Institute for Human Sciences

Pronatalism has become a populist vote winner for right-wing parties in Central and East European countries. Demographic imbalances, involving youth migration, ageing populations and immigration resistance, have sparked a series of baby-making policies. But are financial incentives in Hungary, Poland and Serbia enough to reverse the trend of decreasing birth rates?

‘Practically every home in Pankisi bears the scars of the Second Chechen War, the Abkhazian War and the Syrian War. Practically every home has ties to the Islamic State.’ In this excerpt from her book ‘Goodbye, Isis: What Remains is Future’, Kateryna Sergatskova travels to the birthplace of Tarkhan Batirashvili, aka Omar al-Shishani, the former IS ‘Minister of War’.

Writing open letters of protest, quoting Václav Havel, led to incarceration for a young Chinese woman. How deep do comparisons between communist China today and Czechoslovakia of the 1970s and 1980s run? And what can Jan Patočka’s thoughts on evading passivity tell us about the compulsion for dissident acts?

Ukraine’s EU candidacy has brought new momentum to an EU enlargement process suffering from a major crisis of credibility. But reservations towards enlargement run deep. The EU should admit this and propose an interim goal that still offers candidate countries genuine incentive for reform.