Suchergebnisse

In connection to the process of the public administration reforms which take place in most of the European countries and also in connection to the "European administrative space", the issues of studying and mutually comparing administrative systems of various European countries, especially EU member countries, become more and more topical. They focus not only on purposeful and effective mutual use of experience in administrative systems improvements, but also on improving orientation in the already mentioned "European administrative space". There is nodue attention devoted so far to the systematic study of administrative systems of (other) European countries. Most of the publications which focus on this issue (mostly study books, study materials, or occassional articles) describe it only on a "descriptive" (mostly simplified) level. The cause of this lies in (apart from time and financial demands) significant complexity of the given issue, in terminological complications and in difficulties of getting adequate (essentially necessary) factography and in practically non-existing adequate methodology. Legal comparative jurisprudence and comparative studies of political systems might inspire onewhen developing the methodology. Even under the current situation, it would be efficient to pay more attention to the comparative studies of the structure of administrative systems, or to some selected areas of the public administration, for example to personnel systems in the public administration, financing public administration or administration of the public property. A thorough "stock -taking" of all the materials which have ever been published about this matter (even in different contexts) in our country orabroad might serve as a basis of these fragmented studies.

The Czech Republic is comprised of different regions at the sub- national level. These are the historical lands of Bohemia, Moravia, & (part of) Silesia, small ethnographic regions, & administrative units. Their objective hierarchy derives from their former historical role, from their administrative function today, & their regional importance. In this article the authors attempt to describe the subjective hierarchy of these regions in the minds of their inhabitants, drawing on a survey of 1203 respondents from throughout the Czech Republic conducted in 2003 by the Centre for Public Opinion Research. The historical lands of Bohemia & Moravia are two regions whose existence Czechs recognize without question, while Silesia is in a weaker position & garners only two- thirds of the level of recognition accorded the other two historical lands. The cultural or ethnographic regions & the administrative units are on an approximately equal level, which is distinctively lower than that of the three Czech historical lands. More of these small regions are located in Moravia than in Bohemia or Silesia. The best known Czech regions are: Wallachia, Moravian Slovakia, Hana (all of which are in Moravia) & the Region of Khods (Bohemia). The best known region that is neither ethnographical nor one of the administrative units is the former industrial region of Ostrava.

Research on political speeches is often done in countries with strong presidential powers, typically in the USA. However, political speeches by presidents are also a critical method of influencing public opinion in the Czech Republic. Therefore this article is focused on the analysis of speeches of the former President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. Our research is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Klaus' speeches (thematic units are used as the unit of analysis) found on his website (www.klaus.cz) in the period from 1995 to the end of his presidency, March 2013 (N = 470). We aim to identify the changing structure of political issues in Klaus' speeches and changes in Klaus' position on those issues, and to uncover any characteristic features of his speeches (the use of personal pronouns, the role of the speaker, the tone of the speech, etc.). Adapted from the source document.

The legitimacy of political regimes does not lie only in the manner in which these regimes use their power. A key role is played by the way these regimes are perceived by their populations. Following this insight, the paper defends and elaborates one necessary condition of legitimacy of every political regime: the justification of power provided by the regime must "make sense"to the citizens. This "making sense"can be best understood as a correspondence between the proposed justification of political authority and the citizens' understanding of themselves. In other words, a political regime "makes sense"to its population only if it resonates with their conception of themselves and their role in the society. The paper then analyses the possible correspondence between the Rawlsian conception of liberal self-understanding, where citizens view themselves as "self-authenticating sources of valid moral claims", and the legitimacy of contemporary democratic societies. This perspective reveals the sources of deep egalitarian assumptions behind the legitimation frameworks of contemporary societies, as well as the necessary limitations of power of contemporary states. The correspondence between our self-understanding and the legitimacy of the present-day states also reveals the fundamental importance of the human rights framework in current political life.

In many advanced countries housing consumption plays a significant role in the social stratification of households. First, the article sets out to determine whether during the transformation period significant differentiation of housing consumption occurred and social stratification became linked to stratification by housing consumption. In other words, whether alongside the 'standard' criteria (age, education, income, and other socio-economic variables) influencing the stratification of Czech households it is also necessary to take into account the type and quality of housing. Second, in relation to these findings on stratification, Czech households are segmented into 12 segments. The article then makes some general prognoses for each household segment regarding the number of households in selected forms of housing and types of housing development for 2020. These prognoses showed that if 'optimistic' outlooks for economic development are met and Czech citizens' housing preferences remain constant, there could be a substantial increase compared to today in the share of Czech households living in family homes and even to a certain excess of supply of rental flats over demand.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the Public Affairs Party, which entered the Czech House of Deputies after the 2010 parliamentary elections. The aim of the paper is to cover organizational matters and certain peculiarities of the party. As the most appropriate tool of analysis, the concept of a business firm party is used. The author shows how the political and economic interests of the party's most influential member, Vit Barta, overlapped significantly and that Barta could be depicted as a kind of "political entrepreneur" misusing political activity for his business purposes. The analysis of the functioning of the Public Affairs Party and especially the distribution of power inside the party shows, in comparison to classical examples of business firm parties, that Public Affairs embodies a new way of intersecting politics and business practices: the already existing party was taken over (in a hostile way, to use the language of business) by a business company. Adapted from the source document.

Regardless of the role religion plays in the world today, ie despite the significant deprivatization of faith in the sociocultural space & in politics, contemporary Czech sociology of religion is in rather poor shape. The author presents a number of factors to explain this, including the legacy of the communist regime, & low levels of church attendance in the Czech Republic, the latter having been erroneously interpreted as non-religiosity. But the author focuses mainly one other reason: the discordant legacy of Czech pre-communist sociology of religion & the neighboring field of social studies. Two different traditions of the subject are identified - the 'profane' sociology of religion, founded by T. G. Masaryk, & Catholic religious sociology. Although the former legacy declared itself non-religious & even anti-clerical, in the case of many of its followers this claim was only partially true. In the 1930s & 1940s, when they (especially Prague's sociological school, which formed a certain opposition to Masaryk) turned more toward Durkheimian attitudes, they emphasized, for example, their own religious experience as a necessary tool for understanding piety. On the other hand, Catholic religious sociology was closely related to church activism, policy, & contemporary social work, ie, strictly conservative & anti-modern. Its way of understanding modern society was discounted by the former group of scholars, though to at least some degree, the two legacies shared similar methodological approaches. Both certainly seem outdated today, but their theoretical & methodological discussions & their findings remain of importance. Consequently, a re-thinking of these legacies & their theoretical backgrounds is still significant for the sociology of religion today.