Despite the upward trend of democratization since the mid-1970s, there are still many countries that are struggling to make the transition from autocracy to democracy. One of these countries is...Show moreDespite the upward trend of democratization since the mid-1970s, there are still many countries that are struggling to make the transition from autocracy to democracy. One of these countries is Zimbabwe. In 2008, Zimbabwe appeared to be on the brink of democratic change. This thesis investigates why these democratic changes did not materialize by analyzing the situation through the lens of the elite-driven theory of democratization. Using the qualitative research methods and theory building, this thesis can further develop the elite-driven theory of democratization and simultaneously investigate the puzzle of the Zimbabwean case. of within case theory building, this project develops both the elite-driven theory of democratization and investigates the puzzle of the Zimbabwean case. Conceptually, the project finds that the elite-driven theory lacks concrete empirical indicators and expectations which makes it an incomplete theory to use for investigating real-life cases. With regards to Zimbabwe, this project finds that democratization led by the elite did not occur in 2008 because the theoretical conditions did not materialize themselves as expected. Additionally, the project also finds that democratization is not a rational choice for elites and if they are given any other alternative that can protect their collective wealth and power then they will not encourage democracy.Show less
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) may be supporting the violation of the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions constituted by the illegal occupation of Western Sahara...Show moreThe United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) may be supporting the violation of the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions constituted by the illegal occupation of Western Sahara by accepting extraterritorial nationally determined contributions (NDC) reports. Through the use of theory-testing process-tracing, this thesis investigates why the UNFCCC’s acceptance of extraterritorial NDC reports might influence the legitimacy of occupations. By conducting a case study of Morocco, the theoretical argument of this thesis is developed: Occupying powers seek legitimacy over their occupation by partaking in international organization processes which subsequently are approved by the international organization. This approval dissuades other states from objecting to the occupation and attempts to legitimate it, thereby perpetuating the status-quo which ultimately increases the external sovereignty of the occupation. By evaluating NDC reports, reports by the Western Sahara Resource Watch, and speeches at the UNFCCC, this study has identified the presence of the causal mechanism. Hence, this thesis contributes to the scholarly literature by addressing the influence that international organizations have on the legitimacy of occupations, a field that so far has gained little attention in academia.Show less
Despite worldwide reports of former child recruits engaging in post-conflict criminal activity, no one has sought to systematically analyze whether this turn of events was a consequence of their...Show moreDespite worldwide reports of former child recruits engaging in post-conflict criminal activity, no one has sought to systematically analyze whether this turn of events was a consequence of their child soldiering past. In fact, any attempt to empirically verify this would have to address the lack of theoretical foundations on which to rest. Indeed, theories about adult post-conflict crime cannot help mapping juvenile crime in the same context, as they are bound by age-specific assumptions. This thesis therefore addresses, and contributes to filling, both these empirical and theoretical gaps. I hypothesize that wartime child soldiering increases post-conflict juvenile crime through two complementary mechanisms – the long-term effects of a full socialization into violence and relative economic grievances – and further suggest that both are mediated by gender. Running a negative binomial regression using existing datasets enables me to glean supporting evidence for this hypothesis, as well as preliminary evidence speaking to the socialization mechanism. Yet, overall, the findings remain somewhat inconclusive due to limitations in the data. I thus call for more research – including qualitative work and original data collection – to ground them.Show less
After almost thirty years of conflict and 3000 fatalities, the Northern Ireland peace agreement promised peace. However, while there was a significant reduction in violence, the post-peace years...Show moreAfter almost thirty years of conflict and 3000 fatalities, the Northern Ireland peace agreement promised peace. However, while there was a significant reduction in violence, the post-peace years were marked by increasing polarisation, low-level sectarian violence and outbreaks of rioting and unrest. The most recent outbreak was in Spring 2021 and is the case-study for this research. Using content-analysis of newspaper articles and interviews with local actors, this research investigates the relationship between ethnonational and socioeconomic grievances in violent collective action in Northern Ireland. It found that decremental and aspirational deprivation were present as grievances in the Spring 2021 riots, and further shows the impact of socioeconomic grievances on this instance of ethnonational collective action.Show less
This paper analyzes the interaction between policy distance and issue salience using the proximity model of voting. It uses a quantitative analysis of items from the Dutch Parliamentary Electoral...Show moreThis paper analyzes the interaction between policy distance and issue salience using the proximity model of voting. It uses a quantitative analysis of items from the Dutch Parliamentary Electoral Survey (2021) and POPPA (2018) to research whether the more salience is attached to economic, socio-cultural, and political issues by voters, the more important the chosen dimension will be for their vote. The examination provides data on voters’ and party positions on these three dimensions, and the binary logistic regression finds that the effect is strongest for the socio-cultural issues, but also somewhat significant for political issues, which confirms the importance of populism in contemporary Western European democracy.Show less
This thesis focusses on the so far neglected role of NATO – the organisation – in the transatlantic conflicts during the Trump administration. Adopting a constructivist approach and conducting a...Show moreThis thesis focusses on the so far neglected role of NATO – the organisation – in the transatlantic conflicts during the Trump administration. Adopting a constructivist approach and conducting a discourse analysis, I identify agency in the discourse of NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s response to the internal frictions with the aim to draw further conclusions on how discourse contributes to the autonomy of international organisations. By doing so, I confront the current dominance in the literature on this subject which has focussed predominantly on the involved states and state power. Correcting for this one-sided misrepresentation, the empirical findings of this thesis suggests that the autonomy of NATO echoed in the Secretary General’s discourse in two ways. One, Stoltenberg was able to create topics, address them and shape its content, indicating that he possessed significant discursive agency. Two, he employed this discursive agency to defend and pursue the interests of the organisation, even at the expense of the interests of NATO’s member states. Consequentially, I argue that these signs of agency were telling echoes of NATO’s autonomy in Stoltenberg’s discursive response to its internal conflicts during the Trump administration.Show less
State-centric, collective resource governance in a world of finite resources is an undertaking struggling with opportunistic behaviour and competitive thinking. Rapidly developing climate change...Show moreState-centric, collective resource governance in a world of finite resources is an undertaking struggling with opportunistic behaviour and competitive thinking. Rapidly developing climate change makes the ability of collective action on vital resources only more difficult. Although states band together in global organisations to address shared issues such as water shortages the academic literature finds stately led collective action to be inadequate for effective, sustainable resource governance. The suggested solution to the found collective action problems is a change in governance approach, namely polycentrism. This study aims to analyse the viability of polycentric governance in global organisations by applying a comparative content analysis on two global institutions, one based on statal and one on municipal membership. These two organisations will be analysed and compared on their ability to collectively govern water resources and avoid collective action problems, which are categorized in coordination, cooperation and division problems. The comparison bases on the organisation’s membership type, being statal or municipal, the institution’s networking structure and the paradigm used for resources which is found to influence discourse and thus governance. If the global organisation based on municipal membership is able to compensate for the found collective action flaws of the state-membership based organisation and vice versa the case can be made that polycentrism is viable. If not, the realizability of polycentrism can be put into question.Show less
Social movement theory and research in political science has been disproportionately focused on state movement dynamics; only recently have alternative actors such as the countermovement been...Show moreSocial movement theory and research in political science has been disproportionately focused on state movement dynamics; only recently have alternative actors such as the countermovement been considered. Yet, most approaches concerning the countermovement-movement synergy still overestimate the role of the state or are limited to its manifestation in protest mobilization. In an increasingly virtualized world with growing transnational movements, however, it is necessary to both think beyond the jurisdiction/role of states and the salience of protest dynamics. Through the example of the feminist and manosphere movement, this thesis argues for an inclusive approach on counter-movement dynamics that considers narrative exchange. Here, the argument is developed that the countermovement generates narrative affronts to the movement that are either met with retaliation or a recuperation by the movement. This is encouraged to be used as a basis for future research on social movements and countermovements.Show less
Recent studies have found a strong correlation between covid-19 and higher conflict intensity. Yet, scant attention has been paid to the ways in which covid-19 increased the conflict intensity of...Show moreRecent studies have found a strong correlation between covid-19 and higher conflict intensity. Yet, scant attention has been paid to the ways in which covid-19 increased the conflict intensity of pre-existing conflicts. Therefore, this is the gap that this thesis aims to fill. From the disaster-conflict literature, and the covid-19-conflict literature more specifically, I derive three possible causal mechanisms concerning 1) state capacity 2) conflict mitigation, and 3) foreign backers. Consequently, I test these mechanisms with the use of process tracing in the context of the Libyan conflict. The evidence reveals that all three mechanisms were partly present, but did not exactly function as theorized. Indeed, in contrast to the hypothesized causal mechanism, no evidence is found for the suspension of military activities by the state, suggesting that the emergence of covid-19 did not weaken state capacity. Besides, the suspension of conflict mitigating activities and the involvement of foreign backers led to an intensification of violence, despite the continued attention for the conflict during the pandemic. More research, therefore, is necessary to further explore the mechanisms linking pandemics and conflict intensity in pre-existing conflicts.Show less
The 2016 Primaries were anything but ordinary: Trump and Cruz represented anti-establishment figures promising to fundamentally alter how the US operated. This thesis investigates the two...Show moreThe 2016 Primaries were anything but ordinary: Trump and Cruz represented anti-establishment figures promising to fundamentally alter how the US operated. This thesis investigates the two forerunners in the Republican Primary and how they utilised different discourses in their bid for The White House. Of particular interest are religious discourses as early commentators discounted Trump’s potential electability among ‘value-voting’ Evangelicals; and populist discourses, as both candidates utilised people’s disaffection with the contemporary system and the discourses surrounding immigrants and other non-American groups to mobilise supporters. To achieve its objectives, this thesis considers twelve speeches by Cruz and Trump that were given during the competitive leg of the 2016 Republican Primary (1st February to the 3rd May). Content and discourse analysis are used, finding that the candidates differed on their use of religious discourse; however, used similar populist discourse. Given the similarity in populist discourses and advantages Cruz had with his religious background the conclusion is drawn that it is not the content that distinguishes Trump, but perhaps his style.Show less
In August 2021, the Taliban took control over the Afghan government. Subsequently, the EU halted development aid to Afghanistan. This research seeks to explain what motivated this decision and how...Show moreIn August 2021, the Taliban took control over the Afghan government. Subsequently, the EU halted development aid to Afghanistan. This research seeks to explain what motivated this decision and how Afghanistan’s illegitimacy has influenced the EU’s decision. Two aid allocation models based on recipient merit and donor interests are used to explain this puzzle. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative content analysis, this research illustrates how both aid allocation models sufficiently explain the EU’s decision considering Afghanistan’s illegitimacy.Show less
R2P (Responsibility to Protect) is an international norm set up by the international community to set out against mass genocide prevention. It is socially relevant given the Rohingya migration...Show moreR2P (Responsibility to Protect) is an international norm set up by the international community to set out against mass genocide prevention. It is socially relevant given the Rohingya migration crises calling out R2P to be invoked. However recent media and academic debates have cast doubts on R2P’s application. Regardless of these doubts, R2P advocacy has grown globally with more international research partners and their own research journal. This brings forth the question: how does the organization of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) reflect epistemic/expert authority? This is an explorative thesis that makes use of a single case study of R2P employing qualitative research methods. Academic debate shows R2P as either an extension of unilateral humanitarian intervention or a replacement for it. Proponents argue it as a replacement due to its increasing popularity through its authority. This thesis adds to the authority argument with the use of Global Knowledge Networks which explains whether knowledge production of an organization has expert-legitimacy. Using the transnational discourse community and coalition approach it is shown that R2P’s knowledge production has independent force and power among experts, and simplification and impact towards nonexpert. This gives R2P’s knowledge production expert-legitimacy and therefore establishes R2P’s epistemic/expert authority.Show less
