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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]

The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the development of Czech innovation policy which started to get its shape in the first years of the 21st century. The article traces its origins to a number of interlinked factors - the introduction of European regional policy in the Czech Republic, the increased inflow of foreign direct investment into R&D-intensive sectors and also the devolution of power to Czech regions that were established in 2001 and gave a new, regional dimension to research and innovation policy. It pays particular attention to the process through which the regionally-based innovation policy advocated by the European Union (EU) has been translated and adapted in the context of a new EU member state. As an illustration of the efforts at the regional level to make a better use of the potential of R&D and innovation in the regional development, a case study of a regional innovation strategy of the City of Prague is analysed. The City of Prague was selected for a critical analysis of an innovation system and innovation policy due to the fact that it is a region with significant but until now not fully exploited innovation potential and, in addition, its first innovation strategy has been recently adopted. The innovation strategy is closely scrutinized and the process of its elaboration is critically examined within the European and especially national context. The authors demonstrate that there is a lot of conceptual ambiguity and confusion associated with the process of transferring the experiences of Western European regions to the Czech Republic. The authors believe that at least some of their observations and analysis of weaknesses of the process through which the regional innovation strategy (RIS) has been carried out will have relevance for other Czech regions and even for other regions in the new EU member states. [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]