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The presence of state capture and political disadvantages incite the emergence of social movements, which hope to induce a removal of political disadvantages. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) protests and social movements have been initiated for several reasons, often to lay attention on the government's dysfunction. Nationalism has been shown to potentially be destructive in those ways it is used to silence the opposition and this essay has identified how nationalism has been a tool for politicians to repress social movements in BiH. By using the paper's theoretical framework, a discursive analysis of politicians’ repressive statements towards three different types of social movements has been done. The three types of social movements included in the analysis are the LGBT movement in BiH, the student movements in Jajce and Travnik and the ‘Justice for David’ movement in Banja Luka. The results have shown that repression mostly occurs through emphasizing the threat of the movement in different ways as well as invoking nationalism. Nationalism is also frequently present through the classification of a “we” and “them”. Future research would benefit from explaining why specific aspects of nationalistic discourse are more common than others in politicians' repressive statements.

Resettlement policies have been central to the Ethiopian development strategy in recent decades, and have resulted in contentious debates regarding their implications as a development practice based on expropriation. Researchers, politicians, and activists have provided varying perspectives which tend to either represent resettlement as a harmful detriment to local development, or a powerful tool to generate growth and economic opportunities. This thesis examines how resettlement policy has evolved as a development tool in Ethiopia during the 2000s, and to what extent it has been shaped by the developmental discourses of modernization and the developmental state. By employing Critical Discourse Analysis, the thesis tracks the interdiscursive shifts of resettlement policy across three periods to investigate how it has been continuously shaped by developmental discourses. Hence, the thesis provides insights regarding how national politics are influenced by global development discourse, and how expropriation functions as a development tool in the global political economy. The thesis concludes that resettlement has changed drastically, and become a more socially concerned and locally anchored development tool. The influence of modernization discourse has consistently been significant, but interdiscursive shifts have changed its implications, while the influence of developmental state discourse was initially significant but decreased over time. The thesis identifies decentralization and diversification as two transdiscursive movements that have shaped the evolution of the discourses, and how they have constituted of resettlement policy.

The increasing use of information warfare by authoritarian states to promote a multipolar order, coupled with a growing rapprochement between Russia and China, can lead to synergies that undermine international security. In response to the problem, this thesis aims to unpack and examine the Russia-China disinformation nexus to address the implications of the relationship on international security. To do so, the thesis employs a mixed-methods approach to analyze Russian and Chinese disinformation on Twitter following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, using the concepts of sharp power and policy transfer as a framework of analysis.  The results indicate that while joint aims to undermine US hegemony provides fertile grounds for synergetic effects, the aims and objective of each state is the driving factor behind overlapping disinformation. The primary process of convergence was China emulating some features of Russian disinformation, with some evidence suggesting that Russia and China engage in a reciprocal policy transfer of information warfare. The findings further indicate that China formats its disinformation to appear neutral in the Ukraine war, despite the declared no-limit partnership with Russia. These findings offer insights into the complex evolving ’no-limit’ partnership developing between Russia and China and are thus significant for policymakers to counter these states’ influence efforts.

Tillit är centralt i ett välfungerande och stabilt samhälle. Människor behöver känna tillit både till samhällets institutioner och till andra människor i samhället för att kunna samarbeta och upprätthålla social sammanhållning. Denna studie ämnar att undersöka faktorer som hotar social tillit, med särskilt fokus på mångfaldens inverkan på tilliten. Enligt en etablerad tes inom samhällsvetenskapen utgör mångfald ett hot mot social tillit, men Sverige, som har upplevt hög invandring sedan 1930-talet, visar en konstant hög nivå av tillit trots ökad mångfald. Detta väcker frågor kring andra faktorer som kan påverka tillit på lokal nivå, såsom kommunala variationer i homogenitet och ekonomisk jämlikhet. Datamaterialet hämtas från den Västsvenska SOM-undersökningen 2019, samt kompletterande statistik från Statistiska centralbyrån (SCB) och Sveriges Television (SVT) för att undersöka sambandet mellan etnisk sammansättning, ekonomisk jämlikhet och social tillit. Resultaten visar att etnisk mångfald minskar social tillit, även om sambandet är relativt svagt.

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The independence of Scotland from Great Britain has been a long-standing and complex issue, with roots dating back centuries. In recent years, the question of independence has been brought to the forefront again with the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, commonly known as Brexit. After referendum in 2014, Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom, but most Scottish voters chose to remain in the EU in the Brexit referendum of 2016. This has led to renewed calls for independence from some quarters, as many in Scotland feel that their interests are not being represented in the UK’s decision-making process. The issue of independence is highly contentious, with arguments for and against independence being made on economic, cultural and political grounds. Those in favor of independence argue that it would allow Scotland to have more control over its own affairs and to chart its own course in the world, while those opposed to independence argue that it would create unnecessary division and uncertainty, Ultimately the question of independence for Scotland remains a matter of ongoing debate on the will of the Scottish people and the decision of the UK government.

How does political power affect populist rhetoric? The research on populism has failed to describe the difference in discourse between populist parties in opposition and in government. The previous academic debate has consisted of two fundamental areas of focus; definitions that are centered around identity formations, and the political or societal effects of populism in power, referring to issues related to democracy and rule of law. This study argues that populist rhetoric contains both elements and should therefore be studied as such. It aims to increase the understanding of how populism is expressed before and during governance, and how this differs. Using rule of law as an analytical measuring instrument and tools and theories from discourse analysis, Fidesz, the ruling party of Hungary, is examined by qualitative text analysis. The study finds that the idea of “us” as the people and “them” as the elite survives with populism in power, where “them” as the elite no longer consists of domestic political opponents, but rather international political opponents and organizations. Further it finds that the values connected to rule of law are abandoned in favor of a more technical meaning.

Wildfires are a part of the growing concern regarding climate issues in our society, and since the 1990s, the intensity of wildfires has grown. As wildfires affect our societies, countries have adapted crisis management strategies to tackle the issue of wildfires with help from international organisations. Research has been done on the topic of framing crisis management and the framing of wildfires. Nevertheless, these two fields have never been studied together. This study aims to examine how international organisations frame wildfire crisis management in the case of Portugal. Official assessment documents from the EU and the OECD have been analysed using a framing method. The findings of the study are that the most persistent framing of Portugal's wildfire crisis management is policy failure; however, depending on what areas one is analysing, fragments of actor failure can also be detected.

This paper seeks to investigate why did ECOWAS’s AFISMA fail to resolve the Malian conflict between 2012 and 2013. The idea is not to go over the different challenges that ECOWAS faced in handling the Malian conflict but to instead establish the single main challenge that inhibited ECOWAS from achieving its desired goals in resolving and managing the crisis in Mali. This thesis employed the theoretical framework of neoliberal institutionalism. Methodologically, this thesis has utilised critical discourse  analysis method.  The paper will analyse data from both primary sources (i.e ECOWAS’ policy documents, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions on the Mali crisis, AU documents, Mali’s government documents, speeches and reports) and secondary sources (i.e news articles and media reports). This paper is arguing that the reason why ECOWAS’s AFISMA failed to resolve the Malian conflict with regards to its conflict management quest in Mali is the community’s lack of ownership of its military intervention initiative in the country. In agreement with its hypothesis the paper concluded by positing that indeed the ‘reason why ECOWAS’s AFISMA failed in its conflict management quest in Mali is the community’s lack of ownership of its military intervention initiative in the country’.