This thesis aims to answer the question of what differences in risk propensity may exist between Swedish Army Officers from different branches and those with or without experience from international deployments. Since different individuals can perceive risks in different ways a discrepancy can arise between how different decision makers act in different tactical situations. This can have consequences in combat through decision makers who expose themselves and others to unnecessarily large risks, or decision makers who fail to act through an excessive risk perception. The thesis aims to discover whether such differences exist within the Swedish Army, to avoid catastrophic outcomes in combat because units or individuals are acting in a way that is not advantageous to the task, and directly or indirectly creates an even more risky situation. The survey was conducted through a questionnaire survey, where the data was analysed to test two hypotheses, one relating to the different branches and the other regarding experience from international deployments. The analysis showed that the differences between groups were not statistically significant and that the hypotheses cannot be proven.

This study aims to investigate how aid organisations with different means of financing respond to corruption allegations, and how the perceived risk of reputational loss affects that response.  The method used to answer the research question was a collective case study where three different aid organisations, Oxfam GB, UNDP and SIDA, which all have different funding mechanisms, were compared in their response to corruption allegations - before and after the public gained knowledge of those allegations. The analysis shows that there is a difference in the response to corruption allegations between the cases, namely that Oxfam GB and UNDP developed their response to a large extent when the public learnt of the allegations, SIDA on the other hand did not change their response at all. However, donor pressure seems to be more important for this induced change rather than the perceived risk of reputational loss.

Gender inequality greatly affects the vulnerability of women in many areas of societal development. Gender mainstreaming is used as a strategy to include a gender perspective in policy and practice to decrease vulnerability. In regular development there is a discrepancy between policy and practice, but especially so in contexts of disaster. This thesis aims to examine how gender mainstreaming strategies are implemented in disaster risk reduction. The main purpose is to create an understanding of how such processes translate into practice both in relief efforts and resilience-building projects. A case-study of the Swedish Red Cross is the foundation of this thesis, looking at how these processes flow from theory to policy to practice. Semi-structured interviews with professionals from the field serve as the main method. A content analysis of IFRC policies regulating gender action will supplement the interviews. The results illustrate a discrepancy between the gender-focused policy and a women-centric implementation, and further highlight the role of donors and ‘the Tyranny of Urgency’. These results, and consequently this thesis, contributes to recognizing the feminization of responsibility in the field of development in general, but especially in the context of disaster.

Throughout the years many have called for a reform of the United Nations and more specifically its most influential body the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council has the authority to pass resolutions with the sole purpose to preserve the peace around the globe, in theory at least. As there are conflicts that have been going on for a decade without any kind of solution from the Security Council and with huge humanitarian toll, just like Syria and Yemen, the need for a reform is clearly needed for the Security Council to be able to act better in conflict solving. In the Council five members have veto rights which are also permanent members and are not elected. As this has been considered unfair, both the notion of a permanent member and also the notion of a veto, some reform proposals have been brought up by organizations or countries to change the Security Council. This work is concerned with the Weak Veto reform proposal as analysing possible reforms using discourse analysis can predict possible future behaviour of states and can introduce a different view on the future of international organizations.

Gender awareness has been recognized as critical in sustainable peace efforts, and gender mainstreaming has become a natural practice in peace projects. While gender has long been equated with focus on women, the inclusion of men has increased. The concept of militarized masculinity has gained recognition, where exposure to the military institution is believed to foster certain gendered norms. The construction of these militarized masculinities has been a prominent focus in previous research, where capability of violence is apparent, and they are often found to undermine sustainable peace efforts. Less attention has been given to how these norms endure outside of the military institution. This thesis seeks to explore this question by studying five Namibian veterans who after the independence war moved on to become prominent politicians, which is argued to provide a least likely case for norm change. Through a qualitative content analysis, the veterans are studied during their entire time in the Namibian parliament. The study finds that the masculinity norms of the veterans developed and adapted to peace time, but still remained militarized. A new ideal type of militarized masculinity is formulated based on the findings, the Nation Protector, where leadership, bravery and patriotism are central, together with ideas of gender equality and peace. The study thus provide evidence that militarized masculinities may change outside of the military institution, but that this change is slow.

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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.