of history to show how the past can instead be understood to have ‘sedimentary’ layers and to endure over time. Ultimately, the article argues that the relationship between law’s past and law’s present needs to be reconceptualised in terms of metaphorical ‘fault lines’ in the rule of law, to acknowledge the potentially disruptive effects of history and to facilitate a critical reimagining of the rule of law’s theoretical and factual foundations.

This study relies on a linear programming model to estimate welfare ratios in Spain between 1600 and 1800. This method is used to find the food basket that guaranteed the intake of basic nutrients at the lowest cost. The estimates show that working families in Toledo had higher welfare ratios than in those in Barcelona. In addition, the welfare ratios of Spain were always below those of London and Amsterdam. The divergence between Northern Europe and Spain started before the Industrial Revolution and increased over time.

Spatial inequalities within countries have recently been seen as a source of resentment, suggesting a “geography of discontent” in Europe. We examine this hypothesis by analyzing satisfaction with democracy (SWD) in urban and rural areas over the last two decades. Based on data from the European Social Survey (2002–2020) covering 19 countries and corroborated by the International Social Survey Programme and the European Values Survey, we find that urban–rural differences in SWD are statistically significant but very small over the whole period studied – only about 2.5 percentage points between big cities and rural areas. This gap is minimal compared to differences between countries and between socioeconomic groups such as citizenship, employment status, education, social class, or income. These results hold across various political satisfaction measures, such as trust in parliament or politicians. Despite significant cross-country heterogeneity in spatial disparities, they challenge the notion of widespread rural discontent in Europe.

Deer hunting was heavily ritualized in medieval Europe, as indicated by historical and archaeological evidence; it also emphasized social differentiation. The butchery of a deer carcass (‘unmaking’) was integral to the ritual and led to different body parts being destined for individuals of differing status. Archaeologically, the practice is particularly visible in high-status sites in Britain, but documentary and archaeological sources are consistent in pinpointing its earliest occurrence in twelfth-century France. In Italy, late medieval evidence for such ‘unmaking’ is present but is not supported by any known historical sources. Red and fallow deer were butchered in a formalized manner, whereas the data for roe deer are unclear. Although the Normans contributed to the diffusion of the ‘unmaking’ practice, in France it is also found outside the core area of Norman influence. The extensive spread of the practice demonstrates the connectedness of the medieval hunting culture in Europe.

Sabina Yuhas (@Overszabi) and Juliana Belova (@juliewanderz or Oyibo Marlian) are Hungarian and Russian women, respectively, who are fascinated by Nigerian popular culture. Despite their successes in exploiting Black culture to attain wealth and fame in the Nigerian mediasphere, their works have hardly been studied. Close readings and nuanced analyses of their selected TikTok skits show a multiplicity of images that are neither fully European nor Nigerian—equivocal identities—mediating Otherness. However, the longstanding power asymmetries between Africa and Europe characterize their enactments as commodification of Blackness, accounting for why Nigerians who perform “Europeanness” do not attain corresponding success.