This edited volume focuses on populist political parties in the region of East Central Europe, more precisely the post-communist member countries of the European Union. Authors of the individual chapters use a common typology of populist parties (exclusively and non-exclusively populist parties) which is introduced in the first, theoretical chapter of the volume. Each chapter – case study deals with various aspects of populist parties, such as their history, organizational structure, ideological profile, electoral base and position in the political system. 

This publication represents an account of the evolution of Europe’s role in international economic and political relations. Throughout the book we employed a historical approach, so that we could reflect on various challenging issues. Among the most important is the rise in Europe’s influence during the late Middle Ages and the early Industrial Era, the dramatic weakening of Europe in the first half of the 20^th century, and her recent search for a new role in the globalized world. To make an informed contribution, we discuss a vast array of works of many prominent authors. 

This book represents a conceptual elaboration and empirical investigation of a relatively neglected area of attention in Czech youth research: Czech ‘mainstream’ youth as ‘consumers’. The objective is to ascertain the extent to which the concept of ‘mainstream’ youth offers a valuable lens for understanding young people’s relationship to social change and how it might be relevant for further youth research in the Czech Republic.

This book presents basic characteristics of constructivist approach to international policy, which constitutes alternative approach beside strategic and market oriented concepts. Attention is paid to basic theoretical models of constructivism and conceptualization of energy security. Selected texts focused on the issue of energy security are presented in the end of the book.

Oil Policy of the USA: History and Challenges is the title of the latest book published by the Masaryk University Publishing. The book is divided into several chapters: initial chapters deal with development of oil industry in the USA from its very beginning; attention is also paid to importance of oil in US foreign policy; cases of using so called „oil weapon” and recent challenges. Subsequent chapters deal with threats for the naval transportation of oil and with the issue of unconventional sources of natural gas that recently spurred the gas industry, a historical twin of the oil sector.

The Masaryk University Publishing has just released a book titled “Energy Policy of the European Union” written by Filip Černoch, Ph.D., researcher of the International Institute of Political Science focusing on the issue of energy security, and Veronika Zapletalová, who works at the Department of International Relations and European Studies at the FSS MU and also focuses on the issue of European energy policy. 

What is the basis of Chinese and Indian energy security? How does Japan react on the rapid economic growth of these two states? What are the basic principles of Russian energy policy? These are only a few questions considered in the brand new book titled „Energetická bezpečnost asijských zemí a Ruské federace“. 

The Masaryk University Publishing has just released a book titled “Energetický sektor České republiky”. One of the two authors, Mgr. Filip Černoch, Ph.D., is also a researcher of the International Institute of Political Science who focuses on the issue of energy security. The book consists of ten chapters which analyze various sectors and energy sources, such as oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, etc.

The Masaryk University Publishing released new book titled „Technical and Economical Aspects of Energetics“. Co - authors of this book are Mgr. Filip Černoch, Ph.D and Mgr. Petr Ocelík, researchers of the International Institute of Political Science and energy security experts.

This study focuses on the current development of the events associated with shale gas in the Czech Republic and Poland with regard to their possible mutual cooperation. The foundation of the research consists of the two case studies on regulatory frameworks in these countries. Given the fact that both countries are at different stages of the shale gas developing process, further attention is paid to country-specific aspects, which form the core of the current internal national debate. The reference to the regulation and internal affairs at the level of national states is then supplemented by the analysis of the current discussion on shale gas regulation at the level of the European Union.

International Institute of Political Science released two new studies from researchers of the Department of International Relations and European Studies of Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, which deal with topical issues of energy security - The Future of the Druzhba Pipeline as a Strategic Challenge for the Czech Republic and Poland and Unconventional Sources of Natural Gas: Development and Possible Consequences for the Central Eastern European Region.

Bulletin is available here.

There was an increased number of cases with the Czech presence by the European judicial authorities last month and we report about them. At the same time you might like a report about study of international law at the prestigious University of Leiden.

Bulletin is available here.

The January issue of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization brings an exclusive interview with the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno-Ocampo. Moreover, Lukáš Hoder (Georgetown University) writes from Washington DC about the conference of the prestigious American Society of International Law on the state of international law. Bulletin is available here.

In the December issue of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization, we bring an interview with Christian F. Rostbøll, Professor of renowned Copenhagen University, on the relationship between freedom of expression and religious tolerance. Bulletin is available here.

In the November issue of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization, Petr Přibyla interviews Anja Mihr, Associate Professor of renowned Utrecht University, on the relationship between human rights and democratization. Bulletin is available here.

It is a great pleasure to present you a new issue of our biannual Bulletin. The highlight of the issue is the interview with one of the most influential world philosophers of the last decades - Peter Singer. Moreover, we inform about new human rights development in the Czech Republic. The English issue of the CCHRD Bulletin is available here.

Publication presents study of gender in psychotherapy and counselling using mainly social constructionism as a theoretical point of departure. Main goal is to contribute to discussion about how gender perspective might be applied in the psychology, both on theoretical and practical level. The book can be ordered here.

Czech organised crime has not yet received in-depth academic treatment, one of the reasons being that it has never been a conspicuous and easy-to-define phenomenon. The present book represents a "qualitative" reaction to this state of affairs in social scientific research. The book can be ordered here.

In the October issue of the CCHRD Bulletin, Martin Kopa writes about his experience as an intern with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Our member Monika Mareková has been serving as a UN youth delegate and even held a speech in the UN General Assembly in New York and chatted with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. You can read all about her experience in our Bulletin. The current issue of the CCHRD Bulletin is available here.

The book aims to introduce urban planning from the perspective of urban sociology. It attempts to find out why urban planning is so seldom studied in sociology, points out the interconnections between the two disciplines, and gives arguments for a more substantial research on planning in urban sociology.

September issue of the CCHRD Bulletin features the second part of the exclusive interview with Peter Singer, a well known professor at Princeton University, concerning euthanasia, abbortion or animal rights. You will also find some firsthand human rights news from Luxembourg written by Helena Bončková. The current issue of the CCHRD Bulletin is available here.

New issue of the Czech Journal of Political Science (3/2011) features the English study „The Unclear Border between Internal and External Security in the European Union: Impact of the Lisabon Treaty" by Tomáš Weiss. The section of articles comprises the text „The Term Crisis in the Political Sphere: An Attempt Towards Conceptualisation" by Juraj Laššuth; the text „Institutions as the Key to EU Communication Policy?" by Michaela Kozlová and Petr Kaniok; or the article „The European Commission Register of Interest Representatives: Expectation and Reality" by Markéta Pitrová and Veronika Zatloukalová. In the section of Materials you can find the text by Pavla Dočekalová „Efforts Towards Settlement of the Transdniestrian Conflict: The Role and Activities of the OSCE". As usual, you can find reviews of three selected books in the issue.

In the summer double issue of the CCHRD Bulletin we would like to highlight an interview with Peter Singer, a well known philosopher and professor of bioethics at Princeton University, who gave an exclusive interview to our intern Petr Přibyla during his visit at Melbourne University. You can find the first part of the interview concerning global poverty, humand rights, and other issues here.

New issue of the Czech Journal of Political Science (2/2011) features a study by Lukas Linka and Tomas Lacina "What Influences the Unity of the Czech Parliamentary Party Groups?". The section of articles comprises the English text "Territorial and Participatory Aspects of the Development of Local Democracy in Slovenia"; the text by Milos Brunclik "Cause of the Rise of Radical Right-wing Populism in Sweden"; the text "Consolidation of left in the Czech Party System: International Relations or Processes" by Miroslav Mares.

The book Coalition Government in Central Europe (1990-2010) builds on existing scholarly literature dealing with the issue of governments and governing in (mainly) Western European countries, and explores this topic in the context of the four Central European countries with a history of Communist regimes. Consisting primarily of four case studies, the volume focuses on the impact of particular political and party systems on the character of government(s). The book can be ordered here.

June issue of the CCHRD Bulletin features several interesting texts. Jan Lhotský from Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, writes a report from Geneva from a perspective of a direct participant in the negotiations of the UN Human Rights Council. Another promising article is an interview with Dr Zaid Eyadat, professor of political science and international relations at the University of Jordan, who had recently taught a course on islam and human rights at the Faculty of Social Studies. The bulletin is available here.

The book named Selected Security Threats and Risks in the 21st Century reflects and discusses increasingly important issues. The authors of particular chapters present the texts that deal with security phenomena of the modern times. They aim to provide the reader with the most  precise and understandable explanations of these complex problems. The book can be ordered here.

Following the tradition of past successful Symposiums, editors of Global Politics decided to focus this time on recent popular uprisings in the Arab World. It is our great pleasure to publish the answers of Sheila Carapico, Marek Čejka, Katarina Dalacoura, Jack A.Goldstone, Hilal Khashan, Fred H. Lawson, Karim Mezran and Yezid Sayigh from institutions like George Mason University, London School of Economics, Johns Hopkins University, King's College London or American University of Beirut.

May issue of the bulletin features number of interesting texts, the most unusual probably being the article on the human rights activism carried out by ex-president of the International Automobile Federation, Max Mosley, who made a complaint to the ECHR on Great Britain stating that it had not protected his privacy after his sexual encounters had been revealed by the press. The topic of May issue is nonetheless Robert Fremr's candidacy for the International Criminal Court. The process of candidacy as well as the chances of Czech candidate are being discussed in the interview by Ľubomír Majerčík with Renáta Klečková from the Czech MFA's Department of International Law. The Bulletin is available here.

The publication Political Economy of International Relations aims to apply the optics of the International Political Economy as a scholarly discipline on wide and extremely complex topic of interrelation between political power and economic flows. This discipline falls under the field of international relations and is mostly defined by its research subject, which is the dynamic relationship between politics and the state, on the one hand, and economic flows and the market, on the other, within the environment of international relations. The book may be ordered here.

April issue of the Bulletin published by the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization is now available. It features the interview with Jan Kaminek on his observation mission in Sudan, text by Petr Schmied, current director of the People in Need mission in Cambodja, on his studies at Oxford Brookes University and other topics. Also, Hubert Smekal published in this Bulletin his text on the reaction of the EU to the revolutionary developments in the Middle East. The Bulletin is available here.

It is our great pleasure to present you the second issue of the Czech Republic Human Rights Review. While we publish our newsletter on human rights from all over the world in Czech monthly, you will find an overview of main developments in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the English bulletin bi-annually.

The Centre for Human Rights and Democratization has only been established recently, yet we are the first institution of its kind in the Czech Republic, publishing on the topic and organizing conferences and seminars. If you are interested in human rights developments and questions both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, we would be happy to assist you with our expertise. The Review is available here.

This collection includes fifteen essays dealing with the issue of the right to privacy. The authors attempt to analyze in legal terms those situations when our comfort and well-being comes at a fairly high cost: We are monitored by surveillance cameras, we leave a trace of which websites we have visited while browsing the internet, our mobile phones allow continuous signal tracking, databases of personal information are being created, satellites keep track of our car's location, we subject our bodies to security screening, and so on. The book may be ordered here.

The Czech Journal of Political Science (1/2011) features a study by Petr Kratochvíl and Ondřej Šimon "The EU as an Actor: The Study of Recognition as a Dimension of EU Actorness". The section of articles comprises the English text on the Czech organized crime written by Tomáš Šmíd and Petr Kupka "Czech Organized Crime: Structural Development and Activities of Czech Organized Crime", text written by Jakub Charvát named "The Electoral Bonus Mechanism and Greek Variant of Electoral Reform in View of Results of Elections to the Czech Chamber of Deputies", and the paper on "The CDU/CSU Approach Towards EU Enlargement: Do the CDU/CSU Form One Entity in the European Parliament?" by Michal Vít and Petr Kaniok. The article "Trends in the Development of Public Diplomacy in Today's Foreign Policy" by Lukáš Novotný is available in the section of materials.

March issue of the Bulletin features number of articles, news, review of the book on the ECHR, interview with Australian student of law, and a report from a conference in Mexico, among other things. The main article is written by Hubert Smekal, current recipient of the Fulbright scholarship at the prestigious University of California in Berkeley, USA, who analyzes the Test-Achats case. The Bulletin is available here.

The book aims to narrow the gap in the Czech social science production. This gap lies in the absence of the text dealing with development of the political system in the Czech countries from the first constitutional experiments between 1848 and 1849 until the fall of the socialist regime in 1989. The authors (Balík, S., Hloušek, V., Holzer, J., Šedo, J.) strive not to double the existing historical tradition - on the contrary, they aim to analyze the development of the modern Czech politics from the political science perspective in order to conduct a classification of the phases of its development. The book can be ordered here.

Space Policy is a serious science field in the world. It covers international space law, political science, sociology, technology last but not least modern history. Economics of space is restricted only to costing and surely is not the core of Space Policy. Economic thinking and applied economic policy marginalize the role of Space Exploration in economics. Economics of Space is actually poor in economics and economic theories. This book collected the few of economics of Space and added a deeper analysis of the topic. The book may be ordered here.

February Issue of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization Bulletin features number of current texts on the questions that are being rather overlooked in the Czech Republic, the main topic of the Bulletin is nevertheless the one of revolutions in Arab world which gains lots of media attention. In the article on the role of social networks in contemporary revolution events, Petr Přibyla tries to moderate the enthusiasm of technological optimists and turns his attention towards the real problems of the region's inhabitants. In the February issue, we also put together an outline of current scholarly articles with human rights focus. The Bulletin is available here.

The book Resource Conflicts: Selected Cases deals with a highly interesting phenomenon that has gained notoriety in the last 20 years. The issue of clashes over crude oil, water, precious minerals and other commodities certainly is not limited to contemporary developments; a deeper historical analysis would reveal that virtually all wars in history were waged because of material considerations, frequently over some kind of natural resource. Conflicts over arable soil, access to water, wood, gold and later crude oil, gas or coal thus have much longer history than the last 20 years.

In the first Bulletin of the year 2011, we would like to draw your attention to the article by Helena Bončková on a question of communist past of judges in the Czech Republic. The text deals not only with a decision of the Constitutional Court which enabled publication of the information on comunist past of the judges, but also with other circumstances of the entire debate. Among other articles featured in the January issue, there is also an interview with Pakistani fighter for human rights Mukhtār Mā‘ī who has been recently awarded a honorary PhD by a Canadian Laurentian University. Monika Mareková interviewed Ms Mā‘ī on this occasion. The Bulletin is available here.

Filip Černoch, Head of the Energy Section, published an article 'Energy Policy of the EU after Lisbon Treaty' in the Global Politics journal. The text analyzes the changes in the EU energy policy after the Lisbon Treaty. The main goal of the text is to assess whether the creation of a particular chapter devoted to energy and the fact that the energy became part of the Shared competencies resulted in a real shift in communitarization of a given area. The text is available here.

Czech EU presidency of the first half of 2009 can be associated with all kinds of adjectives. Except for one - boring. Six months when Czech Republic „stayed in the limelight" was not a boring period neither for Czech politics nor for the European Union. Gas crisis, Entropa, speech of President Vaclav Klaus in the European Parliament, Barack Obama's visit in Prague and fall of the government - this is a list of the most attractive events of the Czech Presidency. The book has been published in Czech and can be ordered here.

The book „Levels of Justice: Liberalism, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights" pursues two general goals: First, to sketch in basic terms the debate on the issue of transnational or global justice. Second, by means of a critical exposition of the main points of cosmopolitan theories of justice, the author wishes to show that the competing and more moderate view of a global extension of principles and theories of justice is more plausible.The book has been published in Czech and can be ordered here.

In december 2010, new issue of the Bulletin of the Azerbaijan and Caspian Studies Center has been published with focus on bilateral relations between Caspian and European countries. It analyzes these relations from many perspectives, including foreign policy, economy, but also security. Can Germany act as a mediator of the Caucasus? What are the priority areas for the Czech diplomacy towards Southern Caucasus? These are just a few examples of questions answered by the new bulletin, available here.

International Institute of Political Science released two new studies from researchers of the Department of International Relations and European Studies of Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, which deal with topical issues of energy security - The Future of the Druzhba Pipeline as a Strategic Challenge for the Czech Republic and Poland and Unconventional Sources of Natural Gas: Development and Possible Consequences for the Central Eastern European Region.

The last issue of the Bulletin in 2010 is focusing on the WikiLeaks phenomenon in terms of human rights. Data leaks show US embassies engagement in investigation of the events linked to the US war against terrorism. To remind the most important developments in the world of human rights during the last twelve months we also prepared a summary of the events for the 2010. Bulletin is available here.

The article analyses how the standpoints of political parties on energy related issues are formed. The effect of the process of forming these standpoints on energy policy in general in the Czech Republic, the divergence among ideologies (coming out not only from the election programs), and other factors, as well as the parties' ideological continuity in time are particularly emphasized. The text is available here.