Publication details
Aktéři a tvorba české zahraniční politiky
| Title in English | Actors and making of the Czech Foreign policy |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Monograph |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This book is concerned with the process of Czech foreign-policy making as viewed by the key political actors involved in it. The book’s main aim is to analyse and to clearly explain their actions and how they contribute to the establishment of Czech policy positions internationally. Thus, the book does not explain influences on foreign policy from the international system within which it is formulated. Focused on the contextually-grounded understanding of how actors perceive themselves and how they evolve over time, the research approach chosen is closer to a qualitative, subjectivist view than to an objective, quantitative assessment of the actors’ options. Likewise, we do not seek to measure actors’ influence over foreign policy; rather we seek to understand the manner in which they influence it. The general epistemological premise of the book’s authors shares some essential traits with the ‘soft programme of constructivism’. In the book’s individual chapters, the character of the actors involved in Czech foreign policy is studied in detail. Crucially, the process of foreign-policy making is also influenced by the character of the foreign-policy agenda. Topics that are deemed to be of secondary importance or less attractive tend to be administered by particular ministries (e.g. of foreign affairs) and other potential actors in foreign policy (government, parliament, president, other ministries) give them their partial attention (if any). The authors present the actors of Czech foreign policy from different points of view – structural (constitutional and legislative) and historical – and examine their specific involvement in the exercise of foreign-policy making. |
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