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Fifty two years ago, the Kingdom of Cambodia became an independent state. A former colony of French Indochina i.e. an associate member of the French Union, Cambodia gained sovereignty in 1954 at the Geneva Conference. Since then Cambodia has been trying to build stable political institutions, but from the long-term perspective this process has been hampered by the internal conflict, directly at first and later indirectly and generated by several foreign-policy actors. The multi-stage civil war of 1970-1991, characterized by the autogenocide of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) ravaged the country and cost it several million lives. International community led by the UN brokered the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991 and in 1993 organized the most complex and expensive elections in history. Since then, Cambodia has held multiparty elections in regular electoral cycles in 1998 and 2003; nevertheless and despite the fifteen years of peace, the country has just begun its democratic transition.
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Croatia’s EU candidate status and the beginning of the accession talks is the opportune moment for a review of the Sino-Croatian relations in order to determine which foreign-policy legacy Croatia is to bring into this community, whose foreign-policy orientation it will have to adopt lock, stock and barrel. This will also enable Croatia to design a Croatian niche within the broader framework of Sino-European relations. It is not easy to achieve distinctiveness in the vast and remote Chinese space, especially for a small country such as Croatia. However, this should be attempted as it is essential both for the Croatian political and economic interests and for many other major areas such as culture, science, and education. The Chinese rapid economic growth and its consequential political importance have made China a major player on the global political scene and every country has to shape a foreign policy agenda regarding China. The starting point of the Sino-Croatian relations is the Joint Statement on Establishing the Comprehensive Cooperation Partnership between the Republic of Croatia and the People’s Republic of China, signed by Prime Ministers Ivo Sanader and Wen Jiabao in Beijing on 26 May 2005.
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Following the fall of the Berlin wall, the foreign policy priorities of the former socialist countries have been the EU and the NATO rapprochement as a guarantee of their economic, military, and political stability. The least progress has been made by the countries of Europe’s south-east due to that region’s specific circumstances. The combination of unresolved national issues, historical grievances and, above all, the bloodshed and the war crimes committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia have pushed this region further from the European integrations. Incoherent policies of international actors, and particularly the disunited Europe, have not helped to resolve the conflicts besetting this region. After the cessation of the armed hostilities, the international community and especially the EU, wishing to stabilize the region, have designed a plethora of aid programs; they have also promoted the rapprochement with the European integrations. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the stabilizational frameworks for the region as well as their success in the promotion of regional cooperation and the process of reform in all areas, as well as in accelerating the overall progress of the countries of this region on their way to the full EU membership. The authors also dwell on the necessity of resolving the other crucial problems (especially the statutory issues between Serbia and Montenegro and in Bosnia-Herzegovina) in this decisive moment for the future of this region, and the key role and responsibility of the EU thereof.
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The article looks into the concept of human dignity in the context of pluralist democracy, primarily as a cultural-anthropological premise; the concept of pluralist democracy is seen as an organizational consequence in the constitutional state. For the author, human dignity means a pertinent and fundamental right to democracy, and he elucidates this by comparing constitutional texts.
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The position of the national minorities in Croatia has been defined either independently or in cooperation with the institutions of international community which has resulted, among other things, in the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities. This Constitutional Law regulates the rights of the national minorities and formally broadens the scope of the realization of their rights, especially after the ratification of fundamental international documents concerning the protection of national minorities. A special place in this belongs to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The overall present political and social situation in Croatia is increasingly conducive to the realization of minority rights.
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Discussion about elections and electoral systems is in fact discussion about the effects of representative bodies in democratic political systems. Understanding of that link is not possible without knowing technical details used for forming electoral systems. Despite nonexistence of generally accepted conceptual framework and complexity of different definition approaches and interpretation bases of both elections and electoral systems, there is an agreement that elections are related to representative democracy and they represent its central institution, while electoral systems represent the ways in which voters can express their preferences through their votes and possibilities how those voices can be turned into representative mandates. Which elections strategy, formed in electoral model, should be applied? How to combine structural elements of electoral systems in order to achieve hoped-for political effects? Those are the question which could be answered only by good knowledge of the complex electoral problem area which is in contact with total political landscape: institutions, processes and contents.
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Relationship between European Union and The People’s Republic of China declared in 2003 as the “strategic partnership” attracts attention as a new and remarkable phenomenon within post-bipolar international framework. This article reviews essentials and motives of both partners’ mutual and deepening relations by pointing at their growing economic interdependence, upgrading political relations, and further developing their cultural, science and technology, academic, environmental etc. cooperation. However, while critically analysing EU–China basic agenda of the strategic partnership and its real outcomes, this article points at poor Chinese human rights record, persistence of EU arms embargo, mutual trade disputes, Chinese failure at obtaining the EU’s Market Economy Status, as well as insufficient intellectual property and trade mark protection in China. This study concludes with finding an attaining the real EU–China strategic partnership questionable, considering that as a mere term of official-level politeness, lacking behind expectations and potential.
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During both occasions of the 1st anniversary of the German Grand Coalition government CDU/CSU and SPD (2005/2006) and of the 10th anniversary of the Czech-German Declaration on reconciliation (1997) the author analysis the recent German foreign policy, especially the role of past burdens in the bilateral relations. Gradually, although they faced many complications, both a legal and political solution was found, and instilled, creating a prevision for, and to a certain degree institutionalizing “the culture of historical controversy“. The rhetoric of historical guilt and responsibility slowly disappears in Germany’s relationships to the states of Central and East Central Europe, it relates also to the reconciliation rituals. On the other hand the new German government (with the CDU-chancellorship) has accepted all declarations and treaties made by preceding governments, including those which deal with property issues between the F.R.G. and Poland/Czech Republics respectively. The main dash is not drawn between any single political camps; rather nowadays, it is drawn right across the German society and their political elites. Especially the topic of World War II and its victims has become a conventional subject and one of public historical memory. This appeared shortly after the new government was appointed into office, as well as the idea that the moral-historical dimension of the Czech-German, Polish-German (and any other neighbors to Germany) relations will not disappear, but instead achieve a new quality. Only the role of moderator will be given to the governments and to the political sphere. Parallel to the departure of the last generation of contemporaries, the theme will be changed, and there will be only one of many reference frameworks in German relations to its neighbor states and their societies. This will, however, not be a linear process: relapsing is not excluded and it will depend on the responsibility and maturity of the political elites as well as the quality of the Czech-German “community of interests“ (including the constituting role of European Security and Energy policies), as to how they will be managed.
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Contemporarily human rights are ranked among the most crucial foreign policy priorities in many countries. At the same time numerous states are forced to consider the human rights agenda under growing international pressure. The substance of foreign policy in the field of human rights, its intensity and instruments vary in many different aspects. The paper focuses on foreign policy in the field of human rights analysis. Its aim is to comprehend and extend prevailing methods in order to obtain an analytical scheme applicable to almost every country. To fulfil this aim it includes several steps, the most important of which are: examining the essence of analysing foreign policy in the field of human rights as a specific part of the foreign policy agenda, introduction and elaboration of the so called Mower’s apparatus, interpretation of foreign policy in the field of human rights using different levels of analysis and developing methods of its evaluation. In the end the paper summarises the current state of research and makes some recommendations for the future.
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This article summarizes the main contemporary theoretical approaches to international institutions as well as significant theories of institutions, which build upon those approaches. In line with the existing overviews, I focus on realism, neoliberalism and constructivism. All three approaches differ in regard to both the origin and impact of institutions. Whereas, the basic realist perspective regards state interests and power to be the main source of the institution’s origin; the basic perspective of neoliberalism emphasizes the structure of state interests and collective action problems, which result from it. Many constructivists presume that so called general institutions determine the origin of specific institutions. According to realists, the impact of institutions is dependent on state interests and power; institutions only regulate state behaviour in a limited way. The neoliberal conception of institutions infers that: institutions significantly regulate state behaviour since they help states resolve collective action problems. According to constructivists: institutions even constitute state identities and interests.
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Natalia Naročnickaja: Rusko a jeho místo ve světě. Za co a s kým jsme bojovali. 1. vyd. Praha: Ottovo nakladatelství, 2006, 207 stran (název ruského originálu: За что и с кем мы воевали), ISBN 80-7360-511-2. (Michael Romancov) Jan Křen: Dvě století střední Evropy. 1. vyd. Praha: Argo, 2005, 1109 stran, ISBN 80-7203-612-2 (Jiří Beránek) Егор Тимурович Гайдар: Гибель империи. Уроки для современной России. 1-ое издание.Москва: РОССПЭН, 2006, 440 stran, ISBN 5-8243-0759-8. (Karel Svoboda) Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos – Argyris G. Passas (eds.): Greece in the European Union. 1st ed. London – New York: Routledge, 2004, 164 stran, ISBN 0-415-25811-1, (Jan Hřích) Ladislav Cabada: Politický systém Slovinska. 1. vyd. Praha: Sociologické nakladatelství (SLON), 2005, 272 stran, ISBN 80-86429-37-7, (Filip Tesař)
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A sarcastic article over the anti-American reactions that followed the 11 September events and a realistic analysis of the tragedy and its implications in the postmodern world signed by Mircea Mihaies.
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