Volume 11 (2017): Edizione 2 (December 2017)

This article offers an outsider’s perspective on the place of policy in the analysis of governing in Central and Eastern Europe, both before the change from a communist to a post-communist order, and since. It explores the way in which ‘policy’ is used as a construct in both the practice of governing and the analysis of that practice. It argues that we have to recognise multiple strands – authority, structured interaction, and collective problematisation - in the construction of ‘policy’. It points to a distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘practical’ perspectives, and argues that this distinction reflects structural tensions in the process of ’putting together’ the shared understandings and relationships which make g for ‘governing’, It argues for the importance of continuing research, empirically based and theoretically informed, into the way that governing is ‘put together’ in Central and Eastern Europe, and how both participants and the governed ‘make sense’ of this process.

Empirical evidence related to the effectivity and outcomes of the self-employment programmes in the Central and Eastern Europe is still very rare, despite the important role of entrepreneurship in the economic development of post-communist economies. The main purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the impact of self-employment subsidy for unemployed in the Czech NUTS 3 regions for the period of years 2012–2015 to provide policy makers supportive material useful for policy adjustments. The study applies quantitative research framework, which is based on the construction of econometric models. Estimated regression models with region fixed effects supported the negative association between the amount of supported self-employed and unemployment rates in the Czech regions. This finding is theoretically framed by the theory of necessity entrepreneurship. Positive spillover of the programme (‘a double dividend’), was econometrically tested on the regional employment rates. Obtained estimates found that there is a positive contemporaneous relationship (weakly significant) between the number of supported self-employed and the employment rates but not in the lag. Analysis of the costs revealed that the costs of self-employment programme are not that high, if one takes into account the alternative costs of unemployment benefits paid to the unemployed and social insurance paid back to the state by the newly established self-employed. Therefore, this tool of active labour market policy has a potential of wider usage. Nevertheless, the applied empirical strategy was based on the regional level and has its limitations. Provided results need to be interpreted cautiously, without any causal inference, because the true outcomes of the programme could be analysed only on the level of supported individuals. Future research should therefore challenge the effectiveness of the start-up subsidy programmes in the Czech Republic on the level of individuals, with focus on the survival rates of subsidized businesses and incomes of their formerly unemployed owners.

This paper evaluates the policy impact of analytical communities in three Russian regions (Karelia, Tatarstan and Saratov). Based on the existing methods to assess the political power of think tanks, the authors develop a method to evaluate this impact. The authors test this method using the empirical data and findings from interviews, workshops with representatives of analytical communities of the three regions, and from observations and assessments of experts in regional politics. In conclusion, the authors argue that the capacity of analytical communities to impact policy change in a region depends on the level of political competition and pluralism and democratic institutions in the region; the level of consolidation of the analytical community, its autonomous political status and authority.

The objective of this paper is to analyse and compare the design and governance of the contemporary childcare policy in the Czech Republic and Norway in relation to the situation of households with dependent children under school age. Following this, we review certain provisions of the childcare policies of the two countries, whose systems possessed certain similarities at the beginning of the 1990s, although they represent distinct types of welfare state. Our analysis reveals that the chief differences in childcare policy have persisted and adapted to the key features of the welfare regimes. The two countries’ central childcare policy values contrast with each other (equity and free choice in Norway vs. re-familisation and strong ‘family dependency’ among individuals in the Czech Republic) and exhibit differences in the structure and extent of policy measures, as well. Policies in both are less sensitive to the needs of children with specific needs (such as migrants in Norway or Roma children in the Czech Republic).

The paper focuses on the discursive framing of drug users and sex workers as subjects of public space governance within the process of local policymaking. The core of this study analyses the non-governmental organisation OZ Odyseus grant application for a harm reduction programme and a subsequent debate of the Municipal Council Members of the Bratislava city district – Nové Mesto. The aim of the meeting and the debate was to approve funding for numerous social projects, including a fieldwork-oriented organisation OZ Odyseus, which provides harm reduction in numerous city districts of Bratislava. The analysis disclosed the application of specific subject positioning frames, which conceptualise drug users and sex workers as ‘out of place’, anti-social and not members of a local community. Results of the study point to the conceptualisation of (commercial) public space as ‘stolen from the normal people’ and the need for spatial segregation of sex workers and drug users in order to reclaim and revitalise it.