A new issue of Studies of Transition States and Societies has been published

At the end of June, the new 18th issue of Studies of Transition States and Societies (STSS) was published. Read more here!

This issue of STSS contains four articles and three book reviews that each, in their own way, explore the gap between what institutions promise and what people actually experience.

Kristjan Kikerpill, Andra Siibak and Maris Männiste (2026) revisit the UK 2020 ‘A-level fiasco’, where an algorithm built to deliver neutral, objective grading instead downgraded the already disadvantaged and was discursively turned into an agent in its own right. Tin Hla (2026) asks why political imprisonment grew under Myanmar’s elected NLD government, and locates the answer not in a change of heart but in a constitution and a body of law that kept repression entirely legal. Arman Kassymbayev, Gulnar Nassimova and Damira Sikhimbayeva (2026) turn to Kazakhstan, where language quietly sorts speakers into the included and the distanced, leaving many Russian-speakers feeling the system is not for them. Timur Dadabaev, Manizha Rajabova, Abel Polese and Liam O’Farrell (2026) follow Tajik women to South Korea, where opportunity and exclusion coexist in a manner that is always negotiated, never simply granted.

The three book reviews also stay close to these questions of empire, power and the digital: Karol Dabrowski on East Central Europe Between the Colonial and the Postcolonial (Huigen & Kołodziejczyk, 2023), Brenda Kosi Andrias on Lorenzo Kamel’s History Below the Global (2024), and Benjamin Cisagara on Meelis Kitsing’s The Political Economy of Digital Ecosystems (2022).

We would like to thank the authors and reviewers whose contributions made the publication of this issue possible.

Studies of Transition States and Societies (STSS) is a diamond open access interdisciplinary journal for the study of transition societies published and funded by the School of Governance, Law and Society and Institute of International Social Studies at Tallinn University. Publishing in STSS is free of charge for authors, and the journal is indexed in Scopus and other relevant databases. STSS welcomes submissions on education, labour markets, and their intersections with family, health, migration, mobility, and related domains. Submissions should focus on regional or national contexts in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, or offer a comparative perspective that includes the journal’s core region.