Main objective of this article is to analyse political determinants of
the descriptive representation of women at the local level in communal elections (i.e. the position of mayor) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia over the past decade. It focuses on the political opportunity structure (i.e. the structure of relationships that affect social and political behaviour) and questions whether this structure affects also women’s political representation. It shows that women are significantly advantaged in municipalities where women have held a mayoral post in a previous electoral term. In contrast to other studies, previous women’s representation in a municipal council is here found to have only a limited effect. The strong negative effect of the direct election of mayors and the negative effect of municipal size (only in Slovakia) indicate that women’s representation as mayors may be the result of interdependent phenomena that are a combination of institutional structure (e.g. electoral procedure, the mayor’s powers) and political contextual factors (past experience with a female mayor – not necessarily incumbents). This finding challenges earlier studies and it shows that any effort to identify a clear list of determinants of women’s representation as mayors is a complex task, making it difficult to pursue a broader comparative study in a different institutional environment or a different political culture.
The politically motivated distribution of public funding, or porkbarrel
politics, occurs for various reasons, one of which is the wish to reward political allies over political rivals. Despite the widespread nature of this practice, research in Central Europe has not yet examined this issue at every level of publication administration. The literature that does exist on this subject has mainly focused on national grant programmes, while less attention has been paid to distribution channels at lower-level administrative units. This article focuses on the distribution of subsidies in the municipalities in the Central Bohemia Region between 2014 and 2016. It uses a binary logistic regression to analyse the factors that lead to an application for a subsidy being supported. A negative binomial regression revealed what factors influence the level of subsidy granted. The results of the analysis show that party ties have a strong effect on the odds of a municipality obtaining a subsidy. This factor, however, has less of an effect on how large a subsidy the municipality obtains, and moreover only does so when the distribution of funding is taking place before an election.
The article includes the description and particular selected examples from the Czech environment of the basic types of
problematic publication practices in ethnology and related disciplines, namely based on the hitherto research abroad, the
publication and edition practice and other resources. The attention
is paid especially to plagiarism and autoplagiarism, so-called
recycling and salami slicing of texts, publication of problematic books and magazines. The article also solves the issue of the formation of so-called “quotation brotherhoods”. In the text, there are formulated basic general theses in which the issue of publications malpractices is outlined as to the extent of its dissemination, causes, and attention the ethnological academic environment pays to it. There are also sketched possibilities how to
reveal the unwished publication practices (especially by means
of scientometrics).
The goal of the text is to sum up the existing works on religion and religiosity of the Gypsies in the Czech Republic and, to a certain extent, also in the Slovak Republic. We summarize the tendencies to be found in the academic texts on this topic and propose the positive way for the future studies and texts, which consists in the clear definition of the subject matter, and explicit use of the conceptual tools and theories.
Vegetation succession was studied for 12 years on an abandoned nutrient-poor small field surrounded by a strip of natural grassland. No fertilizers or herbicides were applied. Few weeds or annuals were present during this period. Only two plants, i.e. Agrostis capillaris and Festuca rubra, dominated during the 12 years. At two spatial scales (0.04 and 0.4 m2 ) a dramatic increase in species richness was recorded during the first two years. However, no further trend in species richness occurred after the sixth year of succession. Successional changes were directed and continuous. The rate of succession depended on the distance from the neighbouring meadow. Vegetation at the margins of the transect developed more slowly and diverged from the middle during the succession.
Czech “tramping” is primary Czech non-political movement and in the same time a pastime which came into existence at the beginning of the 20th century. It interconnected a stay in the countryside with romanticizing inspiration with American Wild West. Emphasis was placed on personal freedom and small amount of organization. It is also characterized by specific literary, musical and graphic production. This paper attempts to analyze specific features
of current campfire legends as a part of modern folk literature. It is based on material collected during a short survey. It seems that narration appearing in “tramping” environment has heavy though not absolute motivic relation to some more general types of narration of the youth such as the campfire legends and motifs related to legend tripping. However, they are spread in the ways characteristic for the youth by people who are much older. There is also a strong connection to the places visited by “tramps”. The existence of the legends is reflected within the movement. The stories can be turned into literature, parodied, or intentionally newly created as folklorism.
This article sets out to identify the factors that have an impact on
mayoral decisions in terms of priorities for municipal development. Data from a survey conducted among Czech mayors in the years 2015 and 2016 (N = 492) are used. The sample consists of answers of mayors from municipalities of all population sizes and the sample is evenly distributed over the area of the Czech Republic. The main aim is to show the impact of geographical context, sociodemographic characteristics, and characteristics connected with political experience on mayors’ preferences for different mayoral agendas. The results of the analyses show that municipal size and the position of a municipality on the urban-suburban-rural gradient have a substantial effect on a mayor’s preference for different mayoral agendas. However, the influence of other observed characteristics cannot be overlooked either
Homelessness in the Czech Republic is a relatively new phenomenon. Because of ideological background before 1989, as a result of loss of employment, it could not show up. For that reason, it fully emerged in early 1990s. Under this condition, it has been also unresearched for long time. Moreover, most of the written papers have ignored key studies from abroad, especially from the USA. Therefore, this paper offers an overview of studying the homelessness in USA. It briefly describes historic and cultural movement from the pre-industrial poor to the urban centric homeless. Then, in light of distinguished periods of 20th century, it focuses on conditions of emergence and development American skid rows and particularities of their populations. Finally, the paper presents important studies of all these periods. Based on overview of American homelessness the paper articulates four propositions for a research in the Czech Republic. The research should focus on: (1) historic, socio-cultural and polical-economical context related to postsocialism and neoliberalism; (2) searching for less ideological conceptualizations of homelessness; (3) connecting poverty as the main factor of homelessness with other ones; (4) carrying out more ethnographic researches.
The aim of the following text was to intermediate the personal reflection of migrants of preponderantly Czech origin who were in the years 1991-1993 resettled from the former Soviet Union to the Czech Republic. Better to say, the article focuses on one specific group of these displaced persons who came in the year 1993 and have lived since then in the locality Kopidlno. The main aim of the text is to reflect the way how the refugees themselves at present assess the motivation for their leaving of the land of their forefathers, how they evaluate their adaptation and integration with respect to the locality in which they live, how did they cope with the „resettlement shock“ and how did they succeed in the „competition“ with the majority society, for example at work. The final part of the text presents the differences in assessment of the return migration process and in evaluation of the locality between the first and second generation of the return migrants. The text was based on repeated guided interviews and observations realized in the locality of Kopidlno during the years 2008-2010.
Traditionally, all freshwater representatives of red algae with uniaxial cartilagineous and pseudoparenchymatous thalli were placed in the genus Lemanea. Two subgenera of this genus were distinguished, Lemanea and Paralemanea. The recently proposed elevation of these subgenera to genera is fully justified and generally accepted. However, the increasing data from natural populations of Lemanea shows that not all the traditional diacritical features are reliable for distinguishing species. This paper presents the results of a research project on the morphological variability of Lemanea in the Czech Republic. Of the four species Lemanea fluviatilis and L. torulosa appear to be well-defined but there are no clear differences between Paralemanea annulata and P. catenata. A survey of taxa and key to species are presented.