Substance Use in a Comparative Perspective (The Case of Bulgaria, Czechia, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia)
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Arnošt Veselý Dagmar Dzúrová (Eds.) Nakladatelství Karolinum Praha, 2011 |
The book puts together different pieces of evidence on the developments of substance use in five post-communist countries over time. It builds a complex and reliable evidence base for empirical comparsion and identifies evidence gaps. Such developments are analyzed and interpreted using an original theoretical framework and a combination of both quantitative and qualitative methodology.
Public programs, public projects and public procurement
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Frantiček Ochrana Wolters Kluwer Česká republika Praha 2011 |
The book focuses on most important aspects of public programs, public projects and public procurement. The book is devided into four chapters. The chapter one explores different approaches to allocation (evaluation) design and offers advice on the reform design of public resources in the Czech Republic. The chapter two desribes procedures a methods on program evaluation within tight time and resources Constraint. The author descibes method for evaluation of program and procedures for collecting information on program performance and indicates a new ways of quality control public programs. The chapter three supplies managment and financing techniques for avaluating public project. This chapter present the methods necessary to evaluate public project and illustrates quantitative techniques and shows how to apply them to daily situations. The chapter four starts with general theory of acquisition processes, including many open issues, and proposes new incentives for reform public procurement order in the Czech Republic.
Contemporary Methodological Issues of Public Policy
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Martin Nekola Hana Geissler Magdalena Mouralová (eds.) Nakladatelství Karolinum Praha, 2011 |
The publication aims at responding to such contemporary methodological issues in the field of public policy that are not only being debated internationally but also perceived by the authors as burning for the field in the Czech Republic. The first part of the publication discusses specific analytical methods and general research approaches. Extensive attention is paid to methods for analyzing the plurality of attitudes and values among policy actors and their and argumentative strategies, such as discourse analysis, frame analysis or Q methodology. More general research approaches are presented in chapters on policy research, comparative methods and case studies. The second part of the publication focuses on different aspects of policy impact assessment. It reflects issues surrounding the implementation of the EIA and RIA methodologies, both internationally and in the Czech Republic, and presents contingent valuation – a relatively unknown method in the context of Czech public administration.
Studying the Future as a Challenge
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Martin Potůček a kolektiv Nakladatelství Karolinum Praha, 2011 |
The publication offers a comprehensive characteristic of seven fundamental challenges to solving social forecasting exercises from a holistic perspective. It begins by defining forecasting as the formulation of conditional accounts of possible futures. It goes on to review forecasting methodologies and methods with respect to the theories and assessment criteria applied. It studies the role of elites and the general public in forecasting production, the form of an institutional framework for forecasting, and the challenges of globalization. It formulates a series of practical recommendations for social forecasting and identifies the key substantive challenges that will confront Czech society and Czech government in the future
Social Rights, Active Citizenship and Governance in the European Union
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Edited by Prof. Thomas P. Boje, PhD and Prof. Martin Potucek, PhD. 2011, 203 pp., pb., € 29.00 ISBN 978-3-8329-5419-2 (European Civil Society, vol. 10) |
The volume presents the main outcomes concerning social rights, active citizenship and governance in the European Union as presented at the final conference of the CINEFOGO Network of Excellence (Brussels, March 2009). The classic social question that has faced modern nation states since the 19th century has been coming back – in the changing contexts of globalization and European integration. Researchers have been involved in deepening the understanding of the role of civil society and new forms of governance in Europe and the making of European citizenship. They have been systematically studying political, legal, institutional, and economic conditions as well as different roles of various actors and institutions, the extent of their involvement in decision-making, and how their actions influence the changing human living conditions – including the actual accessibility of social rights to EU citizens. Different aspects of the structural changes to welfare states and the extent and forms of citizens’ participation in addressing public affairs have been placed in the centre of research attention. The authors are social scientists from both the Old and New EU Member States who participated in the CINEFOGO Network of Excellence in 2005-2009.
Vzorce a hodnoty dobrovolnictví v české společnosti na začátku 21. století [Patterns and Values of Volunteering in Early 21st Century Czech Society]
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Pavol Frič, Tereza Pospíšilová a kol. Nakladatelství Agnes Praha, 2010 |
The publication presents volunteering as a complex phenomenon and an integral part of the Czech society’s development. It understands volunteering as an outcome of both existing traditions and contemporary changes at the level of individual activities and at the level of organizational and cultural framework. Instead of studying the causes of volunteering in the Czech Republic, the authors focus on the ways volunteering functions and is practiced in the Czech Republic, indentify which ones are dominant, and see how they differ from the ideal volunteering patterns adopted from the literature and adapted for the conditions of Czech society. Chapter 1 reviews and analyzes relevant theoretical literature on volunteering. Special attention is paid to the concept of volunteering patterns and values and to the delimiting of its key dimensions at the individual and collective levels. Chapter 2 applies the concept in analyzing socialist-era volunteering and uses two logically coherent hypothetical stories to formulate assumptions about the effects of that era on the shape of contemporary volunteering patterns. Chapters 3 to 9 analyze the individual dimensions of Czech volunteering on the background of the concept of volunteering patterns and the theory of modernization. The concluding chapter summarizes the evidence from individual chapters, analyzes relations between the internal dimensions of volunteering patterns and, finally, discusses the developments in Czech volunteering over the past twenty years.