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The aim of this text is to briefly introduce practically oriented discipline called policy analysis, and to do so in the perspective of (applied) social anthropology.After the introductory definition of terms, which are crucial within the area of public policy, such as policy, policy studies, policy evaluation and policy analysis, I continue with the definition of the very policy analysis of which the explanation of its types and gradual steps towards reaching it are the necessary parts. Another part of the study summarizes the interrelation, interconnection and the enrichment of both disciplines – the policy analysis and the social and cultural anthropology. Several roles in which an anthropologist can assert himself/herself are presented in conclusion. ; The aim of this text is to briefly introduce practically oriented discipline called policy analysis, and to do so in the perspective of (applied) social anthropology.After the introductory definition of terms, which are crucial within the area of public policy, such as policy, policy studies, policy evaluation and policy analysis, I continue with the definition of the very policy analysis of which the explanation of its types and gradual steps towards reaching it are the necessary parts. Another part of the study summarizes the interrelation, interconnection and the enrichment of both disciplines – the policy analysis and the social and cultural anthropology. Several roles in which an anthropologist can assert himself/herself are presented in conclusion.

The article provides an overview of the main theoretical approaches to research on educational choices and anticipated labour-market opportunities from a gender perspective. It then presents the results of three quantitative analyses of secondary data. The objective is to help facilitate a complex understanding of the mechanisms of the reproduction of gendered social
structures. The genderedness of the social institutions in the education system and the labour market in relation to the socialising trends in the family is described in three parts: 1) gender segregation in employment in the context of segregation in education – the author shows that the horizontal dimension of these social institutions plays a more signifi cant role than the vertical dimension; 2) the factors that condition girls' and boys' educational aspirations and choice of schools – the author demonstrates how secondary school choices are gendered (though the analysis did not reveal the differences between the factors that infl uence girls' and boys' aspirations); 3) the factors that condition parents' educational and class aspirations for their sons and daughters – the author uncovers several aspects of the socialising effect of the reproduction of the two traditional career trajectories based on gender. In conclusion, the article answers the question of how structurally gendered expectations cohere with individual career trajectories, and based on the three analyses formulates questions for further research and offers a revised theoretical conceptualisation of gender as an analytical category.

This article explores the spatial influences that shape the contemporary Czech party system & their consequences for the institutionalization of the party system. First, the regionalization of the party system is measured to identify the specific regional clusters of votes for individual parties. Second, after controlling for the impact of social cleavages, the independent effect of two macro- regions on the differences in voting decisions is analyzed. In the case of Moravia, no such independent effect is evident. Conversely, in the formerly German- inhabited Sudetenland there is an effect on the vote in the case of two parties (KSCM & ODS). The historical reasons for this spatial regime are briefly discussed. Finally, the relative insignificance of spatial regimes in the Czech party system is explained with reference to its high degree of nationalization (the level of spatial heterogeneity in regional voting results). The author employs spatial analytical techniques in the article, such as measures of spatial autocorrelation, the spatial regression model, & the Gini Index. The findings suggest that there is a high degree of spatial institutionalization of the Czech party system & relatively insignificant contextual effects at the macro- regional level.

One of the fundamental features of liberal democratic systems is the existence of diverse interests that seek to influence government decisions. It is therefore no surprise that the activities of organized interests present a natural and legitimate part of the democratic process. Nevertheless, we regard lobbyists with considerable skepticism, and the concept of lobbying often has negative connotations. This situation is mainly the result of a growth in the diversification and number of organized interests that often act in informal or unfair ways. Trying to distinguish lobbying from corruption or other illegal ways of influencing people in public office has led many countries to make efforts to level the playing field and the processes that take place in it. The result of these efforts is the introduction of the regulation of lobbying, which may be achieved by means of various tools. The aim of this paper is to briefly map the attempts by the Slovak government to establish rules governing the behavior of organized interests in the Slovak Republic and to identify the preferences of the particular actors in the Slovak political system with respect to the issue of regulating lobbying in Slovakia.

This article focuses on a comparative analysis of the organization of contemporary Czech parliamentary parties. It emphasizes the structural and functional differences between the new parties—ANO (meaning "yes" in Czech) and Dawn of Direct Democracy—and older parties. The theoretical section presents the basic organizational types – in particular, the concept of the business-firm party. The following organizational aspects of parties are then compared: membership, form of funding, the role played by ground organizations, the position and composition of top party bodies, the role played by the party leader, and media resources. This analysis reveals that ANO and Dawn have a more exclusive membership than older parties and have centralized more power into the hands of the party leader, who is supported both by formal statutes and by informal structures. In the case of ANO, the central leadership dominates over lower-level ground organizations; Dawn forgoes them altogether. Its missing institutional base accelerated Dawn's implosion in 2015. ANO is characterised by a high degree of professionalism and control over key media, both of which were missing in the case of Dawn. ; This article focuses on a comparative analysis of the organization of contemporary Czech parliamentary parties. It emphasizes the structural and functional differences between the new parties—ANO (meaning "yes" in Czech) and Dawn of Direct Democracy—and older parties. The theoretical section presents the basic organizational types – in particular, the concept of the business-firm party. The following organizational aspects of parties are then compared: membership, form of funding, the role played by ground organizations, the position and composition of top party bodies, the role played by the party leader, and media resources. This analysis reveals that ANO and Dawn have a more exclusive membership than older parties and have centralized more power into the hands of the party leader, who is supported both by formal statutes and by informal ...

In the 1990s, the research of political field was ultimately established as part of German political science. The article describes the development of the research of political field in both the international & the German contexts & overviews the current state of this research in Germany. First, the article introduces important researchers & research institutions. Further, the article discusses the relationship between basic & applied research & between research & politics. The list of sources at the end of the article contains not only available literature, but also Internet links of important researchers & institutions. References. Adapted from the source document.

The article analyses how the standpoints of political parties on energy related issues are formed. The effect of the process of forming these standpoints on energy policy in general in the Czech Republic, the divergence among ideologies (coming out not only from the election programs), and other factors, as well as the parties' ideological continuity in time are particularly emphasized. The analysis comes to the conclusion that energy related issues are important for each political party but not crucial. In addition, it is concluded that parties are internally consistent, their standpoints are based on ideology, and they are all rather constructive in policy formulation. An interesting conclusion is also the fact that energy policy in the Czech Republic is generally highly personalized, thus strongly influenced by particular individuals.

The Democratic Party (Demokratická strana - DS) was a member of the previous Slovakian government and having been a small but self-confident liberal-conservative party, it had been setting the reformist pace of the entire government. The article below employs Arendt Lijphart's account of the ideological dimensions of party conflicts to frame the analysis of the party programmatics, with a special attention to the pre-election period of the year 2002. The paper also includes a brief discussion of the Democratic Party's position within the Slovakian political system, mainly with regards to the discrepancy between its important role as an active member of the previous government and its popularity among Slovakian voters, which has dropped to 1% over the last few years and resulted in the Democratic Party's decision not to take part in the September's parliamentary election. The author concludes that such type of a political party could prove indispensable to a country in post-communist transition period that still has to undergo a good number of social, economic and legal reforms.

This article focuses on the connection between fi nancial aid systems in higher education and the development of inequalities in access to higher education. Although the student financial aid system is just one of a number of factors that infl uence a person's chances of studying in higher education, its role in a person's decision to pursue higher education may be of fundamental significance for those with lower socio-economic status. Therefore, the authors of this article focus on the effect of the fi nancial conditions of study on the chances that individuals from families with low socio-economic status have obtained higher education. The analysis looks at developments in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, because Czech and Dutch student financial aid systems have been evolving in very different directions over the last two decades, while their secondary school systems continue to share very similar features. The analysis reveals that student financial aid based primarily on direct financial support (as in the Netherlands) was accompanied by a decline in inequalities in access to education, even though students had to pay tuition, while a system of financial aid primarily involving indirect support (as in the Czech Republic) applied over the same period did not inhibit increasing inequalities, despite the fact that during the period under observation students were not required to pay tuition.

The status of minorities is in the modern world generally considered to be one of the measures of consolidation of democracy. This text analyzes position of members of Italian and Hungarian minorities in Slovene political system and the rate of their political participation in the decision-making process. The first part of this study is based on the analysis of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia and other fundamental laws that determinate the position of autochthonous minorities in Slovenia. The second part subsequently deals with the real possibilities of minorities' representatives to influence political decisions and their ability to enforce their rights and claims both on the local and state level.

In this paper we are presenting an analysis of shift of tax burden from income onto consumption. The analyzed consumption tax is value added tax, while destination principle is applied. The result of analysis is finding that the contemporary tax policy in the Czech Republic is suboptimal from the point of view of tax burden distribution between production factors and consumption. Theoretical findings are confirmed by analysis of data from European countries. Every percentage above the EU27 average of consumption taxes share on total tax quota results into increase of GDP growth by 0,04% to 0,05% p.a. The Czech political "elite" determines the fiscal policy to be popular and recent surveys confirmed Czechs. Adapted from the source document.

The aim of the article is to describe the relations between institutions in the public, private and non-profit sectors that are considered the most important actors of negotiation and decision-making in local development. These institutions and the relations between them are defined as a social network. A study was carried out in the small Czech towns of Blatná, Český Krumlov and Velké Meziříčí, and data were collected in 2007 and 2008. The first part of the article describes the institutional actors, the collection of the relational data, and the context of the three towns that were studied. The analytical part consists of social network analysis. Basic quantitative characteristics are used to describe and compare the social networks of the institutional actors in the local development of the three towns. The conclusions indicate the unconditional significance of local public administration institutions and the significance of other local institutions; relations to extra-local institutions are rather weak. A section on methodology at the end of the article contains methodological notes on Hellinger divergence and SNA.

The paper analyses the motivation behind the Czech Foreign Policy's decision to support the "measures" of the "EU-14" towards Austria in 2000, which was an exception among EU-accessions candidate states. This paper offers two hypotheses explaining the Czech decision to follow the EU-14 measures: defense of European values or international norms vs. the assertion of the national interest. The hypotheses have been constructed with the help of two approaches: the constructivist distinction between "logic of appropriateness" & the "logic of consequentiality" in the state behavior, & the liberal-intergovernmental model of maximizing benefit, i.e. improving the state's negotiation position. The analysis of arguments which were used by the Czech political elite showed that the normative argument & the argument regarding "national interest" were both used in different variations by both advocates & opponents of the "sanctions." Through an analysis of empirical material the author came to the conclusion that detection of motives in foreign policy decisions requires consideration of both of the aforementioned approaches. Obviously, a comparative survey including further research materials could eventually support this conclusion. References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper provides a framework for the analysis of social movements, drawing on political process theory (PPT). The author argues that the concept of political opportunity structure is still adequate, although it has to be re-conceptualized at various points. Firstly, when analyzing contentious politics or collective action, it is much more suitable to handle the social movement as the unit of analysis rather then the protest event. Attention should also be paid to how the concept is applied. Finally, cultural aspects & the context of multilevel governance are implemented into PPT. This framework is used in the second part of the paper to analyze the Czech women's movement between 1989 & 2006. Adapted from the source document.