The main focus of the dissertation is to examine the interactions between Egyptian foreign policy and the domestic, regional and international dramatic changes that shaped the environment in which that foreign policy was made and operated during the Arab Spring in Egypt from January 2011 to June 2013. The goal is to explore whether domestic, regional and international changes during the Arab Spring had resulted in a substantial change of Egyptian foreign policy in those three years regarding most foreign policy issues especially toward Turkey and Palestine. The dissertation's analysis, while rather qualitative and inductive in nature, employed the neoclassical realism as its theoretical framework. It allowed the researcher to identify major domestic players and issues such as ideology, strategic culture, political religion and the ability to mobilize national resources and study their impact on the foreign policy decision makers. The researcher concluded that the Egyptian foreign policy made several major changes during the Arab Spring especially toward Turkey and Palestine/Israel. These changes were due to domestic and regional variables more than to international systemic order's signals. Neoclassical realism proved to be ideal for the researcher's analysis. It helped him easily identify key...

Diploma thesis "From evil Turk to comrades and back" deals with the ability to use power to overlay one dominant discourse by the another. In our case local orientalist discourse by the new communist one. We have analysed media representations of selected Middle Eastern countries and people living there, published in broadsheet Pravda in two different periods - in 1984 and after 2014. We have analysed more than 50 articles from 1984, and 160 titles, photos and introductions published after 2014. Communist discourse dominated in the 80's Pravda newspaper, accompanied with relevant framing, stereotypes and binary opposites. But this shift was only temporal, and nowadays Pravda shows a comeback to orientalism as defined by Edward Said and others, as well as being present in Slovak folk and art literature for a long time before. Media shifted the narrative from the evil Turk to vicious American, while Islam and "us" vs. "them" division was made irrelevant. On the other hand, class divides were put into the spotlight, with the political left being unifying international element spanning the globe. 30 years later Pravda operates with typical orientalistic framing again - Islam, oriental tyrrany, irrationality or religious bigotry and fanaticism. We have also, as collateral result of the analysis, found...

The aim of this thesis is to introduce the Maghreb countries and the historical background and current events to clarify the common issues between the two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Specifically, this thesis introduces the relations between Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Libya with their former colonial power, France. Although Libya differs in many aspects from the other Maghreb countries, it cannot be isolated in the region. Thus this thesis, with the emphasis to the differences, takes Libya also in account. This thesis also aims to define the current foreign policy of France towards the Maghreb countries and outlines the strengths and weaknesses of current and future mutual cooperation.

The Islamist movements operate in all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. The mother organization, which is also best-known among the movements, is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, whose ideas spread quickly into other countries in the region. Although the Islamist movements are ideologically different, they have one similar attribute - focus on various social issues as well as the fact that they originally profiled as charity organizations and they have only recently entered the political scene. The main goal of this diploma thesis is to analyze and compare the activities and achievements of the Muslim Brotherhood (The Freedom and Justice party) and The Movement of Islamic Tendency (The Ennadhda party) within the political systems in Egypt and Tunisia. The thesis also aims at verifying explanatory cleavage of Islamist electorate based on the cleavage theory within Egypt and Tunisia. The biggest success of the Islamist movements so far meant the changes after the Arab Spring. Following this event the Islamist movements won the first free parliamentary election in both countries. However, the political activities of the Muslim Brotherhood did not last so long in Egypt - nowadays the movement exists only illegally and it has been in a difficult position. On the contrary, the...

The thesis is concerned with the influence of the income from oil industry on the economies of Algeria and the United Arab Emirates in the years 2000-2015. The topic is analysed from the point of view of the resource curse theory. This theory is defined as a negative relationship between excess of a non-renewable resource and economic performance. Alongside with the negative economic growth, the experts defined other factors linked to the resource curse. The method used in the thesis is an analysis of these indicators on the example of Algeria and the UAE, and subsequently the dangers of resource curse are identified. The thesis evaluates, based on the comparison of the performance of selected factors, the economical and institutional development of the chosen countries. In the conclusion the diversification efforts of the UAE in the economic field and relatively safe economic development of Algeria are commented. More or less positive tendencies may be observed also in the development of most of the institutional indicators of both countries.

The master thesis is concerned with the impact of online and offline marketing. These effects are researched in the conditions of United Arab Emirates and its telecommunication industry. The goal of the thesis is to identify the effects of offline and online marketing tools on consumer behavior in the UAE telecommunication industry. The main added value of the thesis is brought through primary research that was conducted on the sample of 100 respondents living in the UAE. The results show the increasing importance of online marketing tools and stress the significance of synergic effects of implementing adequate online and offline marketing tools.

The diploma thesis deals with the regime change in the context of the Arab Spring 2011 with focus on Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. The aim of the thesis is to determine factors causing different progress towards political reforms in each country. Theoretical framework is provided by characteristics of undemocratic regimes, transitions to democracy and democracy itself. Each country is introduced from the historical point of view with focus on the 20th century, especially current methods of the governance. Several conclusions are made based on analytical -- synthetical method of reviewing historical, political and socioeconomical factors determining the domestic situation in compared countries and explaining their influence on different transition progress towards the new political system.

Intervention in Libya is an anomaly in President Barack Obama's foreign policy during his eight years in the office. This thesis aims to analyze the decision-making process leading to this unprecedented step. Using Graham Allison's Bureaucratic Politics Model, the purpose of this analysis is to investigate the influence of some presidential advisors and allies on his final decision. Data for this study were collected using President Obama's public statements, biographies of several members of the administration, and secondary academic sources. After some general context, the thesis closely examines the selected period from the first protests in Libya on February 15 to the beginning of the Operation United Protector on March 31. This timeframe of forty-five days is further divided into the week-by-week process tracing analyses. The development on the ground in Libya is merged with changes of attitude in the American administration and changing alliances among the members of the advisory team of the President. The Bureaucratic Politics Model is used to analyze specific tactics used by American officials to impose their preferred scenario. The study also tests the applicability of several new methodological approaches within the Bureaucratic Politics Model like the palace politics perspective,...

Bibliographic Note Sundal, Kendra. 2013. La Frontière/Il Confine: French and Italian Migration Discourse. 85 pages. Master's thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Supervisor doc. PhDr. RNDr. Nikola Hynek, M.A., PgDipRes, PhD Abstract This work analyzes the historical background and discourse on migration in Italy and France, focusing on migration from and through former colonies in North Africa. Drawing on a feminist methodological approach, the work discusses how migrants may be perceived or treated differently based on gender, and how this impacts (or is impacted by) policies. In particular, one illustrative event, the closure of the Franco-Italian border in April 2011, is analyzed more deeply using the theory of domopolitics as introduced by William Walters. By tracing the history and the discourse about migration and integration from colonial times to the present, this event and other recent debates related to Mediterranean migration are contextualized. Key Terms: migration, France, Italy, borders, Arab Spring, domopolitics, feminist methodology, discourse analysis, historical representation

The master thesis titled Italian Political Discourse and Securitization of Immigration: the Case of the Maghreb revolutions in 2011 deals with the issue of mass immigration waves reaching Italian shores and, in particular, the tiny island of Lampedusa during the initial phase of the so called Arab Spring. Its main goal lies in reconstruction and interpretation of the political discourse led by Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government presenting the immigration crisis as a serious threat to national and potentially to European security. The first part introduces the general theoretical framework. The securitization theory of the Copenhagen School was used as an instrument for the thesis, including major criticism raised by the authors belonging to the social constructivist approach. In the second part, the author tries to characterize the basic historical and political context and clarifies the specifics of immigration in contemporary Italy. The last segment contains structuralized discourse analysis of the 2011 events and explores the extraordinary measures adopted and implemented in reaction to the government rhetoric at both the national and supranational levels. In this respect, the author pays special attention to how the process of negotiations finally led to the revision of the EU...