Suchergebnisse

This article explores the question of whether the increasing importance of religion in international relations is also reflected in the role the Roman Catholic Church plays in the formulation of Czech foreign policy. In the first half of the study we will briefly investigate in what ways the role of the Church is described in the key documents of Czech (foreign) policy and how the Church-politics relationship is interpreted in the Czech media discourse. Our attention will be dedicated primarily to the thematic analysis and the actorness of the Church. In the article's second half, we will focus on the way(s) the Church is trying to change the situation of its relation to Czech politics, which is currently unfavourable to it. We will identify three fundamental strategies that can be used by the Church as a reaction to its expulsion from the public sphere and also assess their empirical presence in the Czech milieu. Adapted from the source document.

This article offers a critical review of the few existing scholarly attempts to conceptualize & theorize the study of peacekeeping operations. It reveals that even though the study of peacekeeping operations is burgeoning, most of the available literature is idiosyncratic & atheoretical. Although some authors have recently utilized various concepts from international relations theory for analysis of peacekeeping operations, the potentially diverse international peacekeeping theories are yet to be fully integrated into international relations theory. After inspecting future research agendas outlined by the leading experts in the field, the author critiques the recent calls for a "macrotheory" of international peacekeeping. Adapted from the source document.

This article first disputes the traditional view of Realist School of international relations as inherently positivistic, & second presents a reaction to the polemic taking its course in pages of this journal between Marek Louzek & Petr Drulak. In the first part, those aspects of the work of E. H. Carr & Hans Morgenthau that challenge their placing in the positivist camp are presented. In the second part, these remarks are used as a critique of Marek Louzek's schematic division of theories of international relations as between normativist idealism & positivist realism. 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.

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.