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Legitimising policy knowledge in autocratising contexts: the case of Hungary
No full textIn contexts of autocratisation and political polarisation, maintaining the legitimacy of policy expertise is cumbersome. Experts are clustered on two sides of the political divide: those not aligned with either side are excluded from regular policy processes, while those aligned to the regime are too close to the government to be seen as legitimate. This article analyses how policy-knowledge producers work towards achieving legitimacy for the knowledge they produce in such highly politicised contexts. It identifies three sets of legitimacy-building practices used to navigate the dominance of the political. First, knowledge producers increasingly embrace values-driven practices rather than insisting on neutrality and independence. Second, boundaries between political arenas and epistemic authority are tightened by the separation of individual and organisational identities. Third, the relevance of policy knowledge is reframed by diversifying audiences and outcomes to maintain usefulness. The practices identified are not specific to autocratising contexts, but they are exacerbated and become coerced responses to the hard constraints of an incrementally closing regime. Based on interview data with think tanks in Hungary’s polarised autocracy and highly politicised policy making, this research examines populist tendencies of questioning truth and neutrality of knowledge and expertise – all hallmarks of today’s turbulent policy environments. This makes it a valuable contribution to the broader literature on how think tanks negotiate legitimacy in contexts of de-democratisation
Dual aspectual opposition sensitizes speakers to event stage in conceptualization:Evidence from Russian and English native and non-native speakers
No full textGrammatical aspect is a linguistic correlate of the temporal distribution of an event. However, aspect is not identical across languages. Crosslinguistic differences in mapping between aspect and basic temporal features such as event stage can reveal underlying language-specific criteria that guide event conceptualization. We investigated the relationship between grammatical aspect and event stage in conceptualizations of in-progress and completed events by native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers of aspectual languages Russian and English. In L1, event stage predicted aspect in Russian but not in English. In L2s, event stage did not predict aspect. We discuss these findings in terms of crosslinguistic differences in the relevance of event stage for conceptualization in L1 as well as the role of L1 transfer in L2 aspect use
Social inequalities in vaccine coverage and their effects on epidemic spreading
No full textVaccinations are fundamental public health interventions. Yet, inequalities in vaccine uptake across socioeconomic groups can significantly undermine their impact. Moreover, heterogeneities in vaccination coverage across socioeconomic strata are typically neglected by epidemic models and considered, if at all, only at posteriori. This limitation reduces their ability to predict and assess the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns. Here, we study the impact of socioeconomic inequalities in vaccination uptake on disease burden, measured as attack rate. We consider a modeling framework based on generalized contact matrices that extend traditional age-stratified approaches to incorporate socioeconomic status (SES) variables. We simulate epidemic dynamics under two scenarios. In the first, vaccination campaigns are concurrent with epidemics. In the second, instead, vaccinations are completed before the onset of infection waves. By using both synthetic and empirical generalized contact matrices, we find that inequalities in vaccine uptake can lead to non-linear effects on disease outcomes and exacerbate disease burden in disadvantaged groups of the population. We demonstrate that simpler models ignoring SES heterogeneity produce incomplete or biased predictions of attack rates. Additionally, we show how inequalities in vaccine coverage interact with non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), compounding differences across subgroups. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of integrating SES dimensions, alongside age, into epidemic models to inform more equitable and effective public health interventions and vaccination strategies
