Mapping and Analysing Political Science Research in a Post-Communist Country
Thirty-three Years of Insight into Research on Czech Local Politics
Online First
The extreme territorial fragmentation of the Czech Republic, characterised by over 6,250 municipalities, makes it a uniquely valuable testing ground for international theories on local democracy, decentralisation, and democratic resilience. This study aims to map and analyse the evolution of political science research on Czech local politics from 1993 to 2025. The authors compiled a comprehensive database of 324 peer-reviewed articles extracted from Web of Science, Scopus, and 28 domestic Czech journals. The analyses reveal significant changes within the discipline. Most notably, there is a shift from publishing in Czech to English, driven by national research evaluation frameworks and the pursuit of global visibility. The most productive authors are distributed across a wide range of universities and research institutions, indicating a healthy lack of institutional monopolisation. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that Czech local politics is a highly interdisciplinary field, spanning numerous thematic strands from traditional political science to public administration, sociology, and economics. However, a significant structural challenge persists as the discipline remains heavily male-dominated, with a pronounced gender gap in publication output. By synthesising thirty-three years of scholarly output, this study not only identifies existing thematic gaps but also establishes a foundational framework for future comparative research within the Central and Eastern European context.
Local Politics; Czechia; Research Mapping; Publication Output
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