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The presidential elections in Bulgaria between systemic nationalism and the anti-systemic vote

November 13th of this year saw the second round of presidential elections in Bulgaria. With an overwhelming majority, General Rumen Radev became Bulgaria’s fifth elected president. the outcome of the presidential elections in Bulgaria came to light. We take this opportunity to analyze the political assumptions surrounding the election results. There are multiple ways to interpret […]

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Cretinous Parliamentarianism

At the September 18th Russian parliamentary elections, the ruling United Russia party increased its vote to 54%, guaranteeing it a constitutional majority of 343 seats in the 450-member lower chamber. The other parties represented in the previous parliament—Russian Communist Party (13.5%), the Liberal Democratic Party (13.3%), and Fair Russia (6.2%)—will remain there. None of the […]

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Spanish elections 2016: Has the Podemos-strategy run into it’s limitations?

1. Polls predicted that Unidos Podemos would finish ahead of the social democrats of PSOE, and that these two parties would muster a majority against the parties of the right. This did not happen, and Unidos Podemos in fact lost votes compared to the December 2015 results of the two parties that make up UP […]

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Bridging the Gap Between Technocracy and Fascism in Croatia

The Croatian political scene has been very lively since the last parliamentary elections held on 8th November 2015. The results of the election left both major centrist parties unable to form a majority government as the nominally left-of-centre coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) won 56 seats, while the nominally right-of-centre coalition led […]

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Kosovo: Spring of the great loneliness

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croat web portal Bilten.Org What was predicted to be “The Kosovar Spring” in fact turned out to be opposition’s “Spring of the great loneliness”, if we can raise an analogy with one of the masterpieces of the Albanian novelist, Ismail Kadare, […]

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Serbia’s election outcome: More of the same or worse?

Serbia held early parliamentary elections on 24 April 2016, the second set of early elections in just over two years. Serbian premier and leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Aleksandar Vučić, appears to have believed that, with the opposition in disarray, and his own popularity still sky high, he could win an even more resounding victory than on 16 […]

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VIDEO: TalkReal in Vienna: Towards a Plan ‘D’ for Democracy in Europe

Note from the LeftEast editors: In this video of European Alternatives’ ‘TalkReal’ series the debate is on how to go beyond the pessimism that has taken over our contemporary political climate. TalkReal is published in co-operation with OpenDemocracy and Roarmag. For years we have been told ‘There is No Alternative’, that the status quo is both […]

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VIDEO: TalkReal in Madrid: Beyond the Ballot Box

Note from the LeftEast editors: following the first show of TalkReal on the Greek Crisis, European Aleternatives’ Lorenzo Marsili and the team of TalkReal explore the situation with the upcoming Spanish general elections. Together with ROARmag and OpenDemocracy, LeftEast publishes the talk as a kindred web portal to the TalkReal initiative. From the indignados and 15M to […]

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The association that dissociates: on the Kosovo-Serbia Agreement

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article was originally published by the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. On August 25th, in Brussels, Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Isa Mustafa and his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, signed the Agreement on the Association of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo. This was the flash point and most disputable event of the three year negotiation […]

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Mapping the Hungarian Left: parties and movements

By 2010, after eight years in government the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) had eroded the popularity to such an extent that MSZP lost 60% of its former voters (1.4 million people) and its traditional coalition partner, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) disappeared from the political map of Hungary. In parallel with the weakening […]