The article deals with developments of the Internet elections project in Norway. The project for the time being peaked with the 2011 municipal and regional elections, in which voters in ten municipalities were entitled to cast their votes over the Internet. The article firstly analyses Internet elections pilot projects and discusses results of surveys focused on key preconditions of the Internet elections within the framework of the digital divide concept. Furthermore, the article is concerned with results of the Internet elections in terms of several key variables: ratio of those, who cast their vote over the Internet depending ontheirplace of residence, party preferences and age. In spite of a high level of Internet penetration in Norway surveys and the Norwegian Internet elections have confirmed existence of two sub-types of digital divide: social divide and democratic divide., Miloš Brunclík., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
The right to end an unwanted pregnancy as an integral part of the full citizenship of women has been influenced, reinfluenced, and questioned by different actors in the Czech Republic since the 1950s. Until 1986 the right to abortion was not viewed as a woman’s personal right, but depended upon the decision of abortion commissions and was influenced by the current demographic and political situation. The decision-making process was a very embarrassing experience for many women, who in fact had no other means of contraception available to them. In this paper, I analyse the legal and political regulation of abortion from the perspective of Foucault´s theory of governmentality and biopower. Abortion regulation is an example of how state power influences and disciplines the bodies of its subjects, how it regulates the population and shapes it according to the government’s needs. Through the regulation of abortion, the state not only attempted to restrict a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, but also defined which of its citizens should or should not become a parent and under what circumstances, and who should or should not have the right to be born. In the text I first present the theory of governmentality, then I analyse the periods of the regulation of abortion in socialist Czechoslovakia, and finally I show how this regulation can be understood as an instrument of a specific form of governmentality typical of totalitarian communist regime., Radka Dudová., Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé
The intersectional perspective represents, in Czech sociology, an untapped opportunity to examine the interaction between the different lines of inequality in the process of constantly changing social structure. This article aims to enrich current Czech sociological research in two ways. Firstly, it analyses and describes the impacts of the economic crisis on labour market relations in the Czech Republic. Secondly, it applies the intersectional perspective in a quantitative analysis of structural inequalities. In this perspective, we analyse the changing structure of the labour market between 2008 and 2012 at the intersection of gender, class (education), age and parenthood, using statistical indicators. Moreover, we use event-history analysis to capture the risk of job loss in the first phase of the crisis (2008–2010). Our analysis shows that the economic crisis deepened existing inequalities in the labour market, further differentiated female labour market prospects by educational attainment, especially in interaction with parenthood, and also rapidly deteriorated the labour market situation of men with low education, including fathers of small children., Alena Křížková, Lenka Formánková., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
The article deals with relationships between human capital and social capital. Often is mentioned that presence of social capital is key condition of success investment in human capital. The article presents opposite view - investments in human capital are necessary condition investments in social capital (at least in individual social capital). The three main form of social capital (bonding, bridging and linking social capital) are described at it is shown when generating each form can generate individuals profit and utility - in each case individuals must also invest in their human capital. Investments in human capital can also respond to the situation when investments in social capital become obsolete or devalue., Petr Wawrosz, Herbet Heissler., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
Prior to analysing and comparing delinquent groups of youths at the international level, it is necessary to create a definition of this phenomenon: what is a gang? Definitions of what constitutes a juvenile gang within comparative research are invariably general in nature; and their subsequent operationalisation in empirical research constrains research about gang membership in specific contexts. This article argues that the ‘Eurogang’ definition employed in the second wage of International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD) Study has a number of potential weaknesses; and this study offers a solution by proposing a revised gang definition for the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. and Eva Moravcová.
The paper deals with powerlessness as one of the possible meanings of alienation, and presents Neal’s Powerlessness Scale as a means for measuring this concept. The aim of this research is to find out if it is possible to adopt the Neal’s research technique, developed in the context of the American culture in the late 1950s, to empirical sociological research in the Czech Republic. This issue is important because there is at present no standard attitudinal instrument for measuring a persons’ perception of their power to exert influence over socio-political events. An initial test of the reliability and internal and external validity of Neal’s scale is undertaken using a non-representative sample of the Czech population. Results of this quantitative analysis suggest that a subset of nine items from the original twelve item scale is the most reliable and valid measure of a person’s sense of control over the socio-political events within the Czech cultural milieu. Importantly, the process of data collection reveals several problematic features of Neal’s powerlessness scale, and it is recommended that certain alterations before its further use in the Czech context., Marie Traxlerová, Ladislav Rabušic., 4 tabulky, Obsahuje bibliografii, and Anglické resumé
This study has two key aims. First, it explores the two main methods used in the Czech Republic to operationalize the concept of party identification. Second this study demonstrates the merits of both methods; and on the basis of this research proposes one of these party identification measures for use in future studies. This study builds on the classical conceptualization of party identification developed by the Michigan School, but also utilizes (1) reformulations proposed by the Revisionist School; (2) Macropartisanship theory; (3) the Social Identity approach; and (4) experience of using the party identification measure in Europe. Using the Czech Election Study of 2002 this research shows that estimates of partisanship are influenced by how the survey question is formulated. Thereafter, the relationship between the two main variants used in the Czech Republic is presented. This work reveals that use of a (prior) vote intention item leads to an ‘over estimation’ of partisanship when compared to the other partisan measure. Comparing estimates from the Czech Election Studies of 1996, 2002 and 2006 this article reveals that there is no simple association between party identification and voter turnout. In fact, it is better to think of party identification as having two components: (a) probability to vote; and (b) probability to support a party that elicits a sense of identity from voters., Lukáš Linek., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy