Today, the state is most often perceived as a complex, all‑pervasive bureaucratic institution that frequently makes life more difficult for its citizens—a system of offices exercising authority over people. Yet the modern state is an entirely exceptional form of organising social life, shaped since the sixteenth century by a wide range of ideas and concrete power structures: religion and ideology, relations between central and local authority, the separation of powers, concepts of monarchy and democracy, tensions between national and universal interests, and theories of human rights.
The authors of this volume examine various forms of the modern Czech (Czechoslovak) state from 1848 onward and, alongside outlining their basic characteristics, consider which social and national groups embraced particular state arrangements and which, by contrast, questioned or even rejected them. Their analyses often lead to surprising conclusions. The book also demonstrates fruitful interdisciplinary cooperation between a historian and a political scientist.
