This paper analyzes two policies published by the Canadian Government, the Electronic Travel Visa and the Interactive Advance Passenger Information. These policies were initiated to close an integrity gap and to fight security issues resulting from globalization. These two documents are problematized by using Carol Bacchi’s analytical framework, What’s the Problem Represented to be, to dissect the underlying problem representations, the historical developments and the effects of these policies on migrants and travellers. Globalization, securitization and externalization in connection to Critical Border Studies are used for theoretical development. The results show that these policies have altered Canadian border management by pushing screening processes outside of physical sovereign boundaries and traps migrants in a web of offshore policing and securitization.

Online disinformation is a complicated and controversial phenomenon that is proving to be a large challenge for governments, private sector bodies, and civil society groups in a variety of different contexts around the globe. Foreign influence operations conducted through online disinformation campaigns have been implemented in various contexts with the intention to create political instability within these targeted nations. This thesis examines the question: What education policy initiatives are being implemented and/or already exist in the United States and Finland in an effort to make themselves more resilient to transnational online disinformation campaigns? Various policy documents that concern education legislation are analyzed through Bacchi’s (2009) ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ approach. Concepts associated with the Securitization theory and Buzan’s (1998) security analysis framework were applied to the content of these documents in order assess whether the reasoning or discourse associated with the introduction of critical media literacy programs was related to counteracting the threat of one foreign disinformation. Results indicated that there were many differences in how and why the United States and Finland implemented media literacy programs. There are indications that the perceived threat of foreign disinformation campaigns is one of the main justifications for the United States and Finland to introduce or improve national media literacy policies. This work allows other researchers to see these differences in approaches and how they relate to the international communities’ efforts toward utilizing media literacy as a security measure against disinformation.

The aim of this study was to critically analyse the bill (2021/22:162) which lay the foundation for the upcoming changes to the Swedish Education Act. Applying Carol Bacchi's framework “What’s the problem represented to be?”, this study aimed to answer how problems and solutions were presented in relation to the school's assignment towards students with intellectual disabilities (ID). In addition, identifying what silences could be discovered in the bill. Dyson and Millward's forms of inclusion constituted the study's theoretical framework. The analysed areas were limited to strengthening student health, guaranteeing early support efforts, and replacing and eliminating certain outdated concepts. The results show that none of the government's proposals met the criteria for strong inclusion, but contained both inclusive and exclusionary elements. Although the bill presented an ambition to strengthen the education for students with ID, results showed that this ambition did not include all students. Depending on which proposal the government presented, students with ID were attributed different characteristics to justify the government's proposal. This study also shows that the presented solutions were applicable within the existing school system and deriving from individual shortcomings. Further problematization of overall obstacles for students with ID was thus missing.

In the late parts of the year 2023, the Swedish government through the Justice department released a document investigating the regulation on custodial measures for young people. This documents main suggestion is to enact specially regulated child prisons. In this thesis this investigation is analysed using Carol Bacchi’s WPR model which finds that the problem that is discovered surrounds the rise of grave criminal activity amongst young people, especially involved in criminal gangs. Since Sweden has the CRC incorporated in the law, the compatibility with the convention has also been studied. The investigation shows clear consideration regarding children’s rights priority. The topics the best interests of the child, gang criminality in Sweden and incarceration of children has been included as previous research in this thesis and contribute to the analysis. The findings show that whilst much acknowledgement is made towards children’s rights in the SOU investigation, key threads of children in gang criminality is not included.

The overarching aim of this essay is to understand why gender equality policy proposals sometimes fail to be adopted even in very favorable circumstances. The paper searches to do so by examining the political debate and the process that lead to the Swedish Social Democratic Party’s decision in 2014 to not adopt a law against gender discrimination in commercial in Sweden, despite their longstanding arguments to impose such a ban. The case is considered being a “failed case”, that is, a situation where gender policy adoption failed. Drawing on feminist political theory and frame analysis the study examines the arguments made by proponents and opponents in the debate. The study finds that the Liberal People’s Party possibly might have managed to pursue the Social Democratic Party to switch position by reframing the issue regarding gender discrimination in commercial. The study also observes that freedom of speech can be seen as a competing and higher valued interest to gender equality. Furthermore, the paper demonstrate that Sweden generally have been reluctant to reach gender equality through harder measures, which additionally can be seen as an explanation to the failure of the proposal.

The object of the essay was to investigate the argumentation in the bill, the comments from unions and the authorities, among others and the motions concerning the bill. To analysis this argumentation I have been using feminist theory, specifically Carole Lee Bacchis ”What’s the problem”-aproach. I also used Maud Eduards and Diane Sainsbury to complete my theory. They describe men as the norm of the society and women as deviant. The questions I have been investigating in the texts are - What’s the problem? - Who or what caused the problem? - Who or what is responsible for the problem? - Who has the responsibility to change the problem? - What problem is not mentioned? - Are men mentioned as a gender and a group? - Are women mentioned as a gender and a group? - How are men and women described? The investigation found that the problems that was presented in the theory was very mush present in the text that I investigated. Women are seen as passive and as willingness victims of their employers. Men on the other hand are active and are mentioned as the opposite of these women. The results however varied depending on which text was studied, but the main picture remained the same.

Tidigare har kärnkraftspolitiken i Sverige legitimerats genom att kärnkraften framställts som det enda energislaget som både är koldioxidneutralt och effektivt nog att förse den svenska industrin med el till konkurrenskraftiga priser. Eftersom kärnkraften under de senaste åren utsatts för allt hårdare konkurrens från effektiv och koldioxidsnål förnybar energi finns det goda skäl att förvänta sig att den senaste förändringen av svensk kärnkraftspolitik - beslutet att avskaffa effektskatten - legitimerats genom nya sätt att skapa mening kring kärnkraften och kärnkraftspolitiken. I den här studien undersöks därför hur beslutet att avskaffa effektskatten legitimerades inom den energipolitiska policyeliten och hur det skiljer sig från tidigare sätt att legitimera kärnkraftspolitiska beslut. 12 semi-strukturerade intervjuer och ett textmaterial bestående av 13 remissvar, en statlig utredning och en politisk överenskommelse har analyserats med hjälp av Carol Bacchis ”Whats the problem represented to be?”-metod samt ett poststrukturalistiskt metodologiskt och teoretiskt ramverk. Studien visar i likhet med forskning från andra länder där kärnkraft utsatts för hård konkurrens från förnybar energi att ett nytt sätt att framställa kärnkraften, där den framställs som nödvändig för elsystemets tekniska funktionssätt på grund av dess förmåga att leverera effekt, blivit det mest centrala sättet att legitimera kärnkraftspolitiken inom policyeliten i anslutning till avskaffandet av effektskatten. Studien visar även att ett nytt sätt att legitimera kärnkraftspolitik med hänvisning till att undvika snedvridande ingrepp i elmarknaden återkommer inom policyeliten, men att det finns olika bilder av vad som utgör ett snedvridande ingrepp. Framställningen av kärnkraften som koldioxidneutral framstår som mindre central än tidigare.

The planet’s biodiversity is in a worrying state. Palm oil production significantly contributes to biodiversity loss in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. Unfortunately, the different forms of public and private regulation in place have had limited success in regulating the sector and protecting the environment. Three of the biggest palm oil traders – Cargill, Musim Mas, and Wilmar International – were chosen as subjects of an embedded case study to answer whether their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts have the potential to drive transformation in the palm oil sector towards more environmental sustainability.  This thesis contributes to the debate around the role of business actors in Global Governance and their ability to tackle social and environmental problems caused by their business models with CSR. The thesis engages deductively with capitalism-critical theories on CSR. Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach will guide a discourse analysis of the 2019 sustainability reports of the three companies regarding their efforts to improve sustainability in the palm oil sector. A comparison with research articles and NGO reports reaches the conclusion that the measures taken by Cargill, Musim Mas, and Wilmar are not enough to improve sustainability sufficiently.

Human rights violations have been connected to several FIFA World cups. In 2010 the first article published by Amnesty international on human rights violations of the South Africa World cup. The impacts of mega sporting events such as human rights violations and environmental impacts have been under scrutiny in literature of sustainable development and legacies of mega sporting events, such as the FIFA World cup. Prior to the FIFA World cups, sustainability strategies are published which consider the issues and impacts of the World cup. These strategies will be analyzed by using the framework of Carol Bacchi’s “what is the problem represented to be '' approach. Additionally, the problem representation of the strategies will be compared   with Graham Houghton’s theoretical framework of Equity principles. With this the aim is to understand what the problem is represented to be in the sustainability strategies and regard the similarities and differences of the strategies. It can be concluded that throughout the strategies the social issues dominate the problem representation. Also, the strategies come closer to Houghton’s idea of sustainable development through time where the Qatari is closer to the idea of sustainable development than the two predecessors.

This study examines the framing of environmental policies within two military organisations;the Swedish Armed Forces and the United States’ Department of Defence. Additionally, key similarities and differences between the two were described and discussed, as well as which possibilities and challenges each organisation faces moving forward. By using a two-part method consisting partly of a content analysis performed through the chosen theoretical framework of Human Nature Relationships (HNR), along with Carol Bacchi’s policy analysis tool ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR) when examining both organisation’s respective sustainability reports from 2020, underlying problems were identified and analysed from a critical environmental perspective. The results show that the two policy documents were framed seemingly differently, where the SAF derives their sustainable efforts from the UN Sustainable Development Goals with these being clearly integrated into the operations internal goals, and the DoD mainly mentions sustainability in relation to a bigger picture of cost efficiency. Despite these differences, at their core the organisations both show signs of upholding environmental worldviews which place humans as more valuable than nature, which can be identified through the recurring priority of fulfilling military interests and thereby perceiving sustainable efforts as important, but inevitably, less than. Therein, the main challenge for both organisations stems from the task of balancing differing interests – military interests contra the needs of nature. Possibilities here arise partly from already existing developments, on part of the SAF, and from financial resources on part of the DoD. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of these aspects along with recommendations for future research.