EU trade strategies which include multilateralism, bilateralism/inter-regionalism, unilateralism, and protectionism have displayed different trends in different time periods. Regarding the determinants of EU trade strategies, while institutionalist approach points to the roles played by core EU institutions, pluralist approach draws attention to the influence of domestic interest groups. Systemic approach, on the other hand, underlines the impact of external constraints or opportunities. Nevertheless, neither of these approaches can provide a complete explanation as each of them focuses on the impact of one factor. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the changing dynamics and determinants of EU trade strategies by developing a more interactionist approach. For this purpose, firstly, main arguments of the previous approaches utilized in the analysis of EU&rsquo / s external trade policy are critically reviewed. Later, all the major factors proposed by previous approaches are brought together in an interactionist manner in order to demonstrate that a direction of influence exists among these factors and they each play a distinct role in the determination of EU trade strategies. Secondly, reasons behind different trends displayed by EU trade strategies throughout history are investigated by utilizing the interactionist model for three major periods: 1958-1995 / 1995-2000 / 2000-present. The analysis reveals that in all three periods, external factors always drive the EU to reconsider its trade strategies while their specific content is rather shaped by domestic dynamics.

The aim of this work is to test the ability of three selected theoretical approaches to explain the response of the Czech Republic to the American offer to build the ABM radar device on the Czech soil. These theories are: neorealism, utilitarian liberalism and constructivism. Each of these approaches looks at the social reality from a different perspective which allows us to view the issue in its complexity and diversity. Each theory also uses a different set of independent variables to explain the behavior of the Czech government in this case (these variables are: autonomy and influence for neorealism; domestic interests for liberalism and international and domestic norms for constructivism). Thanks to this variety of variables we are enabled to critically evaluate which key factors played the crucial role in the Czech decision-making process in this particular issue and possibly also to point out some assumed regularities which might play an important role in forming of the Czech security policy as such. The main task of the first chapter is to provide some broader historical and political context of the case. Next three chapters are then dedicated to testing of the theories by comparing their deductively phrased hypothesis with the value of dependent variable, which for our work is represented...