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Intergovernmental cooperation on collective action problems and social dilemmas faces significant challenges, as difficulties often stem from conflicts between national self-interests and collective long-term goals, lack of trust, and uncertainty about other states' commitments. Transboundary environmental issues demonstrate a clear example of collective action problems and social dilemmas, in which the Baltic Sea and HELCOM constitute such a case.  The Baltic Sea is one of the most polluted seas in the world, which in turn has placed demands on the surrounding countries to address and rectify these issues through the establishment of an intergovernmental organization, in the shape of HELCOM. HELCOM is therefore the responsible body tasked with tackling this, through policymaking and cooperation within the Baltic Sea region. Despite efforts made in the area, HELCOM has not succeeded in achieving its many goals, making HELCOM an interesting case to study. This thesis aims to research how the key institutions of HELCOM are designed, and how they influence its governance and decision-making processes using the IAD framework, and to investigate how institutional design shapes collective action outcomes. These questions aim to contribute to the study's purpose, which is to analyze institutional choices within intergovernmental collaborations and to examine the relationship between institutional design and collective action. The thesis is conducted using qualitative text analysis, specifically applying qualitative content analysis to answer the study's research questions. The empirical data consists of official HELCOM documents, which form the basis for the results presented in this study.  The study's results show that HELCOM, like other intergovernmental organizations, can be explained and understood through the IAD framework. Based on this investigation, the IAD framework could highlight that HELCOM's key institutions are designed similar, even though their area of competence differentiates. Furthermore, the study's results indicate that the design of different rules within an organization has a significant impact on the outputs of actions characterized by collective action, as it turned out that the results of various measures within HELCOM's institutional arrangements varied between different working groups. Thus, there may be incentives and benefits in designing the institutional arrangements of intergovernmental organizations in different ways, to achieve a more effective approach to combating collective action problems.

Small-scale fisheries in low and middle-income countries lag significantly behind in access to trustworthy, consistent, and easily available fisheries data. Empirical studies on the effectiveness of mobile apps for transparent data sharing to address gender disparities and women's engagement in small-scale fisheries remain limited. Data is important because it identifies the reporting source, facilitates the evaluation of fishing activities, and ensures accountability within the fishing sector. This study examines the potential of mobile apps for increasing the visibility of women's contributions to small-scale fisheries using Mexico as a case study. Current research on the role of apps in promoting equitable and sustainable fisheries is insufficient, as it lacks detailed information on who is reporting the data and its impact on the fishing sector. The primary method for this study is Q-methodology, a participatory mixed-methods approach appropriate for extracting patterns of opinions held in common within a group. Ten representative fishers from different communities and villages in Mexico participated in the study, and the analysis highlighted two key perspectives. First, mobile apps facilitate increased visibility of women within the fishing community, promoting collaboration and partnership between male and female fishers; this builds a sense of trust and group identity within the community, leading to stronger collective action. Second, collective action in the community leads to male fishers entrusting women with more fishing tasks like reporting catch data on their behalf– a task traditionally performed only by male fishers. This results in women using mobile apps to take a more active role in reporting both community solutions and catch data which leads to increased compliance to marine reserves in the fishing community. The findings are important because the study explores the potential of technology, specifically mobile apps, in recognizing women's transformative roles in reporting fishing data for equitable and sustainable small-scale fisheries.

This thesis consists of two objectives which divide it into two parts. Thus, part one explores the cyclicity of protest mobilisation in post-Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1992–2009 period and part two investigates the relationship between protest mobilisation and democratisation in the 1990s, a decade marked by early progress in democratisation followed by an abrupt reversal to authoritarianism. Acknowledging the existence of numerous competing explanations of protest cyclicity, the first part of this study utilises four major social movement perspectives – relative deprivation (RD), resource mobilisation (RMT), political opportunity structures (POS) and collective action frames (CAF) – to explain variances in protest mobilisation in Kazakhstan over time and four issue areas. Adopting a small-N case study and process-tracing technique, the thesis’s first research question enquires into which of these four theoretical perspectives has the best fit when seeking to explain protest cyclicity over time. It is hypothesised that the ‘waxing and waning’ of protest activity can best be attributed to the difficulties surrounding the identification and construction of resonant CAFs. However, the study’s findings lead to a rejection of the first hypothesis by deemphasising the role of CAFs in predicting protest cyclicity, and instead support the theoretical predictions of the POS perspective, suggesting the prevalence of structural factors such as the regime’s capacity for repression and shifts in elite alignments. The second research question revolves around variations in protest mobilisation across four issue areas and explores the reasons why socioeconomic grievances mobilised more people to protest than environmental, political and interethnic ones. According to the second hypothesis, people more readily protest around socioeconomic rather than political and other types of grievances due to the lower costs of participation in socioeconomic protests. While the regime’s propensity for repressing political protests could explain the prevalence of socioeconomic protests in the 2000s, the POS perspective’s key explanatory variable failed to account for the prevalence of socioeconomic protests in the early 1990s, resulting in the rejection of the second hypothesis. The second part of the thesis attempts to answer the third research question: How does protest mobilisation account for the stalled transition to democracy in Kazakhstan in the 1990s? Based on the theoretical assumption that instances of extensive protest mobilisation foster democratic transitions, the study’s third research hypothesis posits that transition to democracy in Kazakhstan stalled in the mid-1990s due to the failure of social movement organisations to effectively mobilise the masses for various acts of protest. This assumption receives strong empirical support, suggesting that protest mobilisation is an important facilitative factor in the democratisation process. The thesis is the first to attempt to employ classical social movement theories in the context of post-communist Central Asian societies. Additionally, the study aims to contribute to the large pool of democratisation literature which, until recently (following the colour revolutions), seemed to underplay the role of popular protest mobilisation in advancing transitions to democracy. Finally, the research is based on the author’s primary elite-interview data and content analysis of five weekly independent newspapers.

有機農業不僅可產出自然安全的農產品，同時亦得創造優質的農業環境，提供環境公共財與社會公共財，然而這樣的公共財，難以由單一農民提供，而是必須透過同一地區的農民以及利益相關者的共同參與，展開集體行動，才得以有效供給。 宜蘭縣三星鄉行健村是個特殊的案例，有部分農民為推行有機農業，乃成立全台灣第一個由農友組成的有機生產合作社，展開揚棄慣行農法的集體行動，藉由社員互信互助，實踐不施農藥、化肥的栽培，成效初具。然而，行健有機村的知名度雖逐漸提升，但實際上，有機村的名號與實際發展似乎不相襯，目前村內有機耕作面積只佔全村耕作面積的五分之一。因此，本研究以集體行動之理論分析框架，檢視行健村以集體行動促進有機農業發展之可能性。並以文獻分析法、深度訪談法、斷面步行法探究行健村有機農業發展之困境，分析檢討目前的集體行動社會網絡互動模式有何不足之處，期能提供改善建議，以促進該村有機農業發展的可能性。 研究結果顯示該村有機農業發展確實需要集體行動，始能獲致生產及非生產性的共同利益，然而村內網絡間的社會資本不足，以致欠缺發展有機村的共同目標，推展有機農業的集體行動難以擴大，再加上網絡間整合不佳，導致外部資源的投入未有相對應的成效，復又，行健合作社的制度安排不佳，導致營運困境，影響有機村的推展。而中央與地方政府合作不佳，以及現行政府的有機政策導向都關鍵地影響慣性農民轉型有機農業之意願。 本研究認為應增加村內社會網絡間彼此溝通交流之頻度，且行健合作社應重新檢討內部的制度安排，以利促進眾人一心發展有機村之集體行動；而政府方面，應設法改善有機農民之通路、建立有機專區的誘因機制，並且思考補貼政策的轉型，輔以加強消費者食農教育，使有機農業的供需市場擴大並產生互利的良性循環，如此方能讓更多農民願意投入有機耕作，或能真正發展成為兼具生產、生活、生態的「有機村」。 / Organic agriculture not only produces healthy and natural food, but also co-produces environmental public goods and social public goods. However, this kind of goods need to be provided efficiently only by farmers cooperatively, rather than individual. This case study is located in Xingjian village, Sansing Township, Yilan County, where some farmers set up “Xingjian Organic Production Cooperative” to stimulate organic farming development in the village. In this Cooperative, they trust and help each other, trying to persuade other farmers out of using chemical fertilizers and pesticide in farming, and further more, expanding the collective action. To date, some people have been participating in this collective action, as a result, have tackled local agri-environmental issues and provided agri-environmental public goods to some degree. However, as the growing reputation of “Xingjian Organic Village”, the organic farming area only accounts for 20 percent of the total arable land. Therefore, this research using collective action theoretical framework to view the possibility of the Xingjian in promoting organic farming development. This research adopts three ways- literature, in-depth interviews, transect walks, to explore the obstacle of Xingjian village in promoting organic farming development, and to analysis the problem of social network interaction. The result shows that organic agriculture development in the village do need collective action to attain production and non-production of common interests. However, the collective action of organic farming is difficult to expand due to lack of social capital in the village between the networks, and the lack of the common goal in this village. Thus, the input of external resources do not correspond to its performance. Further, institutional arrangements in Xingjian cooperatives functions poor, leading to its operational difficulties. Besides, poor Cooperation between central and local government, as well as the current policy orientation of government, both play a crucial role in affecting farmers' willingness to change conventional farming to organic farming. This study suggests that social networks between the village should connect closely by communicate with each other frequently, and Xingjian cooperatives should review its institutional arrangements, in order to facilitate the collective action of “Xingjian Organic Village”; and the government should try to improve organic produce’s access to market, establish incentives about organic agriculture zone, transfer subsidies policy to organic agriculture, and strengthen consumer’s organic education, so can make more farmers willing to invest in organic farming, or can really develop a production, life and ecology combined "organic village".

The Basque conflict has waged since the 1950s in its current form. However, with the arrival of democracy 36 years ago, the Basque Country has been the scene of an intense peace mobilization, dominated by two peace organizations: Gesto por la Paz, a group of community organizations that mobilize to publicly reject political violence, and Lokarri/Elkarri, an organization that includes a conflict resolution proposal based on dialogue between conflicting parties. While there is some literature on these organizations, none has analysed their extraordinary impact on Basque society. This research explores how the Basque peace movement has impacted on the social and political culture of the Basque conflict. It seeks to understand the nature of this impact and to determine the channels and methods by which it was achieved, using frame analysis. Three interlinked questions serve to guide the research, asking first if there is a Basque Peace Frame and if it could be considered a master frame, how this Basque Peace Frame has evolved, and, finally, how the Basque Peace Frame has impacted on other Basque Civil Society Organizations related to the conflict. This qualitative research spans the period between the March 2006 declaration of ceasefire by ETA and the end of fieldwork for this research in September 2008. The research includes 18 in depth interviews, written media, and analysis of seven notable Basque social organizations related to the conflict, in addition to the two peace organizations mentioned above. The research found the impact of the Basque peace movement in the Basque Country is significant and rich. The Basque Peace Frame developed based on the rejection of the use of violence as a political tool and identifies that violence as the main barrier to achieving an inclusive conflict resolution. The Basque peace movement organizations developed a specific kind of mobilization to enforce the Basque Peace Frame based on silent and symbolic acts. The objective was to counter the former dynamics of mobilization that were contentious and directed to promote Basque national rights. The Basque Peace Frame proposed a change in the way the political collective identity was constructed in the Basque Country, showing that an association between nationalism and violence is not obligatory. The Basque Peace Frame has evolved and spread between social organizations in the Basque Country, using sympathetic identity networks as the main channel of frame diffusion. Even organizations that did not reject the use of contentious methods of protest are now questioning the use of violence, signifying exciting prospects for the future of non-violent political action in the Basque Country.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the role of social norms and social networks on the organization of political violence. Challenging traditional accounts of collective action, this dissertation presents an alternative theoretical framework of recruitment by organizations that aim to engage in political violence. The framework hypothesizes that the use of social norms and social networks can help overcome the collective action problem for such organizations by minimizing the need for selective incentive provision. The theoretical framework is applied to two in-depth historical case studies of the conflicts in Chechnya (1994–1996 and 1999–2009) and Sierra Leone (1991–2002). Each case study is composed of two analyses of the organization of political violence. In the case of Chechnya, the organization of Chechen resistance in the First Russo-Chechen War (1994–1996) and the organization of Chechen resistance in the Second Russo-Chechen War (1999–2009) are treated as separate units of analysis. In the case of Sierra Leone, the units of analysis are the Revolutionary United Front that initiated the Sierra Leonean Civil War in 1991, and the Civil Defense Forces that were organized in opposition to the Revolutionary United Front in the mid-1990s. The analysis of the results from the case studies supports the hypotheses of the theoretical framework. Both case studies exhibit significant within-case variation. In both cases, it is shown that use of the norms and networks of the sociopolitical environment within which the organizations of political violence operate has a favorable effect on successful recruitment, and that non-use of these mechanisms has a detrimental effect. In addition, the results have implications for current theoretical debates in the literature on domestic conflict, as well as policy-related implications for the potential for conflict mediation. / text

「藝術不是一面鏡子，而是一把槌子。」引領英國紀錄片運動發展的John Grierson曾作出如此嘹亮的宣稱。足見紀錄片作為一種藝術傳達的形式，得以建構社會議題，敲擊現實，撼動主流意識，揭發社會問題的根源。因此本研究將強調紀錄片作為政治行動的可能性。 紀錄片是紀錄片工作者用自己的觀點和詮釋基模所組織起來的真實世界，因此紀錄片工作者乃是紀錄片文本框架的主控者。而環境議題紀錄片則強調藉由影像語言的中介，再現具有爭議性或討論價值的環境議題，且能在主流媒體所塑造的優勢框架之外，產製新的媒體框架以提供觀者新的觀點與另類的視野。 環境議題紀錄片究竟引用了哪些證據？如何凸顯其論證的可信度？能否引發共鳴？為進一步檢視環境議題紀錄片的敘事策略，本研究將援引「集體行動框架」作為分析架構，由問題建構、歸因、處理方針、共鳴程度與動員潛力等面向剖析紀錄片如何再現環境議題，評估紀錄片是否具有觀念倡導、說服觀者採取社會行動的能量。除此，本研究亦將耙梳相關文獻資料，建構台灣環境議題紀錄片類型發展的歷史梗概，期能有助於釐清此類型紀錄片產出的社會脈絡。 本研究由以環境議題三大主要子議題 ── 環境公害、生態保育、反核運動 ──為主題的紀錄片中，各篩選出一部近年來具代表性的環境議題紀錄片作為分析文本，包括《奇蹟背後》、《獼猴列傳》、《貢寮，你好嗎？》。研究發現，上述紀錄片除了提出處理方針之方式有別之外，皆以「環境正義框架」作為主導框架、並深入探究環境議題的結構性因素，以召喚觀者共鳴與動員的可能。 / “Art is not a mirror, but a hammer,” claimed John Grierson, who exerted pivotal influence on British documentary film movement. It is believed that documentary as one of the art forms is able to construct social issues, and explore further the causes of those problems. This study is going to focus on the possibility of documentary as political action. This study will adopt “collective action frame” as analyzing structure, to analyze how documentaries represent environmental issues, evaluate its effectiveness in related ideas, and mobilize the viewer to take up social actions. Behind the Miracle (2002), Biographies of the Macaques (2004), and How Are You, GongLiao? (2004) are the three environmental documentaries that the author chooses to examine. There are four findings in this study: 1.Environmental justice frames are adopted as master frames 2.Structural elements of environmental issues become the major investigating points 3.Proposals of management policy vary 4.The directors endeavor to call for the resonance and mobilization of the audience