Czech Politics: From West to East and Back Again

Czech Politics: From West to East and Back Again
Author: Stanislav Balík
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2017-07-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3847409743

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of Czech politics, past and present. The authors not only cover the main political developments of the past two centuries, they also situate the current political system in the context of communist and pre-communist legacies. They argue that amidst the dramatic changes of the Velvet Revolution, one can find a plethora of continuities in culture and institutions that help to explain the shape of Czech politics today.

The Max Planck Handbooks in European Public Law

The Max Planck Handbooks in European Public Law
Author: Armin von Bogdandy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 977
Release: 2020-03-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191039845

The Max Planck Handbooks in European Public Law describe and analyse public law of the European legal space, an area that encompasses not only the law of the European Union but also the European Convention on Human Rights and, importantly, the domestic public laws of European states. Recognizing that the ongoing vertical and horizontal processes of European integration make legal comparison the task of our time for both scholars and practitioners, the series aims to foster the development of a specifically European legal pluralism and to contribute to the legitimacy and efficiency of European public law. The first volume of the series began this enterprise with an appraisal of the evolution of the state and its administration, offering both cross-cutting contributions and specific country reports. The third volume (the second in chronological terms) continues this approach with an in-depth appraisal of constitutional adjudication in various and diverse European countries. Fourteen country reports and two cross-cutting contributions investigate the antecedents, foundations, organization, procedure, and outlook of constitutional adjudicators throughout the Continent. They include countries with powerful constitutional courts, jurisdictions with traditional supreme courts, and states with small institutions and limited ex ante review. In keeping with the focus on a diverse but unified legal space, each report also details how its institution fits into the broader association of constitutional courts that, through dialogue and conflict, brings to fruition the European legal space. Together, the chapters of this volume provide a strong and diverse foundation for this dialogue to flourish.

Former People

Former People
Author: Douglas Smith
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 763
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1466827750

Epic in scope, precise in detail, and heart-breaking in its human drama, Former People is the first book to recount the history of the aristocracy caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of Stalin's Russia. Filled with chilling tales of looted palaces and burning estates, of desperate flights in the night from marauding peasants and Red Army soldiers, of imprisonment, exile, and execution, it is the story of how a centuries'-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the Tsar and Empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia. Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class—so-called "former people" and "class enemies"—overcame the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families—the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns—it reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on. Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia's most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.

Freedom to Win

Freedom to Win
Author: Ethan Scheiner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2023-07-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1639363521

A classic David & Goliath tale, complete with colorful heroes, cold-hearted villains, and nail-biting games—with the hockey rink serving as an arena for a nation’s resistance. During the height of the Cold War, a group of small-town young men would lead their underdog hockey team from the little country of Czechoslovakia against the Soviet Union, the juggernaut in their sport. As they battled on the ice, the young players would keep their people’s quest for freedom alive, and forge a way to fight back against the authoritarian forces that sought to crush them. From the sudden invasion of Czechoslovakia by an armada of tanks and 500,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers, to a hockey victory over the Soviets that inspired half a million furious citizens to take to the streets in an attempt to destroy all representations that they could find of their occupiers, Freedom to Win tells a story that ranges from iconic moments in history to courageous individual stories. We will witness the fearless escape by three brothers who make up the core of the national team. We will experience thrilling world championship games. We will watch as one brave player takes a stand and leads ten thousand people in a tear-filled rendition of the Czechoslovak national anthem amid chants of “freedom!” while a revolution rages in the streets of Prague. And we will cheer as the team takes on its nemesis one last time with the Olympic gold medal at stake. At the heart of Freedom to Win is the story of the Holíks, a Czechoslovak family whose resistance to the Communists embodied the deepest desires of the people of their country. Faced with life under the cruel and arbitrary regime that had stolen their family butcher shop, the Holík boys became national hockey icons and inspirations to their people. Filled with heart-pounding moments on the ice and unforgettable slices of history, Freedom to Win is the ultimate tale of why sports truly matter.

Party Organization and Electoral Success of New Anti-establishment Parties

Party Organization and Electoral Success of New Anti-establishment Parties
Author: Tomáš Cirhan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2023-08-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000923746

This book examines the new anti-establishment parties electorally succeeding at the expense of their established counterparts and argues that party organization matters for their electoral success. It explores a relationship between these parties’ electoral success and their party organization. Using a framework to explain the role of organizational features such as local party branches, party membership, and party elites in this process, it reveals how they help parties to be more stable, cohesive, and legitimate; a state that facilitates better conditions for electoral success. It also shows that control over party organization is achieved partially by the existence of a corporate network associated with party leaders’ businesses. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of party politics and political parties, anti-establishment politics, and Eastern European politics.

When Democracy Breaks

When Democracy Breaks
Author: Archon Fung
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2024
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197760783

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Democracy is often described in two opposite ways, as either wonderfully resilient or dangerously fragile. Both characterizations can be correct, depending on the context. When Democracy Breaks aims to deepen our understanding of what separates democratic resilience from democratic fragility by focusing on the latter. The volume's collaborators--experts in the history and politics of the societies covered in their chapters--explore eleven episodes of democratic breakdown, from ancient Athens to Weimar Germany to present-day Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Strikingly, in every case, various forms of democratic erosion long preceded the final democratic breakdown. Although no single causal factor emerges as decisive, linking together all of the episodes, some important commonalities--including extreme political polarization, explicitly anti-democratic political actors, and significant political violence--stand out across the cases. Moreover, the notion of democratic culture, while admittedly difficult to define and even more difficult to measure, may play a role in all of them. Throughout the volume, the contributors show again and again that the written rules of democracy are insufficient to protect against tyranny. While each case of democratic decay is unique, the patterns that emerge shed much light on the continuing struggle to sustain modern democracies and to assess and respond to the threats they face.

Constitutional Review in Central and Eastern Europe

Constitutional Review in Central and Eastern Europe
Author: Kálmán Pócza
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2024-02-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1003849547

Recent confrontations between constitutional courts and parliamentary majorities in several European countries have attracted international interest in the relationship between the judiciary and the legislature. Some political actors have argued that courts have assumed too much power and politics has been extremely judicialized. This volume accurately and systematically examines the extent to which this aggregation of power may have constrained the dominant political actors’ room for manoeuvre. To explore the diversity and measure the strength of judicial decisions, the contributors to this work have elaborated a methodology to give a more nuanced picture of the practice of constitutional adjudication in Central and Eastern Europe between 1990 and 2020. The work opens with an assessment of the existing literature on empirical analysis of judicial decisions with a special focus on the Central and Eastern European region, and a short summary of the methodology of the project. This is followed by ten country studies and a concluding chapter providing a comprehensive comparative analysis of the results. A further nine countries are explored in the counterpart volume to this book: Constitutional Review in Western Europe: Judicial-Legislative Relations in Comparative Perspective. The collection will be an invaluable resource for those working in the areas of empirical legal research and comparative constitutional law, as well as political scientists interested in judicial politics.

Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate

Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate
Author: James Startt
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2017-05-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1623495326

James D. Startt previously explored Woodrow Wilson’s relationship with the press during his rise to political prominence. Now, Startt returns to continue the story, picking up with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and tracing history through the Senate’s ultimate rejection in 1920 of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate delves deeply into the president’s evolving relations with the press and its influence on and importance to the events of the time. Startt navigates the complicated relationship that existed between one of the country’s most controversial leaders and its increasingly ruthless corps of journalists. The portrait of Wilson that emerges here is one of complexity—a skilled politician whose private nature and notorious grit often tarnished his rapport with the press, and an influential leader whose passionate vision just as often inspired journalists to his cause.

Participation and Democracy East and West

Participation and Democracy East and West
Author: Dietrich Rueschemeyer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2015-05-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317463196

Since Alexis de Tocqueville first made the linkage in his writings on America, a healthy democracy has been associated with the flourishing of civil society, as measured by popular participation in voluntary and civic activities and the vitality of organizations that mediate between the individual and the state. This volume takes a fresh look at this classic theme in the context of post-communist Eastern Europe, the West European welfare states and the United States, asking: what patterns of participation characterize the new democracies of Eastern Europe?; what levels of civic activism are characteristic of contemporary Western democracies?; what factors account for differences among countries and changing patterns over time?; and what do findings suggest about the prospects for democracy in the 21st century?

Closing The Eu East-west Productivity Gap: Foreign Direct Investment, Competitiveness And Public Policy

Closing The Eu East-west Productivity Gap: Foreign Direct Investment, Competitiveness And Public Policy
Author: David A Dyker
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2006-06-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1908979984

A product of the Framework V research project, this book addresses one of the key problems facing the EU today: Why is the ‘new’ EU so much poorer than the ‘old’, and how will EU enlargement help to solve the problem? Focusing on the productivity problems underlying the East-West gap, it looks in particular at the role that foreign investment and R&D can play in closing it. Against that background, the book assesses what role proactive development policy might play in attacking the roots of low social productivity. Concluding that there will be a clear-cut process of convergence between East and West, albeit an incomplete one, it finishes with an assessment of the patterns of competitiveness, East and West, that are likely to emerge from this process of incomplete convergence.The material is based on a rich archive of empirical material which no competing title can match, and combines in-depth interviews with standard quantitative approaches and critical policy analysis.