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This paper examines the electoral results of two extreme right-wing parties, namely Národní Strana and Právo a Spravedlnost in the 2006 local elections. The basic method chosen is a comparative study of their electoral results at the level of those municipalities where they were present. Local results for the two political parties are also compared and contrasted with their previous performance in parliamentary elections. Additionally, a longer-term analysis of electoral support for Sdružení pro Republiku – Republikánská strana Československa and its successors present in the above elections will be investigated. The distribution of electoral support will be attributed to selected socioeconomic factors, number of young voters, education, nationality, and number of religious people in society. On this basis the presented text will try to show the interdependence of electoral behaviour.

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.

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, ...

The legitimacy of political regimes does not lie only in the manner in which these regimes use their power. A key role is played by the way these regimes are perceived by their populations. Following this insight, the paper defends and elaborates one necessary condition of legitimacy of every political regime: the justification of power provided by the regime must "make sense"to the citizens. This "making sense"can be best understood as a correspondence between the proposed justification of political authority and the citizens' understanding of themselves. In other words, a political regime "makes sense"to its population only if it resonates with their conception of themselves and their role in the society. The paper then analyses the possible correspondence between the Rawlsian conception of liberal self-understanding, where citizens view themselves as "self-authenticating sources of valid moral claims", and the legitimacy of contemporary democratic societies. This perspective reveals the sources of deep egalitarian assumptions behind the legitimation frameworks of contemporary societies, as well as the necessary limitations of power of contemporary states. The correspondence between our self-understanding and the legitimacy of the present-day states also reveals the fundamental importance of the human rights framework in current political life.

Traditionally, political rights are an important component of the relationship between the state and its citizens, and therefore only citizens are entitled to bear them. Nevertheless, due to international migration this approach is subject to change and nowadays many countries give voting rights also to foreigners who are resident there. The attitude of the Czech Republic has so far been conservative, which means that only the minimum standard enacted by European law is accommodated. However, preparatory work on a new electoral code has given rise to a discussion on the possible extension of voting rights also to foreigners from third countries resident in the country. This article tries to enhance the discussion in three ways. The first part consists of an analysis of what the potential percentage of foreign voters is, taking into consideration their geographic distribution in particular municipalities and thus providing an estimate of their influence on local councils. According to the results, potential foreign voters form a relevant minority only in 11 out of 6251 municipalities. The second part is focused on the actual exercise of voting rights by European citizens resident in the Czech Republic, who have it already. A representative survey conducted on a sample of 5% of municipalities shows that the turnout of these voters is negligible (approx. 2.4%), far below the EU average. The last part of the article deals with the legislation in this area which causes crucial obstacles to the real exercise of political rights by foreigners, and therefore is incompatible with the European law. Adapted from the source document.

The aim of this article is to analyze whether it is appropriate to classify the Norwegian Progress Party as a member of the extreme-right party family. The study first introduces the theoretical approaches to the identification of party families. The origins of parties, ideology, policies & political style are chosen as the most important criteria for the classification of political parties into party families. The article then defines the extreme-right party family on the basis of these criteria. The remainder of the article focuses on the analysis of the Norwegian Progress Party & examines whether the party fulfils the above-defined conditions for being classified as an extreme right-wing party. It concludes that it is appropriate to label the Norwegian Progress Party as a member of the far-right party family even though some of the criteria are not fulfilled or are not fulfilled completely. Thus the party can be considered as either a "diluted" version or a border case of contemporary European radical right. References. Adapted from the source document.

This article presents a detailed analysis of the Civic Forum as the most important vehicle of changes in the first stage of the development of the Czech party system. It aims at two interrelated goals: first, to describe & adequately elaborate processes within the Civic Forum, which should serve to explain internal divisions in this movement & the emergence of various streams within the Civic Forum as their immediate consequence. Second, it intends to outline ideological positions within the Civic Forum, thus identifying a logic of the future developments in the Czech party system & distribution of its subjects on the left-right scale. Moreover, the article traces back through the history of the Civic Forum influences of ideas of the non-political politics & their permanent clashes with attempts to establish Civic Forum as a hierarchical political party. The article concludes that the Civic Forum significantly contributed both to the establishment of the Czech party system just in the shape it acquired within its further development, & to the emergence of the major Czech parties of the right. 36 References. Adapted from the source document.

Language is one of the most important elements of cultural identity, but also an expression of economic & political structures & relations. This article is mostly dealing with the role of languages in political processes on three levels: national, regional & international. Presently, all of them are changing together with the structure of contemporary international politics. However, the process of economic globalization does not mean the end of the traditional role of national languages in the process of nation-state building. Nation states are traditionally against policies of multilinguism & against political rights for minority languages. These processes are still quite visible, particularly in Asia. Nevertheless, globalization is also connected with new regionalism, on intrastate as well as international levels. The new role of languages on the regional level often reflects, especially in developed countries, processes of political decentralization. On the international level there is a special role for imperial languages. However, processes of integration in developed countries, particularly in Europe, in contradistinction to some other regions, are haunted by problems & limits because of language diversity & the lack of one unifying language. 10 References. Adapted from the source document.

The article analyzes the reasons for two key defeats of the ODS (Civic Democratic Party) in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 1998 & 2002. It is proved that the ODS was not a modern right-wing political party at least up to the 2002 election year. For this reason it did not efficiently cover the wide center-right segment of the political spectrum. Public opinion surveys demonstrated that there was a long-term right-wing orientation & a strong center in the Czech Republic. Nevertheless, the ODS did not respond to the demands of the center- right segment by a corresponding offer. The modernization of the 0DS presupposes an overall change of its strategy, which would include not only a conception of people's capitalism but also a whole complex of changes: a more amicable approach to the European Union, to ecological problems, & to social issues, In addition, the party should take a firm stance against non-transparent clientelism & corruption & strengthen pluralism inside the party. 34 References. Adapted from the source document.

The paper analyzes the far right People's Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) in 2006, 2010 and 2012 Slovak parliamentary elections. The main questions that the paper seeks to answer are 1) whether and how has the party changed its main themes during the periods before elections, 2) what the party's position toward the Roma minority has been, and 3) how the thematic adaptation has affected electoral results of the party. The paper analyzes the changing position of the party toward the Roma minority in the context of three electoral periods and it links the party's electoral results with the occurrence of so-called Roma settlements in the areas, where the party gained a significant share of the vote. We found that during the 2006 elections the party mostly emphasized the need for the renaissance of the (Slovak) nation and the reflection of its roots and national historical figures. In both the 2010 and 2012 elections the party for the most part sharply criticized the Roma minority and the mainstream political parties. We argue that this change was reflected in the party's electoral gain. Since 2010 the party has changed its focus to an active campaign against Roma and electoral results of the party have improved. In 2006 LSNS gained the most votes in areas where the local appeal of its leaders emphasizing the nationalistic themes was the largest and in both 2010 and 2012 the party gained the most votes in regions with the highest occurrence of Roma settlements. We also identified all four features that according to Mudde (2000) characterize far right parties in the electoral themes emphasized by LSNS. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyses the evolutionary process of the Romanian party system during the years 19892004. The Romanian party system went through rapid development after the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime, a process that has not yet ended (this opinion relates mainly to center and right parties). The developmental periods of the party system are divided on the basis of parliamentary elections, since these elections and their results always represent a new situation in the party scene. The main part of the article describes the development and political program individual party subject Romanian party system. The classical division into left, center and right parties is applied to the location of political parties with respect to disputability in the Romanian political context. Besides the classical political parties, it is also possible to identify relatively strong ethnic parties and special party families. In the present state (after the 2004 election) it is possible to characterize the situation as conflict between two main poles -- centrist ("Truth and Justice") and post-communist (Social Democratic Party). Christian National Peasant Party Christian Democratic; socialist Socialist Workers Party; ethnic Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romanian, and radical continuity parties (mainly Great Romania Party) can all be defined as secondary poles. Extreme right parties are minor and insignificant. The Communist party family has no relevant representative. Adapted from the source document.

The article seeks to describe & interpret recent trends within the Swedish party system. The point of departure for analysis is twofold: (1) to describe past development of patterns of cooperation & conflict among Swedish political parties, (2) an examination of P. Mair's concepts on the structure of party system competition & party system change, which are applied to the Swedish case. Special attention is given to the process of formation of the right-wing as well as the left-wing blocs. The aim of the article is to explain why & under what circumstances these blocs emerged, considering the fact that these blocs were at times almost invisible, at times only slightly salient. Moreover, party cooperation often took place across bloc lines. This analysis of past trends serves as a basis for understanding up-to-date developments within the right-wing bloc & particularly left-wing parties, which -- for the first time in the Swedish party politics history -- have recently declared their intention to form an election alliance & even a government coalition after the 2010 parliamentary elections. The article also discusses the question of whether these trends might lead to a specific version of the two-party system. Adapted from the source document.

Contemporary normative debates about justice increasingly revolve around the problem of extending the principles of justice (and corresponding theories) beyond the level of the nation-state, to which they have been for a long time confined. The article below discusses several authors from the wide and heterogenous politico-philosophical current of liberal egalitarianism, which can be considered one of the leading contemporary schools of thought, or the mainstream. There are two interrelated goals in this enterprise: First, to show how varied and cross-cutting the normative landscape of justice is, even within this specific current. Second, since I concentrate on the problem of extending the principles and theories of justice to supra-state levels, the universality (or the "cosmopolitan reach") of these ideas stands out as one of the most interesting features of these discussions. The work of Brian Barry, David Miller, Onora O'Neill and John Rawls exemplify many crucial issues that any theory of justice with cosmopolitan ambitions must cope with. The article concludes that the concept of (universal) human rights seems to be the only value that can buttress any cosmopolitan theories of justice; however, the normative debate over (1) their grounding, scope and corresponding obligations and (2) their connection to a comprehensive account of a good society, i.e. liberal democracy -- and therefore, the acknowledged danger of ethnocentrism -- is still far from being resolved. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyses social policy in the programs of the relevant political parties. Right-wing political parties have profiled themselves as the main bearers of social reform. The pace of social reform started to drop in the second half of the nineties with a complete break down between 1997 & 1998. The political & voting programs of right-wing political parties have been the main source for this research. Adapted from the source document.