Members of the European Parliament are chosen according to 28 different election systems. The European Union determines only few basic rules, which are concretised by member states in their law systems. Diploma thesis "Election system of European Parliament" deals with similarities and differences between these regulations in order to show inequality of European elections. In the second part of this thesis the author compares a partial aspect of the election system, election threshold in Germany and in the Czech Republic. While the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany invalidated firstly the five-percent-threshold and then even the three-percent-threshold because of its contradiction to Basic Law, the Czech Constitutional Court confirmed it as constitutional afterwards. Both courts judicated that it is a violation of election equality but in the opinion of the Czech one fragmentation of the Parliament would hinder its work with such intensity that election threshold preventing from this fragmentation is justifiable. The judgements are compared and their argumentations analysed if reasonable. This thesis comes to the conclusion, that considered the current state and predictable development election threshold has its justification. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

. Jitka Rabitsch Aamčíková The aim of this thesis is the critical analysis of political influence of Andrej Babis through his ownership of the Czech daily Mlada Fronta DNES. The purpose of the work is the display of political content in the Czech media, especially in relation to elections. This reflection is viewed through the lens of political parallelism complemented by an introduction to political communication. The methodological outline is followed by the analytical part using a quantitative content analysis which focuses on the presentation of four political parties in the Czech daily Mlada Fronta. This thesis tests the hypothesis whether the media picture of competing political parties during the Czech local elections 2014 was influenced by the fact that the entrepreneur and politician Andrej Babis is the owner of the Mlada Fronta.

This diploma thesis has several objetcs. The main objective is to answer the research question and seven hypotheses including elections to the European Parliament and MEPs behaviour from individual europarties. Some hypotheses include the participation of the electorate of the member states in elections to the EP, while others relate to participation of MEPs in voting, cohesion and coalitions that are formed in the parliament. Data on voting are obtained thanks to a project created by the London School of Economics. These data are already clearly adjusted, because official data on voting the European Parliament show in a form that could not be analyzed without software support. After the introduction follow two chapters, in which there is described theoretical framework involving the search of relevant sources on the European Parliament, describing his position within key institutions of the EU, its function, history, and empowerment to the election of MEPs to the europarties. The results show some charasteristic patterns in the European Parliament. MEPs in most cases hold the party line rather than national. However, there are some cases, where individual nations across europarties vote uniformly, even though this behavior in some of them oppose to the attitude of a majority of the party. Large...

This thesis presents a spatial analysis of electoral results of the ANO (Alliance of Dissatisfied Citizens) political platform in the 2013 parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic. The study aims to identify spatial patterns of their electoral support and to uncover underlying factors which steered voters towards supporting this party. Furthermore, the thesis attempts to determine whether ANO is a new right-wing party poised to displace previously established right-wing parties (especially ODS); whether its support reached highest levels of support in areas where traditional right-wing parties lost the most votes, and whether significant regional differences exist in voter support for ANO.As explanatory variables, the study uses socio- demographic and economic characteristics reflecting the population structure and the nature of local contexts. Furthermore, the thesis further intends to analyse possible ways through which the pattern of ANO voter support may have been influenced by the activities of the Agrofertagricultural company owned by the platform's leader Andrej Babis. Methodically, the study is grounded in an analysis of aggregate data on electoral results in municipalities, as well as an analysis of sociological surveys of individual voter behaviour. The thesis processed the data via...

The thesis deals with electoral and partisan cycles in stock returns of nine CEE countries and checks consistency of observed cycles with efficient market hypothesis. The evidence mostly supports possibility of political influence on stock markets, but the effects often have opposite sign than hypothesized. Electoral cycle has been found in Estonia and Hungary, while returns in four other countries are significantly lower before elections. Markets more often exhibit left-wing premium, it is significant in the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Romania. The results are similar between nominal and real returns. Both cycles are also considered significant for the panel of countries. Moreover, cycles are hardly explainable by macroeconomic conditions, which indicates market inefficiency. This is confirmed by analysis of volatility, which reveals that risk does not correspond to changes in returns induced by the cycles.

- Elections to Municipal Councils in the Czech Republic The topic of my Master'degree thesis are the elections to municipal councils in the Czech Republic. I chose this topic mainly because these elections receive considerably less attention of professional literature and the media than other kinds of elections, particularly the elections to the Chamber of Deputies. It is so, although the decisions made by the municipal councils often have the biggest impact on the lives of ordinary people. Also this year, there were some interesting cases related to the elections to municipal councils that the Constitutional Court had to decide and that only made my interest greater. The aim of this thesis is to give a complex description of the legislation concerning the elections to municipal councils, to try to give some evaluation of this legislation and to suggest some possible changes to this legislation. This thesis consists of introduction, eight chapters and conclusion and its structure is essentially based on the structure of the Act No. 491/2001 Sb., on Elections to Representative Bodies of Municipalities and on Amendments to Certain Other Laws as amended. The introduction pursues the reasons why the elections to municipal councils receive such relatively small attention and the problems which the...

This thesis deals with the relationship between media coverage of political parties and election results. Specifically, it focuses on four political parties (TOP 09, Věci veřejné, KDU- ČSL and Strana zelených) in the period of nine months before the parliamentary elections in May 2010. The two established political parties were not successful in these elections (KDU- ČSL and Strana zelených), the other two parties were. Using quantitative content analysis of media content this work examines media coverage of these four parties in nationwide television, radio and print media. The thesis compares differences between media presentations of the parties with the evolution of political preferences of the parties. As a source, monthly data acquired by two public opinion research agencies - CVVM and Median - was used. Even more important to answer the research questions was to compare the media presentation of the parties with their final election results. The thesis assumes that the form of media presentation of the parties is one of the factors that affects their voters' support. Based on the data found this thesis tries to find out trends and patterns guiding the relationship between media space which parties achieved, the development of their electoral preferences and the final election results.

This diploma thesis deals with the political-geographical analysis of the Czech extreme rights, its voters and electoral support in the period after 1990. The paper aims to evaluate the development of the Czech extreme rights in the period 1990-2010 in terms of its importance in the Czech political system, and especially from the perspective of regional differentiation of its electoral support, and to identify possible influencing factors that conduce the voters to support this political stream. The objective is to answer the question whether there are significant regional differences in the support of right-wing extremist parties and, if so, whether these differences are stable over time. Just monitoring of a longer period (1990-2010) will specify whether the regions with above-average support of far-right parties are stable, or whether the extraordinary support of these parties during the reported period varies regionally and some shifts occur for example, due to the social-economic changes in the transformation period. The thesis also examines the factors that could explain the regional differences in electoral support of the far rights. The aim here is to use the social- demographic and economic characteristics expressing the structure of the population as well as the influence of the local...

The aim of this master thesis is to compare electoral systems of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic and the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany. Firstly, basic terms regarding substance and types of elections, suffrage and primary classification of electoral systems are briefly characterized with the help of literature. Secondly, electoral system of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, its form in the context of the political system of the Czech Republic as a whole, its development over time and its impact on the results of elections in the last twenty years is described in detail. Furthermore, the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany is analysed in the same way, too. At the end of this thesis, advantages and disadvantages of both electoral systems are compared and their possible changes are outlined. Keywords: elections, electoral system, Parliament, Bundestag, Chamber of Deputies, comparison

As mentioned above, this master thesis is focused on some processes which an election campaign is affected by. In the first place, it analyses processes and trends which are typical for the legal regulation of election campaigns in the Czech Republic. My approach to this topic is centered on restrictive parameter limits which influence election campaigns. The core of the master thesis is naturally aimed at the field of law. The aim of the master thesis is to present basic knowledge of the matter which is still topical in the Czech society based on the fact that elections are held quite often. The master thesis can therefore serve as a source of information for further analysing election campaigns whose main purpose is to win the biggest voters' support. The master thesis is divided into four chapters. The first one concerns a theoretical background of election campaigns. The second one examines an election campaign itself, its legal regulation de lege lata respectively. The third chapter studies general principles relative to conducting an election campaign. The final chapter reflects the current situation in the Czech Republic as regards the direct presidential election.