society

What structural strategies must the political center implement to effectively reclaim the future for liberal democracy? How can governance bodies connect abstract concepts to the everyday lived experiences of citizens? What distinct emotional promises allow the populist right wing to capture public dissatisfaction so effectively across Europe? And how does the algorithmic, endless design of modern news feeds erode public trust and dismantle our capacity for reasoned political debate?

Ever since the 2000s, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party had focused on the media; they considered control over the press as a major ingredient to success. Unlike the previous Socialist government who had had capital salvaged from the times of Hungary’s transition to democracy, Fidesz did not have their own press outlets.

How can we make technology work for us and not the other way around? What is the difference between ‘algorithms’ and ‘androrithms’? Does outsourcing thinking to AI erode people\'s capacity to think and leads to the rise of \"super-stupidity\"? And what will human agency look like in the future? Leszek Jazdzewski talks with Gerd Leonhard, a top-rated futurist and a leading global keynote speaker.

For yet another year, Bulgaria spends the most on its judiciary as a share of GDP among all EU member states — 0.7%. By comparison, Ireland and Cyprus, which spend the least in this respect, allocate only 0.1%. Bulgaria is also the record-holder in terms of the judiciary\'s share of total public spending.

Is the Visegrad Group still relevant? Is it expereiencing its renaissance after Péter Magyar\'s win in Hungary? What is the relationship between the Visegrad countries and Ukraine? What types of projects does the International Visegrad Fund foster and what is their relevance in terms of cultural cooperation? And can civil society funding be considered as part of democratic infrastructure?

An institution is never only a norm. It is also the extent to which people are willing to treat that norm as binding — and the methods they reach for when they are not.

The catastrophe cannot be explained by the embargo alone; Cuba’s deeper tragedy is the system itself — one that promises dignity to the worker while making ordinary work meaningless, underpaid and morally absurd. That is why today, according to media reports, Cubans lack even the most basic foods: rice, chicken and other everyday products, available only through ration cards after long hours in queues.

How dangerous is the far-right in Germany? What should we know about the rise of neonazi terrorism? And what is the role of the secret services in Germany? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Jacob Kushner, an international journalist who reports on migration, terrorism and violent extremism.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz famously described culture as a web of narratives. The way societies understand the labor market is one such narrative — and it matters, because the story we choose shapes how we regulate and manage economic life.

Some Members of Parliament in Czechia seem to want to copy an infamous Russian law aimed against NGOs. Jindřich Rajchl, elected on the ballot of the far-right SPDparty, proudly stands behind this initiative.