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A review essay on books by (1) George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Metafory, kterymizijeme (Brno: Host, 2002); (2) Francis A. Beer & Christ'l De Landtsheer [Eds], Metaphorical World Politics (East Lansing: Michigan State U Press, 2004); (3) Andreas Musolff, Mirror Images of Europe. Metaphors in the Public Debate about Europe in Britain and Germany (Munchen: Iudicium, 2000); (4) Rainer Hulsse, Metaphern der EU-Erweiterung als Konstruktion europaischer Identitat (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003); & Hans Verboven, Die Metapher als Ideologie: Eine kognitiv-semantische Analyse der Kriegsmetaphorik im Fruhwerk Ernst Jungers (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag WINTER, 2003).

The study deals with the so far mostly unaccented problem of the conflict in Northeastern Sudan. In contrast to the Darfur crisis, the conflict in NE Sudan is in progress without attracting any greater amount of international attention. In the text, I examine the development of the general marginalization of the inhabitants of the region in the context of the Sudanese politics since independence until the present time. The main issues of the study are the ethnicization & economization of the conflict & its international consequences. These consequences are still only latent, but the lack of conflict management might contribute to the spread of tensions abroad, as was the case with Darfur. I then argue that the passivity of the international society, as in the case of Darfur, makes certain that there is no chance for the NE Sudan conflict to be quickly resolved. As a conclusion, I suggest a solution to the crisis in the form of a broader engagement of regional organizations & states, especially IGAD (Inter-Governmental Agency for Development). Adapted from the source document.

This article deals with the Czech discipline of International Relations addressing its recent historical evolution as well as its current state. It relies on the concepts of field, capital, doxa & habitus developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. It argues that the discipline was founded in the late 1950s as a part of the political field, entering the field of science as late as the 1990s. Therefore, the main dichotomies of the field were defined politically for most of the time, e.g. reformist communists vs. orthodox communists or anti-communists vs. communists. Nowadays, the dichotomy refers to the role of theory, which splits empirical & descriptive research from theoretically oriented research. This analysis also takes into account the professional trajectory of the author & his embedded position within the discipline. References. Adapted from the source document.

This article presents the idea that the social sciences are by nature normative & so simply cannot exist without normativeness at all. Their purpose is to understand & help solve social problems. The choices of issues, problems & questions are neither random nor objective, but are the results of normative consensus of their specific social-scientific discipline, as well as the greater social environment in which social scientists make them. This argument is applied to the polemics between Marek Louzek & Petr Drulak. I show that contrary to Louzek's assertions, the realism of E. H. Carr & Hans Morgenthau is strongly & explicitly normatively oriented. It is therefore unjustified to distinguish between normative idealists & scientific realists. The final section deals with the question what this conclusion means for the study of international relations. Adapted from the source document.

The article is part of a wider discussion on & the assessment of the global terrorism threat since 2001. Terrorism considered the most dangerous & urgent security threat of today. The text focuses on the three major terrorist attacks in recent history: USA (2001), Madrid (2004) & London (2005). The text examines whether terrorism still remains an indirect strategy in the globalization era. The author analyses the effects of previous terrorist attacks in the assessment of terrorism by politicians, looking at the impact of this assessment on further developments in international relations, both on the regional & global level. The article studies the links between the imminence of a terrorist threat & individual Western countries' approaches to the Islamic world & immigrants coming from this world. The author focuses on global terrorism threat assessment at the theoretical level, introducing the main schools of thought & approaches. Adapted from the source document.

Despite a consensus on the benefits of liberal international economic regimes, there are important differences in the perspectives of different actors. This article deals with two ideal types of perspectives on international trade liberalization. The first of them is the liberal perspective, & the second is the perspective of economic nationalism. Differences can be found in a number of aspects. We discuss the perception of comparative advantage, economic growth & its determinants, the logic of absolute or relative gains from the global economy, I the causal i relationship between the level of economic development & free trade, the issue of competitiveness in the global economy & the problem of existence, & the role of strategic sectors of the economy. If there exist important differences in presumptions, interests & policy preferences between actors, what are the conditions & limits for the perceived compatibility of the defined perspectives? Under which conditions will an individual actor support the progress in the liberalization of world trade & what are the most important risks? How can the past successes in building the liberal economic regimes be interpreted & what are the prospects for the future? This article also attempts to contribute to the discussion of paradigmatic perspectives in the international political economy. Therefore the text confronts the liberal perspective & economic nationalism & discusses some important aspects of these theories. Adapted from the source document.

Constructivist attempts to focus on analysis of the European identity, including the foreign policy dimension, rely almost exclusively on textual and verbal discourse. But discourse as such is not limited to textual and verbal acts; graphics and visuals, including political caricatures, constitute an integral component of discourse as well. The aim of this contribution is to analyse how the European Union's identity as an actor of international relations could be imagined by studying a sample of political cartoons from The Economist. Based on the analysis, I conclude that although the European Union is not imagined as an antithesis to a standard international actor, The Economist still imagines it as a player that is not entirely equal to other players. Adapted from the source document.

The article argues for a new strategy for Czech IR research which would stimulate local scholars to produce innovative contributions to the international IR discipline. The strategy is supposed to go beyond the emulation of the Anglo-American IR, which currently prevails & which, despite occasional successes, failed in its goals. It aims at innovative contributions with a maximum utilization of the Czech domestic conditions which embed the research. The strategy argues that the relations between Czech IR & the international discipline need to be sustained & even strengthened. At the same time, the Czech research should focus on the Czech political experience by examining the political phenomena by which this experience has been constituted & drawing on the traditions of Czech political thought. Adapted from the source document.

Arctic environmental protection and the protection of species living in the Arctic are subject to a number of multilateral international treaties, bilateral agreements, and instruments of soft law, and they are touched upon by the national laws of the Arctic coastal countries as well. Based on the theoretical approaches of Oran Young, the paper construes the current environmental protection in the Arctic as an international regime. The paper defines the basic features of the Arctic and Antarctic environmental regimes, such as duration, resilience, an institutional structure, internationalization and the agreed procedures and processes of the regime's development. The paper discusses whether their differences (e.g. ocean versus continent, inhabitants, military use) have been reflected in their environmental regimes. By comparing these features and regimes, the paper concludes that the procedure used in the Antarctic might not be fully transferrable to the case of the Arctic. Adapted from the source document.

This study aspires to harness the impulses of the critique of international peace initiatives (IPIs) up to this point for the purposes of improving the practical inquiries into them. In the study, attention is given namely to the questions of the initial normative and epistemological premises of the research. The study argues, in agreement with the precepts of critical political theory, that the inquiry into IPIs should first of all strive to emancipate people in postconflict situations. With respect to the IPIs' general aim of transforming the target countries into stable, independent and prosperous states and societies, the focus is directed at the influence the IPIs exert upon social structures in the postconflict societies. With the aim to conceptualize a basic framework for the research, the contemporary thinking on the IPIs is interpreted with respect to International Relations theories and the fundamental metatheoretical questions of social theories. Consequently, in keeping with the philosophy of scientific realism, a critical constructivist position is formulated for the given purposes. Adapted from the source document.

This article deals with the rules of power distribution and the delegation of power in international security organizations. More specifically, the paper describes and evaluates the delegation of power in the security regimes of the UN, NATO, and the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The paper proceeds from a hypothesis drawing on existing research. According to this hypothesis, the security regime of the UN is marked by a substantial delegation of power, but we can observe only weak power delegations in NATO and the CFSP. So while the UN's security regime can be considered supranational, NATO and the CFSP represent intergovernmental regimes. The analysis carried out in this paper confirms the hypothesis. In comparison with existing literature, however, the paper submits much more precise and concrete findings. Moreover, the paper also forwards a rather unique conceptual and methodological approach for studies of power distribution in international organizations (IOs). In this way, it contributes towards the general study of IOs, which is currently rather stagnant. Adapted from the source document.

The application of Elias's Theory of civilization, in the field of international relations, is the theoretical concept of civilian power. In this analysis, I concluded that there are several attributes that allow the use of military force by civilian power. These attributes consist of: (1) using military force as a last resort for dealing with conflicts, and only when all other means have failed; (2) playing an active role in seeking non-militant ways of crisis resolution and military conflict prevention; (3) conducting only military operations that conform to international law and (4) that intend to support and defend human rights while (5) minimizing destruction and casualties, not only on its own side but also on the side of its enemy and finally, (6) having military operations (with the exception of self defense) take place in a multinational framework, which would not be used as a tool for unilateral policies. Adapted from the source document.