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The author gives a critical review of the perception of comparative politics in the programs of the Faculty of Political Science. The perception is based on the assumption that comparative politics is a subdiscipline of international politics. Contrary to this, the author claims that (1) comparative politics is not a subdiscipline of international politics but a separate discipline of political science in its own right that has gained academic legitimacy together with political theory & international & national politics; (2) both international & national politics can be the subject of comparative research; & (3) the methodology of research, not the subject matter, is essential for the definition of comparative politics. These premises are drawn from an outline of the theoretical & methodological evolution of this discipline & the account of its current state. The author uses these to highlight the academic & organizational problems of comparative politics in Croatia. 47 References. Adapted from the source document.

Comparative politics is a political science discipline that has in its evolution continuously reflected developments in the field of international politics. The author outlines the genesis of this discipline, which boomed in the 1950s within the framework of American politology & then goes on to give an account of the evolution of the fundamental research principles, the expansion of the subject matter, & the importance of the key concepts that delineate this academic discipline (political power, political system, political regime). The author analyzes the role of comparative politics in the context of other disciplines of political sciences as well as its applicative potentials. Through an analysis of the history of this discipline he points to the connection between the shift of interest in & focus on practical politics & the thematically specialized subdisciplines within comparative politological research. In conclusion, the author points out the importance & value of this discipline for Croatia (as a country in the process of democratic transition) with regard to comparative analyses of the experiences of developed democracies & countries in transition. Adapted from the source document.

The first part of the article is a review of contemporary comparative politics research in Qennany. The conclusion of the first part is that serious attempts to-overcome the structural weaknesses of this political science sub discipline are made only from the 1990's on. The biggest credit for it goes to the research on political & social transformation that has also contributed substantially to the development of regional comparative studies. In the second part, the author shows both the structural weaknesses & the new positive developments by reviewing five recently published comparative studies. The most important among the weaknesses is the "lockedness" into the traditional framework of studying systems of government, as well as a lack of methodological consciousness, theoretical eclecticism, strong descriptive normativism & a bias in the selection of study cases. References. Adapted from the source document.

The author thematizes the concept of presidentialization of parliamentary democracies, which was developed most systematically in comparative politics by Thomas Poguntke & Paul Webb. The concept of presidentialization designates a process through which parliamentary systems become increasingly presidential in their functional logic & political practice, with no actual alteration of the formal institutional arrangement, ie., of the type of regime. The initial presidentialist processes were observed in British politics of the 1960s, & they were analyzed through a descriptive debate on whether the British Government was prime ministerial or cabinet. The main theoretical rival to the concept of presidentialization is the core executive model, which was expounded in the early 1990s by Dunleavy & Rhodes. According to the core executive model, relations between the principal actors within executive power are determined by dependence, not domination. According to the concept of presidentialization, parliamentary systems are characterized by a shift from collective to individual political might & responsibility. The principal actor is the Prime Minister, who dominates the other actors due to the institutional & personal resources at his disposal. Research into presidentialization can be conducted on the levels of executive power, of political parties & of the electoral process. Adapted from the source document.

The author looks into one of the most important concepts in the last decade of comparative research: social capital. The concept of social capital was originally developed in sociology, where it denotes potential benefits that individuals enjoy, derived from their involvement in various social networks. This concept was fully utilized in the field of comparative politics into which it was "introduced" by Robert Putnam in Making Democracy Work, in which he presents the results of his research in which he establishes a positive link between social capital -- embodied in the norms of generalized reciprocity, horizontal networks, & trust -- & higher levels of democratic efficiency. In the last decade, the concept has been used in a number of studies in comparative politics, the starting point of which was the thesis that spatial & temporal differences in the levels of political efficiency may, at least partly, be explained by the level of social capital of a community. By comparing the concepts of political culture & social capital, the author concludes that social capital is a major conceptual innovation in comparative politics & represents a revival of social/cultural variables in comparative analysis. 63 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article discusses the application of the QCA method in the social sciences, especially as it relates to the field of comparative politics. In its first part, the article presents a critical overview of the key methodological literature on the QCA method (e.g. Ragin et al., 2003, Rihoux, 2003). The main advantage of this method is in its ability to bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative studies by including an intermediary number of cases in the analysis, increasing the variance of both the exploratory factors and the observed outcome, and thus improving the validity of conclusions and their scope for generalisation. Since the QCA method requires a formalisation of explanatory conditions and the outcome, the analysis is easily replicable, which brings it closer to accepted standards of the scientific method. Three characteristics of the QCA method are of particular importance: complex causality, equifinality, and its asymmetric character. The article presents the key elements of Boolean algebra, which is applied in computing the results. We pay special attention to the problem of limited diversity, and to the specificities of the fuzzy set variant of the QCA method. Finally, the author introduces several critical points regarding ways in which the QCA is being implemented. Although the QCA method has been developed in order to bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative methods, when it is implemented without adherence to its key principles, it exhibits the same weaknesses as standard statistical techniques. Its successful implementation depends on sound contextual knowledge of the analysed country cases. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyses the representation and main characteristics of comparative politics articles published in the journal Politicka misao. Starting from the assumption that the political and academic fields are engaged in a process of 'reciprocal legitimation', we divided the period of analysis into two phases and research subsamples. The first encompasses articles published in the period 1964-1989, while the second covers articles published in the period 1990-2013. Content analysis reveals that during the first phase comparative politics articles were weakly represented in the journal. The few articles that belong to the field were mostly written from a Marxist perspective, and occasionally from the perspective of old normative institutionalism. Overall they were methodologically unreflective, descriptive and configurative. The most frequent topics were self-managing democracy, communist and revolutionary parties, anti-imperial movements and conflicts in Third World countries. The time period after 1990 is characterised by a strengthening of the field of comparative politics. First of all, there is a notable increase in the number of articles dedicated to elections, electoral systems, political parties and party systems, legislatures and governments, constitutionalism and the judiciary, political culture, nationalism, as well as European institutions and processes. Secondly, theoretical approaches are more diversified, ranging from new institutionalism, behavioralism and pluralism to rational choice theory and cultural theory. Though case studies and focused studies with a small-N are the most frequent empirical strategies, overall methodology remains the weakest element of domestic academic production in comparative politics, while explicitly methodological discussions remain extremely rare. Adapted from the source document.

This paper discusses the dilemmas regarding the nature of the European Union in contemporary political science and in the field of European Studies as a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field. The first part focuses on the evolution of the European Union from the original European Coal and Steel Community, via the European Economic Community, to its growth into a political union. The Maastricht Treaty, which lay the foundations of the European Union as a political union of its member states, instigated a debate on the actual nature of this supranational union as political construct. Consequently, the author analyses the various characteristics of the European Union, which is manifest in various forms, and asserts that it has some "state-like features" and some "organisation-like features", which are characteristic of international organizations. In the approach to the European Union as a supra-state community, some essential traits of both federation and confederation are simultaneously manifest, corresponding to two tendencies in the development of the European Union as a super-state. Moreover, there is the conception of the European Union as an empire. Finally, this paper specifies the tasks of present-day political science and the need to find a new heuristic instrument, which, according to the author, can be found in the conception of the political system that was introduced in political science (comparative politics) by Gabriel Almond and David Easton. Such an approach, which is nowadays further developed by Jean-Pierre Quermonne, Wolfgang Wessels and Simon Hix, is additionally strengthened by the fact that various models of democratic practice are being incorporated in the European Union in opposition to the basic, legitimacy-related democratic deficit, models which confirm the possible conclusion regarding a European Union as a complex community with many faces. Adapted from the source document.

The paper gives a comparative overview of the politics of history that were characteristic for the HDZ's government in Croatia & HZDS's government in Slovakia (during the 1990s). Those politics worked to overcome the democratic deficit of the two regimes. Firstly an overview of the discipline is given, with subsequent emphasis on the importance of the comparative perspective, especially with respect to the role of the politics of history in legitimizing the political regimes of Central & Southeast European. The comparison of the Croatian & Slovakian cases is in the focus since both countries share similar history, & hence a similar structure of the national collective memory. The discourse analyses show that both regimes used very similar self-legitimating historical discourse: the myth of the thousand-year uninterrupted statehood finally accomplished in the 1990s, & the twentieth century nations' victimization by Serb/Czech hegemony, contested by the partial rehabilitation of the Croat & Slovak World War II states. Moreover, the analyses show differences originating from the different historical experience during the period of the common Hungarian rule, as well as the different experience of the Yugoslav & the Czechoslovak federation, with final differences of the role of the political actors in the two countries. The author points to a gap in the relevant research of the nexus between historical narratives & political power. Adapted from the source document.

The author looks into one of the most important concepts in the last decade of comparative research: social capital. The concept of social capital was originally developed in sociology, where it denotes potential benefits that individuals enjoy, derived from their involvement in various social networks. This concept was fully utilized in the field of comparative politics into which it was "introduced" by Robert Putnam in Making Democracy Work, in which he presents the results of his research in which he establishes a positive link between social capital -- embodied in the norms of generalized reciprocity, horizontal networks, & trust -- & higher levels of democratic efficiency. In the last decade, the concept has been used in a number of studies in comparative politics, the starting point of which was the thesis that spatial & temporal differences in the levels of political efficiency may, at least partly, be explained by the level of social capital of a community. By comparing the concepts of political culture & social capital, the author concludes that social capital is a major conceptual innovation in comparative politics & represents a revival of social/cultural variables in comparative analysis. 63 References. Adapted from the source document.

The author starts the article with a discussion of the ideas of deliberation & deliberative democracy in general & then presents some impressions & findings of the ongoing comparative research project on global justice movements. The research tries to answer two main questions: "How do (attempts to) deliberation, participation & decision-making look like in different kinds of groups, different countries (and probably at different levels -- from the local to the international)?" & "What factors influence & restrict deliberate/participatory practices?". The presented empirical investigation is mainly based on a semi-structured & full-structured participant observation, complemented by informal interviews in the local & regional groups in six countries & a number of transnational meetings of networks & political campaigns for global justice. The author concludes that global justice groups, though generally putting much emphasis reducing what they perceive as illegitimate forms of power within their own ranks & to deliberate as much as possible, do exhibit quite a number of aberrations from this ideal. Still, the author points out that deliberation, at least at the level of small-scale groups, is not just a dream but actually occurs, & that the majority of these groups are more successful in reducing in their internal communication "hard" power & enabling deliberation than most trade unions, political parties, & big NGOs. Adapted from the source document.