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Building on a longitudinal study of the media coverage of the Roma minority in the Czech Republic, the paper argues that the public discourses about the Roma are structured by a conflict between two imagined communities: the locals and the elites. The position of the former takes its legitimacy from first-hand experience, the position of the latter does so through references to civic values. These two groups provide the discourse with a structure and are produced in the discourse at the same time. The paper discusses two pivotal conflicts – the 1999 building of a wall to segregate the Roma and the post-2010 wave of Roma-targeted "anti-seating ordinances" – as key moments in the establishment of this conflict. The thus established structure is linked and compared to the opposition between "ordinary people" and "elites", frequently invoked in the current wave of populist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper evaluates costs and benefits related to the transformation of the Czech economy. As an alternative approach to the frequently used accountingbased view, a macroeconomic method is utilized which identifies costs and benefits of the transformation in its impact on the domestic product growth rate. The analysis itself follows econometric estimates of relationships between the growth rate of an economy and an occurrence of a transition reform. These estimates, which are gathered from the relevant literature, are then applied to the Czech case, which allows obtaining explicit values of costs and benefits related to the transformation process. Results show that, in the short run, the transformation brought costs of hundreds billion Czech Koruna (CZK), measured in the 2005 price level. The total costs are estimated in the range 3300-3400 billion CZK. Nevertheless, the total result of the economic transformation is found to be positive - especially a quick external liberalization of the country reveals to be the most beneficial aspect of the transformation. Contrary, the largest costs are related to the large-scale privatization and the financial sector reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption is one of the major social and economic problems in the Czech Republic as evidenced by numerous opinion polls among both the business community and the general public. In survey questionnaires, citizens regularly refer to corruption as one of the most substantial issues. Th is paper focuses, however, on how corruption is perceived by elected representatives, meaning both regional and local politicians. Th e data is based on survey which was part of an international research project which collected data from councilors in towns with more than 10,000 citizens, then on research we had conducted amongst 83 mayors of the Hradec Kralove Region in February 2017. We also draw on data from the Czech Social Science Data Archive that employs them from various surveys of the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and works within the NESSTAR analytical platform. Th is paper explores assumptions concerning elected local representatives and their perceptions of corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the European dimension of the competition and contention between Czech political parties and argues that domestic party interests undermine the formal oversight of EU politics by the Czech national parliament. Within the current institutional arrangements, national political parties assume stances - which are expressed through voting - towards the European Union (and European integration as such) as they act in the arena of national parliaments that are supposed to make the EU more accountable in its activities. Based on an analysis of roll-calls, the paper focuses on the ways the political parties assume their stances towards the EU and how the parties check this act by voting on EU affairs. The paper examines factors that should shape parties' behaviour (programmes, positions in the party system, and public importance of EU/European integration issues). It also focuses on party expertise in EU/European issues and asserts that EU/European integration issues are of greater importance in extra-parliamentary party competition than inside the parliament, suggesting a democratic disconnect between voters and parliamentary behaviour. The study's empirical analysis of the voting behaviour of Czech MPs also shows that the parliamentary scrutiny introduced by the Lisbon Treaty is undermined by party interests within the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the factors that contribute to confining corruption opportunity space is transparent lobbying as part of a broader approach to governance, based on the principles of openness, transparency, participation and disclosure. The problem of lack of transparent lobbying is closely related not only to corruption but to increased inequality of access by voices representative of a wide range of interests to public decision-making. This issue is also one of the relevant issues of Europeanisation that comes to attention in the European public space; lobbying is an important source of information for European decision-making processes, which speaks in favour of creating transparent rules for its functioning. Despite a real reluctance of national political representation to enforce statutory regulation of lobbying there is however a number of factors (besides regulation) that contribute to the transparency of lobbying. One of them is Open Government Partnership initiative which takes a more comprehensive approach to openness via seeking ways to make the government more transparent, responsive, accountable, and effective. The paper focuses on two research questions: Under what circumstances may open government affect the transparency of lobbying and thereby reduce the corruption opportunity space? Does the Czech Republic use the potential of its membership in Open Government Partnership well? The analysis is completed by data from Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia. The performed research uses descriptive, analytic, comparative and interpretive techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of democracy depends on both politicians and citizens. While most attention has focused on politicians, this paper looks at citizens. There has been some scepticism about whether the postcommunist public is prepared to rule their countries. The legacies of communism and the rigours of the transition may have produced citizens whose opinions are unstable and ill-informed and therefore a poor basis for democratic policy making. This paper tests this proposition by considering the nature of public opinion in the Czech Republic. Its main conclusion is that postcommunist public opinion is more reasonable than conventional wisdom suggests. Opinions on most policies change slowly if at all and when they do change the changes are prompted more by gradual shifts in mores than by political manipulation. This suggests that citizens in the region are prepared to have a significant voice in policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The essence of political communication is seen in the permanent struggle for power. The situation is no different in parliamentary settings where dissent is the driving force of events. The unceasing conflict, whether it is real or staged, can be observed above all in the mediatised forms of parliamentary discourse which take place when medially exposed or voters' sensitive topics are on the program or when political ceremonial events are celebrated. These manifest a finer rhetorical elaboration and a greater presence of quotations and intertextual references. This paper focuses on the debates in the Czech Parliament (Poslanecká snĕmovna) during the presidential election 2008. To start, it examines the impact of the post-communist reality on the selection and the use of intertextual references. Secondly, it considers how the intertextual references used mirror some of the common Czech myths and how the polemic effect of the quotations can be multiplied in the argumentation. To conclude, it traces some additional functions of intertextual references such as framing of a concrete point in complex argumentation or using quotations manipulatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on norm socialization and Europeanization has largely focused on successful norm diffusion, but thus far it has hardly addressed the norm backlash from the respective societies. To more fully grasp the interaction between member states’ roles and their institutional preferences we provide a conceptual model for the de-composition of national role conceptions. This model is applied in case studies on German and Czech European policies in the constitutionalization process of the European Union. The paper illustrates how the composition of Czech and German roles has changed over time and how these national role conceptions shape the countries’ respective institutional preferences. We conclude that historical role experience is considered as a powerful explanatory tool for the policies of today’s European Union member states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many countries have carried out extensive amalgamation-related territorial reforms at the level of local self-government and created relatively large municipalities. The Czech Republic is one of the few remaining European countries with a fragmented territorial structure. There is a lot of discussion in the country about the need for amalgamation, but this discussion is mainly based on political arguments rather than on empirical evidence about the feasibility of amalgamation and its potential to improve local government performance. This paper analyses economies of scale on the local level as a factor that should be reflected in debates about the pros and cons of amalgamation in the Czech Republic. To add to the existing knowledge about the reality of economies of scale on the municipal level in the Czech Republic, we processed the municipal costs of three selected areas on a representative sample of municipalities in the South Moravian Region. The analysis showed that economies of scale can be identified for collecting local fees and for pre-school and elementary education, but not for local administration. Our results suggest that the existence of too small municipalities in the Czech Republic results in inefficiencies and should be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The volatile and unstable party systems in East Central Europe are associated with the emergence of new parties. However, some such new parties survive and become part of the party system they entered while other newcomers fade away even after they record major electoral success or gain government participation. How can we explain the contrasting fortunes of new parties? What explains their persistence and organizational survival? In this paper, we try to find the answers to these questions by linking the organizational success of new parties to the composition of their elites. We suggest that the similarity in professional and career backgrounds contributes to par ties' organizational success by increasing party cohesion, especially at the level of party leadership. We demonstrate our arguments on three new Czech parties - Public Affairs (W), Dawn of Direct Democracy (Dawn) and ANO - with contrasting political and organizational fortunes. Using data on elites' career and political pasts we show that, unlike ANO, W and Dawn have comparatively more heterogeneous elite circles which, we suggest, make them more vulnerable to internal conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government subsidies to the non-profit sector are a significant source of income for non-profit organisations. One significant impact of these subsidies is on the changing scope of private giving. The objective of this paper is to use a regression model to test whether government funding in the Czech Republic encourages private gifts and large amounts of government funding discourages gifts. However, rather than focusing on aggregate data sources, this study examines how these impacts vary among regions and sub-sectors. These models help explain why studies conducted in the past frequently differed and were inconsistent in their findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public economics examines the influence of the state on economic equality and efficiency, and on conduction of business entities in connection with the various tax systems and individual behavior in private consumption. To manage the public economy is thorough knowledge of the real decision-making and allocation mechanisms. From a budgetary perspective, the public economy in the Czech Republic is characterized mainly by the state budget, 6,249 municipal budgets and 14 budgets of local government units. These all units are together subject to annual statutory audit, which mainly represents the analysis of the system of the Audit informative and monitoring indicators (ASIMI). The paper analyzes the outcome of the audit with the use of absolute and relative indicators and suggests possible changes and consolidation of municipal and local government budgets in the Czech Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the question of how parliamentary actors, namely parliamentary party groups, parliamentary administrators and committees, interact with each other in the new post-Lisbon institutional environment. On the basis of assessing scrutiny of EU proposals in the spheres of pensions and labour migration in the parliaments of Sweden, the Czech Republic and Romania, the article comes to the conclusion that despite existing opportunities for parliamentary administrators and committees to obtain greater leverage, parliamentary party groups continue to play a crucial role in defining the outcomes of the scrutiny process. Parliamentary party groups tend to focus on the division of competences between the EU and member states even when they have electoral incentives to address the content of EU proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper presents a case study of the Czech online activist group Žít Brno. The group that challenges local representatives and employs tactics of political satire, parody and culture jamming, evolved from a spontaneous one-off event to an ongoing political project and eventually became an institutionalized political actor. The case study, based on interviews with group members, content analysis of the project website, longitudinal observation of the group's activities and other additional material, enables us to research the limits and the potential of online tactics and the way online practices are intertwined with a more traditional repertoire of collective action. Building on debates about online political participation and the broadening concept of the political, we interpret the group's protest as a reaction to the crisis of institutionalized local politics and we discuss the actual role of new media in such a protest. The conclusion is that online protest and new media, despite their criticized action-less character, could enable a functional bridge to "real" politics but at the same time they do not play an exclusive role in successful protest politics and have to be interpreted within the context of a particular political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the moderating effects of body obesity and subjective health status on the relationship between distance to the polling station and voter turnout in the Czech general election of 2017. Using insights from rational choice theory and the funnel model of turnout, multilevel logit models are used to examine whether the relationship between reported turnout and distance from home to the polling station was different for those who are obese and/or think they are in poor health. This study is based on analyses of the Czech Household Panel Survey data. The modelling results confirm that those who were obese and in poor health had a lower probability of voting as the distance to the polling station increased. Furthermore, this study found that being interested in the 2017 election outcome (instrumental motivation) did mitigate physiological limitations associated with getting to a polling station; however, thinking that voting is a civic duty (moral motivation) had no strong effect on the distance to the polls and turnout relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the connection between democratic values and participation in the context of potential democratic deconsolidation. It has been shown that the democratic understanding among citizens is not universal and, especially, new democracies are full of democrats with adjectives. Subsequently, these values influence participatory behaviour. I argue that the previously found mixed evidence on the impact of the external efficacy on participation is derived by neglecting the individual position on democracy. The country-specific data from the Czech ISSP Citizenship Module II provide information on the multiple dimensions of liberal democracy and allow for clustering citizens into four groups: Liberal Democrats, Liberal Non-democrats, Illiberal Democrats and Xenophobic Democrats. The results show disordinal interaction for the effect of external efficacy. In comparison to the rest, the Liberal Non-democrats are encouraged to participate when they perceive the government to be responsive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how different political opportunity structures in semi-presidential countries either enable or inhibit the overreach of populist presidents. In Turkey, for example, political leverage has been used to hamstring the opposition and transform a democratic regime into an authoritarian one. In Bulgaria, democracy also faded under a populist prime minister. Ukraine's democracy had a checkered history, with frequent changes of power culminating in presidential breakdown. The Czech Republic introduced popular elections for the president to strengthen legitimacy, but that exposed the regime to conflict between the president and the prime minister. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnoregionalism in Europe is a phenomenon usually studied in the context of Western Europe. Still, in Central and Eastern Europe, there are some social and political movements that can be categorized as ethnoregionalist. The phenomenon started to play a role even before the Great War and in the interwar period, but was suppressed during the times of socialist regimes. It resurfaced immediately after 1989 during the times of transformation of political systems to fully democratic systems when problems of decentralization, authority, and division of power became openly discussed. In this article, I compare two such movements in the context of their political potential. The Moravian-Silesian movement in the Czech Republic and the Silesian movement in Poland have both similarities and differences, but the article mostly focuses on the evolution of these movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chapter summarizes and discusses the main topics, developments and issues of Czech administrative reform, based on desk research, secondary literature on developments of administrative reform in the country and input obtained through mapping and analyzing ESF / ESIF support and interviews with employees of central bodies that are responsible for the coordination and evaluation of the use of ESF / ESIF support. It is based on findings prepared within the project European Public Administration Country Knowledge (EUPACK) that focused on researching dynamics of public administration in EU member states and the contribution of external support to improving public administration quality. The research indicates that partial results have been accomplished particularly in the following areas: openness and transparency, quality management implementation (by municipalities and regions) and e-government. Civil-service legislation has been consolidated rather recently, yet has changed various times, and this undermines every effort to evaluate its effects. A national PA evaluation system is being developed by the Ministry of the Interior but focuses (similarly to PA strategies and related operational programmes) on input indicators. This raises questions about possibilities to evaluate actual quality in PA and results of projects implemented within PA reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy Studies Journal is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The creation of technocratic caretaker governments in several European countries in the wake of the Great Recession (2008–2009) and the Eurozone crisis led to renewed academic interest in such administrations. Although such governments are often assumed to be illegitimate and democratically dysfunctional, there has been little empirical consideration of if and how they legitimate themselves to mass publics. This question is particularly acute given that, empirically, caretaker technocrat-led administrations have been clustered in newer, more crisis-prone democracies in Southern and Eastern Europe where high levels of state exploitation by parties suggest a weak basis for any government claiming technocratic impartiality. This article uses Michael Saward’s “representative claims” framework to re-examine the case of one of Europe’s longer-lasting and most popular technocratic administrations, the 2009–2010 Fischer government in the Czech Republic. The article maps representative claims made for Fischer and his government, as well as counterclaims. Claims drew on the electoral mandate of sponsoring parties, the government’s claimed technocratic neutrality, and on Fischer’s “mirroring” of the values and lifestyle of ordinary Czechs (echoing some populist framings of politics). The article argues that the Fischer government benefited from multiple overlapping representative claims, but notes the need for robust methodology to assess the reception claims by their intended constituency. It concludes by considering the implications of actors’ ability to combine populist and technocratic claims, noting similarities in technocratic governments and some types of anti-establishment party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the relationship between electoral support of the Green Party in the Czech Republic and the level of post-materialism on municipal level. Indicators of post-materialism (lower age, university education, middle and upper class/income, lower unemployment rate in the municipality, and larger municipality size) are based on the concept of post-materialism developed by Ronald Inglehart as well as other studies. The study analyses data aggregated at the municipal level, first for the whole nation and then in more depth for two selected regions. Quantitative methods and techniques, mainly correlation and regression, are used to determine the relationship between the variables. We find that although there are connections and influences between post-materially oriented regions and support for the Green Party, the relationship is not particularly strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely argued that the pre-accession process of the Eastern enlargement affected political competition in Central and Eastern Europe. While such claims have been substantiated in general theoretical propositions, there is a lack of theoretically informed research attempting to explain how political competition was affected throughout the region. This article utilises Lijphart’s institutional typology to better understand how pre-accession processes shaped political competition under consensus democracies. The article shows that the consensually designed democracies of Poland and the Czech Republic were able to mitigate the negative impact of the pre-accession process through the rise of Eurosceptic parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do different types of preferential-list PR systems create different incentives for how Members of Parliament vote? To examine this, we compare the quasi-list system of Poland, where only preference votes determine which candidates win seats, to the flexible-list system in the Czech Republic, where the 5 percent preference vote threshold required to override the party ranking of candidates gives the party greater power in influencing which candidates become MPs. We analyze roll call votes in the 2007–2011 Sejm and the 2010–2013 Czech Chamber of Deputies and, after controlling for party and MP characteristics, we find that in both countries, MPs with lower preference vote shares are more likely to vote along with their party. But, when we compare the strength of this relationship, we observe substantial differences. The magnitude of this relationship in the Czech Republic is ten times stronger than in Poland, which can be attributed to the more prominent role Czech electoral rules give to the party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business-firm parties founded on the initiative of a political entrepreneur are a phenomenon of growing importance in contemporary party politics. In practice, these are either commercial companies, whose structure is used for a political project, or new and separate organisations constructed on business principles. This article examines the case of Czech party ANO (“YES”), established by the owner of the Agrofert holding company Andrej Babiš. The party achieved remarkable success in the 2013 Czech general election. The opportunity for ANO’s success was provided by strong voter dissatisfaction, reinforced by the scandalous circumstances of the centre-right government’s fall. This context created a fertile ground for the introduction of a new entity espousing anti-party, anti-corruption, and anti-political sentiments. In ANO’s organisation and functioning, a strengthening of certain traits characteristic of this type of parties is apparent. A robust system for screening party members and representatives has been gradually put into place, and human resources–style techniques of psychological testing were employed at the party’s inception. Furthermore, the power in the party has been wholly centralised around the leader, and the party’s territorial structures assigned merely service tasks. ANO has also maximised its electoral-professional orientation. The strengthening of the typical traits of a business-firm party can be explained by reference to the party’s origin in the business environment and the notions entertained by its leader. In many respects, Babiš’s party has brought the organisational model of a business-firm party to its limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigations into Central Europe’s emerging party–state relationships—in contrast to those of the former Soviet Union—have focused less on the abuse of public office for private gain and more on patronage and clientelism as political resources. That debate in turn has been bounded by the conventional political science preoccupation with civil society, party, and state relations. This article contends that these conventions have tended to deflect our attention from the contemporary dynamics of political corruption in Central Europe, in which the commercial sector is a major player and the gains of political players primarily private. Building on the assumption that party systemic adaptations are contingent on changing power relations within the political economy, this article offers an ideal typical party model to characterise the behaviour of political parties that preside over the continuous marketization of the state. A “corporate brokerage party” directs its strategic focus to the private sector and acts primarily as a broker of the state’s power in the marketplace, whether expressed through privatisation, regulation, or public procurement. Using the Czech Republic as a critical case study for Central Europe, the evidence suggests that politicians able to direct allocation to the private sector with low regulatory constraints act less evidently as technocratic brokers of the public interest, partisan constituency, or organisation builders and more as private agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social aspects of what the author refers to as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) open door membership policy as of 2016, and it mentions the implications of NATO's decision to accept Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the organization. Global alliances are addressed, along with the history of NATO and concerns about who is allowed to join NATO and when should the organization stop admitting additional members. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is examined, along with the potential inclusion of Russia and Ukraine in NATO.

This study compares three groups of full-time politicians in the Czech Republic. Two of these – MPs and mayors – came into existence in the early 1990s immediately after the fall of the communist regime, and the third, here referred to as county full-time politicians, appeared only at the turn of the millennium. To investigate their profiles and careers, a database was created from a wide range of sources, such as election results, county council meeting reports, county and personal websites, media databases and similar. Analysis of the database showed that establishing a second tier of local government (counties) opened up career opportunities primarily for members of the main political parties who had ambitions to become full-time politicians but did not want to disengage from the local network on which their political capital often rested. Like other politicians, those in the counties are predominantly middle-aged men with higher education. Furthermore, the party selectorates prefer candidates with experience in other elected positions. However, the ‘professional’ political career frequently starts at the county level. So far, the most typical have been county politicians who hold paid positions for one or two election terms. Transitions from or to other levels of government are often discrete. With the exception of the entry of municipal professionals into county politics, these transitions involve a small circle of people. The most visible part of county politicians is formed of the county presidents and those related with national politics. Moreover, these people often serve as the regional officials of political parties and play an important role in the recruitment of parliamentary politicians. Therefore, the effect of the newly established regional political elite on party politics should be examined in more depth. It is argued that the ‘invisible majority’ of full-time county politicians deserves scientific interest too, because it can have a major influence on shaping the policies and specific features of each region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Václav Havel had two eventful terms as the first democratic president of the Czech Republic. The documentary Citizen Havel is one rhetorical artifact that captures the way a new democracy and its attendant executive power is constructed consciously in real time in a political culture where such a tradition has largely not existed. Culled from ten years of fly-on-the-wall-style footage, Citizen Havel captures the tensions between the constitutional expectations of the Czech presidency and Havel's own extraconstitutional interpretations of executive power. Ultimately, this essay argues that Citizen Havel is one influential representation of how Czech “presidentiality” during the post-communist transition was built from the inventional resources of a range of rhetorical and historical materials, such as the Czechoslovakian interwar period, the long influence of totalitarianism and the dissident culture that challenged it, the examples of “Western” presidential rhetoric, and even European monarchical traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theorists of Europeanization expected the EU to have the greatest influence on post-communist countries during the period of negotiation to join the EU as the EU had the greatest possibilities of pressuring the post-communist countries to make reforms before they joined, on the grounds that it could threaten to prevent these countries from joining unless they met certain conditions. However, in the case of family policy, the EU had very little direct influence on the post-communist countries. These countries had already long since met the minimum conditions for maternity leaves, while they simply ignored the Barcelona goal of providing day care for one-third of children aged under three. When the Czech Republic had the EU presidency, its Prime Minister openly stated that the post-communist countries would have never agreed to the Barcelona goals if they had been members at the time the agreement was made. The one area in which the EU has had some direct influence is in its demands to make laws gender neutral. Thus, the 'extended maternity leaves' that follow the more generously paid maternity leaves had to be transformed into 'parental leaves' that are open to men and guarantee men the right to get their job backs afterwards. However, since the leave benefits are a low flat-rate in most of the countries, very few men have gone on leave; so in practice they have remained as 'extended maternity leaves' more than parental leaves. Nevertheless, the EU has had great indirect influence on family policy in that by requiring 'gender mainstreaming', all the post-communist countries have had to set up commissions that examine law proposals from a gender equality perspective. This in turn has given the notion of 'gender equality' much more legitimacy in the public eye, as the mass media has felt pressure to report more on these issues. After discussing the actual changes in policies in two post-communist countries (the Czech Republic and Poland), this article goes on to analyze the discourse on feminism in the main daily newspapers, and it shows that before accession the newspapers were rather hostile towards feminism, while afterwards they have become much more accepting of the term. This more open view towards 'feminism' meant that it would be easier for future reforms in family policy to be made which could be more supportive of gender equality. Thus, Poland has recently reformed its parental leaves in a manner that gives men greater incentives to share in the leaves, and an openly feminist activist, who wants fathers to share in parental leaves, has recently become Minister for Labour and Social Affairs in the Czech Republic. The EU did not have any direct influence on these developments, but by forcing countries to have gender equality commissions, the EU contributed to making 'feminism' more acceptable, which in turn made it easier for feminists to become ministers in charge of social policy, who could carry out reforms long after the countries had joined the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What impact does European Union (EU) funding of advocacy organizations have? To address this question our article turns to the post-communist Czech Republic, an ideal laboratory for studying externally dependent non-governmental organizations. Employing social network analysis, the main objective of this article is to analyse the effect of EU funding on the cooperation networks of Czech advocacy organizations. Our source of data is a survey of these organizations. We aim to figure out whether there is an association between the dependency of advocacy organizations on EU resources, and their cooperation with other organizations. Contrary to the prevailing interpretation based on the competition argument, our hypothesis is that the greater the dependency on EU funding, the greater the cooperation capacity on the part of advocacy organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article provides the first comparison of public sector efficiency in and beyond transition. We compare the comprehensive efficiency scores of 202 local governments in the Czech Republic in the transition period of 1995–1998 and the post-transition period of 2005–2008 and identify the period-specific determinants of local government efficiency. We observe convergence to the best practice frontier but also a growing efficiency gap between small and large governments. In both periods, municipal size and the main fiscal variables qualitatively affect efficiency in the same direction and in line with the fiscal stress hypothesis. Left-wing ideology is only robustly associated with cost inefficiency in the transition period. The geographic distances begin to matter for efficiency only in the post-transition period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political discourse is closely observed and evaluated by the public, with special attention being paid to events in which the accepted rules and norms have not been observed or the common practice has been violated. In this context, terms like political 'front-stage' and 'backstage' are especially relevant. The 'front-stage' is where politicians perform their professional tasks and roles, which are generally audience-oriented; the political 'backstage', on the contrary, is where communication lacks the audience-oriented, professional 'spin'; hence, communication leaks from the 'backstage' can cause public distain. The present analysis focuses on an interactional event that took place on 6th of December 2013. While sitting in the Parliamentary Chamber, the incumbent Prime Minister, Jiří Rusnok and two other Ministers from his technocratic government were caught, on microphone, commenting on the obligation of certain state representatives to attend the funeral of Nelson Mandela. The 'unspun' language and general tone of the conversation were at odds with desired public image and institutional practice of government members and sparked a heated debate about the propriety of the communication modus among Czech politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the development of Czech adult education policy over the past twenty years. It comments on the fact that the processes of globalization and Europeanization represent the most significant factor of that policy. The introductory part presents the historical development from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the communist regime. The subsequent analysis of the impacts of globalization on Czech education policy emphasizes local manifestations of and connections to the ideas and trends that may be traced in the vast majority of nation states. Examples include the influence of international organizations on the education policies of individual countries through expert opinions and policy documents as well as the phenomenon of vocationalism. Regarding the specific features of the national example under analysis, the article applies a concept of glocalization that surpasses the view of globalization as mere unification. It shows that globalization and Europeanization are clearly reflected in Czech education policy, while revealing that various forms and connections of policy transfer also display nationally specific characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union ( EU) played an instrumental role in re-starting the international development policies in central and eastern European Member States, but questions remain about how far this policy area has been Europeanized since accession. Focusing on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, this article investigates why the new donors have been reluctant to adopt the EU's development acquis more fully. The article traces the socialization processes offered by the EU's development policy rule-making and subsequent national rule implementation. The conclusions reveal three reasons why socialization has been weak: perceptions among the new Member States on the procedural legitimacy of the development acquis; low domestic resonance with the development acquis; and inconsistencies in the activities of norm entrepreneurs. The article contributes to our understanding of development policy in the EU - particularly how decision-making takes place within the Council and its working groups post-enlargement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]