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The Nature of Conflict in the Arctic: A Rationalist Approach to the Conflict Triggers
Benda, Lukáš ; Solovyeva, Anzhelika (advisor) ; Střítecký, Vít (referee)
Lukáš Benda Master's thesis 2023 The Nature of Conflict in the Arctic: A Rationalist Approach to the Conflict Triggers Abstract This Master's thesis explores the triggers of the conflict in the Arctic between the littoral states. Its goal is to identify key conflict drivers, based on the existing literature, then assess their intensity, based on the existing framework and supplemented by this thesis' own definition of conflict. By using the theory of rational choice and the bargaining model of war, it is studied why and how has the Arctic issues not escalated into armed confrontation, a topic which has been prominent in the literature at one time. By applying the aforementioned theories, this thesis links the conflict triggers to an intensity level, while applying the bargaining model of war on a non-violent conflict. The conclusions should determine the intensity of each conflict trigger, while explaining the changes in the conflict, including the external influencing factors. Developing its own definition of conflict and an intensity scale, this thesis aims to fill the gap in the existing literature, which usually focuses on the conflict as a singular topic, while introducing and exploring different layers of the conflict derived from identification of the conflict triggers.
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French Military Interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa 2003 - 2012
Chlebounová, Tereza ; Tomalová, Eliška (advisor) ; Weiss, Tomáš (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to answer how and why France intervenes in Sub-Saharan Africa in the new millennium. This region represented the pivotal part of French colonial empire and France maintained close mutual relationship even after decolonization, partly due to the numerous military interventions. Security and defence policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa underwent gradual changes since the 1990s', France started to participate in multilateral peace operations and outside its traditional sphere of influence. Since 2003, when the European Union launched the first operation on the African continent, the vast majority of French interventions took place within the Common Security and Defence Policy of the EU. There were twelve new operations in the examined period 2003-2012, from which four military missions were selected for the purpose of this research: Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, EUFOR DR Congo ibidem in 2006, EUFOR Chad/CAR in Chad and Central African Republic from 2008 to 2009 and naval operation EU NAVFOR Atalanta launched by the coast of Somalia in 2008. The thesis compares these cases in order to analyse motives which lead France to intervene in Sub-Saharan Africa and to prefere multilateral type of operation. The motives are assessed in the context of the...
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Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected Countries
Sál, Karel ; Jüptner, Petr (advisor) ; Brunclík, Miloš (referee) ; Chytilek, Roman (referee)
203 12 Dissertation Summary Dissertation title: Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected Countries Name and Surname: Karel Sál Field of Study: Political Science Place of Work: Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague Dissertation Supervisor: PhDr. Petr Jüptner, Ph.D. No. of Pages: 203 No. of Appendixes: 30 Year of Defense: 2016 Keywords: internet voting; remote internet voting; electoral turnout; crisis of democracy; theory of participation; rational choice theory; Estonia; Switzerland; France; Norway; Spain. Abstract: The dissertation thesis named Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected States reflects the phenomenon of the last decade - incorporation of new media into the political process. Internet voting is one of the discussed and suggested solutions of the so-called crisis of democracy, which could possibly stop the negative trend of diminishing voter turnout in advanced western democracies. The entire academic debate can be summarized into one question: It is possible, that the way of ballot casting can affect the voter turnout in that scale, that we can recognize a significant-positive...
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Quantum Theory of International Relations: Modeling Strategic Interaction with Quantum Probability Theory
Tesař, Jakub ; Drulák, Petr (advisor) ; Tyc, Tomáš (referee) ; Karlas, Jan (referee)
Recent results from cognitive psychology suggest that human behavior can be, in some situations, better described by laws known from physical quantum theory. This work responds to this development and seeks to answer the question of how quantum models of cognition and decision-making can contribute to our understanding of the social world. We introduce the approaches to the application of quantum theory in social sciences - quantum consciousness, quantum reasoning and quantum metaphor and further develop the second, in the context of strategic interaction in game theory. We show that the quantum model corresponds to both the psychological intuition and many empirically known anomalies such as the order effect, disjunction effect, or context effect. In this work, we derive a specific model of strategic interaction between two players, and we test it in the experimental Prisoner's Dilemma game. The model is based on the rational choice theory, which is nevertheless re-defined when it is shown how the strategic choice is changed if the quantum probability (C*-algebra) is used as the underlying theory instead of classical probability (σ-algebra). The results obtained support the quantum model and showed a different representation of the game among various groups of players. The quantum model of...
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Far-left terrorism: the case of the Japanese Red Army
Hromádková, Klára ; Charvát, Jan (advisor) ; Bureš, Oldřich (referee)
The Japanese student leftist movement, which already started to take shape after the Second World War, was an important phenomenon of 1960s Japanese politics. The outcome of this situation was the creation of a number of extremist and terrorist organizations, such as the Japanese Red Army which is the studied subject of this work. In the first part of the work I present a detailed description of this group, specifically its history, ideology, organisation, leaders, the most famous terrorist actions, foreign relations, and current status. In the research part of the work I examine the terrorist attacks perpetrated by the Japanese Red Army, namely the choice of targets. In the study I apply the rational choice theory and inspect whether group's targeting was rational and whether there was, during its thirty years of existence, a variation present in the choice of targets. The results suggest that the Army preferred soft, less guarded targets, and that this choice was influenced by the group's ideology but probably also by its earlier cooperation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
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Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected Countries
Sál, Karel ; Jüptner, Petr (advisor) ; Brunclík, Miloš (referee) ; Chytilek, Roman (referee)
203 12 Dissertation Summary Dissertation title: Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected Countries Name and Surname: Karel Sál Field of Study: Political Science Place of Work: Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague Dissertation Supervisor: PhDr. Petr Jüptner, Ph.D. No. of Pages: 203 No. of Appendixes: 30 Year of Defense: 2016 Keywords: internet voting; remote internet voting; electoral turnout; crisis of democracy; theory of participation; rational choice theory; Estonia; Switzerland; France; Norway; Spain. Abstract: The dissertation thesis named Democracy in the Lack of Interest: the Effects of Remote Internet Voting Implementation in the Electoral Process of Selected States reflects the phenomenon of the last decade - incorporation of new media into the political process. Internet voting is one of the discussed and suggested solutions of the so-called crisis of democracy, which could possibly stop the negative trend of diminishing voter turnout in advanced western democracies. The entire academic debate can be summarized into one question: It is possible, that the way of ballot casting can affect the voter turnout in that scale, that we can recognize a significant-positive...
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Facets of motivation in crowdfunding
Matoušek, Vojtěch ; Lupač, Petr (advisor) ; Sládek, Jan (referee)
This thesis serves as an introduction to an investigation of sociological aspects of motivation of funding in crowdfunding projects. The text explains basic internal mechanisms of a crowdfunding campaign and the explanation is based on a review of available literature and on own qualitative study carried out on a sample of crowdfunding campaign planners. The described mechanisms reveal individual aspects of crowdfunding motivation. The thesis works with a hypothesis that the aspects can be divided into two dimensions: the social dimension based on the theory of social exchange and the economical dimension based on the theory of rational choice. The hypothesis was tested by a quantitative approach using data collected on a sample of backers. Instead of approving the hypothesis, the data revealed that there were five dimensions associated with the aspects of backer motivation. The dimensions are described and discussed in the thesis.
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French Military Interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa 2003 - 2012
Chlebounová, Tereza ; Tomalová, Eliška (advisor) ; Weiss, Tomáš (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to answer how and why France intervenes in Sub-Saharan Africa in the new millennium. This region represented the pivotal part of French colonial empire and France maintained close mutual relationship even after decolonization, partly due to the numerous military interventions. Security and defence policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa underwent gradual changes since the 1990s', France started to participate in multilateral peace operations and outside its traditional sphere of influence. Since 2003, when the European Union launched the first operation on the African continent, the vast majority of French interventions took place within the Common Security and Defence Policy of the EU. There were twelve new operations in the examined period 2003-2012, from which four military missions were selected for the purpose of this research: Operation Artemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, EUFOR DR Congo ibidem in 2006, EUFOR Chad/CAR in Chad and Central African Republic from 2008 to 2009 and naval operation EU NAVFOR Atalanta launched by the coast of Somalia in 2008. The thesis compares these cases in order to analyse motives which lead France to intervene in Sub-Saharan Africa and to prefere multilateral type of operation. The motives are assessed in the context of the...
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Anchoring of the Concept of Flexicurity in the CR in the View of Rational Choice Theory and of Sociological Institutionalism
Hájek, David ; Šlosarčík, Ivo (advisor) ; Drulák, Petr (referee)
This diploma thesis is a single-case study analyzing promotion of the concept of Flexicurity principle in the CR through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). The concept of flexicurity began raising European integration actors' awareness since early 2000s. That was due to considerations how to strenghten competitiveness of the EU Member States' economies during growing expansion of more liberal markets such as China, and in the same time to maintain the European social model based on the concept of welfare state. In 2007, there was adopted EU's definition of Flexicurity. Flexicurity began to be promoted by the OMC. This thesis responds to the lack of studies analyzing the influence of the OMC in specific policy areas. The author analyzes literature, relevant legislation as well as their explanatory reports, National Reform Programmes, Czech government's policy statements, and interviews with representatives of tripartite actors who take part in social dialogue. The study explores how does the OMC work in the case of Flexicurity promotion. The aim is to find out which of the selected theories is more suitable for describing the way Flexicurity is anchored in the CR. Selected theories are the Rational Choice Theory (RCT) and the theory of Sociological Institutionalism (SI). The author concludes...
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Downs rational choice theory and its applicability to explain votrers turnout in the Czech Republic
Koreň, Pavel ; Linek, Lukáš (advisor) ; Kabele, Jiří (referee)
This thesis deals with the applicability of Anthony Downs rational choice theory to the Czech environment, respectively the utility of its model to explain voter turnout and identification of rationality among Czech voters. First part provides theoretical foundation of work, explanation of basic concepts from which the work draws and alternative theories to the research problem. It also presents current state of society in terms of policy perceptions, and participation in elections. The core of the work is to present Downs' rational choice theory, different views on it and its possible extension in terms of criticism. The basic variables introduced are here, in particular how are percieved by various authors, what is their content and what affects them. In the analytical part, the variables are examined within the reserach aims in terms of frequency in the population and individual segments of the electorate. The primary parameters of the rational choice theory model are then tested in terms of interdependence, and in terms of their significance in the model and their influence on voter turnout. The conclusion summarizes the research results, and demonstrates evaluation of the applicability of the model to the Czech voters, the relevance of individual variables representing the rational choice...
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