Jan Kofroň
Shattered Spaces of Political Geography
Political geography is a field located at the frontier between geography and political science. Considering this, one could expect that cross-fertilization occurs across the two fields. Unfortunately, what we see is rather a different picture – that of mutual neglect, or worse implicit antipathy. This paper aims to discuss deeper cleavages that separate the field and to suggest some possible remedies. The key cleavages we analyse are: the broader goals of the social science; epistemological preferences; preferences for nomothetic vs. idiographic knowledge and preferences for description and interpretation vs. explanation; and attitudes towards methodologies. The paper illustrates these cleavages via a short comparative anal- ysis of two papers (one written by a geographer, the other by a political scientist) that have similar research goals and general research designs. Greater attention to counterfactuals on the side of geographers, and greater willingness to consider more ideographic and de- scriptive pieces on the side of political scientists, are among the suggested ways to overcome this unproductive separation of political geography and political science.
David Vogt
Based on theories of relations between democracy and civil society and the concept of social capital especially in the version of Robert Putnam (1993) but also regarding his critics (Kwon 2004), this paper applies approaches of political geography to the study of politically active civil society outside traditional political parties in the Liberec Region of Czechia – a relatively small territory comprising many types of social, historical-cultural and natural environments. It tries to find and map differences in geographical (spatial) distribution of several types of such political civil activities and to determine some key geographical or geographically distributed factors with an impact on it. This paper focuses on a relatively untraditional role of civil society organizations (beside classical political parties) – that of direct participa- tion and success in (municipal) elections. It presents predominantly results of the analysis of data from municipal elections in 2010 and 2014, focused on the success of several types of untraditional, local or regional political movements, which had created candidate lists. Employed methods are particularly multiple linear regression and spatial autocorrelation. There is apparent differentiation according to the historical border of the Nazi-occupied and formerly predominantly ethnic German area, while influences of settlement structure or local particularities are also visible.
Jakub Stauber
Institutionalization of Nationalized Party System: The Czech Case
The concept of party system institutionalization is usually applied as an explanatory framework for the process during which inter-party competition exhibits the recognisable pattern of stabilization over time. Party system institutionalization is measured with indicators based on the patterns of stability in government formation and alternation. The article presents an empirical test of the argument that a high degree of party system nationalization plays a significant role in the process of party system stabilization and routinization. In the cross-temporal comparison, the presented study explains to what extent the Czech party system’s development exhibits patterns of institutionalization. The Czech case has been selected because recent party system changes are interpreted as unprecedented with regard to the electoral success of new political parties in 2010 and 2013. To better understand the complex party competition development over past 25 years, indica- tors of inflation and dispersion on the party system level are compared with the Gini-based party nationalization score.
Kateřina Rudincová
Viability of a Secessionist State in Africa: Case Study of South Sudan
South Sudan declared its independence after the long-term civil war in 2011, a move which was welcomed both by its inhabitants and the international community and widely supported by the African Union. However, a new civil war broke out a few years later, bringing old ethnic and power rivalries back to light. This article focuses on the causes behind the failure of the state-building process in South Sudan, power relations of its elites, and the difficulties of nation-building. Its main scope is to analyse the causes of the state failure in South Sudan which have their roots deeper in the Sudanese peace process, and which started in the 1990s and culminated with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. All these phenomena are studied in a broader geopolitical context bearing in mind also relations with neighbouring states, including parent state Sudan, and with international organisa- tions and the African Union in particular. From a methodological point of view, this article is an intrinsic case-study based on the analysis of documents released by the Government of South Sudan, the African Union, and various international organisations, literature, and also partly on the interviews and observations conducted at the African Union Commission, Addis Ababa, in 2011.
Kristina Špottová
Horizontální evropeizace: teoretická úvaha nad horizontální formou konceptu evropeizace
Horizontal Europeanisation: a theoretical reflection on the horizontal form of the concept of Europeanisation
This article aims at the underdevelopment of the concept of Europeanization in general and its horizontal form in particular. Although the concept of Europeanization is the subject of various research, its horizontal form is still rather underdeveloped, despite the rather fre- quent usage of the name. The goal of this article is to provide the definition of the often used but inadequately explained concept of horizontal Europeanization, based on the examina- tion and analysis of its key aspects (i.e. process, change and subjects). The definition is in the latter part of this article specified by distinguishing between horizontal Europeanization and cyclic Europeanization, or false horizontal Europeanization, using the characteristics of the process and the activity of the EU institutions, respectively, as the distinction. The defini- tion of the concept of horizontal Europeanization serves as a theoretical explanation of the name used in current research and also as a background for better empirical understanding of the horizontal processes. The description and even discovery of such processes should be clearer and easier if based on this definition rather than on currently available general definitions or particular descriptions of selected processes.
Martin Kuta
Mezi stranou a parlamentem: o českých poslaneckých klubech
Between party and parliament: about Czech parliamentary party groups
The paper deals with the role of parliamentary party groups (PPGs) within political systems, more specifically parliamentary system of government. The author poses the question of whether PPGs are of a parliamentary or party origin. In the first part, the author conceptu- alizes a comparative role of PPGs in parliamentary systems. Based on the arguments of the collective action and enforcement of voting unity of PPGs, the author embeds the PPGs in promoting a party’s goals in the parliament. The second part is devoted to the analysis of Rules of Procedure of the Czech Parliaments since 1918 in order to identify the institutional position of PPGs. Further, the paper proceeds to the analysis of party regulations. Based on both the Rules and regulations, it concludes that the role of PPGs consists in the coordina- tion of deputies’ activities and promotion of party goals (i.e. enforcement of collective ac- tion), and therefore may be embedded in the party basis of political process.
Vít Skála
Vliv sociálního kapitálu na rozvojový potenciál venkovských obcí
The impact of social capital on the development potential of rural communities
There are more than 5,000 small municipalities in the Czech Republic with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants. It is very difficult to strategically govern such a vast number of individual independent entities. Leaders, the situation and stage of development vary from municipality to municipality, and it is not easy to find some general pattern applicable to all of them. Some of these municipalities are growing, some are not. Why? What causes such differences? There are several research projects based on the regional typology trying to answer these questions. But we can find two similar municipalities situated close to each other (same regional typology), with one growing and the other declining. This article introduces an am- bitious approach to trying to explain these differences. Particular attention is paid to social capital as a crucial phenomenon influencing municipalities’ development potential. Case studies are used as a research design. One hundred individual characteristics are examined in 18 selected villages from three different regions in the Czech Republic, half of which are growing and half declining. Ten indicators were found compounded in the index of municipality development potential. Open composition of this index allows for the diversification of public policies according to the particular needs of individual municipalities.
Arnošt Novák
„Nic nechceme, nic nežádáme, bereme si, co nám patří!“ Sociologie nejnovějších sociálních hnutí
"We want nothing, we ask nothing, we take what is ours!" Sociology of the latest social movements
The article deals with the concept of the newest social movements (Richard Day). These movements, which have been developing over the past 20 years of neoliberal governance, act through pre-figurative direct actions. They are conscious attempts to alter, impede, destroy or construct alternatives to dominant structures, processes, practices and identities. They challenge the logic of hegemony and seek to change the roots thereof; they seek to address not just the content of current modes of domination and exploitation, but also the forms that give rise to them. They proceed by logic of affinity, i.e. based on non-universalizing, non-hierarchical, non-coercive relationships and mutual aid and shared ethical com- mitments. The article argues that to understand and explore these movements and non- branded tactics, it is necessary to research them using new theoretical perspectives.
Lukáš Hájek
Markéta Melicharová
Kristýna Mothejzíková
Markéta Zapletalová, Eva Lebedová
Michael Romancov
ROJEK, Paweł: Rusko: prokletí impéria. Zdroje ruského politického chování
Martijn Boot
Does Value Pluralism Prevent Consensus on Justice?
This paper discusses the consequences of value pluralism for the possibility of achieving consensus on justice. Justice is a multifaceted concept. Its multiple aspects are related to plural values, which may conflict mutually. Besides, elements of justice may clash with other weighty human values. If these conflicts occur, many philosophers believe that we should weigh the relevant demands of justice against each of them or against other important human values. However, under particular conditions, incommensurability of the relevant plural values prevents the assignment or determination of objective and impartial weights. In those cases, an impartial or objective ranking, or the right balance, do not exist. People may recognize the same universally valid human values, principles of justice and human rights. Achieving consensus on all important questions of justice is nevertheless unlikely, due to the problem that there seems to be no right or single right and determinate balance and ranking of these plural and universally valid but sometimes conflicting values and ethical demands.
Jill McArdle
Alternative Approaches to Public Reason in Pluralistic Societies
John Rawls asserts that the form of public reason appropriate to modern pluralist contexts is one that seeks to avoid divisive issues of ethics and the good by removing them from the political public sphere, and by grounding public discourse instead in citizens’ reasonableness expressed in a consensus on a conception of liberal justice. One objection to this account has focussed on its apparent over-dependence on the assumption that all “reasonable” citizens of a liberal polity “share” a political identity that can ground a consensus on justice and public reason. I examine this objection and conclude that the objection to Rawls’ account of reasonableness is valid; however, it must be directed not at the overlapping consensus but at the foundational level of justification, i.e. his understanding of practical reason. I also point to Onora O’Neill’s alternative interpretation of Kantian practical reasoning, which shares insights with discourse ethics, as a more promising approach to public reason in pluralist contexts.
Angela Roothaan
This paper investigates how, in the condition of postcolonialism, claims of political and cultural identity depend on the understanding of humanity, and how this understanding ultimately relates to historical agency. I understand postcolonialism as the condition that aims at the decolonization of thought of formerly colonized and former colonizers together – a condition that is global. I will construe my argument by discussing the following au- thors: Frantz Fanon, Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, Amilcar Cabral, Achille Mbembe and Michael Onyebuchi Eze. Fanon for his criticism of modern Western philosophy as dehumanizing the other; Emmanuel Eze for his in-depth critique of Kant and Hegel’s ideas of humanity and the racialised and racist frames of thought they left behind and both Fanon and Eze for their proposals to understand humanity as a project under construction; Amilcar Cabral for his views on the interrelatedness of political and cultural identity in a situation of the building of new nations. Achille Mbembe because he showed the relations between the former colo- nizers and the formerly colonized to be characterized by conflicting temporalizations and Michael Eze for his understanding of historical agency in the condition of postcolonialism. Through this discussion I will disentangle the relations between identity (political and cultur- al) and humanity in the postcolony, and arrive, after a critique of the racist Enlightenment, at an inclusive, instead of an exclusive, understanding of humanity and historical agency.
Olena Lyubchenko
The Ukrainian Crisis: A Case of ‘New Orientalism’
During the 2013 Ukrainian Euromaidan uprising and in its aftermath, many politicians, journalists, as well as academics diagnosed the Ukraine Crisis to be a manifestation of middle-class aspirations for a total social, political, and economic integration with the EU. Although correct in part, this account overlooks the heterogeneity of the Euromaidan par- ticipants and the role played by radical right and nationalist groups. This paper examines the problematic coalition between liberalism and the radical right factions in the Euromaid- an protests in Ukraine. More specifically, it suggests the liberal project that is taking place in Ukraine depends on a specific form of the friend-enemy distinction of ‘New Orientalism’. By doing so, this paper presents a reading of Euromaidan through Carl Schmitt’s critique of liberalism. The discussion concludes with suggesting a political economy analysis of separa- tism in the Donbass region.
Giorgos Bithymitris
This article deals with the socio-cultural elements and the hybridity of neo-nationalist discourses in the context of liminal working-class communities. Through the analysis of interview material collected from workers who experience an unprecedented condition of insecurity, volatility and economic hardship, we aim to understand the interplay between contradictory and yet interacting interpretative repertoires, emotional structures and social orders that either enable or hamper the permeability of neo-nationalism. To this end, we employ methods drawn from the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework, focussing on collective identities, which (a) are constituted within representation, (b) are constrained by different structures of power and social actors and (c) are consolidated in emotional struc- tures. The findings from the analysis are then linked to questions about nation and class, aiming at a more nuanced interpretation of the influence of the extreme right politics on the working-class members.
