scholarly journals Is Foreign Aid Responsive to Environmental Needs and Performance of Developing Countries? Case Study of the Czech Republic.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zdeněk Opršal ◽  
Jaromír Harmáček
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Individual Development ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Environmental Objectives ◽  
Environmental Aid ◽  
And Performance

This paper examines the responsiveness of foreign aid to environmental needs and performance of developing countries using, as an example, the Czech Republic. It focuses on the environmental component of foreign aid, which is defined as the development intervention of the Czech Government, which can be expected to have positive environmental impacts in target countries. The provision of environmental aid is based on the assumption that the Czech Republic has practical, transferable experience of qualitative improvements in the environment following the collapse of communist regime. Flows of environmental aid were determined by analyzing and categorizing individual development aid projects in the period 2000 to 2015. Regression analyses were employed to explain the pattern of Czech environmental aid allocations. The results show relatively limited reflection of the recipient’s environmental needs in the distribution of Czech environmental aid. Only two environmental objectives were significantly echoed in actual aid flows. The first was transfer of advanced environmental technologies and reductions in energy consumption, approximated by carbon dioxide emissions per capita. The second was protection of biodiversity, represented by the extinction risk of sets of species. The other five objectives did not play significant roles in environmental aid allocations. Above that, other factors not related to the environmental needs and performance of recipient countries affected Czech environmental aid. Among them, historical ties to other former communist countries were of high significance. The findings call into question the environmental objectives of Czech foreign aid and point to the need for transparent criteria for the allocation of environmental aid.

scholarly journals Ministerial staff of the Czech Republic 25 years after the ‘Velvet Revolution’

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
František Ochrana ◽  
Michal Plaček ◽  
Michal Křápek
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Residual Effects ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Velvet Revolution

The article analyses ministerial staff of the Czech Republic 25 years after the Velvet Revolution. It characterizes ministerial employees during the period of the communist regime in former Czechoslovakia (1948–1989) and following the anti-communist coup. In order to analyse the present-day situation, it uses our own survey of the staff working at ministries in the Czech Republic. Within the survey (conducted April–June 2013) all 14 ministries of the Czech Republic were contacted. In total, 1351 respondents (ministerial employees of the Czech Republic) participated in the survey. The research aimed to examine the gender structure, age, education, acquired experience and performed activities of ministerial staff. The results of the research also signal that in some areas (e.g. within the so-called systematized employment positions and the prescribed level of education at some ministries) the residual effects of the previous regime still manifest themselves. The results of this research may be an inspiration for similar research projects in other countries of the former Soviet bloc.

scholarly journals Decision Making, Interest Intermediation, and Value: In Government, Public, and Private Agencies Corporatism for Work Promotion

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-342
Author(s):  
Esien Eddy Bruno
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Paper Analysis ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Transition To Work ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Public And Private Cooperation

Abstract This paper analysis decision making, interest intermediation, and value in the realm of government, public and private cooperation under corporatism to enable young third-country immigrants’ transition to work in Austria, Finland and the Czech Republic. Based on document analysis, this paper concludes a centralized delegation of authority, interest intermediations, and public values administrative devices in corporatism governance with democratic deficit that steer young third-country immigrants transition to work. However, the Czech Republic is dissimilar to Austria and Finland with the focus on relationship and partnership cooperation pattern to build contacts, where as Finland and Austria prefer cooperation in the form of coordinating varying employment objectives. The outcome points to deliberate democracy in neoliberal market-oriented setting. This is relevance to bureaucratic accountability and performance monitoring, but imperative to operational risk that may not only impair vulnerable people's belongings, but jeopardize public value accountability, sustainable finance and democratic values.

The Effects of Agricultural Conservation Practices on the Local Water Cycle in conditions of the Czech Republic Modeled by SWAT

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Noreika ◽  
Tailin Li ◽  
David Zumr ◽  
Josef krása ◽  
Tomáš Dostál
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Cropping Systems ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Conservation Practices ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Agricultural Conservation ◽  
Farm Scale

<p>The Czech Republic is an intensely agricultural country. Agricultural intensification of the Czech Republic started in the 1970s during the Communist regime wherein large monotonous agricultural fields, subsurface tile drainage systems, and artificially straightened streams were incorporated across the landscape. Since 1989 (the end of the Communist era), agricultural land and management has been privatized and has experienced shifts from centrally planned crop rotations to those that are economically-driven. On the other hand, nowadays many Czech farmers are beginning to explore various agricultural conservation practices which can have as significant of an impact as land use changes. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of various agricultural conservation practices (contour tillage, reduced tillage, and grass strip addition) and decreasing field sizes at the farm scale in a representative agricultural basin in the Czech Republic. We conducted scenario analysis using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to determine the effects of these measures on basin water balance and soil erosion. Through SWAT we were able to determine which measures are most effective when combined at the farm-scale.</p><p>Acknowledgment: The presented research has been performed within project H2020 No. 773903 Shui, focused on water scarcity in European and Chinese cropping systems and the Grant Agency of Czech Technical University in Prague, No. SGS20/156/OHK1/3T/11.</p>

scholarly journals Years in Cultural Studies: 2013

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Karel Šima ◽  
Ondřej Daniel ◽  
Tomáš Kavka
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Czech Republic ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Uk

n Eastern Europe, which is the focus of our study, different national scholarly traditions assigned their own place to the study of culture. Although the influence of the kulturologia (“culturology”) schools installed at Russian universities in the 1980s radiated out into Eastern European countries, local academic communities dictated the approach to the study of popular culture. While the Polish field of kulturoznawstwo was propelled by internal forces from the early 1970s onwards, in Czechoslovakia, kulturologie emerged as a new discipline around the fall of the Communist regime. Even so, it failed to take off and by 2012 had vanished completely from the Czech Republic. Central European countries were also affected by the German academic tradition of Kulturwissenschaften with its emphasis on philosophy and aesthetics. Our inquiry highlights the first international conference on cultural studies in the Czech Republic in 2013. It was during this event that a group of new postdocs from Charles University, including ourselves, raised the topic of changes in Eastern European popular culture due to the political transformation in 1989. This group had also arranged for Ann Gray, the final director of the UK Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to give a keynote address at the conference, a gesture that clearly linked the CCCS with the group’s own Centre for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPK) established three years earlier. From the outset, CSPK’s organizers aimed to promote the Anglo-American tradition of cultural studies both in the academy and among the general public. At the same time, they sought to retain their independence from academic structures and funding systems that might restrict their political activism.

scholarly journals Sustainability of the Public Water Supply and Sewerage Services Operating System: A Case Study on the Example of the Czech Republic

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Hájek ◽  
L. Petružela
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Ecosystem Functions ◽  
Public Water Supply ◽  
Natural Ecosystem ◽  
Water Services ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Environmental Objectives

Abstract Water services, as a necessity for natural ecosystem functions and a key output from public governance, play a crucial role in forming sustainable relationships between natural, economic, and social factors in the development of society. Primarily, these relationships relate to the natural impacts of weather and climate on the variability of the hydrological cycle. Secondary relationships exist between providers and consumers of the services. Services provided by operators of public water supply and sewerage systems are a specific segment of water services. Their sustainability is controlled on the one hand by public regulation and and on the other by a combination of economic, social, and environmental objectives and the means by which they are achieved. The aim of this paper is, based on the parameters of supply and demand, to quantify the most important aspects of sustainable management of water supply and sanitation enterprises in connection with the current model for state regulation. The methodology is based on an examination of consumer behaviour indicators which can be interpreted from ‘water bills’. The comparison of household expenditure on water services in the Czech Republic shows that some are already approaching, and even exceeding, the limit of what is considered social acceptability.

scholarly journals Country selection and aid allocation: A case of the Czech Republic

2021 ◽  
Vol 129 ◽  
pp. 10002
Author(s):  
Gabriela Dufková
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Secondary Education ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Aid Allocation ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Unemployment Rates ◽  
Country Selection

Research background: Donors provide development aid from various reasons: while some of them might give aid based on the recipient´s needs, some countries pursue their own agendas with their development programmes. Visegrad Group countries are mostly considered as egoistic donors that try to support security in the East European region and promote their trade. Purpose of the article: This article draws back on the existing literature that focused on the motives behind the Czech development aid and examines influence of both egoistic and altruistic variables to determine which of these variables are important for the selection of countries to the aid portfolio and the allocation of aid funds. The researched variables are: number of asylum seekers, debt to the Czech Republic, Czech exports, unemployment in the developing countries, political and civil rights, and enrolment to the secondary education. Methods: Probit-tobit analysis and a generalized linear model are employed in this paper. Findings & Value added: The results suggest that egoistic economic motives (debt and Czech exports) are important factors for both country selection and aid allocation, while the number of asylum seekers affects only the aid allocation. As per the altruistic reasons, the country selection depends on the unemployment rates, political and civil rights and the enrolment to secondary education. The aid allocation depends also on the unemployment rates, political and civil rights, and the ratio of girls enrolled to the secondary education.

Finding a voice: The Slovak-Roma woman writer in Irish and Czech fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
CHARLES SABATOS
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Woman Writer ◽  
Complex Case ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
American Writer

The theory of minor literature (based on Kafka’s hybrid identity in Prague) is applicable to the complex case of Czech and Slovak-Romani writing, including fictional portrayals of the Roma. The Irish-American writer Colum McCann’s Zoli, published in 2006, features a Slovak-Roma woman who becomes an acclaimed poet under the Communist regime, only to be cast out by her community and forced into exile. Two years later, Irena Eliášová (a Roma writer born in Slovakia who lives in the Czech Republic) published her novel Our Settlement (Naše osada), a far more affectionate view of the Roma society of her childhood. Both writers walk an uneasy balance in presenting Slovak-Roma culture from both insider and outsider perspectives. In McCann’s case the intention of bringing one of Europe’s most misunderstood minorities to anglophone readers struggles to avoid cultural appropriation, while Eliášová’s use of multilingualism negotiates the power dynamics between Czech, Slovak, and Romani.

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