No abstract

This paper focuses on public administration reform in the Czech Republic in terms of supporting regional development. The whole system was legislated two decades ago, in 2000. The paper focuses on three issues: (1) territorial public administration and its corrections, (2) institutionalisation of regional development support, and (3) cohesion regions and changes in their institutional set-up. Territorial public administration and regional development in the Czech Republic are closely related to the so-called combined model of public administration, in which the tasks of state administration are taken over at the regional and local level by self-government bodies, which perform them in a delegated capacity. The paper asks to what extent the combined model has been successful in the Czech Republic for over two decades.

The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 in the former Czechoslovakia opened the way to the renewal of the democratic political system. One of the most visible aspects of the Czech political development consisted in the renewal of the essential functions of elections and political parties. On the local level, however, the political process - as well as in other post-communist countries - continued to be for a long time influenced by the remains of the former centralized system wherein the local administration used to be subjected to the central state power. Municipal elections took hold in these countries, however, the local government remained in the embryonic state and a certain absence of real political and economic decision-making mechanism on the local level continued to show. The public administration in the Czech Republic had to deal with the changes in the administrative division of the state, the split of the Czechoslovak federation as well as the fragmentation of municipalities whose number increased by 50 percent. Decision making mechanisms on the local and regional level were suffering from the incomplete territorial hierarchy of public administration and from the unclear division of power between the state administration and local administration bodies. Only at the end of the 1990s, the public administration in the Czech Republic started to get a more integrated and specific shape. Citizens participation in the political process represents one of the key issues of representative democracy. The contemporary democracy has to face the decrease in voter turnout and the low interest of citizens to assume responsibility within the political process. The spread of democratising process following the fall of the iron curtain should not overshadow the risk of internal weakness of democracy. The solution should be looked for in more responsible citizenship and citizens’ political participation. The degree of political participation is considered (together with political pluralism) to be the key element of representative democracy in general terms, as well as of democratic process on the local and regional level. The objective of this paper is to describe the specifics of citizens local political participation in the Czech Republic and to show the differences between rural and urban areas. The paper concentrates on voting and voter turnout but deals also with other forms of citizens political participation.

Abstract:The objective of this paper is to show the mediation between citizens and political power by political parties in czech rural areas. The position of political parties in rural municipalities is demonstrated in two perspectives. The top-down perspective is based on the distribution of several tens of thousands mandates in local municipal councils between political parties. The opposite perspective provides the bottom-up point of view -from the level of the individual municipalities, their party systems and party organisational structures. The analysis of the municipal election results reveals clearly that the role of political parties in local politics depends namely on the size of the given municipality. in this sense, the czech republic represents a very interesting example as it is characterised by a dense and heavily fragmented population settlement with a large number of small rural municipalities. in rural municipalities, we encounter incomplete party spectra and the absence of political parties in the smallest municipalities. Besides, the lists of candidates in rural municipalities reveal the weakness of the local party organisations that cannot avoid cooperating with the independent candidates. The small distance between the citizen and the elected body in a rural community significantly determines the forms of the local politics; the ideological and party mediation is superfluous, in fact, it is often seen as something harmful which divides the rural community.Key words: political mediation, participation, rural municipalities, municipal councils, elections, political parties, party systems, independent candidates Abstrakt: cílem příspěvku je ukázat, jak politické strany ve venkovském prostoru zajišťují zprostředkování mezi občany a politickou mocí. Postavení politických stran ve venkovských obcích je ukázáno v dvojí perspektivě. Jednu perspektivu -pohled shora dolů -nabízejí celkové volební výsledky, rozdělení několika desítek tisíc mandátů v obecních zastupitelstvech mezi politické strany. opačná perspektiva se otvírá zdola nahoru -z úrovně jednotlivých obcí, jejich stranických systémů a stranických organizačních struktur. Analýza výsledků obecních voleb ukazuje, že úloha politických stran v lokální politice závisí zejména na velikosti obce. V tomto smyslu Čr představuje velmi zajímavý příklad, neboť ji charakterizuje fragmentovaná sídelní struktura s velkým počtem malých venkovských obcí. Ve venkovských obcích se setkáváme se neú-plnými stranickými spektry, v nejmenších obcích i s absencí politických stran. Kandidátní listiny pro obecní volby ukazují slabost místních organizací politických stran, jež se nedokáží obejít bez nezávislých kandidátů. Malá vzdálenost mezi občanem a voleným orgánem ve venkovské komunitě značně ovlivňuje podobu lokální politiky, ideologické a stranické zprostředkování je nadbytečné a často je chápáno jako rušivý prvek, který venkovskou komunitu rozděluje.