Darina Malová
Comenius University, Political Science, Faculty Member
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This article demonstrates that the EU’s multiple economic crises have not shifted the main political trajectories in Slovakia. Despite a severe impact on the labor market, the crises themselves have neither triggered strong anti-EU... more
This article demonstrates that the EU’s multiple economic crises have not shifted the main political trajectories in Slovakia. Despite a severe impact on the labor market, the crises themselves have neither triggered strong anti-EU sentiments nor led to an upsurge of social unrest or anti-EU populist politics. We argue that differentiated Europeanization and instrumental socialization based solely on strategic calculation, together with the elites’ narrow focus on fiscal governance, have recently prompted anti-EU attitudes, undermined citizens’ trust, and further weakened the quality of democracy. In sum, the Slovak case suggests that it is the inadequate elite response to the crisis, rather than the economic crisis itself, that has decreased democratic legitimation (Habermas 1975).
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This chapter is concerned with the way in which ministers in Central Eastern Europe view their relationship with civil servants. The relationship between ‘politicians’ and ‘administrators’ has been controversial in many countries across... more
This chapter is concerned with the way in which ministers in Central Eastern Europe view their relationship with civil servants. The relationship between ‘politicians’ and ‘administrators’ has been controversial in many countries across the world and has even led to the suggestion that civil servants may subvert democracy and assume power. Public administration specialists have indeed advanced different models of what the relationship can be. Thus, Peters and Pierre suggest that the relationship between civil servants and politicians may be studied under two different perspectives — namely, the ‘(self-described) roles of politicians and civil servants’, on the one hand, and ‘the effects of systematic factors on relationships within the public sector’, on the other (Peters and Pierre 2001: 3). The first approach was put forward by Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman (1981) in their empirical study of bureaucrats while the latter approach is associated with the work of Peters (1986). Both approaches focus on the relative power of politicians and civil servants in policymaking processes and they are both concerned with the development of a professional and politically neutral administration.
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The Eastern Enlargement of the European Union: Challenges to Democracy?Recent scholarship assesses the impact of the European Union's conditionality on democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in a contradictory way. On one hand, the... more
The Eastern Enlargement of the European Union: Challenges to Democracy?Recent scholarship assesses the impact of the European Union's conditionality on democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in a contradictory way. On one hand, the EU is perceived as a key agent of successful democratic consolidation and on other hand, the return of nationalist and populist politics in new member states has been explored in the context of the negative consequences of the hasty accession that undermined government accountability and constrained public debate over policy alternatives. This article explains this puzzle of the ambiguous effects of the EU's politics of conditionality, which promoted institutions stabilizing the horizontal division of powers, rule of law, human and minority rights protection, but which neglected norms and rules of participatory and/or popular democracy.
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The chapter examines the challenges that six Central European Democracies (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) have faced in the development of political science during the last three decades. We argue... more
The chapter examines the challenges that six Central European Democracies (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) have faced in the development of political science during the last three decades. We argue that political science as a new social science has gone through many structural reforms: it has acquired a relatively well-institutionalised position, gained autonomy and managed to form its identity. Nevertheless, its position is endangered by the erosion of its legitimacy.In this chapter, we show that political science as a new social science in the Central and Eastern Europe region has acquired a relatively stable position. The discipline has gained autonomy and managed to form its own identity, and has shown a capacity to cope with several challenges that have arisen. However, some of the structural reforms, including the commodification of higher education and the proliferation of political science at universities and other teaching institutions, ...
Summary: Previous explorations into the national preference formation of member states have generated a number of different explanations including size, societal interests, dependency, ideology and unique historical experiences. Although... more
Summary: Previous explorations into the national preference formation of member states have generated a number of different explanations including size, societal interests, dependency, ideology and unique historical experiences. Although acknowledging that ...
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Civil Society, Social Movements, Mobilisation and Protest in Slovakia This study examines the emergence of two social movements as an integral part of revival of civil society in Slovakia. It analyzes patterns of mobilization and protests... more
Civil Society, Social Movements, Mobilisation and Protest in Slovakia This study examines the emergence of two social movements as an integral part of revival of civil society in Slovakia. It analyzes patterns of mobilization and protests of “Slovak National Movement” (SNM) and the „Democratic and European Movement“ (DEM), based on the civic campaign in 1998. SNM relates to the set of organized groups loosely linked with the national agenda at the beginning of 1990s’ in Slovakia. It argues that both movements are genuine parts of civil society in Slovakia, analytically defined as the realm of organized public sphere that is voluntary, largely selfsupporting, autonomous from the state, politics and private sphere and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules. The article defines conditions under which social movements can emerged during transition to democracy. It analyzes “civil society in action” and aims to discuss the patterns of successful mobilization. Sociológia 2008, Vol....
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Summary The authors investigate the relationship between the institutional set up as defined by the Constitution and the dynamics of democratic consolidation in Slovakia. The rule of parliamentary majority between 1994 and 1998 in... more
Summary The authors investigate the relationship between the institutional set up as defined by the Constitution and the dynamics of democratic consolidation in Slovakia. The rule of parliamentary majority between 1994 and 1998 in Slovakia was characterized by unrestricted imposition of its will and its disrespect for institutional limitations, which significantly jeopardized the position of parliamentary opposition and other constitutional actors. The outcome of this development was a regime of distorted parliamentarism which could not advance into a fully consolidated democracy. The authors see the reason for this deficiency in the lack of adequate stipulations in the Slovak Constitution by which an omnipotent parliamentary majority could be checked. After the 1998 parliamentary elections and the retreat of Meciar’s government, the new parliamentary majority proposed and partly adopted constitutional reforms in order to correct those deficits. The institutional changes need to be ...
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An Ecological Analysis of the 2012 Parliamentary and the 2014 Presidential Elections in Slovakia: Potentials and Limits of Structural Explanations. This study addresses the often debated importance of structure for explaining voting... more
An Ecological Analysis of the 2012 Parliamentary and the 2014 Presidential Elections in Slovakia: Potentials and Limits of Structural Explanations. This study addresses the often debated importance of structure for explaining voting behavior and cleavage formation in post-communist countries. Based on ecological analysis this study applies multivariate regression analysis (MRA) to test the possibilities and limits of structure in explaining the results of the 2012 parliamentary elections and 2014 presidential elections in Slovakia. The study reveals the high importance of general structure compared to findings in Western Europe, as all tested structural factors together explain from 46 to 77 per cent of electoral variation for the parliamentary election and from 25 to almost 99 per cent of the presidential candidates’ support. MRA confirms some findings from previous research, e.g. the significance of ethnicity and the rural-urban divide. However our model does not confirm the stren...
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EMU Enlargement: why flexibility matters, by Philipp Maier and Maarten Hendrikx. Gains from risk sharing in the EU, by Yuliya Demyanyk and Vadym Volosovych. Postponing Euro area expectations? by Tanel Ross. European accession and capacity... more
EMU Enlargement: why flexibility matters, by Philipp Maier and Maarten Hendrikx. Gains from risk sharing in the EU, by Yuliya Demyanyk and Vadym Volosovych. Postponing Euro area expectations? by Tanel Ross. European accession and capacity building priorities, by John S. Wilson, Xubei Luo, and Harry G. Broadman. Internal labor mobility and regional labor market disparities, by Pierella Paci, Erwin Tiongson, Mateusz Walewski, Jacek Liwinski, and Maria Stoilkova. Latvian labor market before and after EU Accession, by Mihails Hazans. The impact of EU accession on Poland's economy, by Ewa Balcerowicz. Bulgaria's integration into the pan-European economy, by Bartlomiej Kaminski and Francis Ng. Forming preferences on European integration: the case of Slovakia, by Tim Haughton and Darina Malova. Insert: Whither Europe? Credit expansion in emerging Europe. The economic cost of smoking in Russia, by Michael Lokshin and Zurab Sajaia. Deregulating business in Russia, by Ekaterina Zhurav...
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The article analyses party documents and rhetoric from Kotleba’s People’s Party of Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) and demonstrates that it has a culturally conservative, instrumental and paternalist-populist attitude to gender issues. The thematic... more
The article analyses party documents and rhetoric from Kotleba’s People’s Party of Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) and demonstrates that it has a culturally conservative, instrumental and paternalist-populist attitude to gender issues. The thematic analysis indicates that the ĽSNS not only seeks to promote traditional gender roles and the exclusion of women from public space but also uses quasi-feminist arguments. These, for instance, call on women to engage more in public life but only in support of its patriarchal agenda. Our findings show that gender related issues feature only peripherally in ĽSNS rhetoric, however they are used strategically as a theme that cuts across the party ideology, forming not its core but being purposely used in relation to the party’s main priorities. ĽSNS uses gender related themes as part of its political arsenal for (1) increasing the party’s support amongst women and (2) seeking to involve more women in the party’s activities to increase its acceptability amon...
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As was pointed out in Chapter 1, the introduction of the parliamentary-cabinet system in Central Eastern Europe after the fall of communism had a profound and direct impact on the way in which government was to be conducted. Neither the... more
As was pointed out in Chapter 1, the introduction of the parliamentary-cabinet system in Central Eastern Europe after the fall of communism had a profound and direct impact on the way in which government was to be conducted. Neither the population nor the politicians had experienced that system in any part of the region for around half a century; in some countries, cabinet government in its fully developed form had not even been implanted before the Second World War. Given such a background, one might have expected that the abrupt introduction of cabinet government would have led to serious problems and, in particular, that the ministers and their immediate advisers would have felt themselves wholly unprepared to take decisions in the context of this entirely new system.
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This book explores the ways in which ministers, prime ministers and, in some cases, presidents take decisions in ‘parliamentary cabinets’ or, more briefly, in ‘cabinets’, which are the type of government which replaced the communist... more
This book explores the ways in which ministers, prime ministers and, in some cases, presidents take decisions in ‘parliamentary cabinets’ or, more briefly, in ‘cabinets’, which are the type of government which replaced the communist systems in Central Eastern European countries.1 Substantial progress has been made since the 1980s in analyzing the characteristics of the life of such cabinets in Western Europe (Blondel and Thiebault, 1991; Blondel and Muller-Rommel, 1993; Laver and Shepsle, 1996; Luebbert, 1986; Strom, 1990; Woldentorp et al., 2000), but only a few studies have been conducted with respect to the cabinets which emerged after the fall of communism in the individual countries of Central Eastern Europe (Koroseny 1999; Schiemann 2004; Shleifer 1997; Stefan 2004, Vass 1993). This book constitutes an attempt to fill this gap, by analyzing the characteristics of cabinet decision-making in ten Central Eastern European democracies: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia. Romania and Bulgaria.
In a parliamentary democracy the prime minister is the most influential, powerful and visible member of the government. A major debate has indeed taken place in the academic literature about this power, about the extent to which it has... more
In a parliamentary democracy the prime minister is the most influential, powerful and visible member of the government. A major debate has indeed taken place in the academic literature about this power, about the extent to which it has increased in parliamentary democracies and about the effect that such an increase may have on the nature of cabinet decision-making. Prime ministers have been said to vary from those who are ‘chairmen’ and whose ministers act with them to those who are ‘chiefs’ and whose ministers serve under them (Farrell 1971; Andeweg 1997).
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Prime ministers’ offices and their staff play an important part in the decision-making processes of cabinet governments. They initiate political issues and coordinate the flow of business between ministers and their ministries, the... more
Prime ministers’ offices and their staff play an important part in the decision-making processes of cabinet governments. They initiate political issues and coordinate the flow of business between ministers and their ministries, the governing parties and the prime minister (Blondel 1982; Muller-Rommel 1993). Thus, prime ministerial staffs belong to the ‘core executive’ which has been studied in the literature (Dunleavy and Rhodes 1990). One of the most sophisticated empirical analyses in the field is that of Peters and his colleagues who presented a comparative overview of the different role and of the various tasks of prime ministers’ offices in western democracies. The authors confirm that the coordination of cabinet proposals by prime ministerial staff has become a crucial variable helping to measure cabinet capacity at all stages of the policy-making process (Peters et al. 2000).
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As was pointed out in the introductory chapter of this volume, the cabinet system is the only form of government which faces the tension between collegiality and efficiency. This dilemma is rendered more difficult to solve, moreover, as... more
As was pointed out in the introductory chapter of this volume, the cabinet system is the only form of government which faces the tension between collegiality and efficiency. This dilemma is rendered more difficult to solve, moreover, as collegiality is expected to be achieved among ministers who are also representative of opinion in the public at large by means of the political parties, and that representative character can be broader or narrower depending upon the extent to which, by means of coalitions, parties in parliament also have seats in the government. It has long been suggested, because representation can be broader or narrower, that the nature of the cabinet decision process is likely to be influenced by the nature of the party composition of that body. If there is single-party government, decision-making problems seem likely to be minimized as the members of the government can be expected to share a common ideological outlook. Coalition governments, by contrast, have been felt likely to be either ineffectual or unstable: ineffectual if the ministers from different parties cannot agree on the policies to follow, unstable if these ministers prefer to break the cabinet to being made to adopt policies which they do not really accept.
As was noted in the introductory chapter, the speed with which most of the countries of Central Eastern Europe adopted the parliamentary system of government has been truly impressive. The reasons for this development are obviously many... more
As was noted in the introductory chapter, the speed with which most of the countries of Central Eastern Europe adopted the parliamentary system of government has been truly impressive. The reasons for this development are obviously many and it is not the object of this study to consider them in any detail: they are taken here as the point of departure of the analysis. It is sufficient to note that there was manifest eagerness, among the countries of the region, to become quickly associated with a Western Europe from which they had been separated for decades: In political terms, Western Europe meant the parliamentary system.
Cabinet government is based on the notion that all ministers are equal and contribute to the same extent to what is formally and ostensibly a collective decision-making body. The reality is, of course, different. In the previous chapter,... more
Cabinet government is based on the notion that all ministers are equal and contribute to the same extent to what is formally and ostensibly a collective decision-making body. The reality is, of course, different. In the previous chapter, we saw that there were substantial differences in the extent to which the ministers themselves were involved in cabinet decisionmaking, even if there was apparently more collegiality in the cabinets of the countries studied here than there had been in those of Western Europe. Meanwhile, there is something approaching a formal hierarchy between the status of the prime minister and that of the other members of the cabinet, despite the fact that prime ministers need the agreement of their colleagues in order to act. Two key types of differences thus emerge with respect to the involvement of cabinet members in the decision process: one is wholly informal and stems from the extent to which ministers are willing, and perhaps able, to participate actively in that process; the other is close to being formal and results from the manifestly special part played by the prime minister.
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Cabinet government has been typically described as ‘party government’: given that parties and party systems have, by and large, successfully developed in the ten countries of Eastern Europe studied in this volume, there is a prima facie... more
Cabinet government has been typically described as ‘party government’: given that parties and party systems have, by and large, successfully developed in the ten countries of Eastern Europe studied in this volume, there is a prima facie case for concluding that the cabinets of these countries broadly operate in the way cabinets operate in other parts of the world and in Western Europe in particular. Of course, this does not mean that cabinets in the region all have the same characteristics, any more, as a matter of fact, than that Western European cabinets all share the same characteristics: it means only, but crucially, that parties are central to the structure — indeed to the very existence — of cabinet government.
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Having examined the nature and extent of the support which the cabinet receives, we need now to turn to the key actors in the governmental decision-making process — the ministers — as well as to those among the ministers who can be... more
Having examined the nature and extent of the support which the cabinet receives, we need now to turn to the key actors in the governmental decision-making process — the ministers — as well as to those among the ministers who can be expected to play an even greater part, the ministers of finance and the prime ministers. The role and influence of ministers of finance and of prime ministers will be analysed in the next two chapters; this chapter concentrates on those who might be described as ‘ordinary’ cabinet ministers in Central Eastern Europe.
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Cabinet government has often been described as ‘party government’, although what exactly party government consists of still remains rather unclear, despite attempts made in a number of studies which appeared since the 1980s to give a more... more
Cabinet government has often been described as ‘party government’, although what exactly party government consists of still remains rather unclear, despite attempts made in a number of studies which appeared since the 1980s to give a more precise contour to the concept (Rose 1974; Castles and Wildenmann 1986; Blondel and Cotta 1996, 2000; Luther and Muller-Rommel 2005). The most precise definition is that of Richard Katz (1987: 43) who lists three conditions for a government to be referred to as ‘party government’. These are that ‘all major governmental decisions must be taken by people chosen in elections conducted along party lines or by individuals appointed by and responsible to such people’, that ‘policy must be decided by the governing party when there is a monocolour government, or by negotiation among the parties when there is a coalition’ and that ‘the highest officials (for example cabinet ministers and especially the prime minister) must be selected within their parties and be responsible to the people through their parties’. The party or parties which are being considered are, of course, the ‘supporting’ parties and not the opposition, although, in some cases at least, which parties are ‘supporting’ is not entirely clear, in particular, but not exclusively, in the case of minority governments (Blondel and Cotta 1996, 2000).
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Many politicians and journalists who perceive a growth of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe (in general) and in Slovakia (in particular) are very concerned about it. Is there, indeed, a growth in nationalism in Slovakia? And if... more
Many politicians and journalists who perceive a growth of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe (in general) and in Slovakia (in particular) are very concerned about it. Is there, indeed, a growth in nationalism in Slovakia? And if so, what explains its continuation, rebirth, or growth? To answer these questions, we interviewed Slovak academicians and politicians. We also analyzed Slovak reports on public opinion survey data. Empirical data specifically on Slovakian nationalistic attitudes were not found. Consequently, statements on nationalism in (and the growth of nationalism among) the Slovak population are not based on empirical findings. However, there are certain indications about nationalism-related orientations. Between one-quarter and one-third of Slovaks had such orientations in 1992–4. Three categories of explanatory variables are distinguished: systemic, individual, and socialization. Many of the theoretical requirements leading to an increase in nationalism are present in Slovakia nowadays. These include a political, economic, and an identity crisis, with politicians acting as nationalistic ‘entrepreneurs’.