In teacher education, critical civic education and anti-racist education are often disconnected in practice, despite increasing overlap in theorizing and goals: to resist and dismantle the settler colonial realities of education, to promote working for social justice, and to challenge racist and White supremacist structures. This comparative case study examined how White teacher candidates’ civic, social justice, and anti-racist knowledge development during Bachelor of Education foundations courses affected their pedagogical growth. Through surveys, co- researcher observations, and focus groups conducted at research sites in Saskatchewan and Ontario, the study examined how teacher candidates understood their positionalities within societal structures, and how their understandings of structural injustice affected their pedagogical choices. Building from a postcolonial global citizenship education conceptual framework, the study engaged with Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies in order to situate the findings in White settler colonial contexts. Findings indicate that the degree to which teacher candidates were aware of their own positionality influenced their understandings of structural injustice, and their confidence (or not) with anti-racist pedagogy. In the areas of civic engagement, racism, and Whiteness, the re-inscription of individualistic discourses and rejection of structural discourses was pervasive, and teacher candidates resisted self-implication in historical and ongoing settler colonialism and White supremacy. However, access to alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding the social construction of identities and structural determinism were somewhat effective at tackling meritocratic discourses. The study affirms the need for scaffolded anti-racist/anti-oppressive education in teacher education programs and discusses the necessity for teacher candidates to understand their own positionalities in context.

In recent studies of Scandinavian Populist Radical Right (PRR) parties, a convergence of their socioeconomic and sociocultural politics have been emphasized. This evidence points towards them having tempered their more radical agenda as they have moved towards the mainstream. But the description of the Sweden Democrats, the Progress Party and the Danish People’s Party as a homogenous entity doesn’t fit their own perception. Across different channels, like printed media and debates, the Scandinavian parties have made clear statements about how they should not be equated with one another. Through comparative method this study wants to shed light on the Scandinavian PRR-parties dividing and uniting ideological features to discuss if they should be described as homogenous - or can we find divergence? Drawing on Cas Muddes theory of populism as a thin ideology, together with Benedict Anderson's theory of nationalism as an ‘imagined community’, this study demonstrates how we can cover the full range of ideas that PRR-parties represent, and thereby present a more nuanced description of them.

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The aim of this study is to analyse the Moderate Party and the Swedish Democrats idea development in the issue of migration in 2010-2018. The inquiry consists of the following two research questions. How has the Moderate Party and the Swedish Democrats positions regarding migration developed in 2010-2018? How can institutional theories explain the Moderate Party and the Swedish Democrats idea development? The study is encompassed by three theoretical perspectives also recognised as rational-choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism and discursive institutionalism. In regard to the methodological approach, the study employs the comparative case study design with the most-similar system and is essentially an idea analytical study. The main results reveal that both the Moderate Party and the Swedish Democrats have adjusted their migration policies but to different degrees. The Swedish Democrats promote similar policies in 2010 as in 2018 with smaller alterations while the Moderate Party has customised larger alterations, distinguishing the party’s migration policy from 2010 and 2018. These policy alterations are primarily explained as a result of rational action, societal discourses and critical junctures.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att identifiera möjliga utfallspåverkande faktorer som möjliggör ett framgångsrikt implementerat utfall avseende social hänsyn i offentlig upphandling i en svensk kontext. Analysen och slutsatserna bygger på en jämförelse mellan två fall där utfallet utgör den gemensamma nämnaren. Underlaget till uppsatsen bygger primärt på intervjuer med tjänstemän och politiker i Sigtuna och i Örebro. De teoretiska analysverktygen som används i denna uppsats är hämtade från Rational choice- och Normativ institutionalism. Tre temafaktorer har använts för att kategorisera likheter och skillnader mellan fallen. Dessa är spelregler, preferenser och resurser. Resultatet visar på att fallen har fler möjliga utfallspåverkande faktorer gemensamma än de har utfallspåverkande faktorer som skiljer dem åt. En troligt viktig möjlig förklarande faktor ligger i att frågan om sociala krav har hanterats på ledningsnivå som en strategisk fråga, snarare än som en juridisk eller teknisk fråga. Fallen kan även förstås som att behovet av upphandling och behovet av sociala åtgärder har växt fram oberoende av varandra innan själva upphandlingsprocesserna och att det är genom aktörernas aktioner som upphandlingsfrågan och den sociala frågan har kombinerats. Dock rör det sig inte om en institutionell förändring som katalysator för implementeringen, utan snarare om inkrementell förändring i synen på offentlig upphandling som ett verktyg för social förändring. / The purpose of this thesis is to identify probable outcome influencing factors that enable a successful implemented outcome of social considerations in public procurement in a Swedish context. The analysis and conclusions are based on a comparison between two cases where the outcome is the common denominator. The empirical material for the thesis is primarily gathered from interviews with officials and politicians in Sigtuna and in Örebro municipalities. The theoretical tools used for analysis in this thesis are taken from Rational choice and Normative institutionalism. Three thematic factors have been used to categorize the similarities and differences between the cases: these are the rules of the game, preferences and resources. The result shows that the cases have more probable outcome influencing factors in common than they exhibit outcome influencing factors that set them apart. A likely important probable explanatory factor is to be found in the fact that the subject of social considerations was handled at a management / political level as a strategic issue, rather than as a legal or technical issue. The cases can also be understood in a manner which informs us that the need for procurement and the need for social action have evolved independently of each other and before the actual procurement processes. It is through the actors’ actions that the procurement issues and the social considerations have been combined into a common issue. However, the result does not indicate an institutional change as a catalyst for the implementation, but rather that the change in the perception of public procurement as a tool with social policy implication represents an incremental change within the existing institutions.

Climate change is a collective action problem that has been seen as something that needs a global solution. This has resulted in multilateral agreements, such as the Paris Agreement, which can largely be said to have been unsuccessful so far. This has led to an increased awareness of the potential of cities as being part of the solution. Cities are often seen as key sources of climate change, but also as key sites for climate action. The Paris Agreement needs to be implemented on all political levels to be effective. This makes cities an important site for climate policy implementation. Some scholars of urban climate governance have looked at ways to evaluate climate policies in cities as a way to improve these processes. This study means to contribute to that field. The aim of the study is to evaluate climate policies in the city plans of Stockholm and Dublin. This has been done by testing an analytical framework which made it possible to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of the climate policies and the governance structures in the plans. By doing this it was also possible to identify challenges in using the framework and give suggestions on how the framework can be improved. The study takes the form of a comparative case study of the two cities. Document analysis was used as a method to select and analyse the data and the empirical material consisted of the city plans of Stockholm and Dublin. These are policy documents containing general development plans of the cities. It was concluded that both plans contain both strengths and weaknesses. Examples of strengths are that both plans are well-integrated with activities on the regional and national level, that responsibility for implementation is centralised on the local level, that the plans promote innovation and that the plans are connected to long-term goals and visions. Examples of weaknesses are that neither plan makes use of more hard methods such as regulation, that the Dublin City Plan is not integrated with policy on the global level and that the Stockholm City Plan lacks monitoring systems. Regarding the analytical framework it was concluded that it can be used to analyse city plans rather than metropolitan plans. By testing the framework it was also possible to identify challenges in using the framework and give suggestions on how to improve it, such as by making some of the key attributes of the plan more widely applicable.

The target of this research is to reveal causal factors that influence the way policy goals and instruments of international organizations in the domain of human trafficking are designed. By tracking evolutions of anti-trafficking policies undergone by the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the thesis demonstrates impact of specific factors on changes in the functioning of international organizations. To unravel mechanism explaining the internal workings of a policy formation within an IO, the thesis considers and tests theoretical assumptions of three rivalling theories on institutions; the realism, historical institutionalism and neoliberal institutionalism. Premises of respective theories, which offer contrasting perspectives on the functioning of international organizations, will help to formulate corresponding independent variables. The dependant variable being the changing design of institutions, the detailed cross-case analysis spanning a period of one decade uncovers causal relations between independent dependent variables. Thus, by means of time series data collection, patterns revealing which of independent variables can be designed as responsible for observed changes becomes visible. In this way, the study is able to answer to what extent...

The goal of this research is to shed light on the impact of European foreign direct investment and growing Chinese foreign direct investment in Sub-Saharan Africa through lenses of neocolonialism and orientalism. A case study analysis is utilized to grasp the topic appropriately. Two case studies were set - Senegal and Zambia case study. While Senegal serves predominantly as a case study for the impact of EU foreign direct investments, The case study of Zambia helps to understand how Chinese FDI inflow affects Sub-Saharan countries. Therefore, six hypotheses were outlined. This work researches the impact of FDI on the level of democracy represented by the democratic index of The Economist Intelligence Unit, business freedom embodied in The Heritage Foundation's economic freedom index, and stability of state symbolised by the fragile state index studied by The Fund for Peace. All three indexes above are available for free online. The correlation between EU FDI and level of democracy was confirmed while Chinese FDI negatively affects democratic development in studied countries. Next, European FDI positively affects the level of economic freedom in Senegal as well as Zambia. Nevertheless, increased Chinese FDI inflow to the countries deteriorated their economic freedom. Lastly, there is no clear...

This thesis addresses the question as to why multilevel politics is becoming an integral part of politics in Europe. Multilevel politics is conceptualized as a system which functions through a complex web of political relations within and across levels of decision making. The thesis argues that the rise of multilevel politics can be explained by its institutionalization in terms of the emergence, the evolution and especially the effects of relevant institutions. Based on a mixed-method research project, the influence of European institutions on subnational actors and the alignment of actor motives with institutional characteristics are empirically shown. The first chapter of the dissertation establishes the centrality of institutions for political transformation, examines the role of transnational and domestic institutions for multilevel politics, and contextualizes the research question in terms of institution-actor relations. The second chapter develops a new-institutionalist theoretical framework that explains the emergence, the evolution and the effects of the institutions, and formulates a series of hypotheses with regard to freestanding institutional influence, power distribution, material benefits and political identification. The third chapter outlines the mixed-method research design which addresses individual-level and institutional-level variations through a Europe-wide survey and a comparative case study. The fourth chapter on survey results shows generally favourable views on multilevel politics, and strong associations of these views with the independent variables under scrutiny. The fifth chapter specifies a multivariate model which includes all posited variables and confirms the majority of the hypotheses. Therefore, the new-institutionalist argument is broadly confirmed, while there is relatively weak evidence to sustain sociological explanations. The final chapter compares the Committee of the Regions and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, and examines the institutional characteristics which correspond to the hypothesized variables. It is then concluded that the two institutions share several overarching similarities, and display complementarity in other aspects.