- Direct presidential election in the Czech Republic: reasons, conditions, consequences This diploma thesis is concerned with different aspects of implementation of the direct presidential election in the Czech Republic. It is aimed to discover the actual reasons for passing the Constitutional Act No. 71/2012 Coll., which introduces this institute into the Czech constitutional system. For the purpose of doing so, the thesis is divided into three parts. The first one presents and evaluates particular arguments (historical, political, constitutional, legal etc.), which were used by the proponents of this institute on one hand and by its opponents on the other. The content of the second part is the most extensive as it follows up the comparison of bills attempting to implement the direct presidential election into the Constitutional Act since 2001 up to the present. Therefore this part contains thirteen bills in total, including the one, which later becomes the Act No. 71/2012 Coll. Individual bills are compared and contrasted. The pertinent political and social circumstances accompanying their origin are also briefly mentioned. As the result of this comparison the author comes to the conclusion that the true motive to pass the Constitutional Act No. 71/2012 Coll does not lie in its content or its...

My thesis named "Attitude of Czech dailies Lidové noviny, Mladá fronta Dnes and Právo to the first direct Czech presidential election" should confirm or disprove the bias of the three Czech newspapers in the period between the first and the second round of the direct presidential election. The first part of thesis focuses on selected chapters of media, linguistic and semiotic theories regarding bias. It also discusses the process of direct elections and CVs of Karel Schwarzenberg and Miloš Zeman. At first, I used quantitative analysis to determine if the newspapers were balanced and provide comparable space to the both candidates. Then I applied the qualitative analysis to find out what language and semiotic components used the authors from newspapers to inform the public about the candidates of the second round of direct elections. Depending on the findings, I divide the articles into positive, neutral, negative categories for Karel Schwarzenberg and positive, neutral, negative for Miloš Zeman. After the victory of Miloš Zeman the bias was discussed. This thesis should answer the question of whether the three Czech newspapers were biased in favour of Karel Schwarzenberg or Miloš Zeman between the first and the second round of the first direct Czech presidential election.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the process of changing the Czech Constitution from indirect presidential election to direct popular election. This happened in 2012 and it is the most significant change of the Czech Constitution since its adoption. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on characteristics of a president in the Czech Republic and his specific role in the constitutional political system, which is crucial for understanding the topic. The second chapter deals with the process of constitutional change from the indirect to popular presidential election. It describes the history of legislative bills from 1989 to 2012, when the last bill was passed by the Parliament. Also, this chapter introduces an expert discussion about this fundamental constitutional change, as well as its pros and cons. The arguments for a direct election are rare in expert discussion compare to the arguments which are against. The argumentation of the political representation is generally in favor of direct presidential elections. This is in a strong contrast with political scientists and constitutional lawyer's opinion. The strongest argument for a direct election was public demand. The fact that a direct election has no place in the parliamentary political system and has potential to deform the parliamentary...

The direct election of the president is political, politological and also constitutional-legal topic which has already accompanied for many years. It appears always in connection with the presidential elections, but also as a part of the parliamentary election campaign. February 2012 interrupted the regularity and direct presidential election was approved. What this step will have impact on functioning of the Czech political system, will turn up in 2013 when the authority will take the first Czech president elected in direct elections. But the majority of constitutional lawyers and political scientists agree that the introduction of direct elections in the Czech Republic is not solving the existing problems, and therefore they express fears how the chase will affect the functioning of the system as a whole. Keywords: direct presidential elections, powers, legitimacy, political system, presidential campaign

The presented Thesis "Political Communication and Politainment in the Presidential Election in the Czech Republic in 2013" analyses political communication in the historically first presidential election campaign in the Czech Republic. I saw the presidential election as an opportunity to research a new platform of political communication that politainment is. The primary aim of the Thesis is to introduce this concept in the context of the current nature of political communication and at the same time to identify variables defining this phenomenon in the Czech environment. Analysis of the elements of politainment is performed on campaigns of the two most successful candidates aspiring for the office of the President of the Czech Republic - Miloš Zeman and Karel Schwarzenberg. I focused primarily on the television appearance of both candidates in TV debates broadcasted by Czech Television, which were the climax of the entire presidential campaign. I was interested in the content of communication of both candidates and the overall character of the debates. The Thesis answers the following questions: What is political communication and its role in politics? How does its form change over time? Does personalisation of election campaigns result in the emergence of politainment as a phenomenon of political...

The aim of this thesis is to introduce all changes, that occurred in the Presidential office since February 1948 until the death of Klement Gottwald. After the short introduction, which gives us insight into the so called the Foundation period of Communism and into the life of Klement Gottwald and his wife Marta, follows the opening chapter about the situation in the Presidential office after the February 1948. It introduces two great topics, which would be examined in the next chapters - staff question and organization of the office. The thesis is closed by the chapter about the role of the Prague castle and Gottwald himself in 1948-1953. Books about this era describe mostly the general characteristics of the period and of Klement Gottwald himself. They are not paying attention to the Presidential office. Only one of the persecuted employees wrote a biography - Miroslav Jirásek. I used mostly the books of Karel Kaplan. The memoirs of Ladislav Novák (chancellor of Antonín Zápotocký, Antonín Novotný and Ludvík Svoboda) were very useful for the description of the situation after the death of Klement Gottwald. Even though documents from a couple of archives were used, some questions were left without the answers. For example, the file of the action committee doesn't exist, so we couldn't describe its...

In terms of government structure, the constitutional system of the Czech Republic is based on the principles of the parliamentary form of government. That means executive powers are vested in the Government (Council of Ministers), which is accountable to the Parliament through the vote of confidence. The Head of State as a pouvoir neutre plays usually a representative and integrating role in this system. On the contrary the President lacks the political accountability and the Parliament (or another voting body) does not have any direct way of holding him accountable for his action. Except for high treason he also cannot be prosecuted for his actions during his term. The Government therefore usually influences the exercise of his powers by countersigning his acts or decisions. Nevertheless, the role of the Czech President within the constitutional system is not only ceremonial; through his powers he can also actively participate in the adoption of political decisions. He can even exercise some of his expressly granted powers not subject to approval of the Government or any other constitutional body. But is such extent of powers compatible with the fact of his non-accountability? The public debate about these issues has been arising repeatedly since the adoption of the Czech Constitution without...

Direct presidential election is a new phenomenon in Czech Republic which brought a challenge for political marketing. There was no previous experience with presidential campaigns and therefore there were a number of expectations how the candidates are going to carry out the campaigns. The thesis focuses on the election campaigns of individual candidates for Czech president in 2013. On a basis of the theoretical framework is an ambition of the thesis to analyze and compare the campaigns and subsequently to evaluate whether they have played an important role in the election, influenced voters' decisions and election results

Diploma thesis "Ukraine's foreign policy orientation according to the presidential addresses and public preferences" deals with the stability of Ukraine's foreign policy priorities in the period from independence until the year 2007. Through an analysis of presidential addresses the thesis concerns with Ukraine's definition towards its main foreign political partners - the EU, NATO, Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The thesis follows changes of Ukraine's definition in context of domestic and international political development. Foreign political preferences of Ukrainian citizens in the period from the year 2000, or 2002 respectively, to 2007 are a matter of concern because of their significance for an assessment of relevance of foreign policy priorities set by the president.

The topic of this diploma thesis is direct elections of the President of Slovak Republic in context of other Central European countries - particularly Czech Republic and Poland. The subject of my analysis were selected aspects of presidential election, which I analyzed in the third chapter (in case of Slovakia), dedicated to direct elections of Slovak president in 1999, 2004 and 2009; and in the fourth chapter, which is dedicated to last direct election. Among analyzed aspects (in case of Slovak presidential election) a trend of declining interest in the first round of elections was confirmed; also sooner claiming of candidacy, compared with previous elections. The latter fact is connected with longer and longer pre-election campaign, which is also more and more personal and offensive. The ratio of partisan and non-partisan candidates was in all elections about the same (approx. 3:2 in favor of partisan candidates). In the fifth chapter of the thesis I analyzed these aspects in case of direct presidential elections in Poland and Czech Republic. Then, I compared them. According to analysis, women in Poland almost were not standing for president at all (there were even fewer women candidates than in Slovakia), but in Poland we can see much higher number of very prominent candidates (especially former...