Deadline: September 1, 2025
Proposed title: Political Thought in Central and Eastern Europe
Guest editors:
Aurelian Craiutu, Department of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, acraiutu@iu.edu
Venelin Ganev, Department of Political Science, Miami University of Ohio, USA, ganevvi@MiamiOH.edu
Rationale:
Ideas have always mattered a great deal in Central and Eastern Europe where they had lasting and wide-ranging political implications. The major world wars that started there upended the old global order and redefined the map of the entire world. Regrettably, unlike the case of Russia, the political thought of Central and Eastern Europe has remained understudied in Western academic circles. To give just an example, the influential series of Cambridge History of Political Thought has had virtually no place for Central and Eastern European thinkers. The impact of the ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism on intellectual and political life in Central and Eastern Europe has been understudied, along with the emergence of emancipatory national movements or the growth of irrationalism and anti-Semitism in the twentieth century.