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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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World maritime shipping at the beginning of 21. Century
Bubnová, Kateřina ; Romancov, Michael (advisor) ; Kučerová, Irah (referee)
The bachelor thesis deals with the world's maritime trade at the beginning of the 21st century. This thesis deals with the development during the 19th and 20th centuries from the point of view of progress, which influenced the modernization and progress in this area, the 20th and 21st century from the economic point of view, how the volume of goods transported changed. Segmenting cargo vessels is another important chapter, splitting into groups and subgroups, allows a better view of types of merchant ships. It also examines international organizations that are very important for determining and adhering to the rules. The chapter on Maritime Policy deals with environmental policy, balancing the goals of sustainable development and economic objectives of countries. The second part of the chapter deals with the issue of maritime piracy, which greatly hinders maritime trade. It focuses more on Somali piracy, although it is not currently the main danger area, so it has its own specifics. The last part deals with the most important ports as the basic components of maritime trade. Navy trails are linked to the New Silk Road, a project of the People's Republic of China, which could change the sea routes, considering new ports.
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Selected Geopolitical Aspects of the EU's Energy Security
Lang, Petr ; Romancov, Michael (advisor) ; Landovský, Jakub (referee) ; Kučerová, Irah (referee)
This thesis deals with the geopolitical aspects resulting from the increasing EU dependence on natural gas imports from the external suppliers. In addition to the investigation into he current situation of the EU market with natural gas, nature of major suppliers is explored, the thesis tries to identify the main risks to the security of supplies, especially the possibility of politically motivated supply disruption. From a broader perspective, it scrutinizes whether the natural gas market is driven by the market-based principles and regulated by international organizations (Market and Institutions scenario) or the bilateral relations between producer and consumer are the decisive factor (Regions and Empires scenario). Furthermore, the analysis of relevant documents issued by the EU institutions is also included and the thesis aims to assess the feasibility of the single 2 European external energy policy. Finally, the thesis includes two case-studies: the first one is dealing with energy relations between Russia and Belarus and Ukraine. The second one is dedicated to the Nord Stream gas pipeline project.
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The motivation of the countries of the Visegrad group for energy cooperation
Kohoutová, Petra ; Kučerová, Irah (advisor) ; Odintsov, Nikita (referee)
Practically every single state sees energy security as one of the main security and political topics nowadays. Its significance is on the rise. Although there is a continuous progress regarding renewable sources of energy, the world remains largely dependent on non- renewable resources. They are unevenly distributed across the world, especially in case of oil and natural gas. This results in dividing the countries between importers and exporters. This diploma thesis focuses on energy cooperation or more precisely on motivations for energy cooperation between member states of the Visegrad group. These four Central European countries share some similarities. In energy area they all are the importers of both oil and gas and they rely on the Russian Federation as their main supplier. Energy cooperation within the Visegrad group is usually explained by two theoretical approaches - realism or neoliberal institutionalism. This thesis introduces these approaches and works with a hypothesis that energy cooperation between the member states of the Visegrad group is best explained by neoliberal institutionalism. The thesis represents a qualitative study and uses the method of a comparative case study. The analytic part of the thesis is divided into four case studies regarding each member state of the V4....
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Brain Drain: Hindering Development of Lesser Developed Nations?
Galeano, Mario ; Parízek, Michal (advisor) ; Kučerová, Irah (referee)
Mario Galeano Thesis- Migration and Remittances: Hindering the Development of Lesser Developed Nations? International Economic and Political Studies Supervisor: Mgr Michal Parizek Abstract As migration has become recently one of the highlights for studies in sociology and economics and is becoming ever more apparent in the political discourse world-wide, the objective of this study is to widen our understanding of its effects on culture, politics, economy and development, particularly in Latin and Central America. It can be considered that the accelerated migration after the fall of Communism will not be slowing down, as economic inequalities within nations keep putting pressure on populations and as the levels of globalization open-up new spaces into which the former primary pressure for migration can be absorbed. An interaction of these two factors thus propels both the supply and the demand for migration. This thesis seeks to understand both sides of the migration phenomenon and investigate to what extent migration is hindering the development of Latin American nations that fall under the attraction of some more developed world powers and which subsequently lose the status of a self-sustaining economy. The study analyzes the case of migration of Central American workers primarily to the United States,...
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Effectiveness of the decision-making process in the WTO - the Uruguay and Doha round
Jánská, Lucie ; Karlas, Jan (advisor) ; Kučerová, Irah (referee)
The study examines multilateral negotiation in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and later in the World Trade Organization. It analyses the effectiveness of the decision-making process on the liberalization of trade in agricultural products in the Uruguay and Doha rounds of negotiations. Agriculture seems to be the most problematic and the most controversial issue on the agenda during the both rounds of negotiations. The aim of the study is to analyse the negotiation processes in selected cases and compare them to identify factors explaining the difference in the effectiveness of the decision-making process between Uruguay and Doha round. The study also attempts to clarify why it is so complicated to conclude the Doha round after more than fifteen years of negotiations. Therefore, six factors with presumed influence on the effectiveness of the decision-making process are defined in the theoretical part of the study: number of actors, leadership, inclusiveness of negotiation, agenda complexity, coalitions and strategies of actors. The degree of influence of these factors is then tested in the practical part of the study. The study assumes that the efficiency of the decision-making process is increased by the reduced number of active actors in the negotiation, the willingness of the actors...
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Caspian natural gas and its relevance for strengthening the EU energy security: challenge for the 21st century?
Binhack, Petr ; Kučerová, Irah (advisor) ; Jakš, Jaroslav (referee) ; Litera, Bohuslav (referee)
This thesis focuses on the discussion of the diversifying natural gas imports into the European Union and the role played by the Caspian region in this respect. The aim of the thesis is to describe the European Union's energy policy in the natural gas sector and to analyze the role of Caspian natural gas and the project of the Southern Gas Corridor. The question of relevance of the Caspian natural gas for strengthening the European Union's energy security comes along at the right time in the current debate on the further development of climate and energy policy. The policy, along with the draft framework for the creation of the Energy Union of 2015, integrates previously parallel European policies related to fight against climate change, energy security, internal energy market and external energy relations with third countries. The thesis is based on the hypothesis that the Caspian region is an alternative resource region capable of providing a diversification of natural gas imports to the European Union. The basic research questions are the following; "Is the European Union capable of influencing the conditions under which Caspian gas will be transported to Europe?" and "Is the Southern Gas Corridor capable of meeting the expectations of its planned volume of 60-120 billion cubic meters of natural...
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Reception of Strategic Economic Narratives: Case Study of the Kenyan News Discourse.
Řehák, Vilém ; Kučerová, Irah (advisor) ; Horáková, Hana (referee) ; Záhořík, Jan (referee)
Strategic narrative is a communicative tool for political elites to construct a shared meaning to the international politics, to articulate state's interests, to change the discursive environment, and to shape the behaviour of other actors. It has three different dynamics, which proceed simultaneously and reinforce each other: formation of the narrative within the given state, its projection in the international arena, and its reception in other states. Theory of strategic narratives fits well into the framework of new regionalism, which tries to analyse relations between the processes of globalization, globalism, regionalization, and regionalism. Until recently, such analyses were conducted from state-level and positivist perspective. As a result, the dimension of reception remained understudied. The presented thesis is an attempt to fill this gap. It analyses global political economy from the interpretivist constructivist perspective: it uses the leading local newspaper as a data sources and analyses media (news) discourse as one form of a broad societal discourse. Such an analysis can help us to analyse how local society assesses and reacts to strategic narratives and their internalization or rejection by local elites. In my thesis, I focus on narratives of the three superpowers (the US, the EU,...
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Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Korea - success or missed opportunity?
Haas, Václav ; Kučerová, Irah (advisor) ; Plechanovová, Běla (referee)
This thesis addresses the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Korea, which is the first one of the new generation free trade agreements for EU. First, the issue is explained in the theoretical framework of the theory of international systems and the theory of neoliberal institutionalism, which allows to grasp it adequately in the international political context. Then, the work presents the development of the legislative environment concerning the common trade policy and the transformation of strategic thinking in this area. Further, it defines the scope of economic interactions between the two participants and their common interests leading to the conclusion of the agreement. Subsequently, the thesis analyses the existing contractual relationships of both participants and defines the main aspects of the newly accepted agreement. Lastly, the current effect of the efficiency of the agreement on the trade with goods and services is analysed.
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A Comparative Analysis of South American Integration: Cases of CAN and UNASUR
Husáková, Gabriela ; Kučerová, Irah (advisor) ; Karlas, Jan (referee)
This thesis deals with the issue of different efficiency between two integrational organizations in Latin America: Andean Community, and Union of South American Nations, by using neoliberal theory of international relations to examine he causes as to why the Andean Community is more efficient than the Union of South American Nations. First, the theoretical definition of neoliberal theory and the concept of cooperation problems are discussed. Then, follow chapters describing integration in Latin America, in general with all its characteristics, and a chapter describing history and basic institutional settings of the two organizations. In the practical part, each cooperation problem is either applied to the organizations and a relation between these problems and institutional setting, number of member states, and homogeneity between member states is examined. In the conclusion, the all three cooperational problems are brought together to determine, whether the main cause of different efficiency is the institutional setting and number of member states, or the homogeneity between members.
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