Stakeholder participation and perceptions by urban practitioners is a study area that requires further research, particularly in socially innovative living concepts where quality of life and social sustainability are key considerations for end-user stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to contribute to knowledge of these innovations by focusing on urban practitioners’ perception of end-user participation in innovations of living such as co-housing, sharing communities and cooperatives that have been built recently responding to societal needs and growing concerns over social sustainability in urban areas. This study answers research questions of perception of urban practitioners towards the participation of end-user stakeholders, practitioners’ perception in its use of organisational learning, and their interpretation regarding the distribution of power between all stakeholders. Through the lens of a theoretical background based on stakeholder theory and shared value creation, power, empowerment and sharing of power, adaptive and resilient organisations concepts; and adaptive organisational learning processes. Semi-structured interviews with practitioners, employed in the cities of Malmö and Copenhagen, were conducted, transcribed and then interpreted by the authors through an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis methodology that was used to interpret data. Findings suggest that most perceive a value in stakeholder participation and those practitioners exposed to end-user stakeholder participation have a higher comprehension of its potential value. Respondents agreed that the municipality remains a key stakeholder in the shaping process, even though this was not part of initial questioning. Finally, there is a notion of an interplay between power and financial resources that still controls the development process. The paper concludes while there is a perceived value of the processes and knowledge sharing on the process of end-user stakeholders not all perceive the benefits. The authors recommend further development in this area to increase comprehension, knowledge sharing of the possibilities and barriers to innovations of living.

Securitization of an Imaginary Threat as an Authoritarian Legitimation Instrument: The Cases of Belarus and Uzbekistan. July 2021 GUID: 2458329A DCU ID: 19108281 CU ID: 22199053 Presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the 
 Degree of International Master in Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies Word Count: 22 451 Supervisor: Donnacha Ó Beacháin Date of Submission: 31.07.2021 Abstract This research explores how the securitization of imaginary and exaggerated threats is used as a legitimation instrument in hegemonic authoritarian regimes. Approaching the task through the cases studies, this thesis will situate the securitization practice within the performance mechanism of authoritarian legitimation and apply it in two hegemonic autocratic regimes - Uzbekistan of Islam Karimov and Belarus of Alexander Lukashenko. This dissertation picks qualitative research design. Methodologically, discourse and content analysis will be used to test the theory that will be developed in this project. The arguments presented in the thesis draw upon the primary sources such as speeches, official statements, and memoirs. The dissertation will also refer to the secondary sources in order to synthesise arguments provided by the existing literature related to the issue in question. This research project...

The relationship between history and memory is long and complex. While some theorists argue that they are at odds with one another, this thesis explores the necessary relationship between the two. Using Michael Frayn's 1998 play, Copenhagen, and the scrapbook of a Danish police officer and resistance fighter during World War II, the author posits the central role of uncertainty in the negotiation of individual memory and history. The position of the observer or witness to history affects the way the past is remembered and recorded. Individual witnesses, even and perhaps especially where they stray from the accepted historical narrative, testify to something that would otherwise be lost: the nature of the event. The observer therefore plays an important role in interpreting the testimony according to its place in the flow of time.

The purpose of this study was to explore the securitization of communicable disease in the case of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa 2014. Applying the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitization, this thesis conducted a discourse analysis of speech acts occurring at different levels of the global community in relation to the outbreak. The focus lay on two major events, namely the UN Security Council meeting on 18 September 2014 and the UN high-level meeting on Ebola a week later. Investigating to what extent the securitizing discourse apparent in Resolution 2177 which identified Ebola as a “threat to international peace and security” was upheld and justified by the speakers at these events, this study determined that Ebola virus disease has been “successfully” securitized on all levels of global governance. Despite the incredible amount of human suffering which the Ebola outbreak provoked in West Africa, the discourse employed by global governance identified the referent object nearly exclusively at the state-level. Further research is suggested in the concluding parts of this thesis that can build upon the findings of this study.

In recent years climate change has been featured much more prominently in scholarly and public discourse. Especially since 2003 and 2007 the focus has shifted towards the security implications of climate change and the necessary measures to deal with climate change. The discourse commonly portrays climate change as a threat that substantially affects national and human security. Using frameworks of the Copenhagen School and Paris School, as well as discourse analysis, this thesis shows that climate change as a security issue is mainly understood in human security terms and seen to exacerbate already existing problems, such as poverty and food insecurity. The social and discursive construction of climate change as a security issue has influenced the policies and practices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as well as the United Nations Development Programme, as it has become a central element of their work. It is argued that the Paris School’s climatization framework has more analytical value for the security analysis of climate change than the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory.

<p>In the post-9/11 period, the United States can be seen to have securitized its approach to homeland security policy. Canada did not follow suit. Instead, the Canadian state sought to respond to American securitization initiatives in order to protect its own state interests. An in-depth examination of securitization theory demonstrates that this theoretical construct has been re-interpreted by scholars and adapted to various research agendas. This dissertation differentiates amongst three variants of securitization theory: philosophical, sociological, and post-structural. Common to these competing variants of securitization theory was the finding that the role of the audience had remained vague, hindering the use of this theoretical model for examining the policy creation process. Focusing on the philosophical variant of securitization theory, as originally articulated by the Copenhagen School, this dissertation re-evaluates the role of the audience while examining the ways in which the American approach to homeland security was securitized in the new security environment that emerged following 9/11, as well as Canada’s response to this securitization.</p> <p>This project divides the audience into two separate groups, made up of three components. The elite audience, which is comprised of members of the state policy elite, and the media first determine whether or not an issue poses an existential threat to the security of the state. The populist audience - the state’s public - then determines for itself whether or not it accepts the existential nature of the threat. This division of the audience into two separate groups allows for a clearer understanding of whether or not a given issue has been successfully securitized.</p> <p>In the post-9/11 period, the American audience groups willingly accepted that the threat of terrorism posed an existential threat to the state. The Canadian audience groups, prompted by their own authorized speakers of security, did not recognize terrorism as posing an existential threat to the Canadian states. Ultimately, an examination of the audience groups in these two states demonstrates the utility of the philosophical variant of securitization theory for evaluating states’ responses to security threats.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study focuses on the reformation of the cross-border political coalition in the Scandinavian region of Öresund, specifically the re-organization of Öresundskommitteen to Greater Copenhagen &amp; Skåne Committee. Through the lens of Critical Discourse Analysis, the study critically examines the newly advocated regional strategy focusing on international place marketing of the collective brand Greater Copenhagen, underlying power structures and incentives of the reformation as well as the subsequent consequences for the regional development. The result highlights a political shift of focus, from the region in general to Copenhagen in particular, justified by the conviction of growing international competition and the regional core as undisputable ‘growth-machine’ for the whole region. Consequently, local projects can be legitimized as regional concerns, potentially supporting misallocation of regional funds, political and core-periphery polarization.

This thesis applies securitisation theory to the Israeli-Palestinian case with a particular focus on the potential for desecuritisation processes arising from Israeli-Palestinian cooperation/coexistence efforts in peace education and water management. It aims to apply securitisation theory in general and the under-employed concept of desecuritisation in particular, to explore the limits and prospects as a theoretical framework. Concepts, arguments and assumptions associated with the securitisation theory of the Copenhagen School are considered. In this regard, the thesis makes a contribution to Security Studies through its application of securitisation theory and sheds light on a complex conflict situation. Based on an analytical framework that integrates the concept of desecuritisation with the concepts of peace-building and peace-making, the thesis pays attention to desecuritisation moves involving Israeli and Palestinian civil societies through peace education and water management. The thesis contributes to debates over the problems and prospects of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, so making a significant empirical and theoretical contribution in the development of the concept of desecuritisation as a framework for analysing conflict resolution. The thesis develops an analytical framework that combines political level peace-making with civil society actors' peace-building efforts. These are seen as potential processes of desecuritisation; indeed, for desecuritisation to occur. The thesis argues that a combination of moves at both the political and societal levels is required. By contrast to securitisation processes which are mainly initiated by political andlor military elites with the moral consent of society (or 'audience' in Copenhagen School terms), processes of desecuritisation, especially in cases of protracted conflicts, go beyond the level of elites to involve society in cultural and structural peace-building programmes. Israeli-Palestinian peace education and water management cases are employed to illustrate this argument.

The threat from homegrown terrorism in the United States is called a new face of the threat from terrorism. The aim of this study is to empirically examine how the new threat from homegrown terrorism has been constructed in the American discourse. Furthermore it is interesting to examine how the construction relates to the American counterterrorism policy and possible consequences. This is done by using the theoretical framework of Copenhagen’s school of securitization. By using a discourse analysis, documents and speeches from the U.S. government are analysed to see how the threat from homegrown terrorism are constructed by using the securitization theory. This study concludes that the threat from homegrown terrorism is constructed by portraying it as an existential threat to the United States, it’s people and it’s collective identity. The construction has made it possible to undertake exceptional actions that may reduce the American citizens’ freedom in benefit for security.

[pt] Essa dissertação tem por tema mais amplo o processo de construção das organizações políticas chamadas de Estados. A problemática mais específica sobre a qual ele se debruça, por outro lado, é a da relação entre construção do Estado, comunidade política e segurança, tendo como estudo de caso o processo de construção do Estado uzbeque na Ásia Central pós- soviética. O argumento fundamental do trabalho é o de que cada vez que Estados empreendem atos de securitização - isto é, identificam ameaças existenciais e agem para combatê-las, sejam elas eminentemente internas ou externas - eles estão demarcando os contornos de sua comunidade política ao excluírem certos grupos do vínculo político com o Estado, do que decorre um processo de construção do Estado, ou seja, das instituições políticas estatais. No estudo de caso dos processos de securitização na República do Uzbequistão, exploramos a identificação discursiva e as ações para lidar com a ameaça do neoimperialismo russo, a qual engendrou certos padrões de alinhamentos internacionais e um certo repúdio da herança lingüística e cultural russa internamente, o que resultou na instalação de um processo, mesmo que ainda incipiente, de nacionalização étnica do Estado. Em fins da década de 90, contudo, a percepção dessa ameaça foi sendo suplantada pela identificação da politização do Islã (do Islã político) como a maior ameaça à existência do Estado uzbeque, a qual tem produzido severa repressão a qualquer manifestação religiosa - islâmica, em particular - no país e a oposição de grupos islâmicos radicalizados, em grande medida, por tal repressão. O efeito crucial desse processo foi a construção de um Estado laico, ou seja, de práticas e instituições que não permitem a participação de idéias e representantes religiosos na política. / [en] This thesis tackles the wider theme of the process of construction of those political organizations we call states. The more specific problematique into which it delves, on the other hand, is the relation between state-building, political community, and security, our case study being the state- building process of the Uzbekistani state in post-soviet Central Asia. The fundamental argument in our research is that every time states carry out acts of securitization - that is, identify existential threats and act to counter them, whether these threats be mainly internal or external - they are demarcating the boundaries of their political community by excluding certain groups from the political tie to the state, what brings about a process of state-building, that is, of the construction of state political institutions. In the case study of the processes of securitization in the Republic of Uzbekistan, we explore the identification and actions to counter the threat of Russian neoimperialism, which produced certain patterns of international alignments and a certain denial of the Russian linguistic and cultural heritage internally, which resulted in a process, incipient as it may be, of ethnic nationalization of the state. Toward the end of the 90´s, however, such perception of threat was gradually superseded by the identification of the politicization of Islam (of political Islam) as the greatest single threat to the existence of the Uzbekistani state, an identification which has produced severe repression of any religious manifestation - particularly Islamic - in the country and the opposition of groups that were largely radicalized by such repression. The fundamental result of this process was the construction of a lay state, that is, of practices and institutions which do not permit the participation of religious ideas and representatives in politics.