The diploma thesis focuses on the concept of nation branding in foreign policy in general but especially in the context of two Central European countries - the Czech and Slovak Republic. It addresses the question of whether this relatively young discipline is a part of their foreign policy efforts and whether their approach to this tool vary. The comparison is performed through a view on the previous steps and development of the agenda, on the institutional framework and analyses of their nation brands. Nation brand analyses are performed by applying the theoretical apparatus of the concept of image and identity. The image analyses cover assessing the NBI and the CBI indexes, complemented by foreign media analyses and SWOT analyses. The analyses of brand identities are performed through a view on the identity components on the visual level and on the level of substance.

Tatev Derzyan (41794665) The Effectiveness of Erasmus+ and UGRAD Soft Power on Armenia during Hard Times (Nagorno-Karabakh War 2020) Abstract The thesis focuses on soft power and public diplomacy through exchange study programs of the European Union and the United States. Precisely, the thesis studies the influence of the educational exchange programs (Erasmus+ and UGRAD) on the Armenian exchange students in the scope of soft power. After establishing the influence of the exchange programs on the formation of the perceptions about the host countries, the thesis further focuses on the sustainability of the perception taking into consideration the Nagorno-Karabakh Second war which is a 'critical juncture' as it was a dramatic event in the life of the Armenian youth and could have influenced their views of the EU and the US. It is important to note that the academic literature on the exchange students' perceptions does not provide any studies through the lenses of the political events in the participants' home country. Thirty-nine semi-structured interviews have been conducted among the Erasmus+ and UGRAD participants from Armenia alongside the content analysis of the documents that the EU and the US released during the Nagorno-Karabakh Second war in order to understand what was the politics of the host...

Qatar wants to use the 2022 FIFA World Cup as a soft power mean. They want to remove stains on their reputation via sportswashing. However, there is reason to believe that this effect might not occur in the case of Qatar, or in other words; that the tournament has a soft disempowerment effect on the state of Qatar. By doing a discourse analysis this study exams if the soft power efforts of Qatar have been successful, primarily in the Swedish context by examining how the Swedish media and Swedish FA articulates about Qatar, but also in the context of FIFA. The study also examens whether the articulations can be labeled as cases of Orientalism. The results show that in the Swedish context, both an orientalist and soft disempowerment-discourse are showing, and in the case of FIFA an orientalist discourse and a discourse which suggest that the tournament has been a good soft power resource in the eyes of FIFA occurs.

The following thesis conducted a case study to investigate the opinion of exper ts working on the Bombay-Ahmadabad HSR and Ankara-Istanbul HSR on how China uses HSRD and BRI to develop and utilize its soft power and whether that opinion ma tches the official Chinese point of view. The official Chinese view about BRI is that it seeks to deliver win-win outcomes, development, and improvement of lives for partici pating countries. In addition, it 'has no geopolitical motives, seeks no exclusionary bl ocs, and imposes no business deals on others … addresses people's desire for a better l ife … and shared benefits.' Ramo (2007)'s operationalization of the term global image was used to assess the respondents' opinions. The results showed that there is low dependability of the overa ll BRI among the respondents. A majority of the respondents (60%) claimed that BRI and HSRD are successful but were not impressed by the delivered value and quality o f BRI. 70% of the respondents believed that the Bombay-Ahmadabad HSR would ach ieve its objective and that it had a high level of technology. In terms of financial, socia l and political impact, the responses showed proportions of 40%, 37%, 44% respectiv ely gave a positive answer. Overall, it can be concluded that in terms of image the Bo mbay-Ahmadab gave...

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how Sweden’s bilateral economic relationship with South Africa has evolved between the years 1985-2018, from a Swedish perspective. The study has four research questions. The first question focuses on how Swedish policies toward South Africa has evolved over time, which is followed by two questions on how these changes has impacted trade and non-trade economic activity between the countries. The last question binds the study together with a discussion of the balance of Swedish priorities between humanitarian goals and domestic self-interests during this period. The existing literature is mainly focused on the economic relationship leading up to the fall of apartheid in 1994, and there is not much written on the subject since then. This study aims to contribute to the field by connecting the apartheid-era literature to the development of the post-apartheid bilateral economic relationship.  The study is based on a cross analysis of complementary data sources and methods to capture the complexity of the bilateral economic relationship between the two countries. The main bulk of data is derived through semi-structured interviews with representatives from the Swedish government, the civil society, and researchers with experience of this bilateral relationship. This is complemented with a content analysis of Swedish policy documents and illustrative quantitative data. The thesis is built on an analytical framework based on Embeddedness theory and a conceptualisation of Economic- and Soft Power, which highlights the interconnectedness between social, political, and economic relationships.

The European Union is claimed to exercise significant soft power in world politics due to its numerous ‘soft power resources’ (Nye, 2004: 11) that make it attractive to international audiences. A puzzle arises, however, when we notice that despite its vast ‘resources’, the EU fails to attract the British public, as demonstrated by the recent ‘Brexit’ referendum and the low support for the Union in the UK already before it. In this paper, I challenge the dominant resource-centric understanding of the EU’s soft power by adopting a constructivist approach that links attraction between subjects to perceived collective identity between them. By studying implicit frames in the British ‘identity discourse’, I discover the EU only weakly represented in the United Kingdom’s construction of the ‘self’. Based on my results, I argue that the EU fails to attract Britons, because they perceive their country to have little collective identity with the Union.My results demonstrate that when it comes to studying soft power, the focus needs to be on the audience’s perception. Also, more attention needs to be paid to the EU’s attractiveness to its own populations particularly these days, when the Union appears threatened by increased Euroscepticism in the member states.

In the information age, media has come to be recognized as a credible mean and foreign policy tool to pursue soft power. Authoritarian states like Russia are competing in the realm of ideas through state-funded news outlets such as Russia Today (RT). This by reaching out to global and foreign public spheres and by reporting on an alternative reality of events, issues and problems. This thesis studies the role of the media news outlet RT as a mean to promote Russian soft power. This with a focus on how the channel attempts to persuade and attract an international audience based on the construction of a compelling narrative. To approach this theme empirically, a media frame analysis is conducted utilizing five news frames including; morality, human interest, responsibility, conflict and economic consequences. The overall results suggest that RT attracts and persuades largely by providing an alternative Russian perspective on events, issues or problems. It attracts by appealing both in the direction of the western- and eastern world. It appeals to the west by emphasizing how the West needs Russia to find answers to the pressing issues in global politics. It appeals to the east by suggesting an alternative model of development. RT attempts to persuade are made through the construction of counter-narratives which delegitimizes the Western approach in international affairs. The channel devotes efforts to boost these narratives by selective news porting and handpicking statements made by intellectuals from the perceived “other” western camp.

This thesis examines the suicide preventive work done in the Swedish municipalities with a focus on the municipal officials responsible for suicide preventive work within the municipality and the state’s governance. The study uses a qualitative research design and the empirical material consists of interviews done with the municipal officials in nine different municipalities around Sweden. The intention of the thesis is to study the governing mechanisms and how the suicide preventive work is implemented in the Swedish municipalities. Furthermore, this study examines the municipal officials’ perceptions of the suicide preventive work. The officials’ perception of the suicide preventive work is essential and is a ground pilar in the work. The thesis also applies the implementation perspective along with the governance perspective to understand the suicide prevention’s challenges and the process of the work. Moreover, the thesis briefly summarizes two reports from Public Health Agency of Sweden (Folkhälsomyndigheten) regarding Sweden’s suicide preventive work in all the municipalities, regions and county administrative boards to give a summary of the work being done in Sweden as well as comparison to the interviews.    The thesis establishes that the suicide preventive work differs between the municipalities and that municipal officials have a much bigger effect on the result than anticipated. The size of the municipalities does not play a huge role, but the politics and resources are essential if the municipalities want to succeed. However, the goal of the government is their vision zero and the interviews have shown that Sweden is nowhere near its goal. The government’s use of soft power seems to have a contributing effect in this and the lack of demands in the suicide preventive work shows that municipalities have handled the issue differently: some have come a long way and have very developed work, and some have a lot left to work with.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of soft power versus hard power in U.S. policy towards Latin America. In recent years America's unipolar moment has been challenged from populist leaders in the region to its inability to get a handle on the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs that reach its shores. This thesis is a step to understanding the difference between power and influence as well as the effects of hard power and soft power in U.S. foreign policy. A historical comparative case study analysis has been conducted utilizing the cases of FDR's Good Neighbor policy and Reagan's contra war policies. This qualitative approach examined specific short-term and long-term goals of each policy and analyzed each strategy's ability to achieve those stated goals. The results of the study reveal that both soft and hard power approaches can have positive as well as negative effects on American influence in Latin America.

In recent years, China has become an increasingly influential actor in Muslim-majority countries the world over. This is despite growing international condemnation of Beijing’s imprisonment of Muslims living in northwestern Xinjiang province, in so-called "vocational training schools" where their religious identities are forcibly assimilated under the guise of counter-extremism. Nevertheless, Muslim-majority countries have remained silent or even supportive of China's treatment of its Muslim minorities. This seemingly contradictory policy position is frequently explained by citing these countries’ dependence on Chinese trade and investment in their economic and infrastructural development, however this argument inadequately assesses other important factors behind these countries’ support for China’s treatment of its Muslim minorities. Beyond the theory of economic necessity and the equally realist consideration of security ties, this research further posits that Muslim-majority states support or defend China’s treatment of Muslims in order to secure Chinese ideological support to defend themselves from reproach against their own domestic policies towards separatist movements and religious extremists. To evaluate these hypotheses, this thesis examines the engagement of some key Muslim-majority states with China by analyzing realpolitik factors like (1) economic relations; and (2) security and military cooperation; as well as more ideological factors, namely whether or not they share a common vulnerability to (3) domestic secessionist movements challenging their authority; or to (4) religious extremism that threatens state security. This research examines the economic and security relations between China and six of the most geopolitically significant Muslim- majority countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey), as well the influence of secessionism and religious extremism in each country. It then assesses the analytical validity of these four hypotheses, and concludes that the ideological considerations consisting of common vulnerability to secessionism and/or religious extremism, exhibited the greatest explanatory power for predicting Muslim-majority countries’ level of support for China's treatment of Muslims. Although realpolitik considerations like economic and security cooperation with China can also clearly be seen to influence the position of Muslim-majority countries on this issue, ideological factors like obtaining Chinese support for their suppression of secessionist movements or religious extremism are clearly paramount. In addition to these four variables, this research also briefly acknowledges the explanatory potential of other ideological factors in influencing the support of Muslim-majority countries for China's policies towards its Muslim minorities. These include factors like regime type, the prevalence of anti- American sentiment, as well as the desire to form an alliance with China against Western democracies and the norms and standards they espouse in multilateral organizations. Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates that China has already achieved widespread political and ideological support among the developing countries of the Global South, including many Muslim-majority countries. If Western democracies wish to exert pressure on China to change its behaviour, they will first need to win back the support of the Global South by offering a suitable alternative source of political, economic and security support, while foregoing neocolonial demands to enact changes to their domestic political systems.