The term local participation has become a frequently used buzzword within peacebuilding; however, its contextual meaning and practical implications are not well established. Further, most of the literature has focused on international organizations from a state-building and good governance perspective, however, often this does not account for the work and responsibilities which are carried by large-scale peacebuilding INGOs. I address this gap and ask how and why local perceptions are included in some projects while they are less in others. I argue that interventions in peacebuilding projects whose conceptualizations comprehensively incorporate the local context provide space for meaningful interactions and closer ties between beneficiaries and project staff, hence motivating accountability towards the communities and thereby increasing the level of inclusion of local perceptions. To address this question, I conduct a qualitative within-case comparison where I analyze Search for Common Ground’s application of the Grounded Accountability Model, aimed at including local perceptions. Overall, I found moderate support that contextualized conceptualization as a tool for local participation increases the inclusion of local perceptions within peacebuilding projects. The findings highlight the need for a context-sensitive approach towards the term community.

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This study aims to contribute to the debate on the influence of Europarties in the European Union decision-making process, and more precisely in the European Council. As a starting point the theory on Europarty influence in the European Council, by Jonas Tallberg and Karl Magnus Johansson, will be tested in order to assess its validity. There is a need to further research the role of the Europarties in the decision-making processes of the European Union, since the contributions to the field are scarce. The theory suggests that Europarties can be expected to be influential when 1) there is ideological polarisation surrounding the question of concern, 2) one party is dominating the European Council, and 3) when a Europarty is successful in mobilising and creating cohesion among its leaders. In addition, the Europarties have to be able to compete with domestic constraints that the members of the Council are bound by. The theory is empirically tested by a comparative case study on the outcomes of the Spitzenkandidaten-processes in the European elections in 2014 and 2019. It seems that the Europarties were influential and managed to get a Spitzenkandidat elected as Commission President in 2014, but less successful in 2019. However, the findings of the empirical study suggest that the Europarties were successful in mobilising support also in 2019, but a chain of events led to the fall of the Spitzenkandidaten-process in its current shape and the Europarties have most likely lost a part of their long-term influence.

In 2017, the far right populist, transnational movement “Generation Identity” (GI) embarked on an activist “mission” in the Mediterranean Sea to stop non-European migrants from reaching the European continent. This paper presents a study of how GI was able to do so, analysing the empowering network of support that evolved during the movement’s “Defend Europe” campaign. Its relevance arises from the globally growing assertiveness of populist actors, cooperating and shaping international politics together. However, studies on party politics and international interactions prevail in research on global populism -this paper is the first one to raise the question of how far right populist social movements interact in transnational networks. Applying a resource mobilization approach and drawing on transnational advocacy theory, I attempt to answer this question with a single case study on the German GI-branch’s networking activities during the Defend Europe campaign. The relational data collected shows that far right populists, too, engage in transnational advocacy efforts, and it appears that their populism does not visibly determine how their networks function. Rather, GI’s activism in “defensive mode” seems decisive for the movement’s transnational networking practices, limiting its possibilities to gain in political and societal influence.

The Cyber-domain is normally viewed as an individual warfighting domain without much interaction with other warfighting domains. Deterrence theories often focus on larger countries without taking in account smaller nations that must use whatever means possible to deter hostile influences. Cross-Domain Deterrence is a universal theory that uses all available methods of deterrence, both military and civilian to explain how deterrence against hostile offensive action works. This paper uses a qualitative text analysis to investigate if the theory of CDD reflects the standing doctrine and focus of cyberwarfare in Sweden. The result concludes that Swedish doctrine and focus reflects the essence of cyberwarfare in CDD to a certain degree. Swedish doctrine describes the core of Cross Domain Deterrence but is lacking in the signalling and education in multi domain deterrence. The standing doctrine and focus are lacking in explanations how to evolve cyber deterrence to interact with other warfighting domains and how to implement international law in cyber-deterrence.

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This is a qualitative comparative case study which examines the impact of Marxism on Cuba’s social system. The study examines the influence of the theory during the periods 1959-1969 where Fidel Castro was president and 2018-2023 during Miguel Díaz-Canal's rule. It examines Marxism's impact on Cuba's social system through the perspectives of political institutions, economic indicators, and social indicators. Thenceforth, the theory is applied to these to indicate the impact of the theory on Cuba’s social system. The purpose of the study is to analyze the impact of Marxism on Cuba's social system using the three perspectives during the two periods, and examine if the impact of the theory has developed. The research questions are: “How much impact did Marxism have on the social system in Cuba in 1959–1969, during Fidel Castro's first year as ruler?”, “How much impact does Marxism have on the social system in Cuba in 2018-2023, under the rule of Miguel Díaz-Canel?” and “How has the impact of Marxism on the social system in Cuba changed in relation to these periods?” This study has proven that Marxism has had a strong impact on Cuba's social system during Castro's first years as president. Furthermore, Marxism still has a strong impact under the rule of Miguel Díaz-Canal despite that new reforms have been introduced that deviate from the fundamental ideas of the theory. This calls into question the future impact of Marxism on Cuba’s social system.

This research paper investigated how AI can shift the balance of power between China and the U.S. in the military domain by comparing the respective countries' power through Waltz’s five capabilities from two points in time to identify how the power dynamics have shifted in the last two decades. Neorealism and realist hegemonic stability theory were applied to explain why China might be challenging the U.S.'s role as the number one superpower and how this can be achieved as the country aims for AI domination by 2030. Based on the results, China has had surprising growth over the past two decades which indicates that the country is aiming for hegemony in the AI domain as it has the capacity and capability to shift the balance of power in the military domain. However, different attempts from the U.S. and its allies to halt China’s rise in tech have led to tension in the international system. Therefore, how AI technology can be used to shift the balance of power depends entirely on how China deals with these attempts and if it can keep up with its development in the field.

Even if child mortality has decreased significantly since 1990, it is still a substantial issue that is prevalent all over the world. Regional differences are significant, and Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected area. Traditionally, researchers have turned to the medical field for health-related issues. However, social, and structural factors, among them gender inequality, are also crucial in determining health and life conditions. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how intrahousehold gender inequality affects child mortality in Sierra Leone. The study was made through a cross-sectional study using data from the Sierra Leone Demographic Health Survey. A quantitative method was used, and analysis was conducted using OLS regression. In contrast to previous research, the results do not show a significant covariation between maternal education and child mortality. Likewise, paternal education and the difference in education between men and women showed no significant covariation with child mortality. However, polygyny, the number of wives and the first event of intimate partner violence were positively associated with child mortality. More studies about gender inequality in relation to child mortality should be conducted to strengthen the results and increase the knowledge and understanding of this subject.

There is a debate within the field of policy studies whether disasters are drivers of policy reforms, as encapsulated by the disaster-reform hypothesis. Since the disaster rate for extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change, it is of high relevance to study if these disasters have any effect on climate polices. The aim of this thesis is therefore to empirically explore if there are any discernible global trends of disasters preceding a subsequent increase in Climate resilient development (CRD) policies and to show the variation of “effect lag” between income groups and regions. The research design operationalises the most severe disasters through “milestone events” and creates a CRD index by the arithmetical mean of sustainable development, climate adaptation, and climate mitigation. The results show a proportional share of countries experienced an effect lag of 1-3 years after their milestone events, while a large incidence of HIC and LMIC countries had a lag of 4-6 years. This explorative thesis has provided a research design and results on CRD, previously undescribed, that suggests several pathways for future studies such as interesting samples for case studies and alternative designs to the operationalisation of concepts.