European Union from the Perspective of the Czech Political Elites: period from 1996 to 2009

The Master's thesis European Union from the Perspective of the Czech Political Elites: period from 1996 to 2009 presents how the Czech political parties (Civic Democratic Party - ODS, Czech Social Democratic Party - CSSD, Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia - KSCM and Christian and Democratic Union - Czechoslovak People's Party - KDU-CSL) percieved the European Union and the role of the Czech Republic in the EU in the given period. The thesis departs from both basic constructivist principles and the concept of polity ideas. Further, it presents four ideal types of political system: Federal State, Intergovernmental Cooperation, Economic Community and Network. Then, looking at the individual political parties' perspective on selected components of polity ideas the thesis assigns the political parties to the ideal types. The theoretical part of the thesis focuses on the constructivist approach to the European integration and on three major approaches which use discourse analysis to study the process of European integration. The analytical part of this thesis then describes the ideas of the Czech political parties. Each political party is presented in a separate chapter