Monika Brusenbauch Meislová
A Single-Issue Party without an Issue? UKIP and British 2017 General Election
Jan Hanzelka, František Kasl
Securitisation and legal tools to counter online hate speech in Germany: On the discourse from the perception of social media platforms as "tools misused for dissemination of extremism" to the perception of their "accountability for removal of the hate speech content"
Lukáš Novotný, Daniel Šárovec
Německý stranický systém a volby do Bundestagu 2017
The German party system and the 2017 Bundestag elections
Matej Cíbik
Liberal universalism today
Jakub Charvát
Consociational democracy and its alternatives in plural societies: a contribution to the 50th anniversary of the theory
Arnošt Veselý
Design veřejných politik: kritický přehled přístupů
Public policy design: a critical review of approaches
Jaroslav Bílek
Výzkum vládně-armádních vztahů v Latinské Americe
Research on government-army relations in Latin America
Christopher Kelly
Sovereign versus Government: Rousseau’s Republicanism
Rousseau has been criticized by modern republicanism proponents for failing to live up to the standard of republicanism that involves criticizing unjust laws. Rousseau’s version of republicanism regards a different issue as more urgent. Rousseau regards abusive administration of laws, or usurpation of sovereignty by the government, as a more urgent problem. As a result, he addresses issues of dissent, activism and resistance to government rather than protest about laws.
Hana Fořtová
Benjamin Constant and the Ideas of Republicanism
Benjamin Constant is considered as a classical liberal thinker due to his conviction that men establish political authority in order to protect their pre-existing rights, his theory of limited sovereignty and the modern concept of liberty described as a possibility to enjoy our private pleasures. Throughout his life Constant defended his liberal views; at the same time, while persuaded of the progress of mankind and therefore of the impossibility to revive the ancient conception of liberty, he was clearly aware of the dangers of modern society made up of solitary individuals and of the need of a social bond so that the liberal constitution could be maintained. The aim of this paper is to show that through his effort to overcome the atomisation of modern society, Constant comes in some respects close to the ideas of civic republicanism as developed for example by Pettit or Spitz; in the republican tradition, he stresses the need to overcome our selfish passions and to create a legal framework so that we may enjoy our freedom. In his famous speech distinguishing two forms of liberty, Constant emphasizes the importance of combining both kinds of liberty as well as the necessity of political participation. Nonetheless, the preservation of liberty may require more than that. Constant refuses modern moral theories based on the notion of self-interest and utility and demonstrates that the selfishness and passivity they promote may lead to despotism. Liberty is so precious because it enables the full development of human dignity of individual human beings as well as mankind as a whole. Morality that buttresses liberty, according to Constant, must be individual and based on our passions. The virtuous and disinterested deeds that make human greatness possible are based on “religious sentiment”—a moral sentiment that can be expressed in the public sphere as “patriotism”. Thanks to this sentiment, we are capable of overcoming the selfishness of modern sensibility dominated by calculation as well as of offering sacrifices that liberty sometimes demands. Moreover, thanks to this sentiment, we can accomplish our destiny as moral beings.
Serena Mocci
Margaret Fuller is chiefly known as the author of the first American feminist manifesto, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845. This article undertakes to read Fuller’s work through a republican lens by viewing her discussion on women’s rights as a part of the antebellum debate on American democracy. It also aims to put together two approaches, republicanism and feminism, whose relationship some scholars consider to be antithetical, i.e. Phillips (2000), Friedman (2008) and Hirschmann (2003) but which, in general, has been scarcely analysed. Although republicanism called for freedom and equality among men, it never seriously considered, especially in ancient and early-modern times, the status of women and the recognition of their civil and political rights. However, recent studies, such as Vega (2002), Coffee (2012), Costa (2013) and Halldenius (2015), have tried to reinterpret the possible dialectical connections between women and republicanism, opening up new lines of research on this topic. The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide new food for thought to this contemporary academic debate by adopting a historical approach.
This paper argues that Fuller’s use of the concept of ‘liberty’ in her defence of women’s civil and political rights corresponds to Philip Pettit’s (1997) definition of liberty as ‘non-domination’. Taking freedom to mean independence from arbitrary power, Fuller demonstrated that due to their submission to the arbitrary power of men, women totally lacked any measure of independence, and could thus be defined as ‘slaves’. In addition, Fuller bolstered these affirmations by considering a further form of interference resulting from what Alan Coffee (2012) has called ‘social domination’, which was based on cultural values and traditions that condoned women’s exclusion from social, political and working life on the basis of their supposed physical and intellectual inferiority. This did not allow them to exercise their right to freedom as independent agents.
The paper demonstrates that thanks to the use of republican paradigms to develop her feminist critique, Margaret Fuller took republicanism a step further and developed a more inclusive and egalitarian model of republican liberty that embraced women. Indeed, her feminist internal critique of republicanism can offer new food for thought to the contemporary academic debate on the compatibility between republicanism and feminism. The research brings to light how Fuller criticized women’s legal status and the institution of marriage, how she compared the condition of women to that of slaves, and how she supported higher levels of education for women as a right and an emancipatory instrument in a free republic.
Rafał Lis, Christopher Donohue
A Dialogue between Republicanism and the ‘Republic of Science’
In the present article, we argue that there can indeed be a dialogue between the political and philosophical theory of republicanism and between the philosophy of science. We argue that although there exists an apparent conceptual and historical gap between the philosophy of science and theories of republicanism, that gap can be breached, we argue through an attention to conceptions of elitism in republicanism, focusing on the work of Madison and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We also contend, though in a preliminary, often provocative way, that the issue of elitism in republican theory can benefit from a dialogue with the philosophy of science—especially the “negative epistemology” of Karl Popper and his students, Ian Jarvie and Joseph Agassi. Such a dialogue is possible because Popper’s philosophy proposes a solution to the problem of elitism in epistemology and in politics.
Troels Fage Hedegaard
Survey studies show that if governments are perceived to be performing poorly in terms of caring for their citizens, this can lead to increased support for public spending. This article builds on the literature on this ‘inside-the-box thinking’ by demonstrating that this effect is not alike between countries, and might be conditioned on welfare states being perceived as relatively free of corruption and locked into public welfare production. Using the 2006 ISSP Role of Government survey, this is tested on attitudes towards spending on public old age pensions and healthcare, using descriptive statistics and multilevel modelling. The results show that in all 31 countries the perception that the government is preforming poorly does lead to support for increased spending. This effect of perceived performance on attitudes towards spending is, however, weakened by high levels of perceived corruption and strengthened by high levels of public spending. This shows that the effect of public performance on attitudes is conditioned by the context.
Vlastimil Havlík, Vratislav Havlík
From the Return to Europe to Easy Money: Europeanization of Party Manifestoes in the Czech Republic
The article is focused on the Europeanization of political parties in the Czech Republic with special attention paid to two areas of research. First, based on an original dataset, the authors examine the salience of the European issue and identifies the context by which the issue is framed. Second, the attitudes of Czech political parties towards European integration over time are scrutinized. Two main conclusions can be drawn from the Czech experience. In contrast to the pre-accession period when European integration was presented mainly in the context of EU membership and the general direction of European integration, the membership period is typical by focus on EU policies and financial subsidies that the Czech Republic gets from the EU budget. European integration constitutes an issue cross-cutting the most important economical division in Czech party politics, with a high conflict potential influencing the dynamics of party competition in the country.
Monika Brusenbauch Meislová
"Issue capture" and the demand for a British referendum in the context of the Eurosceptic mobilisation of the Conservative Party
As it stands now, a consensus has been, more or less, established that the 2016 British referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued membership in the European Union was held primarily due to the steadily increasing pressure of the Conservative parliamentary party’s hard Eurosceptic wing that had demanded it. This article deals with agenda setting within the Conservative Party, whilst applying the issue capture concept, first introduced by Nathaniel Copsey and Tim Haughton in 2014 in connection with their research into the British debate on the EU and the European integration per se. The author argues that the issue capture phenomenon occurred also within the Conservative Party, when the minority group of its hard Eurosceptic members calling for an in/out referendum took near-control of the terms of the intra-party political debate and gradually put this issue through as a central point of the party’s programme. The article aims to answer the question, why it was the demand for an in/out referendum that became the central issue of the Conservative hard Eurosceptic wing.
Karel B. Müller
Good governance and its actors in post-communist happyville or how to make decisions in the interests of those who are not heard
The paper focuses on the interpretation of the causes, forms, and bearers of political change which, at the local level, led to the promotion of good governance, characterized by a high degree of transparency, openness, and efficiency. Conceptually, the research has drawn upon the complementary concepts of civil society, and focused on the small size towns (5 to 15 thousand) in the Czech Republic. A multiple-case methodology was applied, and it combined use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. Among the most important findings was that (1) political elites were confronted with a civic environment which was imbued by negative and protest-like feedbacks, and nearly lacked the matter-of-fact civic feedbacks; that (2) the political factions performed many crucial both manifest and latent functions; that (3) parents with small children were among the most active civic groups when it comes to shaping public space; that (4) in terms of the general public, a clear correlation between the level of education, and a sense for plurality of opinions and interests was surprisingly not found; and (5) in the metropolitan suburban environment, compared with the small- town environment, a higher concentration of opinion leaders resulted both in the greater frequency and intensity of protest participation, and into a more uneasy accumulation of political reputation. The results of analysis also verified the selection of the studied cases; they have been indeed characterized by a high degree of good governance attributes.
Miroslav Novák
Sociopolitical changes, uprisings, coups, revolutions and their prevention: an attempt to reconstruct Aristotle's conception
This article seeks to „reconstruct”, synoptically arrange and explain Aristotle’s conception of socio-political changes, coups, uprisings, revolutions and their prevention, which is „chaotically” (Pierre Pellegrin) presented in the book V. of Politics. It is argued that a number of ideas that are commonly associated with Modern Age authors, such as Niccolò Machiavelli, John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx and in the early 20th century Max Weber, for instance, appeared much earlier with Aristotle. Aristotle builds on a vast documentation and comes from an analysis of equalities and inequalities. His conception of socio-political development is not cyclical (which is the case of Artistotle’s great teacher Plato), but linear. Among political regimes Aristotle attributes a special position not only to democracy in ancient rendition, but above all to politeia in its own sense, which corresponds to our representative democracies to a large extent.
Bronislav Jaroš, Stanislav Balík
Nové komunální volby v ČR 2002–2017: blokující menšiny?
New local elections in the Czech Republic 2002-2017: blocking minorities?
The aim of this article is to clarify circumstances which are associated with dissolutions of local governments in the Czech Republic and holding new local elections. Two important sources are used to shed light on this problem: electoral data and a telephone survey in municipalities where one or more early elections were held from 2002. Such a comprehensive study has been missing up to now. The results show that, in most of the cases, new elections are caused by pragmatism of minorities in small governments with seven and less seats. Such small governments are the most common in the Czech Republic. Members of these minorities resign and cause early elections with the aim to get more power than they had after regular elections.
