European Integration as the Main Topic of the Czech Discipline of International Relations
Abstract
In this article, we reflect on the research on European integration in the
context of the Czech discipline of International Relations (IR). We pay
attention to those academic institutions that concentrate on IR and,
simultaneously, on European integration. We reach three main findings in
the article: 1) a number of Czech institutions and scholars that studied the
international dimension of the European integration were also concerned
with the domestic level of integration; 2) in the Czech environment the IR
discipline is marked by a distinct cleavage between the theoretically and
methodologically informed parts of the research on European integration
and its descriptively based part; 3) besides International Security, the topic
of European integration dominated the Czech IR discipline.
Keywords
European integration, European Union, International Relations, Czech Republic, theories of international relations
Author Biography
Mats Braun
Mats Braun, born in 1976, he works at Metropolitan University Prague and Dalarna
University in Sweden. He is a member of the Executive Board of the CEEISA
(Central and East European International Studies Association). In the years
2005-2014 he worked as a researcher at the Institute of International
Relations in Prague. He has published articles on the topic of European
integration in academic publications such as the Journal of Common Market
Studies and Cooperation and Conflict. He is also the author of the book
Europeanization of Environmental Policy in the New Europe: Beyond
Conditionality (Ashgate 2014).
Jan Karlas
Jan Karlas, born in 1978, he is the head of the Department of International Relations
and a guarantor of the International Relations / Master in International
Relations (MAIN) programme at the Institute of Political Studies of the
Faculty of Social Sciences (FSV UK) in Prague. He studied International
Relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences, and International Relations and
European Studies at Central European University in Budapest. In 2003-2009
he worked as a researcher at the Institute of International Relations in
Prague. He deals with global governance and European integration in his
research.