This paper will assess transparency in the decision-making process in sports grants allocation. In comparison with other parts of the public sector, surprisingly little is known about transparency in the sports sector. An increasing portion of public funds is spent on sport grants; this establishes the necessity for research. Can any positive effects of sports grants be expected to appear without transparency in the decisionmaking process? An examination of the process in reality is crucial for future public resources allocation. Based on the general assumption that NGOs are important actors in economic and political development, we address the Czech Republic at the municipal level. The main goals of this paper are to assess the transparency of the allocation of public grants for sport organizations on the municipal level in the Czech Republic and to discuss one possible method for improving system transparency and efficiency: vouchers. We discuss sport vouchers as a possible tool for improving transparency. Vouchers solve the problem of transparency in the decision-making process by transferring the purchasing power to the client. Although using sports vouchers as a tool for allocating public resources is quite rare, there are a few examples of this practice in the Czech Republic. We established two research questions: (1) Do sport clubs perceive the allocation of sport grants at the municipality level as transparent? (2) Do sport clubs consider a voucher system as helpful for the transparency? To answer these questions, we discuss the theory and specific conditions in the Czech Republic; we perform a survey among sport clubs and we examine examples of voucher implementation; and we discuss the general consequences of our results.
In Europe in 2008 governments spent 36 billion Euro on sports subsidies. One of the main goals for spending public money on sports is to increase the participation of people in sports. Th e Czech Republic even spent more than average on sports. However, the participation in sports in this country lags behind the European average. Th is article investigates whether the way such grants are given can explain this. One of the outcomes of this paper is that transparency in the decision-making process in sports-grants allocation is lacking, resulting in many cases of fraud. Th is paper also investigates the merits of an alternative way of allocating money, which is, using sports vouchers as a tool for allocating public resources. Th e experience with that instrument is, although rare, quite positive, especially in reducing fraud. Although there is a lot of hesitance against using vouchers, the experience shows that this is primarily based on prejudice and unfamiliarity with this instrument.
Transformation of the health care system was a task faced by all formerly socialist Central and Eastern European countries. The years of changes revealed a large number of problems, including those induced by the limited capacity of governments to formulate and implement health care reforms. The goal of this article is to reflect the Czech situation. We start by summarizing the historical development of the Czech health care system in the context of government capacity for implementing health policy. In the core parts of this article, we highlight the main features of Czech health policy making and implementation and present an in-depth analysis of two selected country-specific issues - a low level of patient co-payments and a pluralistic insurance-based financing of health services.
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