The European Parliament’s vote on the European Climate Law was a controversial and pivotal battle ground for the climate politics, with the Greens and The Left joining the far-right Identity &...Show moreThe European Parliament’s vote on the European Climate Law was a controversial and pivotal battle ground for the climate politics, with the Greens and The Left joining the far-right Identity & Democracy Group in a vote against the law, while the Socialists and European People’s Party voted in favor. Expert analyses judge the Climate Law as insufficiently ambitious in light of the European Union’s targets set out in the Paris Agreement. This thesis, using Habermas’ theory on deliberative democracy as a framework, focuses on the European Parliament’s plenary debates on the European Climate Law to investigate whether democratic deliberation has a connection with climate policymaking. By conducting a discourse analysis of plenary debates using the Discourse Quality Index, this thesis explores the connection between deliberation and climate policy. The debates on the European Climate Law are analyzed, including a total of 141 speeches. As political groups have a high level of internal cohesion, the results are broken down according to political groups and their respective votes on the EU’s Climate Law. The results show that the political groups which voted against the climate law - due to its lack of ambition – had the highest quality of deliberation in the debates. The group which voted against the law - due to it being too ambitious – had the lowest quality of deliberation. These results suggest that a higher quality of deliberation is associated with more ambitious climate policy. The findings of this thesis thereby support the idea that strengthening deliberative democracy has the potential of making climate policymaking more aligned with the ambition of the Paris Agreement.Show less
This research investigates whether or not the resource curse remains applicable when a state transitions from oil dependency to water dependency. In the context of Sudan, this thesis investigates...Show moreThis research investigates whether or not the resource curse remains applicable when a state transitions from oil dependency to water dependency. In the context of Sudan, this thesis investigates the strategic choices of the Salvation Regime during this transition from the '60s till the fall of the regime in '19. Results of this research indicate that (continued) strategic dependency on foreign powers and distributive efforts to capture the voting block domestically by the government strongly reflect on symptoms predicted by the resource curse model.Show less
This paper explores the European Union's discourse in response to the #MeToo movement. To this aim, a qualitative exploratory study with a critical discourse analysis was conducted after in-depth...Show moreThis paper explores the European Union's discourse in response to the #MeToo movement. To this aim, a qualitative exploratory study with a critical discourse analysis was conducted after in-depth reading and manual coding of European Union preparatory legislative documents explicitly mentioning the movement. In addition, a sample of these documents was compared to similar papers before the movement to investigate whether it has influenced the formal discourse of the Union on gender-based violence and women rights. According to the results, the #MeToo movement has been used to go further and quicker on previous initiative already ongoing to fight against gender-based violence such as the Member States ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Even though prevention is at the heart of the European Union discourse in every document, it seems that after the #MeToo movement, there is a partial shift from exclusive prevention to more condemnation. However, the word perpetrator is almost absent compared to victim in all the documents analysed, even more in the ones mentioning the movement. Thus, we know what the European Union is urgently condemning but we do not know who. Moreover, progressive feminist discourses such as the rejection of patriarchal social order seem to have overtaken the arena of the European Parliament. Still, most of the perspective taken in the discourses and initiatives listed are symptomatologic treatment of the problem. Finally, the European Commission's texts differ from those of the European Parliament because of a significant economic cost-benefit approach to gender equality. This perspective could be described as a neoliberal discourse using feminist values of egalitarianism and empowerment for non-feminist purposes. This raises the question of gender equality for whom and especially for what?Show less
This thesis examined the candidate lists of the 17 parties that obtained at least one seat in the parliamentarian elections of March 2021 in the Netherlands. The candidate lists were analysed to...Show moreThis thesis examined the candidate lists of the 17 parties that obtained at least one seat in the parliamentarian elections of March 2021 in the Netherlands. The candidate lists were analysed to determine the level of parties’ descriptive representation in relation to ethnic minorities and women. The rationale for this is the changing demographics, increased popularity for diversity and inclusions practises among parties and, at the same time, an increasingly polarized debate regarding ethnic minorities and immigration policies. The main goals are the following; first, to test if there is a correlation between parties’ restrictiveness on immigration and the share of ethnic minorities on the candidate list and share of safe list position that are filled with ethnic minorities. Second, to test whether centre and right-wing parties contribute proportionally more to representation of women vis-à-vis ethnic minorities. Moreover, all 744 candidates were analysed in terms of ethnicity and gender and with this data an original dataset was created. Secondary sources were used to determine parties’ restrictiveness on immigration. The dataset provided information to test the role of the independent variable – restrictiveness on immigration – on the two dependent variables; a) share of ethnic minorities candidates on the lists and; b) share of safe list positions that were filled with ethnic minority candidates. These variables formed the import for a linear regression analysis. The second possible correlation was tested by plotting the parties’ share of ethnic minorities and female candidate against four statistical dimensions; (1) average percentage of ethnic minorities on the candidate lists; (2) percentage of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands; (3) average percentage of women on the candidate lists; and (4) the percentage of women in the Netherlands. This thesis found a linear inverse correlation between parties’ restrictiveness on immigration and the share of ethnic minorities on candidate lists and safe list positions filled with them. Moreover, this thesis also found that centre and right-wing parties contribute proportionally more to the share of female than ethnic minority candidates.Show less
This research provides an in-depth analysis of the ongoing process to reach a UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights, exploring it from the point of view of Advocacy Coalitions and the role of...Show moreThis research provides an in-depth analysis of the ongoing process to reach a UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights, exploring it from the point of view of Advocacy Coalitions and the role of sustainability in the discussion meetings. The study is shaped as an action-research and adopts a cooperative inquiry approach, as it engages by beginning with one of the Advocacy Coalition member organizations. The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) acted as co-researchers in aiding in the focus and design of this study. Within the literature on the governance of sustainability the complexities facing global governance systems in addressing and implementing initiatives for sustainable development are highlighted. Within these literary discussions two key obstacles emerge. Firstly, the need for participation from different societal actors to provide different perspectives, so that international projects represent the heterogeneity of interests of the global population. Secondly, with a multitude of actors involved at the global level there is a need for greater coordination among them. Advocacy Coalitions are networks which bring together different actors and coordinate their perspectives to lobby collectively instead of individually. As such, this research set out to address the role of the Advocacy Coalitions within the UN Treaty process as well as the way in which the discussions of this Global Partnership have been able to catalyse sustainability- related challenges at the global level. In addressing these research aims this study employs a triangulation among three main sources of data 1) informal conversations with the co-researcher SOMO, 2) documents from the Intergovernmental Working Group sessions in 2018 and 2020, and 3) in-depth interviews with members of Advocacy Coalitions. This data was analysed through inductive reasoning, moving from the exploration of the practice towards the academic debate. The study finds that Advocacy Coalitions play a role in opening the discussion process by increasing the participation of societal actors who are often marginalized, especially through increased gender and regional diversity. The collaboration and collective work of these coalitions is facilitated through their internal rules and structures which help to coordinate the multitude of different involved actors. In addition, this study finds that within the global governance of sustainability this process does to some extent catalyse sustainability principles. However, this focuses largely on the SDGs 16 and 17 and so on aspects relating to peace and access to justice alongside a more economic approach to sustainability. Whereas environmental sustainability plays a less central role.Show less
The aim of this thesis is to analyse the differences between the Netherlands and Germany in their attitudes towards the EU corona rescue package. Both countries are similar in characteristics such...Show moreThe aim of this thesis is to analyse the differences between the Netherlands and Germany in their attitudes towards the EU corona rescue package. Both countries are similar in characteristics such as economic and political system, geographical position in the EU, culture and fiscal policies. Nonetheless, during the negotiation rounds for the corona rescue package both countries had taken opposite positions. Whereas the Netherlands became known as the leader of ‘the frugal four’, Germany proposed the largest economic support programme ever seen in the EU. Questions can be raised why countries that are similar in characteristics and used to be on the same line in previous EU crisis are now taking such different stances. The literature on international decision-making has identified three important factors that can influence international decision making. These are the role of national interests, the role of institutions, and the role of ideas. This thesis will focus on these three explanatory factors in order to get a better understanding of the differences in outcome by the Netherlands and Germany. It has been found that in both countries national interests can be considered an important factor. However, in the Netherlands national interests have been portrayed differently as compared to Germany. Furthermore, the role of institutional factors can be identified as a second explanatory variable for the outcome. In the case of the Netherlands it became clear that the government had to align itself with the principles and values that are part of the EU as an institution. For Germany, it became clear that institutional factors have led to an alignment of German national interests with those of the EU. Lastly, the explanatory variable of ideas can be considered important since it has been found that both governments acted according to the ideas that where present in the Dutch and German societies. However, it is not clear if it was the government that has influenced society or that it was the other way around. This thesis will continue with an introduction consisting of essential context and the research question, followed by a literature review, a detailed chapter on the research design, the empirical data, and an analysis of the results.Show less
