Annales Scientia Politica

10

Authors: Gita Geremešová

Fiction, oral history, and memoirs of the then participants, besides history and its ambitions to approach the historical truth, enable one to return to a relatively distant or near past. Three such publications – by the authors V. Kuštek (2018), M. Greenfield (2019), and E. Adam – I. Jirků (2018) fulfill this role in regards to the past political, cultural, and economic developments of the Eastern Slovakian and Transcarpathian regions, including in the context of their present day cooperation. Each of these works portrays life in Transcarpathia as well as life in the area of the entire Czechoslovakia, a state which had been formed by the Allied Powers as a result of the Treaty of Versailles after the conclusion of World War I in 1918. The currently developing cross-border cooperation among the regions of Eastern Slovakia and Transcarpathia – part of the European Union’s strategy („Europe 2020“) – can benefit from their common historic and cultural heritage; they struggled with the religious and ethnic plurality, their dramatic destinies were characterized by an uncertain statehood (unstable statehood coordinates), by their distrust against the political and religious elites.

11

Authors: Juraj Tej - Roman Vavrek - Viera Papcunová

Any government intervention in the economy disrupts the natural market mechanism. One such intervention is the political cycle, which is based on maximizing the benefits of government politicians. Such interventions can be perceived not only at the national level but also in relation to local self - government. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the impact of the political cycle on the financial management of local self - governments in a set of 69 district towns. The results of the analysis showed that it is not possible to clearly determine the political cycle in self-government, nor to demonstrate the impact of the political cycle on the financial management of district towns in the Slovak Republic.

11

Authors: Alexander Mušinka

The contribution describes the relevant methodological differences among three most extensive surveys of Roma communities in Slovakia, called Atlas of Roma communities from the years 2004, 2013 and 2019. Subsequently according to data of these surveys it presents political participation of Roma in local municipalities of Prešov Self-governing Region.

22

Authors: Ondrej Marchevský

The Enlightenment represents a frequently reflected and, at the same time, also updated tradition. The Enlightenment ideas have become a theoretical-methodological base for thinking as such by its connection to a social or social-political praxis, what can be seen even in the contemporary confrontation with the Enlightenment legacy. The paper analyses the Enlightenment as a unique historical phenomenon – it deals with its explicit as well as its practical-political features – within the Russian milieu. In the basic outline, the paper presents a critical survey of the selected bibliographical sources. It primarily focuses on a historical-philosophical problematics and identification of three phases which can be found within a genesis of the Enlightenment thinking in Russia. The second part of the paper offers the characteristics of distinctive intellectual environments participating in a forming of the Enlightenment tradition in Russian thinking, and overlapping into actual political and social happenings. To these environments belong aristocratic associations, the Masonic lodges, and also educational institutions established and controlled by the state – spiritual academies and universities.

2

Authors: Róbert Király

Book review of the alamanach: Irina Dudinská – Michal Cirner – Gabriel Székely (eds.): Politologická analýza regionálnych volieb 2017 na Slovensku. Prešov: Vydavateľstvo Prešovskej univerzity, 2018. 106 s. ISBN 978-80-555-2128-2

9

Authors: Krzysztof Żarna

The main purpose of the article is to present a relations of the newly created entity on the international arena of the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Poland. Time caesuras include the period from 1993 to 2002. In 1993, the establishment of the Slovak Republic was proclaimed and in 2002, both Slovakia and Poland completed the accession negotiations in Copenhagen related with joining the European Union. The article is based on the assumption that in the analysed period the relations of both countries were determined by striving for be a part of Euro-Atlantic structures.

20

Authors: Gita Geremešová

The study compares identities of the Ukrainian and Slovak ethnicities; they both contribute with their respective uniqueness to Europe – in a certain sense – as a supranational community as well as to Europe consisting of differences and regional connotations. The existence of both ethnicities in a historical sense is primarily related to the European macro-regions of East and West. In this context, Christianity fulfilled important cultural and civilizational functions; it determined people’s educational levels, morals, customs, etc. In this sense, the Ukrainian ethnicity archetypically identified with the Orthodox Christianity. The principle of caesaropapism, the superiority of the political power compared to the ecclesiastical power, as well as the principle of Catholicity brought into the nation’s “mentality” the elements of collectivism, communalism, obedience, respect toward authority, and heteronomous religious morals, which were later transformed to secular morals, i.e. party and state orders / bans. The Slovakians living in the Roman-Catholic / Evangelical Christianity partially acquired the cultural and civilizational heritage of the West. By separating the secular and ecclesiastical powers, the West enabled the rise of individualism, liberty, nation states, and human and civil rights; however, one cannot overlook Slovakia’s geographic position within Middle Europe, and therefore the backwardness of its society. Both Slovakian and Ukrainian ethnicities, and more precisely, their elites led the national emancipatory processes in multi-ethnic empires (Russia and the Habsburg Monarchy) with a single state nation; they had been confronted with the issue of the linguistic nationalism.

2

Authors: Martin Lačný

Association for Borderlands Studies World Conference (report).

3

Authors: Ondrej Marchevský

Universitas Leopoliensis or about our new perspectives of cooperation (report)

6

Authors: Alexander Mušinka

The paper focuses on the presentation and analysis of activities aimed at improving the situation of the Romani community in Spišský Hrhov. We point out and explain that the conditions faced by local Roma cannot be perceived as ideal; that the whole situation must be analyzed in a complex plane in order to understand the real picture. Why, despite many years of community activities, most Roma continue to live in a separate settlement, and why the local majority still perceives the Roma as different.

12

Authors: Pavel Maškarinec

The paper analyses women’s representation at the local level in Slovakia, or at the level of all (almost three thousand) Slovak municipalities, respectively. We focus on determinants of women’s descriptive representation in mayoral offices and how various factors (socioeconomic, cultural, or political) affect women’s political representation at this level. The main findings of the paper are that education or cultural factors (Catholicism and share of the population with Hungarian nationality) had only very limited effect on women’s representation, in contrast to the much stronger negative effect of the municipality size, which significantly decreased number of women in the position of Slovak mayors. However, we show that the strongest effect on women’s chances to be elected to the position of the mayor is whether women held mayoral post in a given municipality in a previous electoral term. This factor strongly favours women in following mayoral elections and at the same time it explained almost all variance in the dependent variable.

2

Authors: Editorial Board of Annales Scientia Politica

Editorial Board of Annales Scientia Politica has lost Vladimír Dančišin (information).

4

Authors: Gita Geremešová

Bauman, Z.: Retrotopia. Bratislava: Artforum, 2017. 167 s. ISBN 978-80-8150-176-0 (book review)

8

Authors: Radim Holechek

This article is devoted to the topic of the analysis of the electoral system in the Czech Republic. Despite that initially, there have been such rules in the electoral law that complied with international election process standards of organising and conducting democratic elections, there are several drawbacks in it. It concerns, first of all, the formula of transferring electors’ votes into deputy’s seats. Such a situation stimulates the Czech political elite to the discussion regarding the search for optimal election system model.

9

Authors: Richard Geffert

Social justice as one of the basic principles of social policy is a relative phenomenon that can be interpreted differently in space and time. The research paper addresses the content framework of the social justice phenomenon in the optics of the socio-political-economic specifics of the theory and practice of the axiological systems of Western civilization. The main aim is to identify the understanding of social justice by the power goverments of the Slovak Republic through the mechanisms of valorisation of old-age pensions in the time horizon of 2010 – 2018.

10

Authors: Jakub Charvát

The paper analyses the politics of electoral reform since 1989 in Slovakia as it follows the earlier paper of Michal Drengubiak of 2017 in order to advance some of its conclusions. After a brief theoretical introduction of the investigated issue the paper focuses on four electoral-reform processes in Slovakia, namely electoral reforms of 1990, 1992, 1998 and 1999. The main findings of the paper are that the 1990 electoral reform was an elite-dominated process, that the 1998 electoral reform is an example of a specific case regarding the Micro-mega rule of Josep Colomer, and that there may be distinguished two waves of the politics of electoral reform in Slovakia (transitional and post-transitional) which differs mainly in strategies opted by political actors to maximize their parliamentary seat shares.

15

Authors: Eliška Boháčová

After the elections in November 2015 Myanmar has had a new and, although some wouldn’t agree, democratic government. And the head of the new government is a woman – Aung San Suu Kyi. In a country where the government had been led by an army dominated by men for more than five decades, there is now a quasi-democratic government led by a woman. Could this fact imply that the situation of Myanmar’s women in general is improving? Does democratization have any implications for a gender regime that has been dominantly patriarchal for decades? And how do the democratisation process and the rising Buddhist nationalism effect the antidiscrimination agenda declared after the abandonment of military rule?

2

Authors: Nataliya Maradyk

Lačný, M. – Cirner, M. (2017) Súčasný komparatívny výskum cezhraničnej spolupráce na vonkajších hraniciach EÚ. Prešov: Prešovská univerzita. ISBN 978-80-555-1893-0 (book review)

6

Authors: Anna Polačková - Irina Dudinská - Michal Cirner

The theory of political opportunity structures stems from political sociology. It was originally used to research social and political movements. At present, it can be practically used for the interpretation of the factors that create opportunities to develop cross-border cooperation. Also, it can be applied to the ability of the local actors to exploit the opportunities they offer.

12

Authors: Juraj Tej – Viktória Ali Taha – Michaela Sirková

The article focuses on analysis of tourism in the platforms of the Slovak political parties and the Government Declaration of 2016. The paper is based on the proclamation of politicians about the importance of Slovak tourism for the development of the regions. The aim of the paper is to analyze the approach of Slovak political parties and their voters to tourism as an important sector of the national economy. Paper contains a survey conducted among voters, which shows interest in platforms of political parties as well as voters' opinions on Government measures.

16

Authors: Michal Drengubiak

The study focuses on the issues pertaining to the electoral engineering. Its aim is toclarify and resolve the imprecisions of the terminology referring to the changes of the legislature concerning the election process, while specifying four types ofchanges. The classification is subsequently applied in the analysis of the changes of the legislature concerning the elections to the National Council of the Slovak Republicsince 1989 to this day.

28

Authors: Martin Solik – Vladimír Baar

This study takes a closer look at the kind of power that is used by one country in order to achievement of its aims in another country abroad. This is the phenomenon of “soft power”, which is presented in this study in a different dimension. In the literature, the term of “soft power” is usually associated with the Western world, culture, attractions and no constraint and coercion. This paper exposes the role of the Patriarchate of Moscow in the Kremlin foreign policy toward Ukraine. Russian Orthodox Church as an institute is increasingly becoming an obedient weapon of the Russian concept of “soft power” that in the hands of the current Russian political leaders is taking on growing dimensions and dangerous forms. The authors point out that the religious concept of “soft power” is different significantly compared to the American (the West) model of the “soft power” and present specific activities pro-Russian religious organizations under the auspices of Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. A Success or failure of this kind of Russian soft power is subsequently evaluated in the conclusion.