Introduction

This chapter sums up the development of public policy as a scientific discipline and object of research and instruction in the Czech Republic. This is presented within a historical context, examining different stages of the development of Czech social sciences even before it was formalised, and the development of its being constituted since the early 1990s. It also takes into account the broader cultural, political and institutional context of the development of this field, including the role of various personalities. A characterisation is given of the main streams of research and instruction in the field (with reference to the key literature, its authors and context). This is followed by a reflection on results and specification of development potentials.

The early 20th century

Brilliant brains often beat generations of intellectual stereotypes. In the Czech social scientific environment there were thinkers who, by formulating problems and proposing solutions, laid the foundations for something that came to be called, decades later, public and social policy. As early as the 1870s, Albín Bráf carried out a brilliant analysis of working conditions in North Bohemia, and as Austro-Hungarian Minister of Agriculture he took part in shaping the economic and social policies of the day. Worthy contributions were doubtless made by the likes of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk with his Social Question and Humanitarian Ideals, as well as his broad concept of democracy (Masaryk, 1972, 1990, 2000); Josef Macek (1935), who asserted himself as both a national economic expert with deep insight and a social policy theorist, convinced that the world needs to clarify the essence of economic prosperity and its conditions – not only material and technical but also moral and political; Ferdinand Peroutka with his characterisation of the problems of forming Czech statehood in the monograph Building of a State (Peroutka, 1991); and last but not least, Karel Čapek with his reflections on politics, public affairs, chronic deficits of citizenship and man as a zóon politikon in the context of Czech society (Čapek, 1993, pp 16-22). Interestingly, their contributions always coincided with critical episodes in the life of Czech national community, which was either working to achieve its full political emancipation or in the formative years of asserting it.