This thesis focuses on the less studied electoral systems, which are called ordinal. These methods allow the voters to order the candidates according to their preferences. The work provides a historical insight into this issue with regard to economics and political science theories, based on the concept of the Condorcet winner. Condorcet winner is the person who defeats all other candidates in pairwise elections and by theorists of the electoral system is the ability to choose the Condorcet winner essential. The work examines three electoral methods - alternative and suplementary vote and Borda rule. These electoral systems are analyzed in terms of effects to system of political parties, political actors and the electorate, with the emphasis on the utilization rate of preferential votes. These aspects are examined on the basis of the actual election results obtained from the website of the electoral commissions and independent institutions. Based on these data, a mathematical model that compares the effects of electoral systems is then created. The conclusion summarizes the results of the analysis and the author expresses further recommendations to address these electoral methods, not only professionally and scientifically, but also as real alternatives for real election.

This thesis is devoted to the election and political marketing topics. I analysed different types of political marketing tools and guerilla marketing tools. Guerilla marketing is a special marketing form suitable for some campaign situations. Moreover we can use it for campaign optimization. This optimization is the core of this topic. It is important to find the best tools, with the lowest expenses for our preferred voters. In addition to that, I introduced several kinds of campaign tactics useable in the Czech politics. There are also election campaign proposed budgets for different types of the Czech elections.

The effect that different electoral systems have on political participation is a widely discussed and researched topic in social sciences. However, this thesis has examined the relationship between western countries' ballot structures and electoral systems and satisfaction with democracy. By using statistical tools such as SPSS, this thesis has conducted a comparative quantitative analysis that aimed to investigate if ballot structures and electoral systems affect western citizens' satisfaction with democracy. The result is presented with the help of graphical tools, such as tables and diagrams to make it easier for the reader to understand the result. The result concluded that Western countries which have implemented a proportional electoral system do have higher levels of satisfaction with democracy among their citizens, compared to western countries that have implemented majoritarian electoral systems. Further, this thesis has concluded that ballot structures do not affect western citizens' satisfaction with democracy in any significant way.

Discussion of changes in the electoral system to the Senate of the Czech Republic The diploma thesis deals with the discussion of changes in the electoral system for the Senate. The work reflects draft laws to change the electoral system in the Senate from the past, interviews with representatives of political parties represented in both chambers of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. Furthermore, interviews with experts in the field of constitutional law and political science. The various proposals were analyzed and their principle and effects explained. The last part formulates the overall outputs of political parties and movements, experts and the opinion of the author of the diploma thesis. Key words: Senate, electoral systems, political system, constitutional system, change of electoral system, majority electoral systems, Czech Republic, parliament.

Doctor of Philosophy / Security Studies Interdepartmental Program / Emizet Kisangani / The goals of this dissertation are two-fold. First is to investigate and explain the key variables responsible for the process whereby political parties form alliances with or create terrorist organizations. Second is to fill an important gap in the literature by offering a more precise conceptualization of the issues and a different theoretical view. Extant literature argues that institutional structural constraints, such as electoral systems, are more likely to lead political parties to create terrorist organizations. However, this dissertation hypothesizes that regime ideology is also an important factor explaining the creation of terrorist organizations by political parties regardless of structural institutional constraints. This dissertation seeks to illuminate existing fears and concerns about alliances between terrorist groups and political parties in states whose ruling party platform is based on leftist, rightist, centrist, or religious ideology. Using empirical methods, which includes both quantitative and case study approaches, this dissertation intends to show that particular kinds of party ideology is positively correlated with the formation of terrorist organizations even after controlling for institutional structural constraints. The implication of these findings is important for policymakers eager to create stable polities.

<p>This thesis consists of an introduction and three stand-alone essays. In the introduction I discuss the commonalities between the three essays. Essay I charts the the main political cleavages among 59 Swedish unions and business organizations. The main conclusion is that there appear to exist two economic sources of political cleavage: The traded versus the nontraded divide and the labor versus capital divide. Essay II suggests a political rationale for why strikes have been more common in those OECD countries where the legislature is elected in single member districts (e.g. France, Great Britain) than where it was elected by proportional representation (e.g. Sweden, Netherlands). In Essay III I present a theoretical model of political support for different types of labor market regulations. From it I recover two implications: Support for industrial relations legislation that enables unions to bid up wages should be inversely related to the economy's openness, while support for employment protection legislation should be positively related to the size of the unionized sector. Empirical evidence from a cross-section of 70 countries match my theoretical priors.</p>

This thesis consists of an introduction and three stand-alone essays. In the introduction I discuss the commonalities between the three essays. Essay I charts the the main political cleavages among 59 Swedish unions and business organizations. The main conclusion is that there appear to exist two economic sources of political cleavage: The traded versus the nontraded divide and the labor versus capital divide. Essay II suggests a political rationale for why strikes have been more common in those OECD countries where the legislature is elected in single member districts (e.g. France, Great Britain) than where it was elected by proportional representation (e.g. Sweden, Netherlands). In Essay III I present a theoretical model of political support for different types of labor market regulations. From it I recover two implications: Support for industrial relations legislation that enables unions to bid up wages should be inversely related to the economy's openness, while support for employment protection legislation should be positively related to the size of the unionized sector. Empirical evidence from a cross-section of 70 countries match my theoretical priors.

This diploma thesis researches the stance of czech political parties to reform of the electoral systém. The goal of the paper is to find out what form of electoral systém is prefered by each political party. The paper itself is divided into three parts. The first part is analysis of electoral systems, which should serve as theretical foundations for next parts of the thesis. In the second part the author analyses electoral reforms in Czech republic and in Czechoslovakia after the year 1989. The third part is research, for which the author states three hypotheses, which are absed on work of Maurice Duverger and Giovanni Sartori. The first hypothesis assumes, that big parties favour majority voting, or certain form of proportional system which favours big parties. Second hypothesis puts emphasis on smaller political parties. The author thinks, that small political parties will favour proportional system in its current form, or in that kind of form which favours small parties. The third hypothesis assumes, that small political parties, which were not elected into the House of representatives will advocate for banning or at least reducing of the electoral threshold. These hypotheses are confronted with data. Data was collected via interviews and surveys with party members and representatives.

Democratic representation is crucial in a representative democracy. To elect representatives there are several different electoral systems. In the United Kingdom a majority system, the First past the post system, is used. This study aims to investigate how the First past the post system affects the democratic representation in the British parliament. Specifically, its focus is on how the democratic representation of the British political parties is affected.  This research is carried out by conducting a case study with the British parliament and the First past the post system as the studied case. The study is done by using textual analysis as the chosen method, where various texts are used as material to be able to reach a result.  The results showed several aspects of the First past the post system that affected the democratic representation regarding political parties. It suggested that theories such as Duverger’s law are applicable to the party representation in the British parliament, indicating that the First past the post system favours a two-party system where the representation of the other parties is flawed resulting in negatively skewed democratic representation.

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