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EU's Imperialism: Contemporary CSDP Missions
Šmardová, Martina ; Ditrych, Ondřej (advisor) ; Parízek, Michal (referee)
The thesis focuses on the contemporary CSDP missions of the European Union from the point of view of critical literatures on imperialism, state-building and capacity-building. State-building and capacity-building gradually became dominant approaches towards weak and failing states which are associated with the exercise of power and influence in the critical literature, e.g. in David Chandler on whose argument this thesis draws on. The thesis develops Chandler's argument by means of analysis of intervention practices in the selected cases.
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European Union as a State-Building Power
Zdrálek, Jan ; Ditrych, Ondřej (advisor) ; Kučerová, Irah (referee)
This thesis concentrates on the role of the European Union as a state-building power. It scrutinizes EU foreign policy in terms of state-building phenomena in three selected areas: Western Balkans, Eastern Partnership, and Southern Neighbourhood. First, it presents the EU as an increasingly powerful international actor and a normative power. Then, it overviews the existing literature on state-building with a special focus on Francis Fukuyama's neoliberal approach and David Chandler's critical remarks. The thesis is methodologically grounded in the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), specifically the four-value fuzzy set QCA, which enables to bridge the quantitative and qualitative approaches. The analysis operates with 23 cases (countries) and five variables in order to assess the EU state-building practices in relation to the targeted states' resilience. Drawing on the moderate generalizations from QCA results, the thesis concludes that the EU is, indeed, a state-building power which strengthens the resilience of states through its state-building practices.
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Securitization of Migration in the Czech Republic - Role of Refugee Women in the Discourse on Migration
Čermáková, Kristýna ; Záhora, Jakub (advisor) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (referee)
Master's Thesis Kristýna Čermáková Abstract This master's thesis explores the topic of the securitization of migration in the Czech Republic and the gender dimension of the discourse on migration. After a theoretical exploration of the migratory process and the specificities of its female face, a discourse analysis of the Czech media will present the main epistemological core of the work. The primary research question attempts to identify the ways in which the Czech media contributes to the shifting perception of migration as belonging to the sphere of politics, even presenting migration as a threat to security. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter provides a theoretical insight into migration studies, the motives to migrate and the phenomenon of forced migration. Despite the general assumption of mainstream academics that migrants are mainly men, the second chapter shows that women's experiences with migration differ greatly from those of men. Based on the Copenhagen stream of thought, the discourse analysis of the Czech media carried out in the third chapter points to the construction of perceptions about migration within Czech society. The absence of gender in the public discourse on migration is further analyzed in the last chapter. The missing gender dimension proved to be...
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The Effects of Securitising Migration: The Case of Slovakia and the Czech Republic
Bandurová, Jana ; Ditrych, Ondřej (advisor) ; Záhora, Jakub (referee)
The Master's thesis called "The Effects of Securitising Migration: The case of Slovakia and the Czech Republic" aims to analyse the extent to which is migration constructed as a security threat in crucial conceptual and strategic documents regarding migration, drafted by the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic and the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic. Given that the Ministry of Interior is a key player in the field of migration in both countries setting the direction of migration policy on conceptual, legislative and implementation level, it enters a discursive field of migration by offering its own understanding of migration, which has a great impact on the policymaking in the area of migration, migration practice and consequently on the life of migrants. Despite the fact that both Slovakia and the Czech Republic have one of the lowest shares of foreigners within population in the whole European Union as well as neither of the two countries have been the final destinations of migrants during the so called refugee crisis, we can identify the dominant role of security discourse in both countries. To get a better insight into a wider social context, the thesis also builds on the number of "texts and talks" dealing with the issue of migration beside the official policy documents and...
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Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East: Changes of the US Foreign Policy after the Suez Crisis
Repčíková, Soňa ; Soukup, Jaromír (advisor) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (referee)
The presented thesis is an analysis of American foreign policy thinking applying comprehensive analysis of three presidential administrations. The analysis is embedded in the historical context of the Suez Crisis, and provides a picture of the change in US foreign policy after the Suez Crisis comparing the three foreign policy doctrines related to this particular period of history - D. D. Eisenhower, J. F. Kennedy and L. John Johnson. The foreign policy doctrine represents a particular expression, image of foreign policy of a given state. The American political system is known by several historically and politically significant foreign policy doctrines. The thesis describes how the US foreign policy is created and what leads to the process of formulation of the presedential doctrines. An important element in the background of the analysis is the Cold War itself. Besides the theoretical definition, the work also provides the complex features of the administrations of the three presidents submited to analysis. Part of the characteristic is the analysis of individual foreign policy doctrines that points out the difference among administrations derived from the historical moment of the Suez crisis. The results of the comparison will draw conclusions on the similarity as well as possible differences...
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Theories of International Relations in the Regions of East and Southeast Asia
Schultzová, Kateřina ; Kofroň, Jan (advisor) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to assess three recognized theories of international relations (the offensive realist theory by John Mearsheimer, the defensive realist theory by Charles Glaser and the liberal theory by John Ikenberry) and determine which of them best corresponds to the development in East and Southeast Asia in the past three decades (1989-2016). This theory-testing case study first introduces the three theories, their basic assumptions and what they predict for the region, especially with regards to actions of the People's Republic of China. The independent variables established by the theories (power, motivation, environment and participation in the global order) are then compared with the dependent variables that represent various aspects of China's behavior. Military spending, economic disputes within the WTO and territorial disputes with Chinese participation are all analyzed with the goal of including a wide range of Chinese behavior in the international sphere. Correlations between the independent and dependent variables determine which theory is the strongest. The theory with the most correlations is pronounced as the most successful. Subsequently, a brief prediction is added: the most successful theory is then utilized to construct a short-term prediction for the region of East...
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Securitization of Muslim populations following the Charlie Hebdo attacks: Comparison of media discourses in France and Great Britain
Kňazeová, Petra ; Ditrych, Ondřej (advisor) ; Kučera, Tomáš (referee)
The thesis seeks to analyse media discourse of four print media in Great Britain and in France in the time period between January 2014 and November 2015 to determine what changes in media discourse occurred after the terrorist attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris and how were the domestic Muslim communities affected. Thesis draws on the theories of securitization, Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse Historical Analysis and media studies. The two countries are contrasted in terms of their approaches to integration (multiculturalism and assimilation). Corpus consisting of articles drawn from online databases of two French and two British national newspapers is analysed.
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The Securitisation of Immigration: An Assessment of the Extent of Securitisation of Immigration in Germany in the Aftermath of the 2015 European Refugee Crisis
Grünewald, Tabea Magdalena ; Ditrych, Ondřej (advisor) ; Kaleta, Ondřej (referee)
This Master Thesis called "The Securitization of Immigration. An Assessment of the Extent of Securitization of Immigration in the German Political Discourse in the aftermath of the 2015 European Refugee Crisis" aims to identify the influence of the 2015 European refugee crisis on the German political discourse in reference to immigration and asylum. Since immigration became one of the greatest security concerns in the post-Cold War era, it appears plausible that the unprecedented high-numbers of asylum applications in 2015/16 triggered securitization in Germany. This impression is reinforced in reference to the increasing popularity of the anti-Islam, far-right PEGIDA movement and the right-wing populist party AfD. However, the merely welcoming attitude towards refugees among the German population, which attracted attention all over the world, challenges the securitization thesis, because the political discourse is assumed to be oriented towards public opinion. Thus, the political discourse in the aftermath of the 2015 European Refugee Crisis is assumed to be torn between fear (securitization discourse) and optimism (humanitarian discourse) in regard to immigration and asylum. By conducting a discourse analysis, contextualized speech-acts based on a generic structure used by Holger Stritzel were...
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Syria and Responsibility to Assist: A New Approach to Conflict Resolution?
Lanková, Kateřina ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (referee)
The main aim of the master thesis titled "Syria and the concept responsibility to assist: new approach towards conflict resolution?" is to find out whether the extension of the doctrine of responsibility to protect by the concept of responsibility to assist that is based on the support of nonviolent movements could work as a new approach towards conflict resolution and thanks to this it could constitute another way of international assistance and civilian protection in cases when it is the regime that perpetrates the violence against its own population. For this reason the thesis, via the Syrian civil war that offers wide range of internal responses to the violence perpetrated by the regime against civilians, focuses on three different forms of international involvement and assistance. These are the international military intervention under the third pillar of R2P, the backing of domestic violent groups and insurgents and last but not least the assistance to nonviolent movements and civil initiatives in the form of R2A as a potential expansion of the second pillar under the R2P doctrine. These approaches are analyzed with regard to the issues of state sovereignty and moral responsibility to protect civilians that arises from the inconsistency of these two aspects in relation to any kind of...
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Nagorno Karabakh: Ethnopolitics and geopolitics of conflict
Ditrych, Ondřej ; Aslan, Emil (advisor) ; Horák, Slavomír (referee)
This diploma thesis focuses on the relationship between ethnopolitics (defined by a raised demand of political autonomy for a community delimited along ethnical lines) and geopolitics (spatial definition and pursuing of national interests, determined by power) in what is one of most serious conflicts in post-Soviet space - Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Structure of the thesis is dialectical. Firstly, it defines terms such as conflict, conflict resolution or security, which will be used in the rest of the paper. Then, the conflict is placed into a spatial context, be it in its physical/material or spiritual/historical dimension. An effort is made to contextually embed Nagorno- Karabakh into the region of South Caucasus - whose politics has for centuries been shaped by conflicting interests of great powers - and to present a detailed projection of the disputed territory; not merely that of Nagorno-Karabakh itself, but also that of adjacent raions, whose total area is almost double in comparison. The main argument of this section is that the value of Nagorno-Karabakh rests not in the material realm - a dispute over "scarce resources" - but rather in the spiritual one, for is is perceived by the parties to the conflict as a "territorialization of national memory", or a constitutive element...
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