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The aim of this article is to analyse the efforts made by the OSCE to contribute to the political settlement of the Transdniestran conflict. As the OSCE is one of the mediators in this conflict, the article begins by considering theories of international mediation and explains the factors that influence the success or failure of mediation efforts. Following this theoretical part, the article continues with an analysis of these factors with respect to the conflict in Transdniestria. It deals with the nature of the Transdniestrian conflict and its causes, describes the parties involved, explains the historical background of the conflict, and analyses its international context, i.e. the role of third parties. The following chapter focuses on the nature of the mediator (i.e. the OSCE) and its mediation activities, and attempts to explain the OSCE's mediation efforts. The article concludes that the absence of a political settlement to the conflict results from a combination of factors that are both embedded in the nature of the conflict and in the nature of the mediator. Adapted from the source document.

Foreign and Internal Trade as the main disciplines in the field of research and study have developed theoretical systems that reflected historical development of international economic and business environment, governmental trade policy and international and domestic businesses. They created a basis, on which the Faculty of International Relations after 1989 has designed a new profile discipline "International Trade" in the framework of the "International Economic Relations" program. Very important features of the discipline, both of study and research areas, are a deep internationalization and an interdisciplinary approach. The discipline's development reflects world trends, international scientific knowledge and domestic specificities and introduces new terminology for new qualitative processes of international business to the Czech economy. To the discipline's development, very many excellent teachers and important personalities of the Czechoslovak and Czech economy contributed. The modern discipline comprehends analysis of global economic and institutional relations and of theoretical concepts, together with practical managerial branches. A prove of high standards of teaching and research is a prestigious accreditation EPAS by which the discipline "International Trade" has been awarded by the European Foundation of Management Development in 2012. Adapted from the source document.

This paper aims to develop a simple, rigorous, and generally applicable analytical framework for investigation of the ability of international institutions to shape the political contestation among actors in international politics. To achieve this end, it discusses the key conceptual problems of the existing notions of the functioning of international institutions and offers steps to address these problems. It partially reformulates and formalizes the currently used concepts of effectiveness and robustness of institutions and builds upon them the concept of institutional capacity, which captures the quality of the institutions' work in a more complex and analytically rigorous manner. Subsequently, the paper discusses how the concept of institutional capacity can be applied to the study of the political systems of international organizations and presents a list of 24 criteria that are suitable for assessments of their functioning. Adapted from the source document.

The case study deals with the issue of the European Union as an actor in international relations. While based on an analysis of the first common EU naval military mission, EU NAVFOR Somalia, code-named Atalanta, the article intends to shed more light on how the EU paves the way to its getting recognized as an international actor. The author assumes that the EU aims at facilitating the process in two key dimensions: the virtual (i.e. material) and the intersubjective (i.e. idealogical) dimension. The consultation is meant to contribute to the epistemo-methodological debate about the essence and origins of the international recognition of the EU. Adapted from the source document.

My target in the present text is to discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of the study of international institutions' design. To achieve this goal I critically review the existing literature on the topic and outline three key reasons for which I believe much of the work on institutional design to be theoretically problematic, and for which any meaningful progress of the study of design as a research programme is unlikely. I argue that we can overcome these problems by returning and sticking to the original concept of institutions as mechanisms for transmission of information that was formulated in the institutional theory in international relations. On the basis of this concept we can develop a research programme on institutional design that takes seriously the basic realist findings about the power nature of international politics. Besides this, by focusing on the information transmission function of institutions we open the space for application of the potentially highly relevant findings from the area of the so-called organizational cybernetics to the study of international relations. With their help new methods for diagnosis of the institutions' functions can be developed and important new empirical and theoretical findings can be achieved. Adapted from the source document.

This article aspires to overcome the barriers to a dialogue between the problem-solving and critical approaches to international peacebuilding. From the perspective of modern constructivism hypotheses are formulated concerning the influence of international peacebuilding on the development of sustainable democratic self-governance in the target countries. The hypotheses are tested on two cases of international initiatives in the post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina -- the cases of the defense and the police sector reforms. The empirical analysis then validates the hypotheses, and the results are presented in charts. The main idea of the article is that adherence to the principles of liberal governance in the course of international peacebuilding is considerably vital for the build-up of liberal peace in the target country in itself. Adapted from the source document.

The issue of international human rights norms which have not yet been fully established within the existing international human rights standard belongs at present to the essential components of the UN Human Rights Council agenda. Based on a synthesis of legal and political notions of the process of emergence of human rights norms, the paper attempts to clearly define and classify these emerging norms, which are sometimes called "new" human rights. At the same time it focuses on individual emerging human rights that are included on the Council's agenda, examines the stages they reached in the international norm cycle and briefly discusses the tools used by the UN Human Rights Council to achieve progress in this respect and turn the norms in statu nascendi into full international standards. Adapted from the source document.

The main goal of the article is to highlight the marked difference between two understandings of geopolitics and space in general the understanding that is present in the field of geography and the understanding that is present in the field of International Relations. Whereas in International Relations (namely in the case of neorealists) space is conceptualized as a material, objective entity, in the field of geography there has been a shift toward a conceptualization of space as an inter-subjective entity. It follows that in the case of neorealists there is some (usually unintentional) tendency to revive (neo)classical geopolitics, or at least some of its basic assumptions. On the other hand, contemporary geographers have adopted a boldly critical approach toward (neo)classical geopolitics. Geographers consider (neo)classical geopolitics as potentially dangerous because of its justification of the conflictual discourses prevailing in international politics. The question remains whether the geographical neglect of objective space does not undermine the ability of critical geopolitics to effectively intervene in practical political issues. Adapted from the source document.

After the withdrawal of Serbian units from Kosovo in the second half of 1999, we could witness Kosovo being transformed into an unstable area while the KLA became the informal ruler of the country with de facto unrestricted authority. Several originally classified documents leaked into the public domain in the last two years. These were authored by various international institutions, and they indicate the involvement of former KLA high officers and current leading Kosovar politicians in the illegal trade with organs of Serbian POWs. During the unofficial investigation of the whole issue, there appeared several obscurities and controversies that cast a bad light on the passive and often rather opportunistic approach of the international community, which has, moreover, repeatedly failed to protect key secret witnesses. However, the report of Dick Marty and the establishment of the EULEX Special Investigation Team headed by Clint Williamson give us some hope that the investigation will bring tangible results and the whole case will be legitimately closed. 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.

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.