Lobbying and its regulation in Czech and international context Abstract This Master's thesis investigates the phenomena of lobbying and its regulation both in international and subsequently national context, following a current government draft law on lobbying. The thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, a suitable definition of lobbying is sought and its functions, most common typologies and three main theories are presented. After that, attention is shifted to the mutual relationship between lobbying and corruption and their interactions. In the following part, possible approaches towards the legitimacy of lobbying as a part of democratic process are presented. The end of the chapter analyses general background of lobbying activity regulation and its forms and tools. The second chapter is concerned with lobbying and concrete modes of its regulation in three selected countries - Lithuania, Poland, and Slovenia. The individual subsections have the same structure: at the beginning, the overall history of the regulation is outlined, followed by the introduction of the national lobbying environment. After that, relevant legal definitions are summed up, the regulation is comprehensively presented and then, based on academic literature, evaluated. Each of the subsections is concluded with...

The dissertation deals with immigration policy of the United States toward illegal immigration from Mexico during the presidency of George W. Bush. It aims to answer the question whether the policy had at all changed when compared to the previous administrations, and whether the terrorist attacks from 9/11 had any effect on the issue. The paper also discusses reasons why comprehensive immigration reform has not been accepted yet. In order to answer those questions, the thesis analyzes American perception of immigrants and characterizes interests of pressure groups and political parties in immigration.

The presented work examines the special characteristics of electricity produced by the wind as a renewable resource into which considerable hopes are being placed. Production of electricity from wind, as well as from other renewable sources, is a subject of many legislatively enshrined preferential rules. These subsidies and regulatory provisions help the energy producers but represent additional costs to every final customer and tax payer. The aim of this work is to analyse the key arguments of wind energy advocates, which are 1) economic advantage of this production due to zero costs for 'fuel' and 2) negligible burden on the environment due to zero carbon dioxide emissions. The work takes into account all aspects of wind energy production, including their financial and extra-financial implications, and shows their indefensibility in economic terms and in terms of environmental protection. Besides, I have attempted to identify institutional aspects and forms of government which is known to give interest groups a chance to succeed in their rent-seeking activities and as a result allow prosperity of the above-mentioned ineffective energy production. Attention is also paid to the observation that, given the specific technological features of electricity production from the wind, it is not possible to fully apply the conclusions of a traditional theory of economic regulation onto the current position of key players in the electricity market.

My diploma thesis deals with external communication with a view to public relations. It´s applied on Robert Bosch company, spol. s r. o., Ceske Budejovice. The main objective was creating an own proposal of external communication for year 2012, aimed at one interest group of the company. This group includes university students with technical and economic specialization = potential future employees of the company. In my proposal there are some suitable elements from new trends in marketing communication (viral marketing, guerilla marketing, event marketing).

The primary objective of this work was to introduce readers to the basic terminology in the field of Public relations and outline their ties to marketing communication. The practical part is focused (by using the results of a questionnaire survey and interview school management) determination of tools used in PR and their effectiveness, potential communication channels and factors that influence students'decisions on the selection of the following schools. After reading this thesis, the reader should have also an idea of how to evaluate the satisfaction of customers (in this case the students).

This work deals with the questions of the analysis and management of the parts engaged in information and communication technology projects. The stakeholder (the term "stakeholder" is used in Czech as well) is a subject, i.e. an individual or a corporate body, that is concerned about the result of the project and has the possibility to influence the project. The main goal of the thesis is to map the contemporary approaches toward the stakeholders analysis and management in the ICT projects, to analyze the problems of the influence of individual parts from both technocracy and human (psychological) point of view and to subsequently suggest the methodology for an effective analysis and management of the engaged parts, which could be used at the management of the projects in the ICT field. It is convenient to introduce the used terms and notions , their history and the way of use in the first part. There are dissect the known methodologies and tools used for the analysis and the management of the engaged parts. Subsequently, the stakeholders are systematically divide, it is accomplished their analysis from different perspectives and discussed mainly the aspects which can be crucial in the project management. The most common interests and motivations of the particular engaged parts are presented, including the influence and interest groups and the ways how to procure these parts for the aims of the projects. In the second part a research is described, which is carried out among managers of ICT companies and participants of ICT projects. There are elaborated some hypotheses on grounds of practical experiences from ICT projects and these are verified by this examination. The third part is focused on the presentation of the methodology for the analysis and the management of stakeholders in the ICT projects, which should serve the project managers for the stakeholders analysis and management in the ICT projects. Practical use of this methodology in the project of the SAP system implementation is described in the last, fourth part. This thesis completes relevant sources with the practical experiences at work on the projects in the ICT field. The effected research attested the original notion that this issue is relatively little known in the Czech Republic. The outcomes of this work could be of use for the project management in the ICT field.

The goal of this thesis is to analyse church property restitutions and overall relations between state and churches in Czech. This issue is up to date not only from economic policy perspective. Church restitutions and its appropriateness is also the core topic in currently public discussion. For analytical part purposes are in theoretical part discussed several theories: theory of interest groups, rent-seeking, theoretical concept of church financing and basic theories from economics of religion. In analytical part is the core analysis of church restitutions and their consequences for government budgets itself. In this part is also analysis of property relations between state and churches from historical development to present-day situation. Than is discuss the Act No. 428/2012 Sb. It has been demonstrated many problematic aspects of this act like high non- transparency, inequality before the law and strong influence of interest groups. Financial analysis concluded that positive impact of the act will be not sooner than in 50- 60 years.

1 Abstract This thesis investigates the problem of gambling in the Czech Republic. There are analyzed and discussed several aspects of gambling in relation to historical development, the existing legislative system or the specifics of interest and acting of participants by research questions. The offer of the gambling market is very wide. The work focuses mainly on gaming device with which the issue of pathological gambling is associated the most. The important methods, which are used, are pathological gambling analysis, analysis of the legal framework, the analysis of participants and analysis of relevant strategic documents. The thesis analyzes the current state of gambling in the Czech Republic, based on questionnaires addressed to the municipalities and structured interviews with other respondents. The thesis also presents specific measures that can be applied to solve the current problem of gambling in the Czech Republic. Keywords Regulating of Gambling, Gaming Machines, Pathological Gambling, Aspects of State Interventionism, Progress of the Gambling in the Czech Republic, Jurist Legislature, Participants and Interest Groups The extent of thesis: 104 pages, 188 342 characters (including spaces)

The paper examines attempts to professionalize and institutionalize lobbying in Poland and the Czech Republic from the beginning of the 1990s to 2016, from the point of view of the sociology of professions, the sociology of public policy-making and interpretative policy analysis. First, on the basis of an analysis of the professional paths of 80 Polish and Czech commercial lobbyists, it presents their common typology for both countries and shows how efforts to gain recognition and enhance their professional status, i.e. efforts to professionalize lobbying, are linked to their pursuit of political legitimacy. Then it shows lobbying as a specific way of constructing the political activity of private actors as a policy problem. It illustrates the conditions under which lobbying in both countries was constructed as a problem and set on the agenda. In doing so, the dissertation pays particular attention to the role of transnational actors in this process. Finally, lobbying regulation processes are analysed as arenas where the symbolic boundary between the public and private spheres is negotiated and redefined.

Economic History of Authors' Rights and Creative Industries in Czechoslovakia Hana Moravcová Dissertation thesis Abstract The thesis analyzes the impact of cultural policy on creative industries in Czechoslovakia. The first chapter is devoted to economics of authors' rights. It identifies inconsistencies in its three main assumptions, that undermine proper understanding of the effects of copyright and authors' rights. It provides a framework for optimization behavior of authors, that respects that market transactions between authors, users and consumers take place not on one, but on many markets where a work is spread. The second chapter reveals that the emergence of the Authors' Rights Act in interwar Czechoslovakia was the result of the influence of particular interest groups. The most important organizations are identified. Their mutual interconnection and linkage to the state facilitated their ability to directly influence the wording of the new law and its practical application. They used favorable conditions, like interventionist thinking of the society. Moreover, Czechoslovakia had to implement an international copyright treaty, part of the peace treaty signed by Czechoslovakia after the Great War. The third chapter consists of two case studies about creative industries in Czechoslovakia. The first...