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The Organizational-Cybernetic Approach to International Institutions Michal Parízek Abstract of the dissertation One of the key tasks of the institutionalist research in international relations should be to explore how the functioning of international institutions can be enhanced through alterations of their design, where design is understood as the only factor that can have a direct causal effect on the institutions' functioning and that, at the same time, is at least in principle amenable to conscious manipulation. The task of this dissertation is to elaborate on whether this can be at all done and, if yes, how exactly and under what conditions. To deal with these problems, I present what is best labelled as the organizational-cybernetic approach, a theoretical and conceptual framework based on insights from the field of organizational cybernetics. Building on the organizational-cybernetic framework, I outline the concept of information transmission capacity as the right dependent variable for the study of how design impacts on functioning of institutions. Subsequently I present the viable system model, an organizational- cybernetic model that identifies on a general level all the key information channels necessary for viability of any governance scheme. Using this approach, we can proceed in the...

The thesis is devoted to the analysis of media representation of Russian and Ukrainian state-owned enterprises in the European media. Non-specialized media sources from Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland are selected as case studies and 4 data samples of 340 articles altogether are taken. With the application of the content analysis technique, the thesis answers several research questions. First, the question of which representation image (geoeconomic or business) prevails in media is addressed. Second, the difference in representation between the Ukrainian and Russian state-owned enterprises is demonstrated. Third, the thesis shows how the representation of state enterprises changes within the 2007-2022 timeframe. Keywords Russia, state-owned enterprises, Gazprom, European media, media representation, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, content analysis, Ukraine, geoeconomics, state capitalism. Title European media representation of Ukrainian and Russian state enterprises.

The master's thesis examines states' compliance with the UPR and UN treaty bodies by exploring pre-selected factors influencing states' compliance with human rights provisions and recommendations stemming from UN human rights mechanisms over ten years (2011-2021). The first two parts describe UN human rights mechanisms and include a literature review that provides an overview of sources focusing on the UN treaty body system and the UPR. Findings from the literature review are used to define the two opposing theories: rationalist theory and theory emphasizing states' administrative capacities and two complementing theories. Based on these theories, four hypotheses are formulated and operationalized to perform four case studies focused on the Netherlands, South Africa, Bahrain, and Honduras. Recommendations given to states are assessed from the perspective of human rights provision or recommendation per se by two sets of criteria for the UPR and UN treaty bodies. To indicate the level of compliance, assessments are assigned with five values. Afterward, findings are interpreted to answer the research question, verify, or refute hypotheses, and compare states' compliance with human rights provisions and recommendations stemming from UN human rights mechanisms.

This bachelor's thesis focuses on the CFA franc and its influence on Franco-African relations. The thesis deals with the historical context, the origin and gradual development of the CFA franc. As well as the role of the CFA franc in the context of mutual relations between France and the member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union. The thesis presents two main narratives connected with this issue, the neo-colonial point of view (which perceives the CFA franc as a neo-colonial weapon of France), as well as the opposite, anti- neo-colonial point of view (which perceives the CFA franc only as a currency without all of its negative connotations resulting from its history). In the research part of this thesis the method of a SWOT analysis was used and applied on both the neo-colonial and anti-neo- colonial narratives. As a result, it was possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with both narratives. The interpretation of the results allowed me to answer the main research question: Did the CFA franc play the role of a neo- colonial weapon of France in relation to the West African Economic and Monetary Union member countries?. The final result is ambiguous, it confirms that the CFA franc is often considered as a neo-colonial weapon of...

DUBRAVČÍKOVÁ, Klára. Models of cross-border data flow governance and their followers: Why do countries adopt one framework over another? Praha, 2022. 119 pages. Master's thesis (Mgr.). Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Science. Department of International Relations. Supervisors Dr. rer. pol. Michal Parízek, M.Sc., Ph.D. & Junprof. Dr. Jan Vogler. Abstract Currently, there are three different regulatory models of cross-border data flow, produced by three dominant actors in the international system - the United States of America, the European Union, and the People's Republic of China. As all three actively convey their model to other countries, posing new challenges to the global economy associated with the models' incompatibility, other countries face a policy-choice dilemma on what model to adopt. Consequently, the issue of mapping how the three approaches to data governance spread across the globe and exploring the rationales of states that adopt one of the three models arises. The thesis turns to this question and uses logistic regression analysis to find a correlation between the adoption of a specific cross-border data flow governance model and three sets of predictors that characterise the economic, social, and power relations between proponent-adopter pairs....

My thesis is focused on the composition and countries' representation in the professional staff of the World Health Organization. The thesis will analyse the overrepresentation and underrepresentation of the WHO's member states and explain possible patterns in the staff. The thesis will focus on the relationship between the number of Member State's professional staff in the WHO and the state's GDP growth, expenditure on education and population size. My thesis aims to research the characteristics of staff's composition in the WHO. I will analyse professional staff structure and apply the Principal-Agent theoretical framework. The research will show how the state's representation of member states changed over time and see also the gender composition of the Secretariat. The timeline of this work is from 1999 till 2019. The thesis works with official documents from human resources of the WHO and datasets of the World Bank. Analysis of data is provided by the statistical programme SPSS and Microsoft Excel. Key words World Health Organization, representation, professional staff, principal-agent theory, correlation coefficients, regression analysis

The thesis concerns with communication of Armenian and Azerbaijani Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Defence on Facebook in relation to 2020 Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The official institutional accounts were used to bolster one sided narratives of the conflict, often by emotional appeals and misinformation targeting international and domestic audence. By analyzing FB communication of the named institutions, it aims to identify the key narrative-building tools utilized by state institutions in communication practice and how these tools are used prior to and during wartime. It also aims at comparing the communication practice across the institutions and in between the countries by analyzing Facebook posts of named ministries over period of 100 days using a dataset generated via Crowdtangle.

This master's thesis aims to provide an outlook on the diffusion of circular economy (CE) awareness across the world and reveal the factors influencing its intensity. The awareness is assessed for a group of 122 countries by using their media data acquired from the Factiva database for the period 2000 - 2019. From the theoretical point of view, the work is framed by the Diffusion of innovation and Transnational diffusion of norms, ideas and policies' theories. According to the results of descriptive analysis, a cumulative distribution of aware countries has followed the S-shaped curve over time traditionally associated with the diffusion processes. Among the leaders in the CE awareness are China, Italy, Japan, and Spain for example. During the later years, however, one of the highest values were also measured for Rwanda or Eswatini. On the other hand, Russia was identified as the biggest laggard from the group. Regarding the individual factors whose effect was assessed via the OLS method, it is argued that the CE awareness is higher in the countries which are more embedded in the networks of intergovernmental organizations. Contrary to the expectations the systematic influence of the other economic, political or environmental factors was not proved. This idiosyncrasy could be caused by the novelty...

Trade relations between Japan and the European Union have undergone dynamic development since the end of World War II, which has not provided the desired results for many decades. Most of the negotiations that took place during the 60 years after the war failed on the demands and conditions of both parties, from which they did not want to withdraw. It was in the case of Japan that there was always a problem in the protection policy of the domestic market, the reduced competitiveness of foreign companies and the protection of domestic products through high tariffs, which always prevented the realization of mutual trade. In 2012, after the new LDP government took office, Japan's position changed, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began negotiations with the European Union on new trade cooperation. These negotiations were part of Abe's plan to rebuild the Japanese economy, which was in recession after a poor economic strategy in the 1980s and global financial crises followed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. In response, Abe introduced the so-called three arrows - a set of domestic and foreign economic measures to kick-start the Japanese economy. Negotiations with the EU then took place together with other countries, however, these trade meetings were among the most important in terms of world...

5 Abstract This thesis aims to provide an overview of Russia's narratives surrounding the anti-Russian sanctions implemented by the West in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis. Employing the concept of "strategic narratives", the thesis aspires to outline the content and usage variation of Russia's strategic communication regarding the sanctions regime. After exploring what countries can, in theory, do to defend themselves against sanctions, it was predicted that Russia would strive to reach two goals with its strategic narratives, delegitimizing the sanctions regime and downplaying the sanctions' negative economic effects. The qualitative method of thematic analysis was used to explore the statements of Russia's political leaders on the sanctions and found that Russia indeed seeks to delegitimize the sanctions and downplay their effects. When investigating the usage of the two strategic narratives over time with the help of a quantitative Chi-square test, no significant differences could be found between economically turbulent and prosperous times for two out of three politicians, with the third one resorting more often to the delegitimizing strategic narrative in economically prosperous times. Meanwhile, two other external factors were identified as significantly influencing the strategic narratives' usage...

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....

The main aim of this thesis is to provide an overview of Chinese domestic political discourse through an analysis of the Chinese domestic media narrative surrounding the recent trade war with the United States. Using a mixed method of quantitative analysis of keywords and qualitative analysis of headline emotivity from media articles published by three big Chinese domestic news outlets, we were able to explore the language and emotions of their narrative. The results of keyword analysis identified the prevalence of politically motivated discourse, which was dominant throughout majority of this conflict. Themes such as strong self- identification, Chinese victim self-portrayal and American aggression were very strongly mentioned in the discourse of this population. Meanwhile, the interest of Chinese media in global economy and multilateral trading system was very little, with only few mentions in comparison to the political aspects of the discourse. Additionally, publishing volumes over the course of the conflict showed that despite the Chinese media reporting escalatory developments of the trade conflict more, the qualitative headline emotivity analysis discovered a general preference for the usage of rather neutral language and appeasing rhetoric.

This master thesis is focused on understanding the process of politicization of the European Union in Czech media between the years 2003 and 2017. The theoretical framework used to observe the politicization process is based on postfunctionalist theory of European integration which assumes that the governance of the European Union has been become publicly contested, i.e., politicized, which consequently constrained the process of European integration. To analyze the process two politicization indices that considered the visibility, i.e., salience, of the European Union and the divergence of opinions i.e., polarization, were created. The source of data were annual Eurobarometer surveys and 6750 articles from three Czech quality newspapers. The hypothesized drivers of politicization assumed increases of politicization during authority transfer moments such as Czech Republic joining the EU in 2004 or Lisbon treaty adoption in 2009; and during crisis events such as was the Eurozone crisis and refugee crisis. The results revealed that the overall level of politicization was low, and it was only during the hypothesized events of Czech-EU admission, Lisbon treaty and refugee crisis that the politicization level increased significantly.

This thesis compares Norway, Botswana and Venezuela and their sovereign wealth funds. The first two countries are referred to as exceptions to the theory of the resource curse, which explains the phenomenon that shows that countries with a high dependence on income from the export of natural resources have a slower rate of economic, political and institutional development. On the contrary, Venezuela (although it was considered an exception in the past) is severely affected by this phenomenon and thus serves as a negative example in this thesis. The thesis focuses on state sovereign wealth funds and examines whether and under what conditions these funds have an effect on reversing the resource curse. Based on the theoretical part, five key characteristics are identified that the fund must meet in order to function against the negative manifestations of the curse of natural resources - (1) offsetting the effects of volatility, (2) diversifying the economy, (3) budgetary policy, (4) controlling the allocation of expenditure, (5) transparency of funds. Based on these characteristics, it is possible to observe that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund works best from selected funds as a defense against the resource curse, followed by the Botswana fund and third by the Venezuelan fund. Norway and Botswana...

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...

CHARLES UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Institute of Political Studies Department of Political Science Abstract 2020 Kateřina Krestová Abstract A decade ago, the WHO decided to make a commitment of reforming itself. Above all, the funding situation was unsustainable. The main source of WHO's funding is voluntary contributions. Anyhow promising the term voluntary might seem, the reality is more complicated since the majority of these contributions is tightly earmarked towards specific programmes. Implying the WHO is not allowed to use the money where it is needed but it must be spent according to donor's wishes. This makes budgeting highly inflexible, the financing is imbalanced between categories and efficiency of fulfilling WHO's mandate declines. The reform launched in 2010 ought to fix these issues. This thesis evaluates the efficiency of the reform; firstly, total budget patterns are compared. Followingly, the attention is given to a specific category of Noncommunicable diseases due to its most severe underfunding. The analysis was conducted based on extensive datasets never gathered before comparing all types of contributions for every category from 1999 to 2019. Findings indicate unsatisfactory results of the reform; flexible sources have not increased, contrarily earmarked donations have...

Neo-Marxism and neoliberal institutionalism are applied to investigate which factors determine the cooperation of emerging powers and what consequences it may have globally within the case of Russia-China relations in BRICS. To this end, congruence analysis is applied. Based on available data, comparison of predictions with observations reveals that the majority of evidences accord with neo-Marxism. Russia and China affirm their position against the predominance of one center in the international arena and emphasize common commitment to a more equitable multipolar world order that is permanently reflected in the statements of Russian and Chinese leadership. The trade war between the US and China since 2018 is one of the evidence of the growing disintegration of the existing world order. Building a new order is based on the creation of regional coalitions of the countries that share common views on specific issues. Within the framework of BRICS, Russia and China have already taken measures towards own financial institutions as an alternative source of funding. The leaderships of both countries believe that emerging economies should have a greater voice and representation in international financial institutions. Their primary interest is the reform of the International Monetary Fund so that it...

The work researches use of prohibited weapons in recent armed conflicts (from 2014 to early 2020). These weapons are prohibited by a set of international rules (treaty and customary) of international humanitarian law (IHL). The research focuses on all the conflicts that are still active to this day (early 2020). These conflicts are both international and more often non-international. The thesis maps the level of compliance, but it goes beyond as it also attempts to identify relevant factors that influence parties to an armed conflict when it comes to the choice to comply or not to comply. The ambitious aim was to identify the most reliable "law-enforcement substitutes" in the anarchical world of international law. It focuses on potential compliance factors such as identity of the parties to the conflict or reputational concerns. Own dataset was created, and a model of multiple logistic regression was utilized to test the hypotheses. The main findings include the fact that none of the factors was able to reliably predict use of prohibited weapons. Moreover, not even the combination of all those factors was able to give a satisfactory picture of the confusing reality on the ground. Other "sideway" findings include a "confirmation" of the popular scholarly belief that compliance with international law...

Thesis title reveals a lot about its intentions and objectives. Its research target is to explain the behavior and strategy of Greece in negotiations prior to agreement on the third economic adjustment program. Thesis asks what the key characteristic of the Greek bargaining strategy was. Negotiation analysis approach is employed as the theoretical/methodological framework. It leads us to examination of following factors. Actors' interests and preferences have to be understood and distinguished from positions. Next, alternatives to negotiated agreement, creating and claiming value techniques, and actions to change the game constitute the remaining basis of negotiation analysis. Moreover, the element of bargaining power is added as a relevant concept to research bargaining strategy. That leads us also to commitment tactic, use of threats, and commitment through domestic audiences and audience costs. Last but not least, two-level games factor is considered as well. Hypothesis and further explanation of analytical technique is followed by three chapters that provide historical context of the negotiations. Then finally empirical analysis is done based on theoretical framework mentioned above. My research shows mixed results. Greek strategy was significantly inconsistent and therefore I cannot consider...

This paper concerns with the development of relations between the EU and Brazil. Even though the relations are now rather stagnant due to the internal problems of both parties and the 2008 "Great Recession" , the European Union in order to meet its goals in multipolar (or non-polar) order needs to increase the attractiveness of cooperation with non-traditional partners. Brazil certainly has the potential to be among these partners. This work therefore analyzes the EU-Brazil strategic partner- ship that was made in 2007 and is defined in its action plans and is the main communication chan- nel between the Union and Brazil. This Paper lays out the content of the partnership in order to eva- luate its effectiveness and to point out the key factors behind success or vice versa which cause stagnation in its implementation. To achieve this, we have identified several indicators that are con- sidered to be crucial in the action plans and other partnership documents, and on the basis of which their achievement will lead to strengthening the links between the parties. Keywords Strategic Partnership, EU-Brazil, EU External Action, Efficiency, European Union, International Relations, Global Cooperation, Mercosur

This thesis concentrates on the case of Russian economy and assessment of its dependence on oil. Russia is often cited as an example of country suffering from resource curse as its natural wealth forms significant share of country's exports and revenues. Thesis will first concentrate on factors determining current state of Russian economy. Presence of the symptoms of Dutch disease in the Russian economy will be studied using the Vector error correction model (VECM) applied on the real effective exchange rate of country (REER). Thesis will also contain an assessment of Russian institutional environment to check for other symptoms of resource curse theory. Analysis of latest federal budget will be used to evaluate the sustainability of Russian federal finances. The thesis is concluded by discussion of results and possible paths of future development of Russian economy.

This master thesis elaborates on the question whether there is a difference in the understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the universal level and on the regional level in South America. It is built upon the dichotomy of the recent movement in the CSR field that seeks to answer both emerging transnational challenges in a coordinated way while delivering a significant impact on the local level. The analysis is performed using the method of content analysis. Two major aspects of CSR are analyzed - the way the nature of CSR is defined and the prominence of the issues that CSR should address. Based on the results of the content analysis, we identify major trends in the understanding of CSR on both levels and determine the scope of the difference between them. Regarding the differences, we find one common denominator that is dominant on both levels - institutions and governance. In other categories we observe a high variability of the prominence across analysed levels. The important trends revealed in the thesis is a high penetration of South America with foreign CSR institutions and a significant impact of a membership in a global CSR organization on how CSR is communicated by a member organization on the regional level.