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In order to evaluate the existing practices of the Slovenian parliamentary democracy, the author conducted a chronological overview of the shifts in prevailing democratic patterns, starting with the first parliamentary elections after the country gained independence onwards. Parliamentary and governmental political party behaviour was central to the analysis and, thus, was analysed using both statistical data and secondary sources, which primarily consisted of academic and research papers and media records. The analysis revealed that Slovenian parliamentary democracy in the initial (first) decade was according to the electoral data predictable and by programme orientation oriented towards democratic development. However, over the past three election cycles (second decade), the situation began to change quickly, indicating a predominance of internal party interests and conflicts that affect the country's entire democratic arena. One of the main findings of the article suggests that political parties in Slovenia remain a fundamentally important pillar of parliamentary democracy, but their roles and activities within the parliamentary, governmental and other arenas increasingly warn of their central mission and democratic system functions. It can be detected that the potentials for electoral uncertainties increase with the intensities of internal and inter-parties' conflicts which all give distinctly negative connotation to the country's parliamentary democracy. To reverse the curve of parliamentary democracy in a country upwards again a new period of democratic transformation should be activated, built on the principles of a new model of democratic and party governance, as well as also global sustainability policies. A clear distance from narrow internal political parties' interests, conflicts and in this regard negative competition needs to be considered as well.

Knowledge is supposed to be one of the most important values of our life. When speaking about it we have to be aware of its complexity and integrity. Knowledge is in a way omnipresent in all fields of our every-day living, and this fact makes it a necessary condition for the quality of well-being. In a way we can claim that no single field of our existence can get by without knowledge. In this article the central interest is oriented towards understanding the role of knowledge in the field of policy science and the worth of policy knowledge in and for democratic policy-making. A very special emphasis is in this regard placed on the conditions of policy knowledge in the younger democracies that have evolved from democratisation processes, reaching their zenith in the late 1980s in the territories of ex-socialist systems in Central and Eastern Europe. The article is in this regard seeking answers to the timeless dilemmas of the worth of policy knowledge, and of policy scientists, focusing on selected characteristics of policy-making practices in the case of post-socialist systems. In doing so, the article, which is more or less an academic--descriptive policy-analytical debate, has two main aims – first, to discuss and further define the understanding of policy knowledge through selected theoretical aspects; and second, to disclose the main characteristics of democratic policy and its knowledge in the context of post-socialist experiences of think tanks. As expected, it is revealed that, in the case of think tanks making, the role of policy knowledge in post-socialist systems is peculiar despite its universal meaning. According to its characteristics, it reflects the specifics of democratic development of the broader post-socialist political system. The 'facade' of democratic policy praxis often conceals a tight connectedness to the state and foreign-aid structures, political advocacy, as well as the apparent maturity of civil society. ; Znanje bi trebalo biti jedna od najvažnijih vrijednosti našeg života. Kad ...

A synthesis of existing academic, expert and everyday practical political literature demonstrates that we can trace many different approaches to the phenomena of governance. Based on the political sciences, particularly policy literature, the governance concept is most frequently connected with an analysis of the relations between actors or institutions of the state and society at different political levels. Use of the governance concept is also becoming increasingly popular when discussing sports issues, especially when the multi-level or global sport perspective is in question. This article aims to confront the national perspectives and understandings of, as well as attempts at, sports governance, in relation to multi-level ones. This refers specifically the EU, because over the last few years, not only have states expanded their traditional concerns with health and social security to encompass leisure and cultural life, including sport, but the EU has also implemented different activities concerning sport issues. This particularly emphasises the extent and importance of the relations that key national policy actors have established with themselves and especially towards supra-national (EU) actors in the processes of creating common EU sports policy directions as part of preparing the White Paper on Sport (2007). It does this by analysing the available official documents, records and statistics relating to the issue, as well as interviews conducted in spring 2007 with representatives of the state and sports-governing bodies in Slovenia. The conclusions of the analysis indicate a predominantly EU-centric type of multi-level governance approach and make some observations about the EU's future development and how this could impact the development of (sub)national sports policy.

The main goal of this paper is to provide a descriptive analytical overview of the existing evolution of the Slovenian parliamentary arena since its transition to democracy and independence. The paper is divided into two main parts: (1) an overview of a normative insight into the parliamentary and party system, and (2) an analytical assessment of the structure of the parliamentary arena as it is reflected in electoral and parties' choices and policy preferences. A look at the contemporary democratic parliamentary arena in Slovenia shows that it, in itself, has been quite stable, while, on the contrary, its main integral parts – political parties – have gradually become less stable and less predictable, especially in the second decade of democracy, which can potentially influence the future stability of parliamentary arena, too.

V članku se osredotočamo na analizo dosedanjih vplivov programa EU Mladi v akciji (2007–2013) na nacionalnih in subnacionalnih ravneh mladinske politike v Sloveniji. Program je zastavljen z namenom povečanja zavzetosti mladih in krepitve ključnih kompetenc za vseživljenjsko učenje, kar naj bi povečevalo zaposljivost in vključevanje mladih v družbo. Z analizo izvajanja programa poskušamo z vidika vsebine zastavljenih ciljev, upravljavskih vidikov in ocene učinkov ciljev ovrednotiti, kako se v doseženih rezultatih izvajanja programa odraža koncept večnivojskosti in ali ima izbrana javna politika pričakovane učinke na mlade. Za konkretno študijo vzamemo primer podravske regije, ki je na polju mladinske politike označena kot najmanj razvita. Raziskovalne ugotovitve kažejo, da so učinki ciljev programa MvA na mlade v izbrani regiji prevladujoče uspešni, a se hkrati kot pomembna in pomanjkljiva kaže odsotnost klasičnega večnivojskega upravljanja samega programa in nadalje tudi mladinske politike v širšem smislu.

Vrijeme kada nisu postojali odnosi između politike i sporta, bilo da se radi o svakodnevnoj praksi ili znanstvenoistraživačkim pristupima povezanosti tih dvaju pojmova, ako ga je ikada i bilo, svakako je odavno iza nas. Usprkos tome danas se čini da se, osobito u znanstvenoistraživačkom radu na području nekadašnjih sportskih socijalističkih velesila, tim odnosima ne posvećuje odgovarajuća pozornost i da se oni često a priori negiraju i smatraju nevažnima. Zbog toga je glavni cilj ovoga članka potaknuti raspravu o važnosti i smislu istraživanja odnosa između politike i sporta gledano iz dvije perspektive – s obzirom na iskustva znanstvenika iz cijeloga svijeta te s obzirom na dosad provedena istraživanja znanstvenika iz bivše Jugoslavije. Stoga smo u ovome članku najprije teoretski odredili kontekst odnosa politike i sporta, a zatim smo analizom postojeće svjetske literature i radova znanstvenika s prostora bivše Jugoslavije analizirali međusobnu povezanost sporta i politike. Na temelju dobivenih rezultata, koji potvrđuju stalnu i čvrstu povezanost, ali ujedno i suviše apstraktno i paušalno razumijevanje odnosa sporta i politike, nudimo politološki relevantnu tipologiju odnosa između politike i sporta. Smatramo da razlike između odnosa politike kao borbe za vlast, institucionalne strukture te koncepta javnointeresnog djelovanja i sporta presudno utječu na buduća obilježja odnosa sporta i politike. ; Times when relations between politics and sports did not exist – be it in everyday practices or within scientific research – is definitely long gone, if they ever even existed. Nevertheless, it seems today that, especially within scientific research, these relations do not receive appropriate attention in the territories of former socialist sports superpowers, being a priori denied and considered as unimportant. That is why the key motive of this article is to initiate a discussion about the relevance of knowledge and research of the relations between politics and sport from two perspectives – the existing world-wide political science research experiences gained so far and already conducted researches in the territory of former Yugoslavia. In doing so, we first theoretically define the context of sports and politics, and then with the use of the literature review method analyse their mutual connectivity in the world and, more narrowly, within the work of the scientific community in the region of former Yugoslavia. Based on the gained conclusions which confirm a tight and constant, but also often abstract and flat-rate understood interplay between both analysed phenomena, a special typology for their in-depth and political-science-focused study is delivered. It is believed that distinctions between political, polity and policy approaches to sport decisively influence the mode of their future interplay.

The study of electoral campaigns is nowadays one of the very topical and popular themes in the field of the scientific-research work. Electoral campaigns can be defined in several ways and from several points of view. In this paper, a campaign is understood as a set of diverse activities performed to influence the electoral result. These activities can be studied according to the political-system, time-space, organisational and instrumental dimensions of their performance. The key purpose of the paper is to analyse and typologise the features of electoral campaigns of today's urban municipality mayors in Slovenia during their standing as candidates in local elections in 2006. By using various methodological and statistical approaches and tools, it was found out in the analysed cases that electoral campaigns were an important part of the electoral process and that, according to planning features and implementing plans, they were very specific in all the studied municipalities. Because of this, the campaigns in the studied elections were characterised as particular and highly localised. Despite these particularities, four different types of campaigns were highlighted according to the groups of similar features: a) traditional campaigns; b) charismatic candidate campaigns; c) modern local campaigns and d) an intense campaign mosaic. Regardless of the particularities of the campaign activities and processes, it turned out that they played an important role at the local level of political activity.

Key words: • electoral campaign • local elections • urban municipality • mayor • type • Slovenia