Voter decision-making about which political party to support in the elections is a very complex process. One of the key factors influencing our voting behaviour is the effect of particular candidates in terms of their local activities. Many Czech and also foreign studies show that candidates gain significantly higher preferences in the municipality of their residence and its surroundings. Within the analyzed parliamentary elections, this is reflected not only by the territorial concentration of preferential votes, but also by higher local electoral support of the political parties or movements represented by these candidates. This diploma thesis examines, among other things, differences in the strength of the described effect (technically called the friends and neighbours effect) between candidates from different political parties and in different regions of Czechia. Quantitative research has shown greater local strength and spatial extent of friends and neighbours effect for leading candidates from non-metropolitan areas who have experiences from local or regional politics, such as mayors or regional councilors. In the 2017 parliamentary elections, the friends and neighbours effect mostly influenced the spatial patterns of electoral support of the KDU-ČSL and the STAN movement and on the other...

This diploma thesis is an analysis of the influence of specific socio-political changes to the landscape and agriculture in Czechia. The chosen socio-political changes are the beginning of communist regime in 1948 and the transformation of the whole society after the end of communist regime in 1989. The main idea used in this thesis was the concept of driving forces and the other used concepts were social capital, agricultural diversification and intensification and extensification of the landscape. Detailed presentation of the influence of specific socio- political changes in agriculture and landscape was made by a case study in administrative region Tábor. The used concepts were described In the opening part as well as the main stages of development of agriculture and landscape in Czechia and in the model area. The main method used in the case study were semi-structured interviews with farmers, who were active in agriculture before 1948 and in the time of the research. According to the results of the research the influence of institutional driving forces significantly increased in comparison to the period before 1948. The results also showed to important role of non-productive functions of current agriculture. . Keywords: landscape, agriculture, driving forces, land use, intensification and...

This diploma thesis is generally devoted to the endogenous potential of the development of the smallest settlements of the selected part of the inner periphery in Czechia. This internal potential is created by the socio-economic and socio-cultural status of the settlement. At a time when the rural development paradigm, ie the top-down approach and the principle of local governance, prevails according to OECD, it seems that the socio-cultural part of the endogenous potential of the settlement is probably the key one. The theoretical part of the thesis describes the possibilities of local actors, especially permanent residents and subjects of the second housing, in influencing the overall state of the given settlement - socio-economic part of the internal potential of the settlement. In the practical part, it analyzes the internal potential of selected settlements, statistically tests the relationship between these factors and looks for probable reasons for different potential. The relationship between the internal factors of development was confirmed and the socio-cultural nature was identified as a key aspect of potential success. The thesis does not aim to predict the exact future of these settlements, but it realistically reflects their internal potential and thus presents their likely direction...

The diploma thesis deals with media freedom in the Visegrád Group countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary) from the perspective of professional journalists. It aims to map how journalists in these four countries perceive freedom in relation to their profession - how they understand the concept of freedom of expression, what threatens freedom of expression or freedom of the media according to them, how free they feel in their profession and what is the trend regarding media freedom in the coming years in their opinion. The theoretical part thoroughly captures the historical development of freedom of expression, its legal protection in constitutional documents and international conventions, the limits of freedom of expression as well as forms of its restriction. It also introduces the most important non-governmental non- profit organizations monitoring media freedom in the world and presents the media environment in each country. The theoretical part also pursues the perception and approach of professional journalists to freedom of expression, media freedom and other journalistic concepts and values. The analytical part then follows a journalistic professional discourse in the form of a qualitative analysis based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with active journalists from the Visegrád...

The master thesis The Issue of the Satisfaction and Access of Foreigners into the Health Insurance (A Case of the Czech Republic) focuses on the topic of the situation of foreigners residing in Czechia and their access into the social security system, especially into the systems of public or private health insurance systems. The thesis brings to light the system of residences and legal statuses and how they affect the range of rights that foreigners can possess, with special emphasis put on their access into the public or private health insurance systems. It also offers an analysis of both public and private health insurance systems and critically compares them.

This dissertation is based on the conceptual framework of social metabolism and it applies methods of Material and Energy Flow Analysis and Ecological Footprint. It studies interactions between human activities and natural environment in Czech/Czechoslovak territory from the historical perspective (after the division of Czechoslovakia for Czechia and Slovakia together). The term of social metabolism is a metaphor inspired by biology. Society or human economy similarly to a living organism which extracts materials from the earth, processes biophysical materials to maintain itself and emits its wastes back. So the economic system functions in an analogy to a living organism and those processes are called "social" or "industrial" metabolism. This dissertation comprises seven individual empirical studies: (I) An introduction to a research topic covered in following articles. It is based on the work of leading world environmental historian and it interprets selected Czech realities within the context of the world environmental history. (II) The historical series of MEFA indicators together with ecological footprint. (III) An article which applies the ecological footprint method on the ecological farm in comparison to conventional agriculture in the context of more foreign studies on this topic. (IV) An...

Geographies of sexualities started to develop within the Anglo-American academic context during the late 1980s. In the 1990s, propelled by the cultural turn, the swelling of post-structuralist and postmodern critiques, and a growing recognition of the limitations to scientific knowledge production and representation, geographers of sexualities introduced queer theory into human geography. Queer theory provided human geography with powerful tools for approaching not only straightforward spatialities of sexualities, but this new lens contributed to the development of human geographies as such. Currently, at least in the Anglo-Saxon geographical context, the field of geographies of sexualities is considered part of mainstream human geography. Therefore, the main goal of this thesis is to provide a few lines of reasoning for the development of geographies of sexualities in Czechia and Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and introduction of post-structuralist understandings, specifically queer theory. In contrast to other phenomena that may be locally exclusive or particular, human sexualities are everyplace, albeit quite variable and dependent on the context in which they "enter into language," become institutionalized, and are regulated. Geographers have been specifically insightful about the ways in which...

Alternative food networks in a post-communist context:: Farmers' markets and farm shops in Czechia Marie Syrovátková ABSTRACT The emergence of farmers' markets (FMs) and farm shops (FSs) in Czechia is a follow-up of the expansion of alternative food networks (AFNs) from Western Europe and North America where they have been developing for several decades. AFNs are an up-to-date topic as they respond to the growing concerns about the negative effects of the globalized conventional food system on social, economic and environmental aspects of food production, distribution and consumption. Each form of AFNs emphasizes a different aspect of the food system sustainability. FMs and FSs should primarily enable direct selling of quality local products made by small producers to support local economy, rural development, environmental protection and to improve quality of life. Based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the aim of the dissertation is to explore the emergence and development of AFNs in Central Europe. Using the example of Czechia, considering the communist past of the region, the work evaluates the contribution of AFNs to build a more sustainable system of food production and consumption and the weak points of the phenomenon in Czechia and, using a comparison of the AFN evolution...

Boom of the farmers' markets in 2010 represented a brand new phenomenon in the so far rather calm development of the Czech alternative food networks (AFNs). Unprecedented was the extent of political support at the local and state level as well as the interest of media and consumers. My PhD project originates in the desire to understand this phenomenon. I realized qualitative research of practice and discourse of the farmers' markets in the territory of Prague metropolitan area (PMA) during the years 2011 and 2012. The main research methods included interviews with organizers, observation at the markets, and the content analysis of the mass media. In the course of the research it became obvious that the current academic discourse, rooted primarily in the Anglo-American context, cannot be applied to the Czech reality. Also, the specific features of the farmers' markets in the PMA could only partially be explained by the differences between the Czech post-socialist context and "the West". An interpretation of the boom of farmers' markets in the PMA, consistent with the results of my research, was only enabled by an innovative approach which combines the concept of the travelling theory, postcolonial sensitivity to the mutual relations between source and target contexts, and the findings of the studies...

Choice of housing is one of the most important decisions of inhabitants. It is a relatively new process in Czechia which did not work absolutely freely till 1989.Inhabitants accustom to choice of housing and learn this process which is based on the relatively short experience. On the one hand, the importance of the choice of housing is conditional by low willingness of the Czech inhabitants to move and on the other hand, it is amplified by the high purchase price, which usually means the greatest investment in life of households. Thus, people consider many aspects in the wish to satisfy one of the basic life needs during the choice of housing. The place of future residence is one of the most important of them. Housing research is a relatively new topic in geography. Even though systematic research on housing and quality of housing in Czechia takes place more intensively (in the social sciences, for more than two decades), there were not performed territorial differentiation of the quality of housing assessment and comparison of municipalities according to suitability for. The concept of quality of housing has appeared almost exclusively in connection with the dwelling yet, the basic unit of housing. Housing permeates all basic areas of human and social life. Therefore the evaluation of the quality...