Departmet of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, Charles University is the oldest political-science-oriented academic site in the Czech Republic. Its establishment dates as far back as the Prague Spring in 1968, then it was dissolved during the so-called normalization (70s and 80s) and restored in 1990.
In research and education, we focus on areas of political science, which are being omitted elsewhere. In Czech context we promote somewhat unique approach oriented primarily to political philosophy and theory, international relations theory, Czech political history, and comparative politics.
In political philosophy and theory, we concentrate on study of liberal democracy and its alternatives. Our focus aims at republicanism, populism, or radical democracy. The research also orietates itself to post-marxism, analysis of discourse, and theory of ideologies.
In the area of international relations theory, we focus not only on the key theories, but also on their application on contemporary affairs. We pay attention to conflicts, terrorism, ideological background of international politics, or social movements in international context.
Czech political history represents another important part of our specialization. We study mainly 19th and 20th century with a focus on the development of political parties, parliamentarism, administration structures in a broader European context. We also concentrate on the history of political thinking and ideology development from the perspective of active politicians, intellectual or other participants on public life.
Last, but not least, in comparative politics, we aim to capture the discipline’s development from behavioralism to the new institutionalism. We focus on transitology, non-democratic regimes theory, or constitutional engineering. Specific field of our research represents the theory of totalitarianism. You can find more information about the Department of Political Science in our scholars’ profiles.
