Review
[1] I recognized the qualities of Michal Illner’s paper when it was presented at the seminar. In the following comments, I wish to expound on what I said about the necessity of making some fundamental additions. What I have in mind are the changes in the architecture of the institutions of sociological research currently under way that are a part of systematic restructuring of Czech scientific institutions. The changes have already had some results, and if we did not know what they are, the picture of the possibilities of Czech sociology (and social sciences as a whole) would be incomplete, to say the least. In the nearest future, those changes will become even more visible
[2] The Czech science entered the nineties with a structure of institutions of the Soviet type: universities were strictly focused on teaching, while research was concentrated in the institutions of the Academy of Sciences. The establishment of grant agencies at the beginning of the nineties marked the first change in the system. In this respect, the decisive role is played by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GACR), whose annual financing budget is several times bigger than that of any other grant agency in the Czech Republic. The GACR is financed from the money for science in the state budget. The funds are allocated based on public bidding, in which any competent person may take part, provided that he or she submits a research project that meets certain formal requirements for a research project. In recent years, about 35 per cent of the GACR money has been channelled in this way to university research projects and another 35 per cent to projects at institutions of the Academy of Sciences.
[3] The underlying unbalance inherited from the old political system, however, remained in place - the Academy, in addition to, and independently of, the funds received in the bidding process for grants, obtained a far more substantial part of its resources in the form of an institutional support directly from the science head of the state budget. In 2002, for example, the Academy received 15 per cent of its funds from grants and 85 per cent directly allocated from the state budget. The money universities received, on the other hand, depended only on how successful they were with their grant applications because till the end of nineties practically no funds were allocated directly form the budget money earmarked for science. They did receive a sum of money from the budget of the Ministry of Education that varied, roughly copying the funding received in grants from the GACR the year before. In other words, the university funding consisted of about 50 per cent grant money and 50 per cent state budget funding, with the grand total depending on the success rate of university grant applications from the year before.
[4] This situation was not satisfactory namely because the maximum period of the GACR grant project is three years and universities were unable to engage in long-term research projects. In the mid-90s, restructuring of the institutional architecture of the Czech science began again, and the changes in the financing allowed even universities to build research institutions and implement long-term projects. At the same time, centres of excellence were identified at universities that showed above-average and internationally recognized results over a longer period of time. Starting from the 2000, those centres were institutionally supported as National Research Centres.
[5] At present the Czech sociology is served by three institutions that are responsible for a decisive part of research in sociology, and they are also the most important facilities for the future. All three of them are built to engage not only sociologists but a much broader range of scientists into social science researchers. The closer a research project is to a practical application, the more urgently it needs a multidisciplinary approach. One of the centres is at the Academy of Sciences in Prague, another at Charles University in Prague, and the third one at Masaryk University in Brno. The research staff capacity is approximately 50 full time researchers in each of the three institutions. The centres at Charles and Masaryk Universities also have about 90 doctoral students each.
[6] At Charles University in Prague, the centre of sociological research, or rather of research into social sciences, is at the Faculty of Social Sciences, where the Center for Social and Economic Strategies was founded in 2000 as the national centre of excellence. Its goal is to identify and analyse key issues, developmental barriers and development opportunities of the social, economic and political development of the Czech Republic in a wider global, international, security and ecological context. In addition to that, a long-term research project Czech Society at the Turn of the Second and the Third Millennium is financed at the Faculty of Social Sciences, with a cooperation of all the other disciplines at the Faculty, i.e. political science, media studies and public policy studies in addition to sociology.
[7] Basic as well as applied research in sociology at Masaryk University in Brno is centred in the School for Social Studies, where in 2000 the Research Centre for Personality and Ethnicity Development was established as the national centre of excellence. It coordinates the work at subsidiary research centres at the Institute of Social Medicine at Masaryk University, and other institute at Charles University in Prague. Its research programme is oriented mainly at psychological research into multicultural society and relations between ethnic groups. The Faculty of Social Studies also has the Institute for Family Research and Population Processes which specializes in sociological aspects of demographic processes, reproduction strategies, relations between generations, mixed marriages and socially-deprived families. The third research institution in the complex is the Institute for Social Problems with research programme of marginalized minorities and ethnicities, with several research projects dealing with the Romany populations and other ethnic minorities in the Czech Republic, and research into unemployment and poverty. It also plays host to a branch office of the Research Institute of Labour and Social Affairs whose research programme includes topics like, e.g., Legitimacy of Social Policies, Aging and Social Policies, Population Climate and Population Policies, Immigration Policies and Long-term Monitoring of Poverty.
Brno, 2002
