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The main objective of this article is to analyse the determinants of women's descriptive representation in the 2014 local elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is shown that although both countries are considered democratic and in spite of two decades of multi-dimensional transition, women are underrepresented at the local level. Especially electoral results in the municipalities which are considered sub-regional centres and where almost one-half of the population of both countries is concentrated are studied. As it is pointed out, factors like local population or political and institutional factors play an important role in women's success in local politics.

The goal of this article is to test various factors which can potentially explain differences in independents' representation at the local level in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. As the size of a municipality was the almost single factor, whose influence was in both countries at the same direction, together with the generally rather low levels of explained variability, we suggest that for a more adequate explanation of the independents' successfulness, we need to look for other indicators that could far better than the usual socio-demographic variables characterize the form of political competition in the specific municipalities, particularly in those which are associated with a specific political culture or other indicators of similar type, which can be difficult to abstract from aggregate data and their use would require the implementation of specific research on the local level.

The decentralization of the state public administration was announced in spite of the EU integration process as well as the reform of the state public administration that proved the necessity of transforming and transferring the competences and finances to the subnational levels of governance. From this principle, among others, the regional and municipal administration of education sector evolved in Slovakia. This article aims to study the decentralization development with the particular impact on local self-government and regional school system. The authors argue about the potential threats of school decentralization and challenges that the system of regional and municipal schools brings.

The goal of this article is to evaluate what the Czech and Slovak governments have done to protect their countries and try to assess why they have achieved different results for the first and second waves of the Covid-19 pandemic. The basis for such evaluation is the concept of collaborative governance, while qualitative research methods are used to achieve this goal. Based on comprehensive case studies and following analysis, the article suggests that in countries with limited quality of collaborative governance and no experience in similar pandemics, short-term "ultramobilisation" and positive results are indeed possible, but failures are non-avoidable in the long run. During the second wave of the pandemic, the weaknesses in governance resulted in massive governance failures. As a result, the governments' responses delivered very limited results in terms of prevalence of Covid-19. ; Namen članka je ugotoviti, kako sta češka in slovaška vlada zaščitili svoje države, ter presoditi, zakaj sta v prvem in drugem valu pandemije covida-19 dosegli različne rezultate. Tovrstna presoja temelji na konceptu sodelovalnega upravljanja, uporabljena pa je bila kvalitativna raziskovalna metoda. Na podlagi obsežnih študij primera in analize avtorji ugotavljajo, da so v državah z omejeno kakovostjo sodelovalnega upravljanja in brez izkušenj s podobnimi pandemijami kratkoročna "ultra-mobilizacija" in pozitivni rezultati sicer mogoči, vendar na daljši rok niso izključeni neuspehi. V drugem valu pandemije je namreč oslabljeno upravljanje privedlo do množičnih neuspehov. Posledično so rezultati vladnih odzivov na razširjenost covida-19 precej omejeni.

Abstract
Path dependence is a concept often used by scholars in fields such as economics, economic geography, political science, law and sociology to explain recent developments. In this article, we apply the concept to support the hypothesis that the democratic revival after 1990 in the examined Central and Eastern European countries and related set-up of local (self-) government institutions were more influenced by an earlier path taken than by a more recent one. For this purpose, we undertake a content analysis of relevant legal documents and apply an in-depth comparative approach.