society

France has been in turmoil (again) since mid-September: peaceful student blockades turned into street fights unusually quickly, and alongside mainstream media, social media plays an invaluable role in this.

Specialization has bought us precision, and that is no small thing. A narrow view often catches what someone trying to take in everything will miss. But a doctor who set out to cure one organ without asking what the treatment would do to the rest of the body would cause more trouble than they cured. The difficulty begins when a specialist treats one aspect of a life as enough to explain the whole of it.

The new agreement of Lithuania’s governing coalition includes a commitment that “people who work must not be worse off than those who do not”. According to experts at the LFMI, this principle is particularly relevant when assessing the unemployment insurance system. Yet in Lithuania, unemployment can still be more financially rewarding than work, especially in lower-skilled and lower-paid jobs.

What is modern Türkiye\'s relationship with its republican, secularist origins of Kemal Atatürk\'s republic from 1923? How is the relationship between Türkiye, the United States, and the West evolving? How is Türkiye positioning itself in the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring? And is Europe\'s stance toward Türkiye hypocritical?

Liberalism in Poland is losing its importance in favor of radical, extreme movements, especially on the right, which divide society, increase polarization, and whose views are based on hatred - towards social groups, other nationalities, state and European institutions, as well as towards specific politicians.

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?