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ABSTRACTUnderstanding social factors that affected how people interpreted the meanings of COVID‐19 measures is important in postpandemic times. This study applies perspectives from research on emotions as one of the possible explanations and focuses on how institutions and their measures are perceived in the context of individual emotional situations. The aim of the study is to understand how parents with joint or shared custody arrangements in Czechia understood COVID‐19–related state interventions and how they dealt with those interventions in their lives. Analysing 16 interviews with these parents, who are considered a potentially vulnerable group, and their interplay with pandemic public policy, the paper suggests the importance of parenting fantasy. The term 'fantasy' builds on Illouz's scholarship and reflects individual sense‐making (ideas or practices) based on close and intense personal relationships related to parenting. This paper claims that the existence of this fantasy (in the form of a fulfilled parenting fantasy) or its non‐existence (in the form of a disruption of parenting, called a negative relationship by Illouz) codetermined how these parents dealt with the pandemic measures—whether (and how strongly) they conformed to them or whether they perceived (or used) them as a threat.

AbstractDespite the abundant scholarship on sociopolitical embeddedness of expertise, its relation to emotions remains understudied. The paper fills this gap by discussing how public framings of expertise work against the inclusion of emotional contexts, affecting what kind of professional knowledge dominates in a public debate. The analysis of the Czech public debate on birth care shows that while midwives embrace emotional contexts of birthing and integrate them as an essential part of their professional expertise, obstetricians see these contexts as troubling their expertise. This professional difference is sustained by the public framing of expertise in the media, favoring obstetricians' expertise over midwives'. The analysis shows that public framing of expertise outweighs evidential work done by midwives and legal advisors and impacts how emotional contexts are understood in the debate. Rather than referring to feelings and personal experience of the body, the "emotional" becomes a discursive label to delegitimize professional opinion. The results raise thus important questions about how the public framing of expertise impacts whether emotional context and experiences of bodily harm are seen as relevant in policy debates and policy regulations.

In public policy scholarship on policy design, emotions are still treated as opposed to goals, and their presence is assumed to signal that things have gone wrong. We argue, however, that understanding how and for whom emotions matter is vital to the dynamics of policy designs because emotions are central to the capacity building of policy intermediaries and, with that, to the success of public policies. We examine the case of Czech single mothers in their role as intermediaries in 'alimony policy'. Our interpretive survey provided single mothers an opportunity to express the way they experience the policy emotionally. The analysis reveals that the policy goal of the child's well-being is produced at the cost of the mother's emotional tensions and that policy designs defuse these emotional tensions, implicitly. These contradictory emotions expressed by mothers show us a gateway to problematising policy designs in a novel way, which reconsiders construing policy design as a technical, solution-oriented enterprise to one in which emotional tensions intervene in policy design and are essential for succeeding.

Abstract
Although textbooks, conference papers, scientific journals and monographs deal with the research aspects of public policy, only little attention is paid to the way it is taught at universities. In this article we aim to explore academic public policy in the Czech Republic - specifically in terms of teaching outputs - using a unique method: an analysis of diploma theses. In the sample there were diploma theses defended within all the full-time Master's study programmes having "public policy" in their names in the Czech Republic between 1995 and 2013. We conclude that there are two traditions of academic public policy in the Czech Republic, which enriches previous findings in the area and makes them more accurate. The research design and thoroughly described methodology invite other researchers to conduct international comparison of the features of academic public policy. The findings may also illustrate the trajectory made by the newly established discipline of public policy in the past twenty years in the Czech Republic, which may be of great interest to the newly formed international public policy community.

Policy Analysis in the Czech Republic is a vital addition to the International Library of Policy Analysis series. It is not only the first comprehensive overview of the historical development and current state of policy analysis in the Czech Republic, but also in the post-communist Central and Eastern European region. As such, it provides a unique picture of policy analysis that in many respects profoundly differs from 'Western' policy analysis textbooks. Written by leading experts in the field – including practitioners – it outlines the historical development of policy analysis, identifies its role in academic education and research, and examines its varying styles and methods. This unique book offers indispensable reading for researchers, policy makers and students