The main goal of this course is to familiarize students with European political systems and contemporary challenges to European politics. It implies a deeper insight into the European politics, highlighting of contemporary trends of the European political development, and finally identification of neuralgic spots of potential future issues and problems European policy makers will have to address.

The course is divided into three parts.

1. Ethnic and religious cleavages in/among European countries (national minorities, religious-based conflicts, etc.)

2. European Governments (this part concentrates on Western models of government – separation of powers, the role of president and parliament, party and party systems; case studies discussed include Great Britain, Germany, France)

3. Post-communist societies (this part focuses on an interpretation of the history of communism and the transition to capitalism and the current situation in three countries – Soviet Union/Russia, Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic and Poland). Each part starts with theoretical background and approaches and discusses relevant issues in a comparative perspective.

The course consists of in-class lectures and discussions, multimedia presentations, field trips (Museum of Communism, Parliament of the Czech Republic and the like).

Course requirements: active class participation, reading of about 50-60 pages per week, short test (at the end of first part of the course), midterm and final tests, home works (short interpretations of the assigned readings ( thousand words), a team work – power point presentation on the most important ethnic and religious conflicts, five-thousand-word paper) .

Class meets twice a week for total of 7.5 class hours per week.

Vladimíra Dvořáková

Professor of Political Science, Head of the Department of Political Science, University of Economics, Prague. Dr. Dvořáková's research focuses on comparative politics, transitions and consolidation of democracy, and civil society issues. In 2003-2006, she was a president of the Czech Political Science Association and vice-president of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). She participated in many scientific grants, her studies were published in may foreign languages including English, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. Since 2006 she is a president of the Czech Accreditation Commission.

Petr Vymětal

Dr. Petr Vymětal is a Junior Researcher at the Centre of Economic Studies, University of Economics Prague. This young economist studied both Political Science and Economics. His PhD. research focused on various political and economic factors of the Economic Policy, corruption issue, and issues linked with bureaucracy and governance quality/efficiency.