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Blazyca Prize

The George Blazyca Prize in East European Studies

BASEES has established the George Blazyca Prize in recognition of the outstanding contribution to its field of study made by the late George Blazyca. The regulations are proposed as follows: 

1. The prize, of one hundred and fifty pounds, is offered annually for scholarly work of high quality in East European studies. This is taken to include those countries of Eastern Europe that were formerly under communist rule that were not part of the Soviet Union
2. A nomination may take the form of a singly or jointly authored book, or two or more related journal articles or chapters. 
3. Works nominated for consideration must be of a scholarly character, must be in English, and must have been published - as defined by the date of imprint or, if a periodical, the cover date – according to point 9 below. 
4. The authors of nominated work must at the time of nomination be members or associate members of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies. 
5. Awards will be made by a jury whose membership will be approved by the Executive Committee of the Association. 
6. The jury may divide the Prize equally between not more than two nominated works in any year; or they may make no award in any year in which no work of sufficient merit presents itself. 
7. Works may be nominated for consideration by the authors, or by publishers, librarians or other scholars. 
8. A copy of the nominated work(s) should also be supplied. 
9. The deadline for submission of nominations shall be 30 September each year in respect of publications that appeared during the previous calendar year. The prize is awarded (if a recommendation is made to do so) at the Association's annual conference in the spring of the calendar year following the deadline for submission of nominations.
10. Nominations should be made on the standard form for this purpose, which is available as a download from this page, and submitted to the Press Officer of the Association. 

The deadline for nominations for books published in 2007 is 30 September 2008.  The judges for the Blazyca Prize are Geoff Swain and Frances Millard. Winners will be announced at the 2009 conference.

First Award at the 2007 Annual Conference

Frances Millard (University of Essex) for Elections, Parties and Representation in Post-Communist Europe (Palgrave, 2004)

"This excellent book provides a timely exploration of the relationship between the development of political parties and the quality of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. It combines innovative approaches from political science with a deep knowledge of the new political systems of the region to identify a complex set of different emerging trends. Millard makes clear that it is only in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia that the political systems have fully stabilized. Elsewhere there continues to be considerable electoral volatility as new political elites struggle to win the confidence of the electorate. With chapters devoted to such issues as the variety of electoral mechanisms employed throughout the region, the character of different party systems, the selection of candidates and their social background, and the decline in the number of women in political life, the book brings real breadth as well as depth to its subject.
Millard concludes by citing a comment made about Latvia, but bearing on the region as a whole: ‘ordinary citizens have doubts as to the quality and trustworthiness of their political representatives and their mistrust and cynicism over the political process is widespread.’ She thus reveals that, despite many differences, the politics of Post-Communist Europe is not so very different from our own." (Terry Cox and Geoffrey Swain, April 2007)