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By ‘bringing in' the global dimension, this thesis aims to explain the main reasons for Turkey's failure to comply with EU conditionality. Existing studies in the field either look at the hardships in Turkish-EU intergovernmental bargains or at the ‘cultural mismatch' that triggers opposition in the conservative circles of both Turkey and Europe. Such tendencies mislead many students to miss the ‘bigger picture'; in other words, the global legitimation processes underlying Turkey's interactions with the EU. By introducing World Polity theory, an innovative sociological institutionalist theory developed by a Stanford University sociologist, John W. Meyer, since the 1970s, this thesis promises a fuller analysis of the difficult relations between Turkey and the EU through the study of three key sectors where EU-led reforms prove particularly problematic: foreign land ownership, ombudsmanship, and Turkey's Cyprus policy. Benefiting from original interview and survey findings, the thesis demonstrates that the likelihood of EU-led reform depends on the extent to which it is perceived as globally legitimate in the candidate country, Turkey. The main argument is that Turkey-European Union relations should be considered within the context of a wider global cultural environment in which they are deeply embedded and which constitute their agency. This argument is innovative in three ways. First, it adds the global context, which is severely neglected in the prevailing studies on EU-Turkey relations, as a constitutive element to the analysis. Second, it offers new analytical tools to rethink the EU as an ‘organizational carrier' of world models and better explain the domestic motivations behind compliance with EU conditionality. Finally, it contributes to World Polity research that is increasingly criticized for having a top-down approach and lacking in-depth case studies on how world models spread.

Gambling is very controversial theme. There are many reasons, why this business is so controversial,for example : huge amount of money, chance for money laundering, chance for winning money. Gambling is wagering money on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money. Purpose of my diploma work is a comparison situation of gamling industry in Czech republic and in the rest of the world. My diploma work has many parts.In the first one I describe the history of regulation in the United States and then I show economic dates from presents: casino locations by category, casinos per state, commercial casino tax revenue by state and national commercial casino revenue. Next I explain a special american category of casino and it is tribal casino and than I show tribal gaming revenues by region. In the next part I describe the history of gambling in the Czechoslovakia and contemporary situation in Czech republic, especially the situation in internet gambling. Internet gambling is the transformation of casino games of chance and skill to the internet. In the Czech republic is an unsatisfactory legal regualtions, because there is a obsolete rule. Therefore domestic operators can not obtain a licence for offering online gambling services to Czech residents, whereas foreign operators offers these services, but illegal. Therefore is necessary to create a new rule, which will be able to change this unsatisfactory situation. In the next part I write about three big cases, which are important for situation in european gambling industry. European commission and European court of justice have both a big influence and I describe, what they do for better situation in european gambling, because some states ( for example Germany ) prohibit internet gambling on their own territory, but this is problem, because this rule is in discrepancy with law of European union. In Czech republic is internet gambling for foreign company prohibited too and I explain, what is the reason for this situation. This diploma work contains my own research, how works telephone and internet gambling.

In this thesis I discuss the financial crisis affecting the whole world. The thesis is concerning the most advanced economic center like United States, European Union, Japan and China. A special attention belongs to the particular states of the European Union (Germany, Lithuania, Greece, Slovak Republic and of course Czech Republic). I tried to compare all the European Union by two macroeconomic variables, the first one is gross domestic product and the second one gross domestic product per capita measured by purchasing power parity. The conclusion is that the original membership's countries were far less affected by the crisis than countries that acceded in 2004 and 2007. In the case of gross domestic product the most negative impact had the crisis on Ireland, Finland and Luxembourg and at least were affected France, Portugal and Belgium. For new member states are most negative influenced the Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia and the least affected countries were Poland, Malta and Cyprus. The second variable shows us that the crisis was in case of new members most favorable for Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia and the Czech Republic and vice versa worst for Bulgaria and Romania. In global the crisis hit at most Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and had the smallest impact on Greece, Cyprus, Netherlands and France. For individual countries from the European Union I tried to analyze the applications of government measures and personally, I inclined to think that the crisis is the curative process on one hand because crises lead to the cleaning the market from less productive and prosperous companies and creating space for new opportunities but on the other hand bring a lot of negative aspects, such as unemployment, decline in living standards and more.

This thesis is a discursive investigation of contested political discourse. Using Discursive Psychology, I analyse broadcast political debates on the European Union to explore how politicians advocate and defend their political positions in an argumentative context of justification and criticism. Past research in social psychology and cognate disciplines has investigated ideology from a multitude of views. Following a move away from mainstream approaches I demonstrate how some qualitative approaches treat it as a live matter in broadcast political debates. For my data I have chosen the controversial political battleground that is the European Union and what it means for Britain. The contribution of Discursive Psychology comes in highlighting the contested, rhetorical, nature of ideology . In this thesis I draw upon Discursive Psychology to explore how this contestation unfolds as situated practice in multi-party conversations about the EU. Politicians will argue in favour or against the EU, often on the grounds of what the implication is for Britain. In this thesis I argue that Discursive Psychology is best equipped to allow us to study this as an activity; an observable, and contextual, social action. The analytical chapters focus on three interrelated aspects of political argumentation: the construction and use of factual claims (including demonstrations of knowledge statuses ) and counterclaims, the role of overlapping talk, and the function of laughter and derision. The first analytical chapter seeks to elucidate some of the ways in which facts and situated knowledge displays of them are oriented to as an argumentative matter and how they can be challenged. The second analytic chapter illustrates the role played by overlapping talk and challenges in managing the argument at hand. The last analytic chapter focuses on the accomplishment of derision in broadcast political debates, particularly on how derision can be used as form of counterclaim. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates the usefulness of Discursive Psychology in understanding the discursive dynamics of mobilisation, contestation, and defence of contrasting viewpoints in the service of political argumentation. Discursive Psychology can help social psychologists get a much deeper appreciation of the situated, and discursively dynamic, nature of political argumentation and conflict in talk.

Constructivist accounts of the EU’s emergence as a security actor typically focus on changing conceptions of the Union’s role within a European context, at both national and EU levels. But few studies have analysed how significant Others in the international system understand the EU’s evolving role, which is assumed to play an important role in EU identity construction. This thesis analyses the nature of the US elite’s discourse on the EU, assessing the relative influence of factors - internal and external to the elite - in shaping its evaluations of EU security action. The study adopts a discursive institutionalist approach exploring how differing ideas about the EU are expressed and modifying this framework to examine how agents purposefully shape discourse in line with their preferences. By adapting the framework to focus on competing elite sub-groups, the project seeks to analyse discursive attempts at institutional change in greater detail. The study employed a qualitative content analysis of more than 100 texts produced by an ideologically and institutionally representative group of American foreign policy analysts and officials, in two cases: common foreign and security policy (CFSP) and counter terrorism cooperation. Public and classified official texts in the public domain were analysed to compare coordinative and communicative discourse. The findings indicate that ideological cleavages are mirrored in distinct narrative accounts of EU, which cross cut the Union’s differing security policy competence levels. While perceptions of European disunity and weakness dominated both conservative and liberal accounts, conservative analysts continued to portray EU security integration as threatening to US interests, a theme which has declined in importance in mainstream official discourse since the early 2000s. Empirically, the thesis provides a rich analysis of discourse on the EU in a context with significance both for scholars and policymakers concerned with external perceptions of the EU as a security actor. It provides a novel assessment of how American officials’ assessments of the EU differ in public and in private. By analysing the discursive tactics of influential elite sub-groups, it reveals an arena for competing accounts of the EU in which the Union’s differing policy competences are overshadowed by the elite’s ideological cleavages.

Despite deficient institutional practices, political resistance, and lagging public support for European Union (EU) membership, as well as the presence of two existential EU crises—the euro crisis and migration crisis—, the states of Southeast Europe (SEE) continue to adapt their domestic policies, procedures, legislation, norms and values to the EU’s acquis communautaire—Europeanization. The Europeanization literature explains that such processes of adaption are induced by incentives, and informed by the (limited) ability of each state to negotiate its membership requirements. However, given the degree of political and institutional weakness in SEE, in addition to the EU’s current apathetic stance towards enlargement, this dissertation questions the explanatory power of traditional, hierarchical conceptualizations of Europeanization. It in turn investigates the extent to which the EU and Southeast European candidates (SEECs) have employed new, ‘horizontal’ mechanisms of Europeanization that rely on cooperation, learning, and the co-production of outputs to overcome the technical and strategic problems facing the candidates. Very little work has acknowledged Europeanization outside of the traditional top-down-bottom-up dichotomy, and even less has attempted to specify and investigate the impact of these alternative mechanisms of Europeanization. To address this gap in the literature, this study traces incidents of civil servant cooperation (twinning) and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) involvement in Croatia and Serbia, and assesses to what degree these mechanisms have helped Croatia and Serbia comply with the acquis. It argues that while the effectiveness of these mechanisms vary due to a number of factors, they have been vital to the accession processes of Croatia and Serbia. These mechanisms have helped align domestic and EU legislation, improved institutional procedures, fostered inter-ministry cooperation, updated policy frameworks, extended state programs to rural and minority populations, and encouraged more systematic public consultation, all of which have been deemed a necessary part of membership preparations. More broadly, these findings suggest a shift in EU-candidate state relations, and demonstrate that a more diverse set of actors and mechanisms are active in Europeanization and governance processes. In candidate states, and indeed even in some member states with weak institutional capacities, tense political environments, and an uncertain public, mechanisms that rely solely on conditionality have varied in their ability to induce domestic compliance. This dissertation contends that horizontal mechanisms that rely on socialization instead of coercion, may present a worthwhile alternative. / Graduate / crouchgb@uvic.ca

The aim of this study is to compare the methodology for determining transfer prices in the Czech Republic and the United States. The reason for choosing these countries are different models, which are governed by states. Czech Republic sets transfer prices according to the OECD model. United States of America set transfer prices according to own regulations. The theoretical part is focused on comparing models and approaches to pricing methodologies. The practical part compares the creatin of a Benchmarking study in these two models.

Czech Republic presides over the European Union in the first half of 2009. The aim of thesis is characteristic of the Institute and its implications for the Czech Republic. This work provides a comprehensive material on the history and importance of the Presidency. It answers to the questions what it yields, how it is carried out due to his preparation for the organization and content, analyzes and evaluates the course of the Czech Presidency in the first three months of the mandate.