Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6)
Private Actors in Politics and Policy-Making: Case Studies into Patterns of Proximity

Private Actors in Politics and Policy-Making: Case Studies into the Patterns of Proximity

Jana Vargovčíková

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 831-836  

The 'Angels of Europe': Corporate Public Affairs Employees as the In-House Entrepreneurs of Europe

Armèle Cloteau

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 837-858 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2018.54.6.432  

This article examines the inner workings of a private company's participation in the European policy game. The qualitative analysis shows that the promotion of a company's interests and its positioning at the level of the European Union is not self-evident and results from internal battles in which European public affairs employees play a pivotal role. Under what conditions do the European public affairs employees of a leading multinational firm endorse, manage, and promote an active position in the Brussels' polity sphere? This article highlights the process by which these 'professionals of Europe' adapt to the specific requirements of the EU and...

Lobbying and Advocacy: Brussels' Competition Lawyers as Brokers in European Public Policies

Lola Avril

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 859-880 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2018.54.6.433  

Studying the role of lawyers specialising in competition law, this paper shows that they are essential intermediaries between the European administrative field and the private sector. Using both qualitative (interviews and archives) and quantitative (database) methods, it demonstrates that intermediation activities developed in the late 1980s with the arrival of American law firms, which exported their working methods to Europe. This led to a fierce competition between law firms, which tried to recruit from inside the European Commission. Circulation between the European institutions started to be common and slowly became regulated, a process that...

Rethinking the Continuum between Public and Private Actors in Electricity Policy in the Context of the UK Energy Transition

Lucie de Carvalho

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 881-906 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2018.54.6.434  

At the turn of the 1990s, a very large part of UK energy utilities was transferred from the public sector into private ownership. When analysing the era of privatisation, recent research on public policy has concluded that public authorities' ability to influence or shape national energy choices has been substantially weakened. Since the mid-2000s, however, tight cooperation between private investors and UK public regulators and policy-makers has emerged as a critical factor to meet the challenges posed by the energy transition. How have the British public authorities tried to get private actors on board and to involve them not only in the delivery...

Hybrid Warriors: Transforming Czech Security through the 'Russian Hybrid Warfare' Assemblage

Jan Daniel, Jakub Eberle

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 907-932 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2018.54.6.435  

This article analyses the ascent of 'Russian hybrid warfare' (RHW) as a notion that transformed the understanding of national security in the Czech Republic in the short period of 2014-2016. It argues that the emergence of RHW as a specifically understood prime security threat was the result of contingent and often unruly social interactions across different settings, rather than a linear and centralised response to Russia's actions. To capture this process, the concept of 'assemblage' is introduced and then defined as a temporary constellation of a variety of different actors, both public and private. Building on research interviews and documents...

Making a 'Resilient Santiago': Private Sector and Urban Governance in Chile

Katarína Svitková

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 933-960 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2018.54.6.436  

Resilience has become a policy and practical framework for addressing a range of threats from natural disasters and extreme weather events to political conflicts and terrorism. Focusing on the context of cities, this paper offers a conceptualisation of urban resilience, critically interrogating its use for urban governance and the political implications it has for individual agency. The paper also seeks to contribute to the existing critical literature on urban resilience. The second part of the paper focuses on the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities programme as implemented in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile. Empirical data obtained...

Beyond Crowding In and Out: Why We Need to Study Policy Design in a Communicative Context

Staffan Kumlin

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 961-962  

Prosociality Matters, But Let's Not Throw Out the Knaves Assumption for Heterogeneous Populations

Thomas Voss

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 963-965  

Institutions for 'Knaves' May Still Backfire-Liberal Civic Culture Needs to Foster Social Preferences: The 'Institutional Gardening' of Citizens' Virtues

Steffen Mau

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 966-968  

Cornel Ban: Ruling Ideas: How Global Neoliberalism Goes Local

Dragos Adascalitei

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 969-971  

Carly Elizabeth Schall: The Rise and Fall of the Miraculous Welfare Machine: Immigration and Social Democracy in Twentieth-Century Sweden

Mats Wickström

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 972-974  

Prerna Singh: How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India

Sergiu Delcea

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 975-977  

Patrick Baert: The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual

Jiří Šubrt

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 978-980  

Pablo Beramendi, Silja Häusermann, Herbert Kitschelt and Hanspeter Kriesi (eds): The Politics of Advanced Capitalism

Luis Ernesto Taborda Moreno

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 981-986  

Reviewers of Articles Decided in 2018

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2018, 54(6): 987