On September 16, 2015 theOriental Institute of the CAS organized an international conference, which addressed the question of the meanings of democracy in the Middle East, Asia, and Russia and the role that democracy plays in the discourse of the political elites and non-state actors in these regions. The case studies at the conference described the situation in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, China and Russia. Democracy plays a crucial role in the efforts of the Western world to promote peace and stability and maintain international security. However, in recent years, countries such as China and Russia have explicitly offered an alternative interpretation of democracy to the public, both domestically and internationally, one which builds on national, cultural and political traditions and contradicts the claims for universality common in theWest. Furthermore, non-universalistic discourses on democracy have become popular among diverse non-state actors, such as Islamicmovements, non-formal authorities, or civil society across the Middle East and Central Asia. These developments have important implications for both the efforts aimed at the promotion of democracy and for the advance of democracy in general. and Věra Exnerová.
The idea of conceputal scheme is clearly present in the classical and modern sociological theory. However, contemporary sociological thinking is highly critical of it and in its radical versions this idea is dismissed altogether. This articele taces various historically formed insights into the nature of concept formation in sociology and tries to demonstrate that without the attempts at creating a coherent conceptual scheme, sociology would be deprived of any possibility to push through a specifically sociological perspecitve on the social world. Talcott Parsons´conceptual level of theory is examined in detail and taken as an example of a viable theoretical approach based on the transformation of sociological concepts. The account of the sociological dilemma of scheme and reality is brought together with Donald Davidson´s argument against the dogma of scheme and reality. The idea of a conceptual scheme has been discredited on contemporary thinking together with the idea and the project of (grand) general theory of society. It is argued that from the generalizing critique of the idea of general theory it does not follow that sociology does not need sound concepts. If it were so then no sociological knowledge that would not refer only to itself would be possible., Jan Baloun., and Obsahuje seznam literatury