Publication details
Ideas Legitimizing Change : The Case of the Czech 2017 Family Policy Conception
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Social Politics |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | article - open access |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxag011 |
| Keywords | Czech Republic; public philosophies; discursive institutionalism; family policy; gender; legitimacy |
| Description | This article investigates how public philosophies shaped contested meanings of family, gender roles, work, deservingness, and state responsibility in Czech political discourse surrounding the 2017 Family Policy Conception. Although the Conception proposed a shift resembling optional familialism, its implementation resulted in incremental changes aligned with the adult worker model. Drawing on discursive institutionalism and grounded theory, the analysis of sixty-nine media outputs (2014–2017) shows that proponents (Social Democrats) legitimized the reform through technocratic and labor-market oriented arguments while avoiding direct challenges to entrenched gender norms. Conservative parties framed the proposal as excessive state intervention, reinforcing traditional family roles and a narrow, work-based notion of deservingness. The article argues that in the context of institutional path-dependence, dominant public philosophies constrained the discursive space for reform, preventing a paradigmatic shift and limiting it to incremental, work-oriented changes that navigated between the post-communist legacy and contemporary neoliberal ideational frameworks. |
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