Slovak Journal of Political Sciences最新文献

{"title":"Specifications of Participatory Budgeting in Visegrad Group States and Possible Implementations for Slovakia","authors":"Dalibor Mikuš, Richard Brix, Daniel Šmatlánek","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210203","url":null,"abstract":"Participatory budget is an innovative tool for public policymaking, which is characterized by the particpation of residents of territorial administrative units. In the paper, authors focus on the evaluation of the participatory budget within the Visegrad Group, which is linked by specific ties due to the special development of this geopolitical area after the political and social changes in the late 1980s. Identifying the specifics of participatory budgeting in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia is set as the main goal of the article, specifically evaluating the pilot project model, analysing the legislative framework, which regulates participatory budgeting, and extending this tool at the local level in terms of current statistics. As for the pilot projects, the authors identified differences in the following indicators: initiator of its implementation; participation of citizens and their position and powers in project design; participation in the decision-making on projects in terms of voting; whether a direct physical vote or online form was used. In addition, the authors evaluate the legal framework of the selected states in terms of presence of the primary or secondary regulation. Finally, the quantitative development of participatory budgets is monitored, while the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is also reflected in the paper. Based on the data from other states of the Visegrad Group, in the final chapter the authors present optimization proposals, which they consider applicable in Slovakia. The authors identified at least three possible ways of amending the current Slovak legislation in order to improve the implementation of the participatory budget. The paper specifies the shortcomings in the form of low citizen participation in the drafting phase and in the voting process. The paper also identifies the same bottom-up implementation process in all V4 member countries. Poland is the only V4 country that has enshrined primary legislation on participatory budgets in its legal system.","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43981495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predictors, Determinant Groups, and Participatory Budgeting","authors":"Maja Klun, Jože Benčina","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210204","url":null,"abstract":"Recent developments in local public finance management in Slovenia indicate the local governments’ growing interest in introducing participatory budgeting as a decision-making tool, wherein part of local resources are used with citizen participation. Usually, the literature on participation budgeting analyses its effects, but our main research objective was to analyze the possible determinants influencing its implementation. The influence of political factors, sociodemographic factors, economic factors, and the capability of municipalities are examined here using binary logistic regression to predict a dichotomous dependent variable from a set of predictor variables. In binary logistic regression, predictable variables are the probability of one category being chosen. In this case, the authors calculated the probability that a municipality, described by selected prediction variables, would implement a participatory budget. The results of the analysis suggest six indicators that impact the probability of participatory budgeting adoption, proving the influence of four determinants on the decision to adopt such a measure.","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47578031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Review: Machyniak, J. (2021). Výkon samosprávy na úrovni obce, mesta a regiónu. Slovensko 1990 - 2020.Trnava: Fakulta sociálnych vied, Univerzita sv. Cyrila a Metoda v Trnave, 2021. 123 pp. ISBN 978-80-572-0121-2.","authors":"Martin Švikruha","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210106","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44351051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exercise of the Presidential Powers in the Slovak Republic in a Comparative Perspective (1999 – 2019)","authors":"P. Horváth, P. Juza, Leon Richvalský, Marek Šafár","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210103","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses at powers of the Presidents of the Slovak Republic during the period from 1999 to 2019. Therefore, the aim is to compare how selected constitutional presidential powers were exercised after the fundamental constitutional changes in 1999. The most significant change was by introducing direct presidential elections, and adjusting the President´s constitutional status. The ways how the individual Presidents holding their office within this period, exercised their powers towards the Parliament, government, and the judiciary do form the basic research questions here. Hence, whether a personal background of individual Presidents and political reality of seats distribution in the Parliament predetermined their exercise of these powers, or if there were some other rules present when they exercised their office. The findings presented in this research reflect 20 years of continuous exercise of Presidential office in the conditions of the Slovak Republic. This ultimately leads to the conclusion that the function itself, as well as its constitutional definition, has affected the exercise of Presidential powers more ultimately than the personal background of these directly elected Presidents at the beginning of their terms of office. The very first President, Mr. Michal Kováč, got into a major conflict with then Prime Minister, Vladimír Mečiar, even during the first year after taking the office. This conflict lasted nearly for five-years and altogether with the inability of the MPs to elect his successor led to the necessity of amending the Constitution. Presidents Rudolf Schuster, Ivan Gašparovič and Andrej Kiska gradually took their office, but only the second mentioned had managed to defend his position in an electoral competition. At present, the office of President is held by Zuzana Čaputová, who has been in the office since June 2019 - as the very first woman in this position in history of Slovakia.","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42349506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What Do We Need to Resolve after Establishing the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Slovak Republic?","authors":"Miloš Deset, L. Klimek","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210104","url":null,"abstract":"Establishment of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is a result of the European Union’s initiatives as a consequence of the fraud against its financial interests. Many questions beg consideration at the EU level as well as at national level of all EU Member States, including the Slovak Republic. The aim of the paper is the assessment of Slovak understanding of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. The article’s focus comprises five crucial issues that need to be resolved in Slovakia. The first section points out at the process of adoption and implementation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Consequently, the following section tackles with the question whether the European Public Prosecutor’s Office could be considered a law enforcement authority at national level. The third section is focused on number of the European delegated prosecutors and related competence and jurisdiction. While the fourth section is focused on the execution of evidence in criminal proceedings, the fifth section is focused on application of mutual recognition. At the outset of the contribution, the historical method of research was used, namely in regard to the genesis of the EPPO. The most frequently used method was the analytical method of research. This method was used in regard to the analyses and assessments of literary sources, legislation and implementation of electronic monitoring. Another frequently used method was the comparative method of research. Further, the synthetic method of research was used. Information gathered in order to elaborate the contribution was collected in particular through the three following gathering techniques. The first data gathering method was the review of scientific literature; the works of renowned authors was analysed. The second data gathering method was access to legislation. It should be highlighted that not only consolidated legislation was used, but also original versions were analysed, in particular in the case of historical issues. Third, research into official documents of European organisations was conducted, in particular documents of the European Union.","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46330635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Heading towards Collapse? Assessment of the Slovak Party System after the 2020 General Elections","authors":"Alexandra Smolecová, Daniel Šárovec","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210102","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to analyse changes of the Slovak party system from 1992 to the last parliamentary elections of 2020. These elections were the eighth elections in the history of independent Slovakia. There are discussions about stability or instability of individual development stages of the party system. In the article, Attention is paid to changes in the distribution of forces within the development of the party system. In political science, various methods are used to measure the party system’s dynamics to determine the intensity of changes and the trends arising from them. This analysis is based on election results in each electoral cycle (period), which are being compared. Next part of the analysis is focused on the selected comparative indicators: Index of the Effective Number of Parties and Aggregation Index. These indices are chosen based on the criteria of classification of party systems. The results presented in the final part of the paper prove that several significant milestones in development of party system could be identified, as confirmed by the 2020 general elections – a major breakthrough in development trends.","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42374989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Review: Eštok, G. (2020). (Ne)dávne hľadanie strednej európy. Košice: Univerzita Pavla Jozefa Šafárika v Košiciach, 2020. 192 pp. ISBN 9788081529245.","authors":"Renáta Bzdilová","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210105","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43849142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Review: Kavan, Š. (2020). Ochrana člověka a společnosti – vývoj vzdělávání v bezpečnostních tématech. Prague: NLN, 2020. 271 pp. ISBN 978-80-7422-753-0.","authors":"J. Dušek","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210107","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41987271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Professionalization of Political Campaigns: Roadmap for the Analysis","authors":"Daniela Ostrá","doi":"10.34135/sjps.210101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/sjps.210101","url":null,"abstract":"Political parties in developed democracies have undergone deep inner transformation processes brought about by changes in voting behaviour of their electorates, fragmentation of media landscape, and technological revolution. Such changes have caused that the topic of political party transformation has become a central focus of current political science research. However, only a few works have addressed specific aspects of these far-reaching transformations, that is the process of modernisation and professionalization of political campaigns. Specifically, the recent research on professionalization of electoral campaigns has focused primarily on measurement of the index of professionalization, which is suitable for comparative research. Yet deep understanding of the process itself has been still absent, and therefore, this research paper aspires to cover this gap. Main goal of this paper is to offer a roadmap for analysis of professionalization of electoral campaigns with focus on qualitative studies. It represents a causal mechanism of professionalization of electoral campaigns, including the identification of internal and external factors and possible framework conditions that contribute to it (i.e. professionalization), through the process of tracing method (i.e. the causal mechanism is built on the basis of the process tracing method). Here, external factors are defined as environmental conditions, which include declining voter turnout, declining party identification, increasing electoral volatility, and declining interest in political party membership. Although their effect is considered a long-term one, the causal mechanism assumes their influence on the triggering of other processes: external shock (electoral win or loss) and internal shock (change of leader). In the next part of the causal mechanism, subsequent internal processes are expected in the form of changes to the primary goal and organizational structure of parties. Unlike previously published works on this topic, this paper suggests that not only the specific internal and external factors or amount of invested financial resources affect the degree of professionalization, but also the party's market orientation and the level of its internal discipline.","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42187851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Legal Regulations Impact on Social Capital. The Case of Poland","authors":"L. Kurowski, P. Szymaniec","doi":"10.34135/SJPS.200203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.34135/SJPS.200203","url":null,"abstract":"The article’s goal is to examine the impact of legal regulations on social capital on example of Poland. Due to specific conditions of Poland’s history of the last 200 years, legal institutions were not supposed to contribute to creation of social capital and in fact made it difficult. Our objective is to investigate the role of positive law in social capital building process. In the authors’ view, the relationship between statutory law and social capital is a complex one. On the one hand, a large stock of social capital supports statutory law, which can therefore be applied more effectively. Moreover, in such a situation, legal regulations do not have to be too detailed and casuistic. On the other hand, inadequate legal regulations may reduce the resource and quality of social capital, while well thought-out regulations can, in turn, support social capital. After review of literature referring to the relationship between the law and social capital, factors influencing social capital are discussed. It is followed by a short history of social capital evolution in Poland. After WWII, Polish legal system contributed to stressing the differences between identified groups, each of them enjoying different privileges. Due to bureaucratic character of this law, it did not help to strengthen social capital. Final section deals with general issues of the law-making process. We are presenting a tentative proposal to expand regulatory impact assessment (RIA) methodology, used in Poland and other OECD countries, by aspects important from social capital perspective. In our opinion, social capital building aspects were formally and practically forgotten during legislative process. Our suggestions on how to deal with social capital in the law-making processes are meant to propose corrective measures.","PeriodicalId":36889,"journal":{"name":"Slovak Journal of Political Sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41445587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}