Uticaj Prvog svetskog rata na nastanak nauke o međunarodnim odnosima: između mita i stvarnosti

Author(s): Dragan R. Simić,Dragan Živojinović / Language(s): Serbian Publication Year: 0

The subject of this paper is the impact of the First World War on the emergence of the science of international relations. It is an attempt to confront once widely accepted hypothesis about the First World War being the most important social cause for the inception of the discipline, with the new, increasingly popular hypothesis that the roots can actually be tracked back to the 19th century. In the first part of the paper, the authors deal with the conventional history of discipline, namely the establishment of the Woodrow Wilson Chair of International Politics at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales in the spring of 1919 and the First World War as the main social cause. The second part lays down criticism of the idea that the First World War was of crucial importance for the development of the science of international relations as an independent academic discipline. Special attention is given to the thesis of global transformation in the nineteenth century and theorists who support this hypothesis.

Alternative predstavničkoj demokratiji: paralelizacija sustavne paradigme skroz heterotopije

Author(s): Cirila Toplak / Language(s): Serbian Publication Year: 0

Liberal representative democracy is considered the least bad and therefore the only acceptable political system in contemporary global social conditions. However, any discourse that denies alternatives is essentially a conservative discourse, while extraordinary demographic, economic and technological developments of modernity require innovations and progress in the field of political where institutions and systemic solutions of 200 years ago still prevail. As it appears rather obvious that the concepts and practices of representative democracy have been largely hollowed out and compromised in the context of transformed and rapidly transforming social conditions, alternatives to representative democracy also need be considered although this system is a rather recent systemic experiment for the Western Balkan societies. Numerous contemporary representative systems and especially those recently introduced, are actually more or less authoritative oligarchies representing a stage of transition to a „true“ democratic society. On the other hand, consolidated representative democracies also tend to turn into oligarchies, deemed the most suitable political framework to the (global) rule of capital. In other words, some societies have not yet developed a functional representative democratic system and are oligarchies for now, while other societies have gone past the peak of optimal functioning of the representative system and are being perverted into oligarchies according to Michels’s „iron law of oligarchy“. Since the dilemma around more or less or better or worse representative democracy would keep the academic discussion inside narrow ideological confines, and since it appears idealistic to work toward systemic reforms or wait for a (violent) revolution, this paper will seek for a path to a harmonious so ciety of optimal prosperity through analysis of heterotopias or „other (political) spaces“ where, according to Michel Foucault, alternative institutions and social relations are being formed and life is conceived under non-hegemonic conditions.

Az Angol–Orosz Bizottság megalakulása, 1924 – 1925

Author(s): Róbert Surányi / Language(s): Hungarian Publication Year: 0

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE MODERN FACE OF WAR

Author(s): Ilie ANGIU / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The specific means of war is the armed struggle, which is destructive. By triggering a war, politics pursues its aims, but uses other means, the means of armed struggle. Armies are closely linked to technological developments. They are the first beneficiaries of technical and scientific progress. Contemporary military conflicts have highlighted new orientations and concepts of military action, characterized by complexity,mobility, dynamism, the use of high technology and almost totally professional forces,integrated actions of all categories of forces and arms genres. The space for the armedstruggle in its terrestrial, aerial, maritime and cosmic dimension tends to becomeincreasingly integrated, completely cybernetic, with increasing tendencies to expand into theelectromagnetic environment based on spectacular developments in the technical-scientificfield.

MULTIDIMENSIONAL JOB ANALYSIS IN THE MILITARY ORGANIZATIONS

Author(s): Corneliu Axente,Costache Rusu / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The officers’ advancement in the military career is represented by the translation from execution posts to command posts. Commitment to a command post involves an exponential increase of the task diversity and analyses information flow. Also there’s a need for continuous skills development in leadership and resource managing. Under these circumstances, the occupied command post involves a mix of various challenges in managing simultaneously and synchronously human, material, and time resources available within the organization.This paper proposes a classification used for analyzing the management positions within the military organizations, thus obtaining a way of expressing their complexity and their value, as well as identifying the coordinates needed to be achieved by the military organizations managers from the point of view of different skills or managerial types imposed by the specifics of the occupied post.

Slovakia’s EU policy in 2018: balancing core and periphery

Author(s): Zuzana Gabrižová / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

True to the tradition that the notable years in Slovakia’s history end in the number “eight,” 2018 will also likely be remembered as a significant moment in the country’s modern political development. It tested Slovakia’s resilience as a country that likes to consider itself as part of the EU’s core – both today and in the future. Several decisions solidified Slovakia’s position in the core in 2017. One was active participation in the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) in security and defense, while the other was involvement in enhanced cooperation under the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). However, profound internal challenges were laid bare in early 2018. First of all, the wide-ranging repercussions of the murders of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová showed the failings of state institutions in a new light or rather placed them in the international limelight. Meanwhile,the foreign policy consensus and geopolitical orientation of the governing coalition continued to disintegrate. The political state of play in the Visegrad group countries, especially in Hungary and Poland, further complicated the situation for EU policy makersin Slovakia and the aim to position the region as a constructive player in debates on the future of the EU.

The EU and Uzbekistan: Where to go from here?

Author(s): Michael Hall / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

In 2005, following the suppression of the Andijon uprising, the European Union, alone among world powers, took a necessary and principled stance towards the regime of Uzbekistan’s President Islom Karimov. A visa ban was imposed on officials believed to be involved in the indiscriminate killing of mostly unarmed civilians, an embargo was placed on arms shipments to Uzbekistan and high-level bilateral relations were frozen. Now, almost two years later, the strain in relations appears to be taking its toll on both sides. The Uzbek government has made tentative overtures to the EU, and there are indications that some in the EU are willing to accept such overtures at face value in the rush to normalise relations, often citing security and energy concerns, as well as ‘progress’ in the sphere of human rights.

Turkmenistan and the EU: Contexts and possibilities for greater engagement

Author(s): Michael Denison / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The sudden death of Turkmenistan’s President Saparmurat Niyazov on 21 December 2006, has opened a window for engagement between the European Union and Turkmenistan. There appears to be a realisation across the Turkmen political elite that Niyazov’s style of policy micro management was unsustainable and undesirable, both in terms of its immediate outcomes and for its broader impact on political and social cohesion. Accordingly, a more balanced and predictable form of governance under President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov has emerged, albeit with an increasingly accented personalistic tone.

Comparing Normativity in Foreign Policy: China, India, the EU, the US and Russia

Author(s): Natalie Tocci,Ian Manners / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The conceptual framework presented in chapter 1 of this book to assess normativity in foreign policy presumes that any international player can act in a variety of ways in different foreign policy instances. In this final chapter we shall conclude by attempting the difficult task of comparing such normativity in the foreign policies of the five major global actors, selected in view of their population sizes and permanent seats on the UN Security Council – China, India, EU, US and Russia.

Presidents above Parties?: Presidents in Central and Eastern Europe, Their Formal Competencies and Informal Power

Author(s): Vít Hloušek,Lubomír Kopeček,Josef Mlejnek,Gábor Dobos,Attila Gyulai,Attila Horváth,Piotr Sula,Agnieszka Szumigalska,Peter Spáč,Rein Toomla,Daunis Auers,Algis Krupavičius,Blagovesta Cholova,Sergiu Gherghina / Language(s): English

The book aims at an examination of the discrepancies between the formal and actual positions of presidents in Central and Eastern European countries, especially those which are classified as parliamentary democracies and those which have semi-presidential features. Constitutionally, presidents are normally endowed with symbolic functions and duties that are shared with the government (such as appointment of important officials), regardless of whether they are elected directly or indirectly. Governments are thus typically perceived of as being the dominant executive institutions. The influence of presidents in select political systems is not only contingent upon the letter of the constitution, but also historically rooted in constitutional traditions, as well as the personal charisma and power wielded by specific presidents.

Arii protejate – concepte, tipologii, politici privind biodiversitatea / ariile naturale protejate la nivel european şi în România

Author(s): Oana Catalina Popescu / Language(s): Romanian Publication Year: 0

The chapter explores theconcepts, typology, and policies on biodiversity related to the natural protected areas in Europe and Romania.

Godina 1918. Prethodnice, zbivanja, posljedice

Author(s): / Language(s): Croatian

The year 1918 and the end of World War I marked a turning point in both European (and world) and Croatian history. The great material and human losses and the disappearance of the multinational, multi-religious and multicultural Austro-Hungarian Monarchy from the political map of Europe marked a critical moment in the history of the peoples living in its south. Croats, Slovenes, Serbs and Bosniaks, hitherto subjects of the black-yellow Monarchy, in the maelstrom of social and political forces are leaving the Central European cultural and civilizational circle and entering the Balkan geopolitical space, or the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Kingdom of Yugoslavia).

Czech Foreign Policy in 2007–2009: Analysis

Author(s): / Language(s): English

What was the Czech foreign policy like during the years 2007–2009 and why? The team of authors from the Institute of International Relations (IIR) and other partner institutions has been looking for answers to these questions for three consecutive years. For three years the IIR also has been producing Czech written thorough analysis of the Czech foreign policy. The book Czech Foreign Policy in 2007–2009: Analysis in-tends to become the first volume of regularly presented deep analyses of the Czech foreign policy in English which builds on the findings and analysis of the previous three Czech language analytical books and presents their synthesis. The English edition thus aims to offer a long-term and continual observation of the development of the Czech foreign policy in various areas: its ideational background, its concrete agenda and events that occurred in a given period, the influence and involvement of various actors and the overlap of the Czech foreign policy with the media and public spheres. These referential points are built into the structure of each chapter, so that the analysis enables the reader to differentiate and trace the various ways in which the Czech foreign policy is contemplated, produced, executed, implemented and reflected. This concept, among others, promises to disclose the changes in the process of the Czech foreign policy making with respect to different issues and different actual political contexts. As the issue area approach to the study of foreign policy suggests, a specific agenda tends to attract different sets of actors. Thus the process of foreign policy making is not constant and does not remain the same in regard to various issues and agendas. Our approach enabled us to enhance our ability to capture the mutual relationship between issues that have the potential to initiate political and media debates on the one hand and actual foreign policy making and execution on the other.

Česká zahraniční politika v roce 2011: Analýza ÚMV

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech

Ever since 2007, the Institute of International Relations in Prague has been publishing deep and far reaching analyses of the Czech foreign policy (CFP) in book form every year. In each book the team of authors asks several fundamental questions about the CFP: What was the foreign policy in the previous year like and why? What actors were making the CFP and in what ways? How did the Czech media inform about foreign policy and how did their reporting contribute to the overall context for the CFP making? What have been the main trends of the CFP in the past few years and how does the last year relate to these trends? Can we assess the CFP as successful, where does its potential lie and where can we find the biggest problems? This year’s edition is comprised of twenty-one chapters written by twenty-three authors from the Institute of International Relations and other cooperating institutions. The book focuses on the majority of the principal dimensions of the CFP in 2011. The structure of the book underwent only very few changes since the last edition. Unlike last year we decided not to include a summarizing chapter that would cover the Czech bilateral relations to the Western European countries as a whole; instead, we went back to the original model of analysing only the relations with France and Great Britain and doing so in two separate chapters. Plus, for the first time, there is a chapter specifically oriented to the issue of energy in external relations while, unlike in previous editions, we did not include a chapter on the region of Latin America in this edition.

Česká zahraniční politika v roce 2014: Analýza ÚMV

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech

Since 2007 the Institute of International Relations continuously analyzes the Czech foreign policy, and it has released 10 analytical monographs on it (including this one) in both Czech and English language variations. The analytical framework remains the same over all these years (though there was a major addition to it in 2013), which provides a unique opportunity for a long-term comparison of how the foreign policy changed over the years. With this insight in mind, the authors can say that 2014 was the most remarkable year for this analytical series since the time that it started and – perhaps – one of the most remarkable years in the history of the Czech Republic as such. Both domestic (e.g. the change of the Czech government) and international factors (e.g. the violent development in Eastern Europe and the increasingly aggressive Russian behavior) contributed to the fact that the domestic political and public interest in foreign policy reached recorded levels that were previously unheard of. In the past, the authors criticized the overwhelming disinterest in foreign policy matters on the part of the politicians and the public in the Czech Republic. However, the heightened, if aroused, political and public attention to foreign policy cannot be rendered exclusively – or even predominantly – as a positive and constructive feature of the foreign policy in 2014. This is not to say that in the long term, the increased interest in the foreign policy, if sustained and managed in a conscious and responsible way, will not yield a fruitful result in the future. But the nature of the political and public con-text of the foreign policy in 2014 further exposed the immaturity and irresponsibility of the politics of the Czech foreign policy. As mentioned, the books’ structure has been the same since 2007. The first two chapters analyze the overall domestic political and media context of the Czech foreign policy and identify the influence and involvement of each of the main actors in it. The second part focuses on the Czech acting within the European Union and the Czech security and defense policy. The third part analyzes the main development and dynamics of the Czech policies in Central Europe. The fourth section maps out various important bilateral and regional relations, and the fifth part analyzes the participation of the Czech Republic in other multilateral and thematic areas. Furthermore, all the chapters follow a unified analytical structure. Each chapter begins with the political and conceptual context of the discrete analyzed field. In the second part of each chapter, a specific agenda and some events of the examined year, as well as their impact on and relevance for the Czech foreign policy, are analyzed. Most of the authors also included an analysis of the involvement of the different ac-tors in the monitored area and also the media coverage of the given topic. With the support of the Czech Grant Agency, the team of the authors has enriched the conceptual framework in 2013 by adding several further analytical categories that would allow them to qualitatively improve the theoretical knowledge of foreign policy-making. Also, thanks to the deepened cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the second year now, the IIR’s analysis also includes an overview of the diplomatic activities of the main Czech foreign policy actors. In 2013, several questions were added to our research repertoire in order to develop a new conceptual framework for explaining the foreign policy of small and medium-sized states, as well as a more general explanation of the Czech foreign pol-icy as such. The set of new questions consists of the following: In what areas did the Czech Republic carry out a pro-active or a re-active policy (or no policy at all), and how successful was it in this respect? Why did it carry out these policies? In what areas did a polarization and a politicization of the foreign policy-making agenda occur, and what impact did these factors have on the Czech foreign policy? How does the Czech Republic react to challenges coming from outside the regional/international/global environment, and why? And how is the Czech Republic itself trying to influence the environment?

Česká zahraniční politika v roce 2013: Analýza ÚMV

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech

Since 2007 the Institute of International Relations continuously monitors the Czech foreign policy, and it has released seven analytical monographs about it, which have always corresponded to the same unified analytical framework. The books’ structure is and always has been as follows: The first two chapters analyze the overall domes-tic political and media context of the Czech foreign policy and identify the influence and involvement of each of the main actors in it. The second part focuses on the most important thematic areas of the Czech foreign policy, specifically the Czech impact on the European Union and the Czech security and defense policy. The third part shows the main trends and dynamics of the Czech activities in the region that is geographically closest to the Czech Republic – Central Europe. The fourth section maps out various important bilateral and regional relations, and the fifth part analyzes the participation of the Czech Republic in other multilateral and thematic areas. Alongside this composition, all the chapters follow a unified analytical structure. Each chapter works with the Czech Republic’s political and conceptual context as a basic internal basis for the Czech foreign policy. In the second part of each chapter, a specific agenda and some events of the examined year, as well as their impact and relevance for the Czech foreign policy, are analyzed. Most of the authors also included an analysis of the involvement of the different actors in the monitored area and also the media coverage of the given topic. The team of authors emphasizes continuity in both conceptual and thematic matters. For this reason, the analysis can build on a robust empirical basis and deepen people’s understanding of the Czech foreign policy. In the yearbook for 2013, there are two significant shifts from the above described concept. First, partly due to a three-year grant of the Grant Agency of the Czech Re-public, the team of authors has enriched the conceptual framework by adding several further analytical categories that would allow them to qualitatively improve the theoretical knowledge of foreign policy-making in the future. Secondly, thanks to the deepened cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the long-discussed plan of the Ministry to replace the regularly published Czech Foreign Policy Report with a new output that would preserve the statistical level of the Report but would also include evaluations and analyses has been put into practice, as this book is precisely this kind of output. On the basis of these discussions, a new concept has materialized this year for the first time. In accordance with this concept, the Institute of International Relations’ foreign policy analysis now includes, for the first time, parts dealing with statistics and surveys, and these parts were prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. English versions of the yearbook will also be prepared with the support of the Ministry in the future. Regarding the overall conceptual framework, there have been several changes in terms of the main questions that we are asking, as well as in how the above described concept will be fulfilled. The aim is to develop a new conceptual framework for explaining the foreign policy of small and medium-sized states, as well as a more general explanation of the Czech foreign policy as such.

Česká zahraniční politika v roce 2016: Analýza ÚMV

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech

Since 2007 the Institute of International Relations continuously analyzes the Czech foreign policy, and this years marks the 10th edition. The analytical framework remains the same over all these years (though there was a major addition to it in 2013), which provides a unique opportunity for a long-term comparison of how the foreign policy changed over the years. With this insight in mind, the authors can say that since 2014 that the turbulent international environment contributed to the fact that the domestic political and public interest in foreign policy reached recorded levels that were previously unheard of. In the past, the authors criticized the overwhelming disinterest in foreign policy matters on the part of the politicians and the public in the Czech Republic. However, the heightened, if aroused, political and public attention to foreign policy cannot be rendered exclusively – or even predominantly – as a positive and constructive feature of the foreign policy since then. This is not to say that in the long term, the increased interest in the foreign policy, if sustained and managed in a conscious and responsible way, will not yield a fruitful result in the future. But the nature of the political and public context of the foreign policy since 2014 exposed the immaturity and irresponsibility of the politics of the Czech foreign policy. As mentioned, the books’ structure has been the same since 2007, with slight variations as to which particular chapter was included or excluded in a given year. The first chapter analyzes the overall domestic and global political context of the Czech foreign policy and identify the influence and involvement of each of the main actors in it. The second part focuses on the Czech acting within the European Union and the Czech security and defense policy. The third part analyzes the main development and dynamics of the Czech policies in Central Europe. The fourth section maps out various important bilateral and regional relations, and the fifth part analyzes the participation of the Czech Republic in other multilateral and thematic areas. The fifth part is an up-to-date record of the diplomatic activities and interconnections of the Czech Republic. Furthermore, all the chapters follow a unified analytical structure. Each chapter begins with the political and conceptual context of the discrete analyzed field. In the second part of each chapter, a specific agenda and some events of the examined year, as well as their impact on and relevance for the Czech foreign policy, are analyzed. Most of the authors also included an analysis of the involvement of the different actors in the monitored area and also the media coverage of the given topic. Also, thanks to the deepened cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the fourth year now, the IIR’s analysis also includes an overview of the diplomatic activities of the main Czech foreign policy actors.

Česká zahraniční politika v roce 2009 Analýza ÚMV

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech

What was the Czech foreign policy in 2009 like and why? The team of authors from the Institute of International Relations and four other partner institutions have been looking for answers to these questions for three consecutive years. The book Czech Foreign Policy in 2009: Analysis of the IIR is thus the third volume of the IIR’s series of books on Czech foreign policy, bringing together 21 chapters from 19 authors. The analytical framework of the book remained unchanged. The analysis begins with a general chapter that explores the nature of the political context of the process of the Czech foreign policy making. The main argument is that even if the executive and administrative background of the Czech foreign policy is solid and full of potential, the worsening political context (embodied in the fall of the government as the Czech Republic was in the middle of executing the European presidency) seriously hampers the outcomes of Czech foreign policy. The second general chapter adds an important analysis of the media coverage of the Czech foreign policy as a part of the policy’s context. This chapter has undergone a conceptual change since the last edition as it now also includes a qualitative analysis of the media coverage in addition to the quantitative one. The following individual chapters follow the same structure as their counterparts in the previous two editions. Each chapter first inquires into the nature of the political and conceptual context of a given foreign policy dimension or theme, and then it goes on to follow the actual agenda and main events in 2009. Each chapter also contains an important part that consists of focusing on the key actors involved in the particular policy making, thus enabling us to point out possible changes in the process of the Czech foreign policy making. The last part of each chapter is devoted to the public and media substratum of a given policy.

Česká zahraniční politika v roce 2015. Analýza ÚMV

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech

V loňském roce (2014) autorky a autoři této publikace konstatovali, že se jednalo nejvýraznější rok z hlediska zahraniční politiky za celé sledované období a do velkémíry za celou samostatnou existenci České republiky vůbec. Trend k oslabování multilaterálního a otevřeného globálního řádu a k poklesu důvěry v tento řád se v roce 2015 spíše prohloubil. Jde o jev ryze negativní pro zemi velikostí a schopností České republiky. Nadále pro nás tedy zůstává klíčová otázka: Jak a proč ČR reaguje na výzvy, přicházející z vnějšího regionálního – mezinárodního – globálního prostředí a jak se toto prostředí sama pokoušela ovlivnit? Přispívá ČR svou zahraniční politikou ke kultivaci či alespoň k udržení multilaterálního globálního řádu či nikoli? V této souvislosti se dále ptáme: V jakých oblastech a proč provozovala ČR proaktivní, reaktivní či „žádnou“ politiku a s jakým úspěchem? V jakých oblastech docházelo k po-larizaci a k politizaci tvorby zahraničněpolitické agendy a jaký vliv tyto faktory měly na zahraniční politiku?

Czech Foreign Policy in 2015: Analysis

Author(s): / Language(s): English

When analysing the last year (2014), the authors of this publication concluded that it was the most significant year in terms of foreign policy for the entire monitored period and, to a large extent, for the entire period of existence of the independent Czech Republic in general. The trend towards the weakening of the multilateral and open global order and towards the decrease of trust in this order deepened more in 2015. It is a purely negative phenomenon for a country that has the size and abilities of the Czech Republic. Therefore, the key question for us is still the same: How and why does the Czech Republic react to the challenges coming from the outer regional-international-global environment, and how has it itself tried to influence this environment? Does the Czech Republic contribute with its foreign policy to the cultivation or at least to the sustainment of the multilateral global order or not? In this context, we further ask the following questions: In which areas and why did the Czech Republic implement a proactive, a reactive or “any” policy, and how successful was it? In which areas did the polarization and politicization of the foreign-policy agenda occur, and what was the influence of these factors on the Czech foreign policy?