Display options:

Shooting Training of CSI Staff

  • Hana Talandová
  • Milan Adámek
ABSTRACT: This article focuses on firearms training in the commercial security industry. The article is divided into three parts: in the first, the authors provide a description of firearms in the commercial security industry (hereinafter referred to as CSI). The second part presents and explores some...

Read More ...

Across the Lines of the World State: The Case of the United Nations

  • Aleš Karmazin
ABSTRACT: This work asks how the UN attempts to bypass the current system of states while identifying a series of reinforcing UN efforts that could be utilised to hoist this organisation to the level of acting as a world government. The title of this work – which may be read in two distinct ways – illustrates...

Read More ...

The New Age of the US-EU-Chinese Relations and Dilemmas

  • Miloš Balabán
ABSTRACT: This article examines the world’s key actors: the US, EU and China, and analyses their political, economic and security relations, as well as stances on geopolitical and global economic development. Asia-Pacific is investigated as the chief determinant of the global development and also, thanks...

Read More ...

The “Marine” Factor: What the Lepenisation of French Politics Really Means

  • Barthélémy Courmont
ABSTRACT: Marine Le Pen, president of the French extreme-right party Front National, emerged on the political scene as not only the daughter and heir to Jean-Marie Le Pen, but a smarter and more seductive leader than her father. Her rise – just a few months before the 2012 French presidential elections...

Read More ...

Interregional Divergence of EU-ASEAN Relations: Achievements, Challenges and External Influences

  • Vasiliki Papatheologou
ABSTRACT: Interregionalism is a pragmatic strategy of the EU’s external action and a tool to extend norms and European values to the developing world as well as a tool in the promotion of global governance. In this sense, the EU has built several interregional and trans-regional frameworks around the...

Read More ...

Limits of Human Development in a Weak and Religiously Fractured State: The Case of Lebanon

  • Martina Ponížilová
ABSTRACT: Deploying Lebanon as a case study, this article links the concept of human development to weak and failed states to provide insights into ways to enhance the effectiveness of implementing development strategies. Lebanon serves as an example of a weak state characterised by strong religious...

Read More ...

Israel and Turkey: From Realpolitik to Rhetoric?

  • Petr Kučera
ABSTRACT: This article analyses the media discourse on Israel in Turkey during the crisis period that followed Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (2008) and culminated in May 2010, when Israeli armed forced attacked the Mavi Marmara, a ship operated by a Turkish Islamic NGO, leaving nine Turkish activists...

Read More ...

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC): Half a Century of Covering Bahrain

  • Nancy Jamal
ABSTRACT: Until 1968, Bahrain was a protectorate of the British government during its days of imperial glory, and home to its political agent in the region. Research shows that the first television programme covering events in Bahrain dates back to the 1950‘s making, the British Broadcasting Company...

Read More ...

Yet Another Version of the ‘Arab Spring:’ Ramifications of the Syrian Conflict on the Existing Arab Order and Beyond

  • Ibrahim A. El-Hussari
ABSTRACT: At the start of 2011, events began to unfold in some of the most stable Arab countries betraying signs of an unpredictable phase in local, regional and even international political life. Nine of the 22 Arab League members were, to varying degrees, undergoing unprecedented mass gestations promising...

Read More ...

Changes in Turkish-Israeli Relations and Implications for Regional Security Environment

  • Gabriela Özel Volfová
ABSTRACT: This work looks at how changes to global, regional and national political landscapes played a role in shaping Turkish-Israeli relations and how this, in turn, affected regional security and development in the Middle East. Specifically, I illustrate how Turkish political actors from the Islamic...

Read More ...

European Civil Society’s Conundrum: Public Spheres, Identities and the Challenge of Politicisation

  • Karel Müller
ABSTRACT: This work draws upon the novel theoretical framework of European civil society which is based on the complementary concept of civil society. It claims that relations between the Europeanised public spheres, political identities and the politicisation of the EU present an intricate and crucial...

Read More ...

‘I am Georgian and therefore I am European:’ Re-searching the Europeanness of Georgia

  • Natia Mestvirishvili
  • Maia Mestvirishvili
ABSTRACT: ‘I am Georgian and therefore I am European.’ These words spoken by the late Georgian Prime Minister, Zurab Zhvania, in front of the Council of Europe in 1999. During the speech, he expressed Georgia’s EU aspirations and outlined the country’s foreign policy agenda for the next decade. Since...

Read More ...

Deconstructing and Defining EULEX

  • Vjosa Musliu
  • Shkëndije Geci
ABSTRACT: Hailed as the greatest European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) mission to date, the European Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) has been oscillating between fulfilling its mission statement crafted in Brussels, while managing the controversial ethnic expectations of the local population...

Read More ...

The Fading Halo of Religious Elites: A Comparative Study of the Effects of Religious Motivation on Nonviolence and Democratic Stability in Poland and Egypt

  • Unislawa Williams
ABSTRACT: Why has the democratic transition in Egypt stalled? The nonviolent nature of successful uprisings may be an important cause of the subsequent religious radicalisation and volatility of the new regimes. Nonviolent opposition can attract, and be sustained by, the involvement of religious elites....

Read More ...

Clientelism within Arabian Gulf States and Beyond: A Comparative Study

  • Mahmood Abdulghaffar
ABSTRACT: Clientelism is a widespread phenomenon, often resulting from preexisting socioeconomic conditions such as inequalities, government dominance over the economy, and deficiencies in political institutions. State formation ushered vote buying into clientelistic behaviour and reinforced brokerage...

Read More ...

Is Regime Change a Solution For the Iranian Nuclear Crisis?

  • Nicoleta Laşan
ABSTRACT: Since 2002, the Iranian nuclear crisis had drawn the attention of the international community and – despite renewed negotiations in the 5+1 formula – remains one of the most salient threats to international security. The ineffectiveness of preventive means already deployed in a bid to solve...

Read More ...

Developing the Methods of Estimation and Forecasting the Arab Spring Events

  • Andrey V. Korotayev
  • Leonid M. Issaev
  • Sergey Y. Malkov
  • Alisa R. Shishkina
ABSTRACT: An assessment of the current state, and a forecast, of the social instability in the Arab world – re: in the Arab Spring processes – is an important, relevant and daunting task. Difficulties are related to the variety of factors affecting social instability, to individual peculiarities of historical,...

Read More ...

Overcoming the State Centred Theory of International Sanctions: Non-State Actors’ Strategies towards the Implementation of International Sanctions

  • Sina Kowalewski
ABSTRACT: In this article I argue that non-state actors (NSAs) can play an important role in international sanctions politics, which has been underestimated due to the state-centred view of international sanctions theory. Even though NSAs do not have access to the decision making process and, until the...

Read More ...

Interwar Views on ManagingEastern European Space: Exploring Lypa’s Conceptualisation of theBlack Sea States Union

  • Ostap Kushnir
ABSTRACT: Few people realise that the idea of establishing a Black Sea Union (BSU) – a regional bloc along the Black Sea littoral – was proposed in the immediate aftermath of WWII. This idea was primarily developed and advocated by Yuriy Lypa, a Ukrainian inter-war political thinker (1900-1944). In his...

Read More ...

Dynamics of Eastern Europeanisation and the Impact of “Membership Credibility” in EU Enlargement Rounds

  • Dorian Jano
ABSTRACT: Research on EU enlargement-led Europeanisation has extensively focused on countries from Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and only recently enriched with studies dealing with specific issues and/or countries of the Western Balkans. Yet, a more comprehensive study across current and previous potential...

Read More ...

Western Imaginary and Imagined Defense Strategies of Eastern Europe and its Borderlands

  • Lia Tsuladze
ABSTRACT: This work discusses how the Western imaginary or the way “the West looks East” reinforces the construction of “unstable” or ambivalent identities in the new European countries, as well as the margins of Eastern Europe. Particularly, it deals with the Western discourses that locate Eastern Europe...

Read More ...

Politics and Religion in Europe: The Case of the Roman Catholic Church and the European Union

  • Petr Kratochvíl
  • Tomáš Doležal
ABSTRACT: The rise of religion in international politics is often treated as a self-evident trend of recent decades. But what exactly is new about religion in global affairs that it deserves such focused attention? Is it the growing numbers of believers of major religions, or the increasing fundamentalist...

Read More ...

Arms for Arbenz. Czechoslovakia's involvement in the Cold War in Latin America

  • Lukáš Perutka
ABSTRACT: This article introduces an under-researched historic problem about the relationship between Czechoslovakia and Guatemala during the protracted Guatemalan Revolution (1944-1954). Czechoslovak relation with Guatemala were already established during the interwar period when the (relatively) small...

Read More ...

Czechoslovakia and Brazil 1945-1989; Diplomats, businessmen, spies and guerrilheiros

  • Matyáš Pelant
ABSTRACT: This work summarises political, economic and security relations be- tween Czechoslovakia and Brazil from 1945 to 1989. During this pe- riod Brazil adopted different approaches towards the Eastern bloc. In this context, despite some difficulties, Czechoslovakia not only main- tained diplomatic...

Read More ...

Czechoslovak-Latin American Relations 1945-1989: The Broader Context

  • Josef Opatrný
ABSTRACT: After 1945, Czechoslovakia resumed its diplomatic and economic rela- tions with Latin American countries; disrupted during the occupation of the Second World War. At that time, Czechoslovakia had the most diplomatic offices in the region of the entire Soviet bloc. Communi- cation between Prague...

Read More ...

Political and Economic Relations between Czechoslovakia and the Military Regimes of the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s

  • Michal Zourek
ABSTRACT: Based on unpublished archival documents, this work analyses the relations between Czechoslovakia and the military regimes in Argentina (1976–1983), Uruguay (1973–1985) and Chile (1973–1989). Besides Czechoslovakia, attention is also devoted to the Soviet Union which had a significant influence...

Read More ...

Turbines and Weapons for Latin America: Czechoslovak documentary film propaganda in the Cold War context 1948-1989

  • Kateřina Březinová
ABSTRACT: This article focuses on the Czechoslovak documentary film production concerning Latin America in the context of the Cold War. It is analysed as a crucial means of domestic propaganda, promoting involvement in a distant region before a wider public. This was achieved by creating a matching discourse...

Read More ...

Czech Tractors, Cuban Oranges: An Outline of Economic Relations between Socialist Czechoslovakia and Revolutionary Cuba

  • Hana V. Bortlova
ABSTRACT: This work deals with the economic relations between Cuba and social- ist Czechoslovakia from the early years of the Cuban Revolution until the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe (cee). This work suggests that economic relations constituted the backbone of the Czechoslovakia’s...

Read More ...

Uncovering Romania by Geography: How Geography Cultivated Lands and Romanians

  • Cosmina Paul
ABSTRACT: This work contributes to the understanding of how the institutionalisation of geography as a science and discipline empowered the Romanian elites’ nationalist discourse before World War Two. Far from being an objective, neutral and value-free science, geography invented new worlds and served...

Read More ...

Misadventure or Mediation in Mali: The EU’s Potential Role

  • Paul Pryce
ABSTRACT: With a humanitarian crisis mounting in the West African state of Mali, the Council of the EU has called on the Economic Community of West African States to deploy a stabilisation force to the northern regions of the country. But such a military intervention would have to contend with a plethora...

Read More ...