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Comparative studies of electoral institutions have marginalized or ignored a fundamental characteristic of electoral systems called malapportionment. This paper presents a brief introduction to the issue of malapportionment from the theoretical (and comparative) perspective suggested earlier by Samuels and Snyder and then applies it -- along with the issue of the value of a vote -- to the Municipal Council of the Capital City of Prague electoral system, especially in the context of the October 2010 elections and previous changes to the electoral system. The analysis of malapportionment and the value of a vote shows that the new electoral rules present some problems with respect to the "one vote, one value" principle but, on the other hand, that these rules conform with, and are comparable to electoral systems used worldwide. This conclusion supports the Czech Constitutional Court's decision not to annul the 2010 Municipal Council elections. Adapted from the source document.

This article presents an analysis of the civil war and subsequent developments in Nepal through the concept of the failed state. The aim of the article is to evaluate whether Nepal meets the criteria for being recognised as a failed state. In the first part, the conceptualization of the term failed state and its general definition are introduced. The second part of the article focuses on methodology. Finally, the main part of the article presents an analysis of Nepal through the concept of the failed state, following theoretical concepts developed by Robert I. Rotberg. The authors conclusion is that contemporary Nepal should not be regarded as a failed state. Despite the chronic internal weakness of the country and its institutions, whose functions are in many cases carried out by parallel institutions, it is not possible to say that such functions were completely missing. Instead, we can say that the functions of these institutions and structures are limited -- that is, that these institutions are performing their functions, albeit partially. In addition, the level of violence that occurs in some areas is not comparable with the period when Nepal was experiencing deep internal armed conflict. Adapted from the source document.

This article focuses on proving some of the earlier published hypotheses that criticized the possibility applying the electoral bonus (bonus seats) to elections to the Chamber of Deputies in the Czech Republic. The results of the Czech parliamentary elections held at the very end of May 2010 provide some empirical data for this analysis and help to prove that the mechanism of the electoral bonus is not useful in the Czech political system. The main reasons for this claim are the hypotheses that the electoral bonus should not reinforce the position of the government coalition and that it erodes the will of the people, whose votes in fact count towards the bonus seat(s) of another party (namely that party which receives the electoral bonus). Adapted from the source document.

This article maps state visits by the presidents of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Austria between 2004 and 2010. It has two goals. First, the article describes and compares the structure of the five presidents' state visits according to the countries and regions visited and according to the type of visit (official, working, or multilateral visit). Second, data about the state visits of the heads of states are utilized as an indicator of the geopolitical orientation of the respective state. All five countries under study show strong geopolitical orientation towards Western Europe, especially Germany. Nevertheless, our data also show certain differences in geopolitical priorities. Poland stands out with its extraordinarily strong orientation towards Eastern and Northern Europe (the Baltics). The Czech Republic is characterised by a relatively stronger preference for the transatlantic relationship. Our data also show that Hungary is to a certain degree isolated as it is not a favoured destination for presidential visits. Adapted from the source document.

The publication output of all political science and international relations departments and their individual scholars in the Czech Republic is analyzed and ranked here using publication indicators from the Web of Science and Scopus citation databases. Both individual and departmental rankings are constructed based on a composite measure of publication activity which incorporates three indicators: the sum of author shares (in order to account for each authors contribution in the case of co-authored articles) of articles registered in either database, the number of citations of these articles, and the impact factor of the journal. The departmental rankings are further weighted by the size of a given department. The analysis takes into account all departments with an active undergraduate or graduate program in political science or international relations (a total of 14), and all researchers with an institutional affiliation to these departments. The original dataset used for this analysis was compiled from both citation databases and validated by information from the internet presentations of the departments and by sending a questionnaire to the heads of all the departments. The results suggest a weak overall performance of Czech political science in terms of the used publication indicators. However, the analysis of recent trends shows a significant increase in overall Czech publication activity since 2006. Both this trend and the emergence of scholars with consistent publication activity registered in the citation databases constitute a positive development and allow for optimism in the near future. Adapted from the source document.

This article presents a qualitative and empirically oriented analysis of the Italian political discourse which took place in response to the immigration wave that appeared after the outbreak of the Arab Spring in the first half of 2011. Using the concept of securitization introduced by the Copenhagen School, the author seeks to deconstruct the discursive strategy of Silvio Berlusconi's government at the time, which was intended to legitimize extraordinary reactive measures at both national and supranational (EU) levels. The author also provides an interpretation of how the Italian cabinet presented the mass influx of African migrants while exerting instrumental pressure on the EU to provide appropriate assistance to Italy. The article concludes by showing how the discourse, which was accompanied by administrative and political practices, led to an escalation of the crisis within the EU and subsequently opened up the space for a fundamental revision of the rules regarding the Schengen area. Adapted from the source document.

The study provides estimates of the size of the fatherhood premium for the Czech Republic in the years 2006-2017, using data from the EU SILC survey. In the years 2006-2009, the fatherhood premium in the Czech Republic does not manifest itself if explanatory variables include the marriage premium and the partner's labour market participation. The fatherhood premium only starts to express itself in 2010 and the following years, when it reaches values from 11% to 15% as a consequence of a decision of families with high-income fathers to have a third child in the years after 2010.

Economic growth of the Czech Republic measured by GDP reached 3,4% per annum in the decade 2001-2010 and was substantially faster than average annual growth of the European Union. Strong acceleration in the years 2005-2007 was followed by stagnation in the years 2008-2012 caused by strong decline of GDP in the year 2009 and milder recession in the year 2012. The modest recovery in the years 2010 and 2011 was pulled namely by foreign trade, while final consumption and gross fixed capital formation stagnated. Alternative indicator of national income was negatively influenced by growing outflow of primary incomes. Real gross domestic income indicates different results in comparison with gross domestic product because of changes in the terms of trade. Macroeconomic stability improved substantially in the field of foreign trade while general government deficit contributed to its deterioration. Adapted from the source document.

The present paper aims to compare the approaches of the Bush and Obama administrations towards the role of nuclear weapons in the United States security strategy. The author focuses on the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reports from 2001 and 2010, employing a detailed comparative analysis of their respective content as well as their implications. The analysis concentrates on broader conceptual issues as well as on the very concrete steps related to specific elements of the United States strategic arsenal. The author argues that the current political discourse, which attributes a nearly revolutionary character to the approach of the Obama administration to the United States nuclear policy, does not fully match the actual dimension of the change between the NPR of 2001 and that of 2010. In fact, the evolution of the United States nuclear strategy maintains its own dynamics in many aspects. Adapted from the source document.

Czech economic thought during the period 1948-1969 was full of sudden turns. Its development was determined by political conditions & spiritual climate that were the result of Stalinist soviet type socialism. During the first half of the 1950s the plurality of economic ideas was substituted by the Stalinist version of Marxist-Leninist political economy using violent methods. Low efficiency of the command system & emerging reform climate in the USSR under N. S. Khrushchev opened the door to the reform thinking of the second half of 1950s & the 1960s in Czechoslovakia. During the 1960s the development of the reform thinking together with renaissance of the theoretical economic thinking culminated in the economic reform of Otto Sik & his team, & democratization process of the Prague Spring of 1968. Promising developments ended as a consequence of the Warsaw Treaty troops invasion in Aug 1968. 75 References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper maps and compares the main topics articulated by political parties in their manifestos published for the Slovak parliamentary elections in 2010 and 2012. First, the paper discusses the conceptual grounds of policy space dynamics. Next, it outlines the method used for the research, based upon quantitative content analysis of the parties' manifestos of the Comparative Manifestos Project Group. Relevance of individual issues is measured by their representation in manifestos. The paper also examines the change in parties' priorities for the 2012 election compared to the election of 2010. With the help of an additional methodology tool, the parties under review are then put along a left-right spectrum. Using this technique, the policy space during the period of both elections is examined. Simultaneously, party shifts along the left-right spectrum that emerged from the obtained data are presented. The final section of the article exposes the descriptive results to the theoretical assumptions about policy space dynamics presented in the beginning. Adapted from the source document.

Die Europäische Union soll um einige weitere Mittelmeerländer - vermutlich um Slovenien, Malta, später auch Zypern und Kroatien - erweitert werden. Das ehemalige Mare nostrum der Römer wird allerdings nie in seiner Gesamtheit in die EU integrierbar sein. Daher die auf der EU-Konferenz in Barcelona getroffene Entscheidung, eine größere Gemeinschaft der Mittelmeerländer ins Leben zu rufen. Folgerichtig befaßte sich die Konferenz mit den Mittelmeerstaaten, mit deren Aufnahme in die EU nicht gerechnet wird. Einige davon (so insb. die Türkei, Ägypten und Marokko) schaffen jedoch schon jetzt Voraussetzungen für eine den gesamten Mittelmeerraum umfaßende Freihandelszone, die vor 2010 gegründet werden könnte. Die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit soll dann schrittweise durch partnerschaftliche Beziehungen im kulturellen, wissenschaftlichen, politischen und teilweise auch militärischen Bereich ergänzt werden, was zum Frieden in dem gesamten Mittelmeerraum führen dürfte. (BIOst-Hrs)