This diploma thesis deals with election campaigns in small municipalities in the context of the Czech Republic, respectively nine municipalities of Microregion of Jemnice, which were selected as a research sample. The work focuses mainly on the analysis of whether election campaigns in these municipalities can be met at all, or what form and character of they have. The subject of the research is also the question if we can meet a certain form of election campaign in those small municipalities where there are disputes about the development of the municipality. This qualitative case study mainly uses the deductive methodological approach, where the basic theoretical approaches and concepts of the researched issue are introduced, from which the specific goals related to the research of campaigns in the Czech municipal environment are proceeded. The analytical part of the thesis is based on an inquiry in selected municipalities of the mentioned microregion, where the semi-structured interviews with successful and unsuccessful candidates from the municipal elections last year, ie. 2018, were used primarily for data collection, analysis of public and virtual documents, community websites or newspaper and municipal newsletters, was used as well. The final part of the thesis then summarizes the partial...

Research on political parties and their organizational stability presents one of the most important research agendas in modern comparative politics. Especially among newly democratized countries of the Central and Eastern Europe, the consolidation of democratic political institutions used to be considered as a key factor for the successful finishing of the whole transitional process. Despite the fact that most of the transitologists optimistically perceived the consolidation of the new democracies as a one-way process, the most of party systems in the eastern countries experienced serious changes and periods of instability within the last ten years. The most notable change was definitely the unexpected electoral success of genuinely new political parties and movements usually led by a political entrepreneur and formed without solid organizational background or solid ties to society. This tendency further turned into a new wave of unpredictability even within the party systems commonly perceived as fully stabilized and consolidated. Based on such new conditions, the contemporary party researchers turn their attention towards possible interpretations of this unprecedented phenomenon. This dissertation contributes to this discussion by the attempt to operationalize and explain the level of...

The goal of this Thesis is to introduce the circumstances of creation the political party TOP09, its development, results in elections in years 2010 - 2018 and its position in current political scene. In the introduction I will define the theoretical background and context. I will interduce the political party, its place in the system and I mention the typology of political parties. Then I will describe the party system with an emphasis on party system in Czech Republic. In the main part of the Thesis I will describe circumstances of creation the political party TOP09 and define programmatic of the party. I'm going to analyze a reason of successes and failures of the party in elections, which took place on Czech Republic, since its creation in 2008 till present year 2018. In this thesis is based on analytical, descriptive and comparative methods.

Voter decision-making about which political party to support in the elections is a very complex process. One of the key factors influencing our voting behaviour is the effect of particular candidates in terms of their local activities. Many Czech and also foreign studies show that candidates gain significantly higher preferences in the municipality of their residence and its surroundings. Within the analyzed parliamentary elections, this is reflected not only by the territorial concentration of preferential votes, but also by higher local electoral support of the political parties or movements represented by these candidates. This diploma thesis examines, among other things, differences in the strength of the described effect (technically called the friends and neighbours effect) between candidates from different political parties and in different regions of Czechia. Quantitative research has shown greater local strength and spatial extent of friends and neighbours effect for leading candidates from non-metropolitan areas who have experiences from local or regional politics, such as mayors or regional councilors. In the 2017 parliamentary elections, the friends and neighbours effect mostly influenced the spatial patterns of electoral support of the KDU-ČSL and the STAN movement and on the other...

This diploma thesis deals with the use of artificial intelligence tools and automated journalism in the Czech News Agency. Specifically, it deals with the very first use of algorithmically generated news reports, which the agency published during the election in 2018. It compares municipal and Senate elections from this year with the outputs of ČTK news from municipal elections in 2014 and Senate elections in 2016. It uses qualitative and quantitative analysis methods. The diploma thesis also deals with the method how the generation of reports in 2018 worked in ČTK and shows and explains examples of source codes by which the report generator was programmed. It will also offer other ways and areas in which the Czech News Agency uses or is about to use automated journalism and its tools. One part of the thesis is also an interview with the technical director of ČTK Jan Kodera, who explained how automated journalism works in the Czech media environment of the press agency. The author also outlines some scientific disciplines related to artificial intelligence, which are required for the needs of this thesis. At the same time, he will also offer a number of examples of how automation tools are used in other newsrooms around the world.

This graduate thesis comparatively analyzes key features of political systems of Malaysia and Singapore using the chosen concepts of hybrid regimes theory. In the first part, main conceptualizations of this theory are presented to be later critically assessed. What follows is a thorough comparative analysis of political systems of the countries in question using the concept of "chain of democratic choice" introduced by Andreas Schedler as a framework for analysis. Subsequently, operationalized concept of competitive authoritarianism by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way is applied. The outcome of the analysis is the classification of Malaysia as competitive authoritarian while Singapore is classified as a case of hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime. As far as theory is concerned, the thesis argues that although hybrid regimes themselves cannot provide for a unique mid-range regime type, some concepts connected to the paradigm offer an appropriate tool for the study of nondemocratic regimes.

The diploma paper represents a contribution to the research of direct democracy in the Czech Republic, specifically it deals with the most used form of direct citizen participation in governance, local referendum. The paper is mainly empirical - it shows an experience of ten European countries with local referendum as well as the legislative framework and the definition of this instrument in the Czech Republic. The centre point of the whole thesis lies in the real practice and the experience of Czech municipalities with local direct democracy. The data used in this paper come up from research which aimed to collect information on all local referendums in the Czech Republic since 1990. Although this aim has not been fully accomplished, the data allow to study the practice of Czech local referendums. Local referendums are divided into several groups (categories of territorial changes, the environment, issues of internal governance of the municipality and others) within which are further analysed. The aim of the paper is to verify the hypothesis that seeks a relationship among the size of the municipality, subject of voting, quorum and voter turnout. The paper also focuses on the factors that have got fundamental impact on the final result of referendum.

In the thesis "Electoral Authoritarianism in Comparative Perspective of Southeast Asia", while analyzing for cases of regime survival and fall, author develops the argument that certain subtypes of authoritarian regimes are better build to cope with change than others. Since the four cases are under new institutionalism generally classified as electoral authoritarianism, the text depicts some of the methodological problems related to this particular research perspective. Building on the systems approach and new institutionalism, the thesis analyzes the relation between institutional character of regime elite and its ability to cope with changes in the environment, i.e. adaptability. Author shows that at the time of crisis, personalistic regimes tend to react almost solely with repression a restrictions, whereas regimes with ruling parties exhibit a substantial degree of personal and policy flexibility, which positively informs their chances for survival. The conclusion also demonstrates the methodological weaknesses of regime typology based on the quality of electoral process. It diverts the attention from other features of regimes which significantly inform logic and inner dynamics of authoritarianism. As a result, under the banner of electoral authoritarianism, there are regimes which differ from each...

The thesis deals with elderly people as voters and their attitudes towards slogans about social security. It examines electoral behaviour and preferences of elderly people and the influence od age on their voting decisions. Part of the thesis is devoted to the slogans od political parties, which are an important part of the campaigns and provides an comparison of election programes of parties in context of social security. The aim of the empirical work was to ascertain the views and attitudes of elderly people to particular slogans about social securities used in election campaign to the Chamber of Deputies in 2010.

Diploma thesis "The role of regional political parties within the Spanish political scene in the period of 1993-2010" presents an analysis of the role of Spanish regional political parties, which play within the national political scene since 1993. The preliminary chapter of this thesis provides a brief description of the contemporary Spanish political system, the regional organization of Spain and the Spanish electoral system, which has considerable influence especially on the party system. I consider this general introduction relevant and important for a better understanding of the whole issue. The next section is devoted to the Spanish party system, its development, the typology and the main national political parties. Here I come to the conclusion that due to the specific configuration of the electoral system in Spain happens relatively complicated interpenetration of the national party system with the regional party systems. The final and the most important chapter deals with the regional political parties, which after 1993 came to the Spanish parliament, and especially about those that have influence on the government formation and the government policy. At the beginning of this chapter I define the regional political party, the regionalist and the nationalist political party and I try to...