On Relations between Government and Non-profits: The Case of Slovakia

In this chapter, we look at non-profits and civil society as a transit zone for solidarity acts, social innovations and initiatives to influence social policy by means of co-creation and collaboration with government (public sector organisations). The aim is to present collaboration practices between public sector organisations, non-governmental organisation, social economy organisations and citizens, known as co-creation, with a focus on drivers and barriers of this collaboration in Slovakia. The chapter focuses on channelling solidarity produced by non-profits into social policy through co-creation. Introducing the solidarity economy approach allows us to evaluate the relationships between the government sector and non-profit organisations from a broader societal perspective including both economic and democratic dimensions

Telework in Public Sector Organizations: The Slovak National Library

Reforms of government and public administration combined with use of information and communications technologies (ICT) have brought many innovations in public sector, including telework as a form of organizing and performing work out of the employers´ premises. This structural change in work organization aims at increasing efficiency and in some cases, economy, too. The authors used qualitative and quantitative approach based on original survey data from own research, including data collected within the LIPSE project. Main findings point out the factors that influence the use of telework in the conditions of Slovakia in a selected public sector organization, e.g. the social, technological and inter-institutional dynamics factors playing a vital role in telework adoption

COVID-19 and participatory budgeting in North Macedonia and Slovakia

The practice of fostering citizen participation in public finance-related decision making at local government level in North Macedonia and Slovakia has backslid during COVID-19. Since COVID-19 prompted a worldwide lockdown, governments were forced to introduce emergencies and/or develop “new” participation methods. The paper aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on citizens’ participation in financial decision-making using participatory budgeting among the local self-governments in North Macedonia and Slovakia and identify possible COVID-19-specific and general barriers to such participation, considering the particular context of the two countries

Civil Society Versus Local Self‐Governments and Central Government in V4 Countries

In the new EU member states, there are very few studies analyzing the role of central and local self-governments in co-design processes. Nevertheless, such studies are particularly important as co-creation takes place in the context of former post-communist countries where central power reigned supreme and cooperation with the civil sector was very limited. This article aims to enrich the existing debate on the role of central and local self-government in the context of co-creation at the local level—specifically to map the extent to which local and central governments in the Visegrad Four region (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) support local participatory budgeting initiatives as one of the most important forms of co-creation. The findings are very interesting, as each country has its situation and specificities. The (positive but also negative) role of the central state is limited but not invisible, except in the Czech Republic. The relations between civil society (and formal NGOs) and local self-governments are somewhat more similar within the countries studied. At the beginning of participatory budgeting, the civil sector and NGOs served as initiators and local self-governments as followers. However, this position has been steadily shifting towards the dominance of local self-governments and the marginalization of the civil society’s role

XXIV. mezinárodní kolokvium o regionálních vědách

Title in English: 24th International Colloquium on Regional Sciences: Conference proceedings. The conference proceedings consists of papers presented at the 24rd International Colloquium on Regional Sciences that was organized by Department of Regional Economics and Administration FEA MU. It contains 79 articles arranged by topic. The individual articles deal with e.g. socioeconomic disparities among regions, regional policy, territory attractiveness, tourism or regional public administration

Welfare Co-Production: Hungarian and Slovak Reality

For more than 30 years the delivery of local public services has been undergoing change, from a style of delivery dominated by the public sector to a more efficient, more effective mixed system, characterised by variations in ownership and sources of financing. Concepts such as public-private-civil sector mix, partnerships, co-operation, and co-creation have emerged as ways of organising public-services production and delivery. Our case deals with co-production via the involvement of the third sector in welfare services. The goal of this paper is to map the real relations between public bodies and the non-governmental sector in the co-production of welfare services in two newer EU member countries – Hungary and Slovakia. The information obtained suggests that the examples of good practice exist, but at a global level the quality of partnership between the government and the non-governmental sector is problematic. The study also highlights important drivers and barriers determining the quality of collaboration and the results of projects – limited resources (mostly financial) to implement collaborative welfare innovations on both sides seem to be the core barrier