Engaging the new democracy

Birgit Müller (1) , Petr Kohutek (2)

1 LAIOS - Laboratoire d'anthropologie des institutions et des organisations sociales
2 Sociologicky-Ustav - Institute of Sociology

The EIA procedure of 1992 opened a new public arena for the decision making on large investment projects that had been in Socialist times the exclusive domain of the state. The new legal frame obliged public and private investors to lay open their projects to public scrutiny and to have their environmental impact assessed by an independent commission. In the controversies about the building of a cement factory next to a nature protected area that will be analysed here, the EIA procedure became a power play for influence in which the political and economic domains are closely intertwined. In the villages close to the projected factory the action of citizen initiatives and ecological associations inscribed itself in the local power struggles and personal conflicts that went far beyond the actual ecological case. The expert procedure thus provided a space in which opinions, values and interests were acted out and it became a testing ground for the actual functioning of the new democratic institutions .

Mots clés: post-socialism; democratization; citizenship; expertise; environmental conflict

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie

Birgit Müller, Petr Kohutek. Engaging the new democracy: The power of participation in the post-communist Czech Republic. Focaal. European Journal of Social Anthropology, 2002, 40, pp.67-81. ⟨halshs-00137888⟩