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Assessing the Priorities in China's Climate Change Policy-Making: Domestic and International Perspectives
Du, Yiyi ; Karlas, Jan (advisor) ; Tesař, Jakub (referee)
This thesis investigates the factors that can sufficiently explain China's policy change on climate change issue. We utilize interest-based theory in environmental politics and constructivism to explore the drivers behind China's climate change policy formulation. The theories are tested by process tracing the historical development of China's policy on climate change. The analysis is further complemented by other explanatory factors based on empirical findings, including domestic policy process and the impact of non-state actors. The study finds out that China's climate change policy has experienced positive changes with growing policy stringency. The result shows that China's climate change policy cannot be sufficiently explained by the interest-based theory, the factor regarding ecological vulnerability can be only partially confirmed. Instead, international norms can provide plausible incentives for policy change through the process of socialization. The final policy outcomes are also connected to the interest of the most influential domestic political actor. The study results help us to better understand the environmental politics in China and provides guidelines to predict China's role in international climate change negotiation after the Conference of Parties in Paris.
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Classification of instruments in approved United Nations Security Council resolutions in 1991-2019
Novotná, Barbora ; Parízek, Michal (advisor) ; Karlas, Jan (referee)
The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the debate concerning the rise of authority of International organizations (IOs) since the end of the cold war. This thesis works with the concepts of authority, "pooling" and "delegation" - these concepts describe how member states of IOs transmit their powers and competences to international organizations. This thesis deals with the study of state sovereignty and intrusiveness into state sovereignty as with the rise of globalization the importance of state territory decreases. State and non-state actors more and more with or without the consent of state actors interfere with state sovereignty of others. This work attempts to show this phenomenon on a study of approved United Nations Security Council resolutions between 1992 and 2019. From these resolutions were collected and categorized instruments according to how the Security Council interferes with state sovereignty by which it exercises its authority in the international system. A dataset was created consisting of approximately the third of all approved resolutions in this period (616 resolutions from 1778). In this dataset we can find almost 12 000 instruments categorized in 83 categories on the scale of index i from 0 to 5 according to how these instruments interfere with state sovereignty....
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US Congress Oversight Power
Červinka, František ; Kotábová, Věra (advisor) ; Karlas, Jan (referee)
CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Political Studies Department of Political Science U.S. Congress Oversight Power - ABSTRACT Bachelor's Thesis Author of the Thesis: František Červinka Study programme: Political Science and International Relations Supervisor: PhDr. Věra Kotábová Year of the defence: 2021 Abstract This Bachelor thesis deals with the implied power of U.S. Congress to conduct oversight. With the exception of the impeachment process that is defined in Article I, the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly state what oversight is and how is it to be administered, thus the goal of this thesis is to explore the theoretical background surrounding oversight, its genesis, techniques, processes, and tools. Focus is given to pertinent Supreme Court rulings, as well as specific mechanisms of oversight, with deeper dive into investigative oversight. Data-based approach in the second part then examines and compares the number of hearings held in Congress in the past 12 years. The aim is to determine if there is a correlation between the level of congressional oversight activity, partisan majority, and the President's party affiliation and what might be some observable trends in the researched period. The conclusion is that while both parties exhibit on average the same level of...
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Explaining the UN Security Council's Selective Involvement in African Conflicts
Urbánek, Daniel ; Karlas, Jan (advisor) ; Daniel, Jan (referee)
The debate over possible selective involvement of the United Nations Security Council in armed conflicts is currently re-emerging both in the academic discussions and in the sphere of practical politics. This thesis aims at explaining the possible reasoning behind this selectivity - often exemplified by the contrasting participation of the United Nations in the crises of Libya and Syria - through a qualitative case study focusing on African intrastate wars. Two possible factors, influencing the Council's decision making, are based on classical theories of International Relations - while realism stresses the interests of the five permanent members of the Council, constructivism puts an emphasis on the normative goals of the organization, therefore on the role of the crisis' severity. The impact of these variables is subsequently assessed within the civil wars in Algeria, Burundi, Djibouti and Guinea-Bissau, with an attempt to depict the relationship between the discussed explanatory factors and the eventual activity of the Security Council.
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"Sinking Islands" and the United Nations Security Council
Bruner, Tomáš ; Hynek, Nikola (advisor) ; Bílková, Veronika (referee) ; Karlas, Jan (referee)
Certain Small Island Developing States (hereinafter the "SIDS") such as Kiribati or Tuvalu are often incorrectly called "sinking islands" because their highest points are located just a few meters above the sea level. Sea level rise may turn their territories to uninhabitable land gradually disappearing beneath the tide. Worsening of the environmental conditions causes internal displacement, migration and other problems. SIDS repeatedly brought their plight to the United Nations Security Council (the "UNSC") during its meetings in 2007, 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2019. They demanded that the UNSC should deal with their situation as a potential security issue and safeguard more equal distribution of environmental security risks and costs. During the UNSC negotiations, various states attempted to interpret and re-interpreted the UNSC mandate in order to suit their interests. The representatives of SIDS suggested that the UNSC should be a body based on the principles of distributive justice decision-making and thus safeguard fairer sharing of threats and burdens, including those of environmental character. The rapidly developing states strongly opposed; they implicitly claimed that the UNSC should be based rather on the principles of commutative justice, i.e. decide in strictly given situations of violations of...
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Integration of environmental policy in the Czech Republic: Analysis from the perspective of political networks theory
Kvapil, Jakub ; Karlas, Jan (advisor) ; Plechanovová, Běla (referee)
The diploma thesis deals with the topic of environmental policy integration (EPI) in the context of global efforts to achieve sustainable development. The aim is to create an analytical framework that will make it possible to examine the level of EPI achieved within individual policy sectors, in this case agriculture. EPI is conceptualized as a rational policy-making process and special focus is put on the institutional and procedural settings of the sector. The relationship of sustainable development and EPI is also of interest, the understanding of which is crucial for grasping the researched issues. Part of the work is the proposal of an alternative analytical framework for examining the achieved level of EPI in a selected sector, which is applied in the last part to the agricultural sector of the Czech Republic. The output of the analysis is a summary of the achieved level of EPI in the agricultural sector, in terms of setting the institutional and procedural framework.
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The Ukraine's Efforts towards Europeanisation
Styrkul, Alexej ; Karlas, Jan (advisor) ; Kučerová, Irah (referee)
This thesis seeks to analyze the process of adoption and implementation of anti-corruption and judicial reforms in Ukraine that were demanded by the European Union between 2014 and 2019 from the perspectives of rational institutionalism and constructivist institutionalism, on the basis of the Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier's direct, top-down model of Europeanization. The thesis is conducted as a congruence analysis by creating ex-ante predictions to each of the factors connected to either perspective. Specifically, the anti-corruption institutional framework, the asset declarations system, the political party financing reform, and the High Anti-Corruption Court are analyzed to demonstrate the limited progress. Subsequent empirical analysis of the aforementioned factors suggests that the rationalist approach offers a better explanation for the stalling reforms - the exceedingly high domestic costs, followed by the lacking credibility. The constructivist approach shows a lesser ability to explain the limited progress of reform adoption and implementation.
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Regional Transition - From Conflict to Cooperation
Kuľková, Miroslava ; Ditrych, Ondřej (advisor) ; Karlas, Jan (referee) ; Koschut, Simon (referee)
Doctoral thesis Regional Transition - From Conflict to Cooperation examines the transformation of world regions from non-cooperative to. It brings reconceptualization of the peaceful change, which it understands as a continuum - negative peace, positive peace, and security community. This understanding builds on the existing literature on peaceful change, yet the conceptualization of the stages is innovated. The main goal of this dissertation is to capture the dynamic process of transition from negative to positive peace, and from positive peace to the security community. It uses findings from the literature on peaceful changes and trust-building to build two comprehensive mechanisms of transition that are subsequently traced with the method of process-tracing in two cases of the region for each type of transition. The focus is on the entities and activities producing the qualitative change in the regional relations. For the transition from negative to positive peace, Western Balkans in the period from 1999 to 2011, and Southeast Asia from 1966 to 2003 are chosen. For the transition from positive peace to the security community, Western Europe (1957-2004) and North America (1940s- 2011) are chosen.
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Russia as a rising power in multilateral institutions
Ananyeva, Ekaterina ; Parízek, Michal (advisor) ; Karlas, Jan (referee) ; Stephen, Matthew D. (referee)
Russia as a rising power in multilateral institutions looks at the Russian attitude towards all institutions this country participated in 2001-2015. I address the questions of what is the attitude of Moscow and what determines the country's choice of attitude patterns. Drawing from the works of those specializing in rising powers and Russian foreign policy, I seek answers to my research questions and contribute to both strings of literature. The parsimonious hypothesis suggests that Russia's attitude depends on its position within the institution. In cases when Moscow holds a strong position in an institution, the country develops a supportive attitude; Russia's weak position within an institution translates into a challenger attitude. I endorse the existing studies by arguing and further supporting with data that Russia tends to be a revisionist in West-led hard-issue institutions it joined after the end of the Cold War. The data points at the supportive attitude pattern also in situations when Russia holds a strong position in institutions it co-founded as a rising power status in the last two decades. The primary data source for the dissertation is the recently released online archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Analyzed with the sentiment analysis software, the...
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