Prager Schriften Zur Zeitgeschichte Und Zum Zeitgeschehen – serie

In this book the author analyzes the phenomenon of coup d’état as a specific means of gaining state power. Though quite frequently found in practice, this phenomenon is almost completely unexplored in political theory. The author examines the concept of coup d’état itself and its various connotations and compares coup d’état with other forms of usurpation of state power, such as revolutions, rebellions, civil wars or guerilla warfare. He also deals with the technique of coup d’état. The book includes an overview of accomplished coups d’état since the beginning of the twentieth century and a list of present political leaders who came to power in this way.

This book examines the salience and role of ethno-national identities of young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina fifteen years after the end of the Bosnian War. The underlying argument is that ethno-national identities and boundaries in Bosnia are not constituted and maintained through intensive social contact as constructivists such as Fredrik Barth and Thomas Eriksen have argued, but rather through a lack of it. The author shows that cross-ethnic contact is a critical mechanism that helps, rather than hinders, the building of multiple and complimentary identities. She proposes that contrary to the constructivist arguments, the actual content of identities such as descent and religion matter for the intensity and malleability of identities. The fieldwork material demonstrates that identities can become multilayered in situations where the «other» is personalized and experienced.

Is the U.S. as a country still capable of finding common ground and effective policy responses in the 21st century, or are the dividing lines within U.S. society actually becoming too deep and too wide to bridge, with potentially grave consequences for American social, political as well as economic development? This book discusses important contemporary U.S. wedge issues such as gun rights, racial and economic inequality, the role of the state, the politics of culture, interpretations of history and collective memory, polarization in national politics, and factionalism in domestic and foreign policy. It provides readers with conceptual tools to grasp the complexity of the current processes, policy formation, and political and social change under way in the United States.

Hitler’s regime invested heavily into radio as the most modern media of its era. First in Germany, later in Austria and the Sudetenland, Joseph Goebbels motivated his Volksgenossen to become active radio listeners. But what approach did the regime take to the first non-German people occupied – the Czechs? How would Czech Radio’s staff and listeners respond to Nazi-dominated programming? What strategies of defiance and what options for cooperation existed? What role did Nazism’s core theme of anti-Semitism play? Which Czech societal groups did the Nazis try to reach most? This book casts a spotlight on the effects of the occupation authorities’ policies on specific programming content, as well as on radio as a medium in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

The author analyzes modern Russian history from a new perspective. Due to the ideological heritage of the XIXth and XXth centuries, the social settings of the sociopolitical history of the USSR (1917–1945) have not been fully identified. Detailed examination of ideological and political concepts shows that the revolution of 1917 became not a middle class, proletarian movement, but rather a plebeian one. The misjudgment by the new power enabled growth but caused tremendous losses of human lives and material damages. Socialization of economy and strict centralization led to a new social structure and established terror as an instrument for social reorganization. WWII revealed the necessity of a correction of these developments, but the events of the Cold War circumvented any further considerations.