Tatunts Svetlana

Liberalism as a political doctrine has influenced the modern model of globalization, its essence and framework, and has contributed to the transformation of the global order and its present turbulence. The article seeks to explain how, contrary to expectations, the collapse of the bipolar world has led to the triumph of the liberal-democratic model, which has resulted in governmental dysfunction, a decline in democratic institutions, and a decrease in pluralism within the political sphere and the modern media landscape. The author provides a thorough theoretical analysis and examines specific examples from different countries to explore the evolution of liberalism. The paper references instances of the de-liberalization of political decision-making processes and the influence of mass media and social media in Western countries. Western media often portray the erosion of democracy as a global crisis, leading many countries, such as Hungary, a small nation with significant international influence, toward authoritarianism. This crisis weakens state institutions and leaves information ecosystems, both national and global, highly vulnerable to manipulation. Concurrently, social networking platforms can significantly contribute to the erosion of democracy, facilitating the rapid propagation of political information and disinformation, and tailoring content to particular groups of people based on their interests. The author explains the nature of democratic liberalism and its fundamental principles. The article also identifies the criteria for distorting liberal ideas and examines the practice of neglecting the doctrinal principles established during the Enlightenment era.

Contrary to the expectations of Euro-skeptics, political leaders and parts of the expert community, neither the traditionalcentrist parties nor the right-wing populist parties (with the exception of France, Italy, Hungary and Poland) were able to conquerthe majority of the votes in the May 2019 elections to the European Parliament. On popularity and electoral support they concededto ‘green' parties - defenders of ecology and climate. The authors of the article point to the demographic renewal of voters andtheir activity on social networks during the election campaign. Among the factors that played an important role in mobilizing youngvoters who came to the ballot box to vote for the European Parliament, the average age of whose members is a solid 55 years,were the desire to protect the idea of Europe from the right-populist and nationalist parties and participation in mass protests ofschoolchildren, students, young people against the threat of global warming, held every Friday in many ‘old' EU countries. Thisled to a significant success of the European ‘green' parties, which received a record-breaking 74 mandates. The tools used byEuropean structures to inform voters about the entire spectrum of the political landscape of the EU countries are revealed. Theauthors believe that the important outcome of the European elections is not only the active participation of young people, but alsothe actual end of the two-party system that prevailed in the European Parliament and the complete political fragmentation of theEU legislature, which can lead to a violation of the long-term stability of this structure. The authors explain the modest results ofthe right-populist parties in the elections to the European Parliament by the explicit position of European youth, who believe in thefuture of a United Europe, oppose euroscepticism and separatism, populism and nationalism.

This article is based on an analysis of the strategic context of the sanctions policy in different historical periods and in various countries, as well as effectiveness of the sanctions mechanism itself. The authors show that in the course of several waves of sanctions policy directed against Russia, the European partners of the United States, under the powerful pressure of Washington, began to fully participate in the sanctions measures, which partly looked very formal. The article examines the experience of sanctions policy both from international organizations and the United States. Assessing the effects and analyzing the proportionality of sanctions measures compared with other methods of achieving political and geopolitical purposes, the authors point out the low effectiveness of Euro-Atlantic economic sanctions against the Russian Federation. Russia's implementation of countermeasures against Western countries, the introduction of the complete ban on food imports from the EU countries, caused enormous damage to the initiators of anti-Russian sanctions, especially to some European countries that suffered serious losses having big impact on the GDP of these countries. Contrary to the expectations of the initiators, the sanctions policy has had a healing effect on the Russian agro-complex. While tens of thousands of jobs were lost in the EU countries, in Russia new jobs were created, and the country strengthened its food security.

Over the last decade global immigration processes in Europe have led to increased xenophobia and intolerance towards “others”. As a result, people are more actively voting for far right politics or even extremist, while dreaming of more authoritarian states and experiencing anti-islamic sentiments. Modern far right politics tend to be more local, more radical and they try to modernize their parties, radical movements and the whole right wing subculture. The authors try to analyze this for both – Western and Eastern European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary). Special attention is paid to the variety of types of far right politics, as well as to the most effective ways to fight the right wing extremists at all levels of society and various forms of intolerance and discrimination that spread throughout Europe.

A comparative analysis of the European level of intolerance on the basis of a poll is conducted by the Bielefeld research group in Germany and the European Friedrich Ebert Research Foundation. The conclusions are about the impact of xenophobia in the political life of Europe.