Democratization through education? Theory and practice of the Czech post-revolution education system and its reforms

The transformation process from an authoritarian/totalitarian system entails many institutional changes, however, the individual citizen is often being overlooked in this chaotic, fast-paced process and his or her “transformation” into a democrat is taken for granted. The changing socio-political system and its exigencies may lead to nostalgia and social frustrations, which in turn cause democratic backsliding. In order to cultivate a democratic society and avoid future backsliding, the post-communist states quickly set out to reform their educational systems, both in form and substance. By reviewing the reform process of the Czech educational system and discussing the prevailing legacies left by the communist regime, the article will show that through the “destruction” of the former system and its de-monopolization, decentralization and de-ideologization, the state deliberately lost significant means and power to transform Czechs from “homo sovieticus” to “homo democraticus” and is now left with a dependence on the highly autonomous schools and their propensity to foster democratic generations that will uphold the democratic state in the future. This paradox is reminiscent of the so-called Böckenförde dilemma, claiming that the liberal democratic state “lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself”.     

Rise of xenophobic nationalism in Europe: A case of Slovenia

The article focuses on rise of nationalism and xenophobia in Slovenia. It starts by considering the issue of unrecognized minorities in Slovenia (former Yugoslavia nations) that have no minority rights, despite being large groups, as many international organizations for the protection of minorities have pointed out. A particular issue in this relation for Slovenia is the ‘Erased’ – the individuals who did not acquire Slovenian citizenship when Slovenia seceded from federal Yugoslavia – and despite the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision, the Slovenian state has still not recognized their rights, which were violated in the post-independence period. The article also examines two other minorities in Slovenia, the Jews and the Roma. The article finds Slovenia to be a closed, non-globalised society which, in spite of its constitutional declaration to protect the rights of minorities and other national communities, is seeking to retain a politically and culturally homogeneous nation state.     

Coping with U.S. and EU's challenges? Strategic confusion in the Czech foreign and security policy

This article traces developments in the Czech political elite's thinking about structural changes that the region and the country have experienced during the last several years. It is argued that two parallel, external structural constraints have significantly shaped decisions of the Czech political elite as the country has, once again, proven to be an ostensibly “reactive state”. These structural constraints have been the ongoing U.S. recalibration of its grand strategy as well as the financial crisis with a systemic challenge to the European political project in which fiscal and monetary issues have largely replaced previous criticism of the Constitutional Treaty and then the Reform Treaty. It is argued that these developments have posed a notable problem for two predominant ideological convictions present in the Czech political thinking – Atlantism and Europeanism, as neither of them has offered readily answers to deal with such a challenge. As will be shown, this mutually reinforcing dual challenge has further exacerbated previously existing Czech government's lack of political vision, and resorted to a political mentality which has contained elements of denial, rationalization, and political resignation.     

Assessing civil society in Putin’s Russia: The plight of women’s crisis centers

The article assesses civil society in Putin’s Russia through the lens of the small social movement working against gender violence. Based on questionnaires distributed to movement organizations in 2008-2009, we find significant retrenchment among the NGO segment of the movement, adding evidence to the claim of Russia’s turn toward authoritarianism. However, this innovative, midlevel analysis--not the typical society-wide surveys nor the small number participant observation--also shows that the women’s crisis center movement has made some in-roads in transforming the state, revealing that some democratic opportunities remain at the local level.     

Crime, organised crime and corruption in post-communist Europe and the CIS

This article examines the incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence on the crime, organised crime and corruption situations in post-communist states, and then seeks to explain the apparent increase in all three in early post-communism. Among the factors considered are the impact of weak states and economies, neo-liberalism, globalisation, Schengen and Fortress Europe, the Communist legacy (the ‘ghost from the past’), and collusion. The article then examines the dynamics of criminality and malfeasance in the region, and provides evidence to suggest that the crime and corruption situation has stabilised or even improved in most post-communist countries in recent times. The factors considered for explaining this apparent improvement are the role of external agents (notably the EU), the move from transition to consolidation, and the role of political will.     

What's past is prologue,or is it? Generational effects on voter turnout in post-communist countries, 1990–2013

A common theme in studies of voter turnout in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is that the legacy of communism attenuates electoral participation. It is argued that socialization and the political habits that emerged under communism impeded democratic development by not motivating citizen activism. This paper examines this claim for voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland for all general elections since 1990 using cohort analysis on pooled crosssectional post-election surveys from given countries. This paper shows that socialization and political habit formation under communism have had no discernible effect on voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary between 1990 and 2013. Generational effects are evident in Poland suggesting that this country's political history is qualitatively different from that of its neighbours. This research is important in highlighting that citizens' political development within non-liberal democratic regimes does not always lead to lower levels of voter turnout. Consequently, the decline in turnout in CEE is likely to have attitudinal rather than generational origins where contemporary rather than historical political developments are most important.