Language practice and its official recognition are considered crucial markers of national identities in the region of Central/Eastern Europe. The issue of language rights used to be a vital aspect of the agenda in national movements in the former Austrian (Austrian-Hungarian) Monarchy, together with the process of territorializing and constructing of national identities in the region since the nineteenth century. The protection, persistence, preservation and further development of the national language was introduced as part of the moral obligations and commitments of the members of a community to the constructed national community.

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The aim of this study is to focus on fiscal decentralization and regional financial autonomy in Slovakia. The public administration reform and fiscal decentralization process in Slovakia ought to increase the autonomy of the multi-level governance and to decrease its dependency on state budgeting and other transfers. We argue that regional territorial governance is greatly dependent on financial incentives from central state financing, which limits the expected effect of decentralization and regional fiscal autonomy. By collecting quantitative data on state transfers and revenues to regional governments we demonstrate the limits of spatial, financial and decision-making autonomy within particular regions. The selected time frame 2005-2016 reflects all stages, reforms and changes in the fiscal decentralization of the second level governance in Slovakia.

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This paper studies the different positions and the polarization among Slovak political elites due to the European migration crisis and the Union´s migration policy. The inability of collective action at the supranational level is first grounded at the national level. From this basis, the authors differentiate the various standpoints of the selected political leaders and parties towards the current migration wave. Based on this cleavage, we seek to demonstrate the patterns of modern day political party leadership in Slovakia and, secondly, to compare the political response and agendas across the Slovak party system.