Veřejná podpora přímé demokracie: Analýza heterogenity politických postojů v České republice

Author(s): Tomáš Dvořák / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 4/2019

This paper focuses on the sources of popular support for direct democracy in the Czech Republic. The analysis first replicates the standard approaches used in previous scholarly research, testing theories of cognitive mobilisation and alienation using the standard regression modelling approach. The results are, however, somewhat inconclusive, as have been the results of previous empirical research in other European countries. It is hypothesised that one reason for this could be data heterogeneity. Both tested concepts could be valid, but for different social groups, resulting in overall inconclusive results. Therefore, latent class analysis (LCA) is then used to show that in the Czech Republic direct democracy is supported both by people alienated from politics and by those satisfied with democracy and democratic governance. The results of empirical analysis show that support for direct democracy in the Czech Republic cannot be explained by any one theory and that different concepts apply to different groups. The article represents a methodological innovative step in the empirical study of sources of popular support for direct democracy.

Vienas iš trijų: seimo pirmininko statusas ir vaidmuo

Author(s): Sigita Trainauskienė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 3 (83)/2016

The article analyses the role of a Parliament Speaker as a leader of one of the main institutions in representative democracy. The analysis is based on the premises of the theories of neoinstitutionalism and political leadership; the basic types of roles a speaker may have in different political systems are reviewed; and the established Lithuanian practice is studied accordingly. There are constitutional, statutory, traditional and ceremonial, procedural, and administrative functions and powers that are usually attributed to the Speaker, but the primary function of the presiding officer of a parliament is to conduct debates in parliament, to control its agenda as well as to represent the institution. While performing one’s tasks, the Speaker may be seen as a party asset as in the US Congress or a neutral chairman as in the UK House of Commons, however, neutrality by many scholars is seen as a basic feature attributed to this office. The studies conducted in the framework of institutionalisation of parliaments highlight several criteria inherent in highly-institutionalised legislatures such as professionalism of its leadership (i.e. long congressional career path) and “well-boundedness” of an institution (i.e. no lateral entry from outside), among other things. Scholars also highlight that it is not only formal powers but also subjective factors depending on a concrete personality that define the authority and the actual role the Speaker plays in the political process. The role of a Speaker of the Seimas is analysed based on theoretical criteria. After examination of the legal basis, status, formal powers of the Speaker of the Seimas as well as other factors, it is possible to conclude the following: • The role of the presiding officer of the Parliament in Lithuania has changed since the beginning of the independence period due to changing constitutional arrangements, legal framework and political circumstances; despite the existence of collective bodies in the Seimas – the Board of the Seimas and the Conference of Chairs, at present Speaker of the Seimas is an individual leader. • Although formally it is the second highest position in the hierarchy of state officers having mandate to substitute the head of the state, according to the established informal practice it is only the third official in terms of political power, being overshadowed by Prime Minister. That is why, it is only the “third choice” for politicians in their political career. • Speaker of the Seimas can be described as a “party asset” type of a Speaker because of his/her relatively broad procedural powers and active political role played by the person despite the formal requirement to suspend one’s membership in the party group – there were several Speakers who retained their formal party leadership while in office. • A selection mechanism for the Office of the Speaker, i.e. inter-party negotiations for the governing coalition, is by far the most important informal variable defining the choice of the person and his/her behaviour later on while in office. Political conjuncture also stipulates relative instability of the Office and the change of Speaker without completing their full term (which is a rather seldom phenomena in Western parliaments). Party discipline and necessity to form a ruling coalition overrides even a secret ballot procedure in election of a Speaker thus diminishing the authority of an institution (the cases of re-voting for Arūnas Valinskas and a sudden replacement of Vydas Gedvilas by Loreta Graužinienė in the middle of their term). • Despite the weakness and instability of the party system in Lithuania, with “newcomers” in the Parliament and the highest political offices, there is a tendency to elect persons with longer previous parliamentary experience for the Office of Speaker, especially from long-established parties. However, the prestige and authority of Speaker often depends on subjective factors and concrete personality occupying the position. Not only the circumstances of the time but also the personality of the politician shape the role and tasks the Speaker performs. In view of the essential role of political leaders in the building of institutions, the analysis of a Speaker’s role in a new democracy seems to be especially meaningful, thus providing an important additional insight into the institutionalisation studies of legislatures.

VIOLENCE BETWEEN AND WITHIN POLITICAL PARTIES IN NIGERIA: STATISTICS, STRUCTURES, AND PATTERNS (2006–2014)

Author(s): COHEN CORENTIN / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

Acts of violence between political parties in Nigeria are usually associated with general elections with their spectacular death toll and it is seen as the result of frauds and electoral malpractices. I argue that this focus hides most of the violence between political parties over the 2006–2014 period, and that it also obscures the different factors as violence is firstly a political resource and tool that. To do so I coded and analyzed data of the NigeriaWatch database of all violent event that occurred between political parties. The paper first shows that patterns of political violence between the 2007 and 2011 general elections differ strongly. During the 2007 election, killings occurred mainly during primaries or were linked to the campaign. During the 2011 elections, however, casualties were reported after the announcement of the results. Nevertheless, it appears that killings related to general elections accounted for less than 50% of the total number of such fatalities as they were reported between 2006 and 2014. A large share of party violence is ignored as it is mostly internal (27% of the violent events over the period) as these events are targeted and have a low lethality rate. Arguably, violence is a mean used by the political elite, rather than the people’s choice to protest against fraud, eventually during local government elections. Levels of violence vary between parties but the former ruling party, the PDP is central as it was involved in 97% of the casualties of party clashes. PDP/CPC clashes have a lethality rate of 23 deaths per fatal incident, as against 11 for the PDP/ANPP and 2.5 for the PDP/ACN. Over the period under study, 13 events account for more than 70% of the death toll. What they have in common is that they ignited ethnic, religious and/or economic tensions, especially in Kaduna, Kano, Nasarawa and Plateau. Other states affected by recurrent political violence are Adamawa, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Kogi, Lagos, Oyo, and Rivers.

Violența simbolică: discurs și reprezentări sociale în campania pentru alegerile prezidențiale din 2014

Author(s): Mirabela AMARANDEI / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 11/2016

Societies work on relations of power and domination, the political practices and even groups involved in politics are generating violence. Romanian public space was gradually taken over by symbolic violence, an act of power between the political elites and the dominated classes. The symbolic violence expresses its fullest potential during the election campaigns. The speech and the political events during the presidential election campaign in 2014 were predominantly violent. Key actors rather used manipulative techniques instead of generating a real debate of ideas. This article presents the findings of a semantic analysis of the main candidates’ political discourse, highlighting the manifestations of symbolic violence. The analysis will focus on the social representations used by the candidates during the public discourses, meant to seduce voters.

Viorella Manolache, Political Philosophy in Motion .mkv, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017

Author(s): Luiza-Maria Filimon / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

VLAST, GRAĐANSTVO I SLOBODA: OD POLITIČKE KONTINGENCIJE DO TRANSFORMACIJE POLITIČKOG

Author(s): Elvis Fejzić / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 3/2017

In political practice of democratic states at certain points it is difficult to reconcile the interests of the citizens and the will of the state government. Moreover, it of tenhappens a kind of paradox, produced by misinterpretation of the right to freedom of assembly and association that democratic government guarantees its citizens. In such a controversial notion of freedom of assembly, the borders between nonviolent activity and political violence in democratic regimes authorities are lost. Itcan spark violent protests of citizens against state authorities. When civil disobedience grows in political violence, it always leads to the decline of the democratic process. Abuse of the freedom of assembly can permanently destabilize the political order and produce the fear of violence by the crowd. Violent protests of citizens in democratic countries are often covertly directed by competing political groups in order to realize their particular demands or exact the dismissal of the elected government and bring an early election. However, in the era of polycentric politics, we cannot regard political parties any longer as only sovereign representatives of the will of citizens, since there are other actors of political process which appear as representatives of particular interests of citizens.. The Public activity of social movements and interest groups in contemporary politics has very much strengthened the overall power and influence of citizens and expanded the milieu of fundamental political freedoms, but – simultaneously- it has so greatly increased antinomical tension between the needs of the citizens and the will of the authorities.

Vliv klimatu školní třídy a jejího socioekonomického složení na občanské znalosti a postoj k volební účasti

Author(s): Aleš Kudrnáč / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 02/2017

Research to date indicates that there is a positive association between the family-based socio-economic status (SES) of students and pupils’ own level of civic knowledge and attitudes toward voting. Many scholars think that social stratification of the electorate may lead to differential political representation of social groups thereby weakening the legitimacy of democracy among the lower social strata who participate least in politics. In this respect, it is often argued that one of the roles of schools is to reduce the difference in civic participation among students coming from families in different social strata. In this vein, this article examines if (a) type of classroom learning operationalised as ‘open classroom climate’ and (b) the socioeconomic composition of the class help to explain differences in students’ level of civic knowledge and attitudes toward voting. The data used in this study comes from the International Citizenship and Civic Education (ICCS) survey of 8th-grade student carried out in 2009. The multilevel modelling results show that the SES of a students’ family does help to explain differences in pupils’ civic knowledge and attitudes toward voting, and this classroom effect is especially strong among low SES students. In contrast, the presence of an open classroom climate has no significant effects on knowledge or attitudes to voting. This article concludes with a discussion of how these findings shape current understanding of how contrasting educational trajectories may have political consequences over the long-term.

Vojenské kariérové kurzy pro přípravu vyšších důstojníků

Author(s): Vojtěch Němeček,František Mičánek,Jaroslav Kolkus / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 3/2014

The career education of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) personnel is a key component to meet requirements for qualifications. As these requirements are career growth conditions for career personnel, they are inherently connected with further promotion in rank. During the process of preparation of the career courses it was revealed that some system changes should be made due to implemented or planned changes within the legislative and source framework of the Ministry of Defence. This article describes the implementation process of a new policy for training personnel in the career courses. It was prepared by a project team headed by the Centre for Security and Military Strategic Studies at the Defence University. Furthermore, the article deals with the clarification of the approach to the development of educational documentation and the chosen form of organization and conduction of military career courses. Also, a quality control system and a collection of information needed for upgrading of the senior officers career education curricula are described.

VOJISLAV ŠEŠELJ – PROBLEM ETIKE I ODGOVORNOSTI

Author(s): Sonja Biserko / Language(s): Bosnian,Croatian,Serbian / Issue: 1/2015

VOJISLAV ŠEŠELJ – THE QUESTION OF ETHICS AND RESPONSIBILITY

Author(s): Sonja Biserko / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

Volby do Poslanecké sněmovny 2013

Author(s): Otto Eibl,Miloš Gregor,Lenka Hrbková,Tomáš Maceček,Roman Chytilek,Peter Spáč,Vlastimil Havlík,Michal Nový,Kamil Gregor,Michal Pink,Petr Voda,Eva Kneblová,Jakub Šedo / Language(s): Czech / Publication Year: 2014

This paper offers a comprehensive look at the early parliamentary electionsof 2013. Analyzing the platforms of the individual political parties reveals increasing areas of commonality in their platform statements. This raises the question of whether it is still worthwhile to create and read such platforms. This is particularly true in view of the documented weakness of the relationship between Czech voters and political parties in general. Equally interesting is the contradiction between the meaning still accorded the platforms by voters, who may consider them an important factor in their decision-making process, and the details of the individual platforms themselves. It would appear that people tend to expose themselves only to those ideas with which they agree a priori. The level of exposure may then even end up strengthening their existing views (and this is also true for the opposite case: a confrontation with information which contradicts the original viewpoint may paradoxically strengthen that viewpoint).

VOLIČSKÉ PŘESUNY MEZI SNĚMOVNÍMI VOLBAMI V ROCE 2010 A KRAJSKÝMI VOLBAMI V ROCE 2012

Author(s): Petr Gongala,Kamil Gregor / Language(s): Czech / Publication Year: 0

Chapter 8, by Kamil Gregor and Petr Gongala, focuses on voting shifts between the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 2010 and the regional elections in 2012. Their basic findings confirm that shifts between consecutive elections demonstrate voter behavior that partially conforms to the concept of second-order elections. Parties in government only retained a small number of their voters from 2010; on the one hand, they saw their voters move toward other groupings, and on the other hand, asignificant portion of their base stayed home. The segment of voters that parties retained primarily grew as their oppositional posture grew more extreme.

Votanții activi și votanții de presiune. Un model teoretic de analiză

Author(s): Alfred Bulai / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 196/2018

The usual model of the analyses of voting absenteeism, for any type of election, is based on the thesis that people interested in the thematic of a vote, if they are not prevented in any way, will participate to it. Absenteeism is usually explained by to a lack of interest in the subject of choice, sometimes accompanied by the inability to understand the nature of the alternative that is proposed, or the difficulty of assessing variants of choice. Of course, in other cases absenteeism may be linked to the presence of a protest attitude against various political themes or actions. Beyond these factors of the absenteeism, which have their own explanatory capacity, I will try to propose another type of analysis of the voting mechanism and implicitly of the absenteeism. I will take the particular case of the referendum on redefinition of the family that took place in October 2018. I will show that the explanation of the very low level of presence to vote is mainly due to the existence of a critical mass of voters whom I will call “pressure voters”. Most of them did not vote at the referendum and usually, in the case of ordinary elections they are very difficult to identify.

Voter policy emphasis and party electoral manifestos: Assessing parties’ reflections of voter policy shifts in the 2010 and 2013 Czech parliamentary elections

Author(s): Lenka Homolková / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

The party manifesto is a crucial document identifying a party’s ideological position. Measuring the response of political party manifestos to both the mean voter as well as party constituency positions remains extensively difficult given the lack of available data, but also the complex political realities and factors which the parties must take into consideration e.g. the economy, globalization, the demands of the market, and pressure from rival parties. In spite of these complexities, this article analyses the extent to which political parties reflect voter policy emphasis in their political manifestos. Through the content analysis of electoral manifestos the article determines the policy positions of Czech political parties during the 2010 and 2013 elections to the Lower House of the Parliament. Identifying also key voter policy preferences the article looks into the possible congruence between shifts in voter emphasis and changes in party electoral manifestos. Employing an approach not yet fully applied in academic research, the article examines shifts within ideological space, while focusing also on specific key policy areas. It concludes that in the short term – from the 2010 to 2013 parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic - political parties responded to shifts in voter policy emphasis in just one quarter of cases. The responsiveness differed significantly from one party to another.

Voting Behavior in Parliamentary Elections in Slovakia

Author(s): Miroslav Řádek / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2016

Department of Political Science at Alexander Dubcek University in Trencin prepared its own exit poll during election day on March 5, 2016. The survey asked seven questions that were aimed at determining the preferences of the respondents concerning not only the current but also past general elections. Interviewers surveyed the choice of political party or movement in parliamentary elections in 2016 as well as preferences in past elections. Followed by questions concerning motivation to vote – when did the respondents decide to go to vote and what or who inspired this decision. The survey also tried to found out how many preferential votes did the voters give to the candidates of political parties and movements. Final question asked about expectations for the future of individual respondents. This article is the information output of the survey. The interviewers were 124 university students and its return was 1,612 sheets. The aim of this paper is to communicate the findings of this unique survey, which is unprecedented in the Slovak political science.

W kulturze mediów, w mediach bez kultury – wypowiedź polityczna jako impuls publicznej pseudodebaty

Author(s): Dariusz Baran / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2012

The political culture in the Polish media coverage, due to its low level, is one of the most difficult issues in the public debate. Today, media culture (and the culture in media) is determined by the mutual behavior of politicians and journalists. Especially journalists, who are more deeply dependent on politicians and topics bounced by their for public pseudo-discussion. The quality of journalists work is in straight relation to the language of contemporary politics and the media issues are created based on even the most trivial impulse, which is sent to them. Thus, the language of the media is reduced to the level imposed by the language of politics and the culture in the media undergoes the dictates of political life. Therefore, the overriding problem is the transfer of information based on the criterion of social (not political) interests, and not the implementation of the communication chain of artificial issues, which, thanks to the political signals become part of media culture.

Walka z rosyjską dezinformacją w Unii Europejskiej

Author(s): Agnieszka Legucka / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 2019

Rosja prowadzi kampanie dezinformacyjne przeciw Unii Europejskiej, wykorzystując media tradycyjne oraz internet, w tym media społecznościowe. Skuteczność zwalczania rosyjskiej dezinformacji przez UE i państwa członkowskie była dotychczas ograniczona. Działania te wymagają wzmocnienia na poziomie międzynarodowym i krajowym, a także zwiększenia świadomości społecznej na temat korzystania z mediów.

Wartość pamięci i mnemoniczne struktury możliwości. Uwarunkowania pamięci zbiorowej w badaniach polityki kontestacji

Author(s): Artur Lipiński / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2015

The objective of this paper is to analyse the conditions that have enabled effective diffusion of the category of collective memory into the field of social movement studies. This primarily concerns the evolution of ways to theorise the phenomenon of contestation policy which has gradually began to take into account the cultural dimen- sion of social movements, including the practice of assigning meanings that refer to the past. The paper also presents two theoretical-methodological proposals for combining the category of collective memory and studies of contestation policy, namely the concept of the mnemonic ability of the US gay movement and the concept of mnemonic structures of possibilities.

WASHINGTONSKI SPORAZUM

Author(s): Ivo Komšić / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

WASHINGTONSKI SPORAZUM

Author(s): Ivo Komšić / Language(s): Bosnian,Croatian,Serbian / Issue: 1/2016