Annotation
• Succession of paradidms in political geography, relationships with political science, international relations and economic globalisation studies.
• Nation-state, its legitimity, effectiveness, and efficiecy. Nationalism, models of ethno-political mobilisations, examples of fragmentations of the Societ Union, Yugoslvia and Czechoslovakia, current fragmentation processes in Spain, the UK, Belgium. Ethni-territorial conflicts in develoiping countries, deviant forsm of states.
• Sub-national territorial administration and self-government – processes of decentralisation and deconcentration, integral competence – complex decision-making, specific competences – one-soded articulation of interests, vertical and horizontal co-ordination of territorial administration and self-government – relations to settlement structures and population distribution, functional fragmentation and territorial fragmentation, differences between unitary and federal states, uncertainties in socio-geographical environment of administration and self-government – needs for flexibility, flexibiliy of structures and mechanisms of divisions of competences.
• Electoral geographies. Political and territorial cleavages in modern and post-modern societies and in nation-states, changing mass values orientations – attitudes – electoral behaviour, typology of nationl party systems in Europe, interpretations of electoral geographies since the establishment of Czechoslovakia to current Czechia. Formations of regional and local elites and changes in eductation levels, cultural oreintations and political decision-making at local, regional and national levels.
• Geopolitics – evolution of geopolitics and international relationships, classical geopolitics – evolution geopolitiocal theories sice McKinder to curent theories, geopolitical transitions and geopolitical codes, neo-realist, neo-liberal and constructivist approaches and critical geopolitics.