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How do populists govern in crisis? We address this question by analyzing the actions of technocratic populists in power during the first wave of the novel coronavirus crisis in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We identify three features of the populist pandemic response. First, populists bypassed established, institutionalized channels of crisis response. Second, they engaged in erratic yet responsive policy making. These two features are ubiquitous to populism. The third feature, specific to technocratic populism, is the politicization of expertise in order to gain legitimacy. Technocratic populists in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia weaponized medical expertise for political purposes.

This article investigates the transition from fixed-term contracts to permanent jobs from the viewpoint of the 'stepping stone versus trap' theoretical framework. The main contribution of this research is that it examines what function fixed-term contracts have in the EU new member states, countries that have not yet been investigated in this regard. This research tests which individual characteristics influence the transition to permanent employment and how labour market institutions can help in understanding the differences among countries. The analysis covers the eight post-communist countries which joined the EU in 2004. The period analysed is 2005-10. We make use of the EU-SILC dataset and employ multinomial logistic regression to perform the analysis. The findings reveal that, on average, a temporary job is more a trap than a stepping stone, although considerable differences exist across countries. Surprisingly, most of the individual demographic and human capital characteristics do not have an effect on the transition to permanent employment. Only the age category and work experience significantly increase the chances for a successful transition. Institutions such as employment rigidity and industrial relations explain a considerable amount of the country variations. More rigid labour markets and stronger trade unions lower the probability of successful transition. We argue that the reason is that companies use FTCs as a tool to increase flexibility in rigid labour markets. The concluding part discusses some limitations of the research, links it back to the theoretical literature and suggests some challenges for future research.

The popularity of televised political debates is growing, attracting millions of viewers. However, evidence that such debates can shift voters’ attitudes is mixed and the impact on voters’ preference is also mixed. In addition, the evidence comes mostly from presidential elections in the United States and almost exclusively from established democracies. A call for comparative research in new democracies has been made several times. Our research answers the call and contributes to this debate by comparing two experimental studies based on first-order national elections and second-order European Parliament elections in Slovakia. To our knowledge, this is the first time such a study has been performed in a post-communist EU country. We employed a pre-test/post-test experimental design in a controlled environment with participants randomly assigned to both groups. The results show that debate exposure has a stronger effect on opinions about candidates’ leadership skills, credibility, and economic competence if the candidates were previously unknown. Familiarity with the candidates and pre-existing preferences also function as a block to preference change. Almost all of our findings are in line with previous research originating from Western contexts. Therefore, we conclude that the causal mechanism linking debate exposure to voters’ preference and attitudes in the post-communist context is similar to that in Western countries with long-term democratic traditions.

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