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Preconditions of Democracy: How forced democratization depends on transformation and state-building characteristics
Kraft, Michael ; Hays II, George (advisor) ; Laryš, Martin (referee)
Military Democratic Intervention is a common strategy of foreign interaction especially since World War II. However, the question why some interventions are successful in implementing democracy and others are still not answered satisfactorily. Whereas the scientific debate so far focused on mission specific characteristics including variables such as personnel or financial equipment of interventions, the underlying assumption of this work is that external democratized countries need to exhibit the same preconditions as countries internally democratized. Therefore, the transition and state-building literature is investigated and five clusters of preconditions for successful democratization is developed. With a Qualitative Comparative Analysis, a dataset comprising 27 cases, eight variables and the outcome variable, the author provides evidence for the significance of all five clusters. Most importantly, the level of human development and modernization as well as the predecessor regime type and the experience with democratic experience strand out. Further, the combination of the variables of high GDP, an ethnically homogeneous society and a democratically ruled neighborhood are identified as variables sufficiently influencing successful democratization after a military intervention. These results...
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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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Democracy assistance policies of the US and the EU: different approaches and their causes
Hornát, Jan ; Weiss, Tomáš (advisor) ; van Hüllen, Vera (referee) ; Fawn, Rick (referee)
The United States of America and the institutions of the European Union are the most prominent democracy assistance donors in third countries. Over the last two decades, they have spent tens of billions of dollars to support the formation and consolidation of democratic regimes around the world. In this sense, the US and the EU have seemingly shared interests - i.e. seeking to build democratic institutions in target countries so that these become part of the community of democracies and contribute to the stability of the world's economic and political system. However, if we look at the approaches and strategies used by the US and the EU to support democracy, we find that they are often quite different and, in some respects, clashing. Why are the approaches of both actors different if they strive to reach the same goal? Or - upon closer examination - are their goals indeed somewhat different? The key problem is that democracy as such is a contested concept, so it is necessary to ask the question: if we are promoting democracy, what kind of democracy do we mean? If we finance the development of one or the other institution, what model of democratic establishment will be created? The thesis takes a constructivist view of this issue and demonstrates how the different democratic identities of the two...
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Impact of the international community on ethnic conflicts in the Western Balkans
Hrušík, Michal ; Barša, Pavel (advisor) ; Stojarová, Věra (referee) ; Polišenská, Milada (referee)
The dissertation is aimed at the analysis of various strategies and approaches of the international community in solving conflicts having originated due to the dissolution of former Yugoslavia since 1991. It is divided into two sections - the former being devoted to the historiographical description of events taking place in the particular countries with main focus on various peace plans and other initiatives proposed and suggested by the international community, while the latter emphasizes potential security threats that might be faced by the region. At the same time it is trying to offer lessons from the mistakes and failures made in the past, since these could become relevant for the international community when dealing with potential new conflicts. Current probability of the origin of new security threats in the form of ethnic conflicts was selected as the main criterion for the selection of countries analyzed in the dissertation - this is also why Croatia is excluded; although it was a significant player of ethnic conflict in 1991-95, due to considerable elimination of Serbian minority representation as a result of the Operation Storm this country does not further constitute a relevant melting pot, where ethnically motivated tensions could rise again. Hence, the analysis is targeted at two...
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Nation-building in Iraq after 2003
Aliová, Naďa ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Střítecký, Vít (referee)
The main aim of the master thesis titled "Nation-Building in Iraq after 2003" is to evaluate the success of nation-building processes in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. The analytical approach of the German political scientist Jochen Hippler serves as a theoretical and terminological starting point. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter deals with the general and conceptional problems and of the terms "nation" and "nation-building". This is followed by a brief overview of Iraqi history. The next part is devoted to Hippler's three central elements of successful nation-building applied to the Iraqi context (i.e. integrating ideology, national integration and state-building). The third chapter explores whether ethnosectarian identities are subordinate to Iraqi national identity. The forth chapter is focused on Kurdish- Iraq relations and its potential implications for territorial (and economic) cohesion of Iraq and the following chapter deals with capabilities of the state apparatus concerning governance, providing security and delivering basic services. In conclusion, the level of success is summarized in the three dimensions respectively as well as with regad to overall nation- building process in Iraq.
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State-building and developing governance capacity in East Timor
Šestáková, Michaela ; Karásek, Tomáš (advisor) ; Ditrych, Ondřej (referee)
This diploma thesis elaborates on state-building in the form of a case study of East Timor. East Timor has hosted an international state-building intervention as a result of the lack of governance capacity. East Timor is not the first case of a failed state with implied international state-building, but applied transitional administration in this format is unique. The United Nations established UNTAET with a finite time period which has been prolonged twice since May 2002. This thesis examines international state-building and its linkage with local participation and ownership. The goal of the thesis is to determine whether the peace-building in East Timor was successful. It continues with the second research question regarding the main aspects of state-building which helped to enhance performance in governance and public administration areas. Using Fukuyama's theoretical background, this thesis builds a hypothesis on the notion, that aspects which helped enhance performance are those connected with local participation and ownership. The method of the research is process tracing between autumn 1999 to May 2002, when the independent state of Timor-Leste was established. Although UNTAET was successful in creating institutional and process bases in areas of governance and public administration, local...
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Intervention in Afghanistan: Soviet and American experience
Tzoumas, Janis ; Matějka, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Knotková, Vladimíra (referee)
This diploma thesis analyzes the approach of the Soviet Union and that of the US-led coalition to state-building in Afghanistan, which today, as in the past, takes place against the backdrop of counterinsurgency warfare. The analysis in the field of politics, economy and security shows that in both cases the intervening powers have focused on building a strongly centralized system of government, in spite of the fact that the Afghan countryside's relationship to the Kabul-based government had traditionally been characterized by broad autonomy. The intervening powers' efforts have futhermore been associated with the export of exogenous political structures and for this reason attention is also drawn to the question to what extent the intervening powers' approach to the modernization of Afghan society has contributed to the escalation of unrelenting conflict.
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