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The relation between the working of democratic systems today and the exploitation of "modern" forms of politically motivated extreme violence, especially the different types of subversive terrorism, has been an object of thorough study and discussion at most varied levels in the course of recent decades, often with contradictory results. This is not a surprise bearing in mind the diversity of bases for such study and discussion, as well as the complexity and changing nature of the subject matter itself, and last but not least, also the deforming impact of different political factors which in many a case predetermined both the horizon of discussions and the character of "politically correct" or at least acceptable conclusions. This does not apply just to decayed political and propagandist writings displaying a remarkable dose of cynicism and lack of shame in serving the interests of power which decided who would be labelled "terrorist" or "freedom fighter", or else. There is a number of scientific works defending the principles and values of democracy which also display apparent effort to a priori exclude raising a particular problem in full in order to prevent any doubt being cast on the purposefulness and justifiability of traditional approaches to and standpoints regarding the assessment of political violence and extremism. At the same time, polemics regarding terrorism had a large impact. Discussions about terrorism changed the way the public felt about both terrorism as a particular category of extremist violence, and politically motivated violence and extremism as such, propagating and reinforcing the view of political violence (acceptance of violent methods of political fight including terrorism) as an utterly undemocratic and anti-democratic behaviour and as a key characteristic of extremism. There is a growing tendency in substantial part of the public in democratic countries today to a priori associate manifestations of extremist orientation with acts of politically motivated violence, and to identify ...

The aim of the paper is to analyse the impact of political instability on inflow of foreign direct investments (FDI) in transition economies (CEE, Balkan and Post-Soviet countries). Regarding standard indexes of political instability, there is a shortage of data within the selected sample of countries. Therefore, we propose alternative proxies for political instability. Furthermore, we distinguish between two types of political instability being omitted in thematic literature: elite (minority or weak governments) and non-elite (violent protests, civil wars, coups). The paper provides two-step empirical analysis: correlation analysis and regression models using standard OLS. Both analyses compare the effect of selected proxies for political instability on inflow of FDI and FDI per capita. In summary, it is not possible to prove the effect of political instability on inflow of FDI in transition countries in unambiguous way. Despite it, a few statistically significant variables seem to be perspective for future research; subindex Political Stability within Governance Matters by the Word Bank and Group Grievance within Failed State Index by the Fund for Peace (non-elite); Herfindahl Index Government and a dummy for (non)presence of parliament election (elite).

The article aims at characterization of the political system in Albania after the fall of the communist regime in 1991. The concepts of J. J. Linz are used. The text begins with the short description of the previous (communist) regime and with the character of the transition. The strong emphasis is given on the analysis of the several axes of non-democratic regimes: the limited pluralism, the mobilization, the ideology and the leadership. The authors conclude that it has been neither classical authoritarian nor totalitarian regime, but the regime, which is situated at the border of democracy and non-democracy and labelled by authors as a defect regime. With respect to unusual values of mobilization, the text operates with the classification mobilizational regime in ethnically divided society.

The theme is crucial to the concrete question, whether moravian identity really exists. It´s about phenomena which is natural and important for some parts of population or on the other hand we can see this identity as the artificial problem. The main goal is connecting with results from the field work. I would like to explain something about moravian political elites according to the non-political activism. It´s also necessary to mark historical processes which are important for present time. The polemic should have done some reflexive view on regionalism, activation of moravian elites and civic movements. ; The theme is crucial to the concrete question, whether moravian identity really exists. It´s about phenomena which is natural and important for some parts of population or on the other hand we can see this identity as the artificial problem. The main goal is connecting with results from the field work. I would like to explain something about moravian political elites according to the non-political activism. It´s also necessary to mark historical processes which are important for present time. The polemic should have done some reflexive view on regionalism, activation of moravian elites and civic movements.

Since the 1960s, voting behaviour in advanced democratic states has undergone substantial changes. From this period, the transformation of social structures, increased education, and the expansion of new technologies in the field of mass media, among other things, are evident. The transformation factors that affect the voter and his choice are sooner or later reflected in new theoretical concepts describing electoral behaviour, whether it was the theory of party identification, voter choice based on issues or rational choice. So far, however, none of the theories have adequately reflected the effect of consumer-style thinking on electoral behaviour. A new trend in political marketing – political branding – aims to correct precisely this deficiency. Due to the fact that the relevant research in the field of political branding and its impact on the voting behaviour of individuals is still in its infancy, we are faced with a lack of robust theoretical foundations. The text thus aims to clarify this situation by gathering and analysing existing branding concepts, pointing to their strengths and weaknesses. Also, it contributes to the theoretical discussion by linking research on political branding to existing theories of voting behaviour, asking whether the related branding concepts are able to explain the voting behaviour of voters as well as whether they are open to further amendments and modifications. ; Since the 1960s, voting behaviour in advanced democratic states has undergone substantial changes. From this period, the transformation of social structures, increased education, and the expansion of new technologies in the field of mass media, among other things, are evident. The transformation factors that affect the voter and his choice are sooner or later reflected in new theoretical concepts describing electoral behaviour, whether it was the theory of party identification, voter choice based on issues or rational choice. So far, however, none of the theories have adequately reflected the effect of ...

On the basis of the analysis of news content from 2008 to 2012, we describe in this article the tendencies of Czech media in dealing with foreign policy topics, using a combination of quantitative content analysis and qualitative case studies of selected foreign policy events. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate that the coverage of political events in the media is highly personalised and viewed through the prism of the personal or political interests of Czech political elites and the conflicts between them. As concerns the diversity of the actors presented and topics covered, the Czech media produce a considerably restricted and more or less uniform stream of news commented upon by a relatively limited spectrum of actors, mainly Czech politicians. For non-political, non-governmental, and international actors, access to the debate is considerably limited. The print media tends to present major political events as power-based conflicts between individuals or groups, rather than as negotiations about public affairs supported by substantive arguments. In effect, Habermas's classical vision of the role of mass media in democracy, which is to promote rational discussion as a desirable form of public debate, is replaced with persuasion through emotional appeal, which has been widely criticised. At the same time, however, some theoretical traditions see it more positively as a less restrictive form of public discourse. ; On the basis of the analysis of news content from 2008 to 2012, we describe in this article the tendencies of Czech media in dealing with foreign policy topics, using a combination of quantitative content analysis and qualitative case studies of selected foreign policy events. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate that the coverage of political events in the media is highly personalised and viewed through the prism of the personal or political interests of Czech political elites and the conflicts between them. As concerns the diversity of the actors presented and ...

The article analyses the evolution of the Slovak political party "Smer" (Direction) and its position in the party system of Slovak Republic. The article focuses on the shift of the party program from the "Centrist Populism" towards "Social Democracy." According to the first program documents the Party of "Smer" (Direction) was designed as pragmatic, non-ideological party. In the persistent conflict between authoritarianism vs. democracy "Smer" identified itself as the pro-democratic and pro-market force. Party policy before 2002 contained only few social democratic components; it was closer to the conservative or right-wing populist parties. After the parliamentary election 2002 and the failure of non-communist left "Smer" decided to become a member of the Socialist International (SI) and Party of European Socialists (PES). The process of the institutional approach to the international Social Democratic Party structures was accompanied by the substantial changes in the social and economic program of the party. The process was completed on the institutional level in May 2005, when Smer joined both SI and PES, and on the level of political program on the Party Congress in December 2005. In the process of so called "socialdemocratisation" of "Smer" the international factor played crucial role, especially the need to have an international partner in the European Parliament. "Smer" met the standards of the Social Democratic identity only in the social and economic affairs. The other five dimensions - environmental policy, participative democracy, cultural and human-rights dimension, supra-national dimension and the dimension of equality and freedom "Smer" met only partially or not at all, so these process remains unfinished. According to some political declarations "Smer" remains the populist party and the uncompromising critic of the right-wing government of Mikuláš Dzurinda, on the other side the official documents of the party anticipate only the moderate corrections of the economical and social reforms, ...

ESIC (Europarl Simultaneous Interpreting Corpus) is a corpus of 370 speeches (10 hours) in English, with manual transcripts, transcribed simultaneous interpreting into Czech and German, and parallel translations. The corpus contains source English videos and audios. The interpreters' voices are not published within the corpus, but there is a tool that downloads them from the web of European Parliament, where they are publicly avaiable. The transcripts are equipped with metadata (disfluencies, mixing voices and languages, read or spontaneous speech, etc.), punctuated, and with word-level timestamps. The speeches in the corpus come from the European Parliament plenary sessions, from the period 2008-11. Most of the speakers are MEP, both native and non-native speakers of English. The corpus contains metadata about the speakers (name, surname, id, fraction) and about the speech (date, topic, read or spontaneous). The current version of ESIC is v1.0. It has validation and evaluation parts.

The role of unilateral and collective sanctions in international has been increasing after\nthe ending of the "Cold War".New regimes of "smart" and "targeted" economic, financial and personal\nsanctions have been developed. Quite a new phenomenon is the impact of sanctions on non-State\nactors. The term "sanctions" is traditionally employed to indicate measures taken by the SC Art. 41 and\n42 of the UN Charter."Sanctions" according to prevailing views differ from the notion "countermeasures"\nas stipulated by the ILC Draft Articles on Responsibility of States.Regional organizations may\ntake sanctions against their own members, if their statute presumes it. Against third states they may\nimpose sanctions legally with authorization of the UNSC. It is controversial whether third states may\nresort to sanctions in case of a violation of obligations erga omnes, if this violation is not of serious\ngravity. The legal content of sanctions stricto sensu remains still to be seriously analyzed, especially\nwith regard to "countermeasures" and the practice of states.

In connection to the process of the public administration reforms which take place in most of the European countries and also in connection to the "European administrative space", the issues of studying and mutually comparing administrative systems of various European countries, especially EU member countries, become more and more topical. They focus not only on purposeful and effective mutual use of experience in administrative systems improvements, but also on improving orientation in the already mentioned "European administrative space". There is nodue attention devoted so far to the systematic study of administrative systems of (other) European countries. Most of the publications which focus on this issue (mostly study books, study materials, or occassional articles) describe it only on a "descriptive" (mostly simplified) level. The cause of this lies in (apart from time and financial demands) significant complexity of the given issue, in terminological complications and in difficulties of getting adequate (essentially necessary) factography and in practically non-existing adequate methodology. Legal comparative jurisprudence and comparative studies of political systems might inspire onewhen developing the methodology. Even under the current situation, it would be efficient to pay more attention to the comparative studies of the structure of administrative systems, or to some selected areas of the public administration, for example to personnel systems in the public administration, financing public administration or administration of the public property. A thorough "stock -taking" of all the materials which have ever been published about this matter (even in different contexts) in our country orabroad might serve as a basis of these fragmented studies.

The paper analyses the development of the Bratislava–Schwechat Pipeline, which is supposed to connect the Slovak and Austrian oil pipeline networks. The research question asks why the project is being developed without taking into account arguments concerning environmental security even though rather significant environmental opposition to the pipeline has arisen. While the proponents of the project stress mainly its importance for the fostering of Slovak energy security, its opponents claim that the pipeline will endanger the current level of environmental security, since it presents a risk to Slovak fresh water reservoirs. In line with the theoretical approach, the paper argues that the conflict between these two types of security is positively skewed towards energy security, because its proponents are able to support their argumentation with concrete evidence. Moreover, advantages from improvements in energy security are visible in the short-term. On the other hand, the possible future negative environmental impacts of the pipeline are not so easy to assess (or quantify) and are of a long-term nature. The analysis also shows that due to the lack of activity of the Slovak Ministry of the Environment, a non-governmental organization Nie ropovodu (No to the pipeline) has become the main proponent of environmental security through the preparation phase of the project. ; The paper analyses the development of the Bratislava–Schwechat Pipeline, which is supposed to connect the Slovak and Austrian oil pipeline networks. The research question asks why the project is being developed without taking into account arguments concerning environmental security even though rather significant environmental opposition to the pipeline has arisen. While the proponents of the project stress mainly its importance for the fostering of Slovak energy security, its opponents claim that the pipeline will endanger the current level of environmental security, since it presents a risk to Slovak fresh water reservoirs. In line with the ...

The paper comments on issues of conceptualisation and typology of regional parties in Europe. Regional parties could be defined briefly as independent formations with regional identity, region–based legitimacy and region–based electoral resources. The territorial aspect of their identity and of their modus operandi is the crucial one in this respect. It should be reminded that a number of heterogeneous party phenomena could be subsumed under the label of regional parties. The existence of a genuine regional party family, which could be, eventually, included into the classic familles spirituelles scheme, is not obvious. It seems that recent attempts to conceptualise the regional (and/or ethno–regional) party family have only small chance to success. Moreover, it should not be taken for granted that invention of such party family would enhance the capacity for comparative research into the European regional party phenomena. It could be a counter–productive move. There is an implicit danger to be avoided: that of conceiving of the differences between regional parties and non–regional parties as the differences between party families. However, these differences are not of the same kind. The paper proposes to distinguish several types of regional parties according to their origins (genuine regional autonomist parties, regionalized branches of state–wide parties etc.) which could allow for a sophisticated explanation of their heterogeneity and of various combinations of the systemic properties of regional parties. It is also suitable to pay more attention to the differing opportunity structures and to the compounded nature of territorial–political operational space of regional parties. ; The paper comments on issues of conceptualisation and typology of regional parties in Europe. Regional parties could be defined briefly as independent formations with regional identity, region–based legitimacy and region–based electoral resources. The territorial aspect of their identity and of their modus operandi is the crucial one ...