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This book examines the relationship between the Czech Republic and the European Union (EU). The authors examine the Czech Republic’s road to EU membership in 2004 and assess how EU accession has affected or changed the Czech Republic, including its domestic politics, governing institutions and public policies. It also examines how the Czech Republic has behaved as an EU member state, addressing the questions:

• What are the Czech Republic’s interests in the EU and how has it sought to influence EU policymaking?
• How have Czech interests and behaviour been shaped by the country’s position as: a new member state; a small member state; a relatively poor member state; and a post-communist member state?

The book also addresses the Czech Republic’s preparations for assuming the EU presidency in January 2009, and evaluates the actual conduct of the presidency. Although a case study of a single member state, this book sheds light on a number of broader points or issues pertaining to the EU and its member states. It contributes to academic debate and knowledge about the EU and European integration, including the debates on Europeanization and the role of small states in the EU.

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CZECH REPUBLIC ARMY, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY HANDBOOK (World Business, Investment and Government Library) ... Read more

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Electronic Government, EGOV 2003, held in Prague, Czech Republic in September 2003. The 76 revised papers presented together with 19 papers from a concurrent workshop on global relations and regional development were carefully refereed and selected from close to 100 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on e-governance, e-democracy, change management, electronic service delivery, web services, models and methodology for e-government research, trust and security, knowledge management, geographical information systems, technical systems, and legal aspects. ... Read more

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Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. These four Central European countries are the subject of this book, and the most likely to become admitted to the European Union within five to ten years. Author John Fitzmaurice sets the basic data for each country against the background of making the transition from communism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A dry summary of a fascinating region
I bought this book while researching Czech and Slovak politics, and got quite a bit less than I was expecting from it. Perhaps the title misled me: I was expecting an overview of politics in the region, but what I got instead was a handbook that, to a large extent, summarised the constitutions of the four countries.

What I found disappointing was the author's sometimes uncritical quotations from constitutions and party programmes. Rather than repeating what is supposed to be, he could have done a better job of informing the reader about what is by bringing in observations and opinions from other political scientists.

In certain areas, Fitzmaurice's urge to summarise leaves the book thin on the ground. For example, the author uses a single paragraph to describe "constitution building" in Slovakia.

The book also shows signs of a poor editing job. The author is quite patchy in his use of diacritics in Central European names; he uses them in some names, while ommitting them in others. He also manages to misspell the names of two leading Slovak politicians. Further, the book is not free of factual errors: Fitzmaurice writes about Poland's Marshal Pilsudski fighting "against the Soviet Union in 1920", when more careful research would have shown him that the USSR was, in fact, not founded until 1922, after Communist Russia's war with Poland was over. Such errors and ommissions reflect badly on the author's knowledge of the region.

Finally, given the title of the book, I expected more attention to be placed on regional issues and on relations between the four countries. While the author does maintain a comparative framework throughout the book, he devotes a handful of pages explicitly to relations between the four countries.

Thus, in short, while the book does provide useful background information on the four countries' politics, the reader would be well advised to look elsewhere for more in-depth information and analysis. ... Read more

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CZECH REPUBLIC DIPLOMATIC HANDBOOK (World Business, Investment and Government Library) ... Read more

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This book examines the effect of economic conditions on election results in five post-communist countries--Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic--in the first decade of post-communist elections.It is the first book length study of economic voting outside of established democracies, as well as one of the few comparative studies of voting in post-communist countries generally.The study relies on an original database composed of regional level economic, demographic, and electoral data, and the analysis features a broadly based comparative assessment of the findings across all twenty elections as well as more focused case study analysis. ... Read more

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Drawing on a rich trove of focus group data, interviews, and textual sources, Elaine Weiner's Market Dreams powerfully captures the varied responses of female managers and factory workers in the Czech Republic to their country's transition from socialism to capitalism. Her work, rooted in sociology and comparative feminism, is an important advance for the literature on women in Eastern Europe.

"Market Dreams is a conceptually-sophisticated and empirically-rich account of how the discourses and practices of the free market penetrated the hearts and minds of everyday Czech citizens. Weiner's provocative analysis takes readers inside the worlds of female factory workers to expose the discontinuities between their radiant market dreams and their everyday realities--and juxtaposes them to the continuities experienced by female managers. In the process, it challenges many of our ideas about post/socialism, marketization, and gender and reveals the enduring power of stories in shaping social identities and actions."
---Lynne Haney, Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University

"Through interviews and a careful analysis of newspaper articles written in the first decade after the collapse of state socialism, Weiner explores the complicated interconnections between personal stories and the emerging neoliberal metanarrative of the free market in the Czech Republic after 1989. Her book transcends many of the dichotomies with which researchers of post-state socialism have been struggling: 'East' vs. 'West,' losers and winners, emancipation vs. oppression, etc., and thus makes a truly novel contribution to our understanding of women's lives after state socialism."
---Éva Fodor, Assistant Professor of Gender Studies, Central European University

"Weiner's rich and innovative study of female Czech managers and workers exemplifies the importance of narrative analysis for understanding why gender and class have not (yet) reconfigured the sense of postcommunism's alternatives. This is critical reading for feminists, class analysts, and students of postcommunist social change."
---Michael Kennedy, Director, Center for European Studies, University of Michigan

Elaine Weiner is Assistant Professor of Sociology at McGill University. Visit the author's website at: www.mcgill.ca/sociology/faculty/weiner/.

Cover Credit: Frank Scherschel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

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Czechoslovakia has captured the international imagination throughout the twentieth century. The Allied betrayal of the country to Nazi Germany in 1938 was to demonstrate the appalling consequences of naive appeasement of aggression. The wholesale reform of Soviet communism in the Prague Spring of 1968 won western support, and sympathy when it was crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks. The fierce Communist regime installed thereafter was brought down almost magically in 1989. Czechoslovakia added to international political vocabulary the term "Velvet Revolution", and the velvet metaphor has characterized much of the country's path-breaking postcommunist transformation and its peaceful break-up in 1993.
In separate chapters on history, politics, economics, foreign relations and the new Czech national identity, this book not only applauds the successes of the Czech Republic since 1993, but also uncovers the frayed edges of this velvet nation. ... Read more

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The first account of the secret police in Eastern Europe after 1989, this book uses a wide range of sources, including archives, to identify what has and has not changed since the end of Communism. After explaining the structure and workings of two of the area's most feared services, Czechoslovakia's StB and Romania's Securitate, the authors detail the creation of new security intelligence institutions, the development of contacts with the West, and forms of democratic control. ... Read more

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USCzech Republic Economic and Political Cooperation Handbook ... Read more

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A survey of Czech business law, tax and accounting regulations. The political, legal and economic systems of the Republic are outlined. ... Read more

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2009 Reprint,updated,printed ""on demand""- Czech Republic Telecommunication Industry Business Opportunities Handbook ... Read more

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2009 Reprint,updated,printed ""on demand""- Czech Republic Privatization Programs and Regulations Handbook ... Read more

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`I read Frank Bönker's book with interest. The book is well documented, balanced, and interesting. The book is overall quite informative and detailed. The comparative approach is convincing and the author demonstrates a deep and detailed knowledge of the three countries and the subject. He also convincingly demonstrates that the topic has an importance that goes beyond the cases analyzed.'- Bruno Dallago, President, European Association for Comparative Economic Studies and University of Trento, Italy

`This is a very well organised and clearly written book with convincingarguments and analysis throughout. Its largely jargon-free style makesit accessible to the non-specialist and provides for a thorough andeasily read piece of work. As well as being of interest to researchersspecialising in this topic, the book should be usable by undergraduateas well as postgraduate students.'- Martin Dangerfield, University of Wolverhampton, UK

This insightful book examines the necessary conditions for the successful initiation and consolidation of unpopular economic reforms. Drawing on the burgeoning literature in the area of policy reform, it features a comparative analysis of fiscal reform in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic at different stages of the post-communist transformation. This analysis demonstrates that a significant number of the national differences in fiscal reform can be attributed to differences in political constraints. It also reveals that these very constraints change in the course of transformation and have become increasingly similar to the `standard' restrictions which exist in the traditional EU and OECD countries.

This in-depth analysis of the changing role of political determinants in post-communist fiscal reform will strongly appeal to economists and political scientists interested in the political economy of policy reform, post-communist economic transformation and the role of international organizations (IMF, EU) in shaping domestic policy-making. Policy analysts interested in fiscal reform in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic will also find much to interest them in this book. ... Read more

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NATO is acutely aware of its increased status as a force for stability in a drastically altered Atlantic community.The number of its initiatives is on the increase just as a new political, economic and military Europe emerges.The Cold War's end has wrought as many changes as there are continuities in the security environment.Eastern and Central European states, especially NATO and PfP members, enjoy an increasing importance to NATO, both as trading partners and as new participants in the civil society.While the literature on relations between NATO and the East Europeans is rather limited, the study of the overall posture of those states in the international system is almost non-existent, so that the consequences of their posture for NATO's renewed concept are unknown.The study of these countries' security posture and strategic interactions with Central European states in general promotes the renewed role of NATO.This book shows that each of the long-term relations with Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria is subordinated to the goal of entering the European Union, and that their different values will makes relations difficult.This will test NATO's new strategic concept to the limit.It also shows the importance of strategic thinking. ... Read more