abstract: Political and economic competition, so goes the broad argument, reduce corruption because competition increases the cost of actors to engage in corrupt practices. It increases the risk of exposure, provides non-corrupt alternatives for consumers, and introduces non-corrupt practices into the political and economic domains. Why then, has corruption persisted in the Central Eastern European countries decades after the introduction of political and economic competition in the early 1990s? This dissertation asks how and why the emergence of competition in the political and economic domains leads to a transformation of the patterns of corruption. I define corruption as an act involving a public official who violates the norms or regulations of their office, receives some compensation in return, and thus harms the public interest. I argue that under conditions of a communist past and high levels of uncertainty, the simultaneous emergence of political and economic competition transforms the opportunity structures of actors to engage in corruption. The resulting constellation of powerful incentives for and weak constraints against corruption encourages political and economic actors to enter into corrupt state-business relationships. Finally, the resource distribution between the actors in the corrupt state-business relationship determines the type of corruption that emerges—legal corruption, local capture, or covert political financing. To test the causal mechanism, I employ intensive process-tracing of the micro-causal mechanisms of eleven corruption cases in Poland and Hungary. Using paired comparisons of cases from the same business sector but at different points in time, the dissertation examines how corruption patterns transformed over time in Poland and Hungary. The dissertation shows that the emergence of political and economic competition changes the opportunity structures of actors in favor of corruption. Moreover, the new constellation of incentives and constraints encourages political and economic actors to establish corrupt state-business relationships. Crucially, I find that the resource distribution within these corrupt relationships determines the type of corruption emerges—local capture where both sides have concentrated resources that balance each other out, legal corruption when a strong economic actor confronts a fragmented political actor, and covert political financing when a weak economic actor faces a strong political actor. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Political Science 2018

Recently, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have adopted policies that engage the private sector in the implementation of their development mandates. Despite the implications of these changes, the subject is among the least conceptualized. By applying a theory-guided process-tracing (TGPT) methodology, this paper examines the process of change at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It advances a constructivist argument and evaluates whether this change could be viewed as a norm-driven change, where norms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), in the process of interaction and learning, have obtained an intersubjective quality and redefined the role of the private sector in the context of organization’s objectives. The paper evaluates this argument in light of the alternative assumptions of the principal-agent model, the bureaucratic culture literature, and rational choice institutionalism. It highlights the implications of this research in empirical, analytical, and theoretical terms for further studies and concludes that, without a due assessment of the intervening effect of norms on policies, the causal claims of other theories are seriously challenged.

The following thesis analyzes why is the democratic rule of law stronger in Uruguay than in Mexico? This work focuses on the state of the democratic rule of law in Mexico and Uruguay. The premise of this thesis is that there is a gap in the literature on causes that have historically made Uruguay the country with the strongest democratic rule of law in Latin America and Mexico one with the weakest democratic rule of law. Historical institutionalism is used to see how the evolution of the sequencing of political regimes as well as the evolution of civil-military relations in the two countries may explain the divergent outcomes. Emphasizing path-dependency, this analysis is conducted using a methodology of process-tracing. This research serves to put forward propositions in the form of a testable hypothesis on the causes that have led Mexico and Uruguay down different paths when it comes to the democratic rule of law. It also serves to fill a gap in the literature as cross-national differences on rule of law in Latin America have not been sufficiently well-explained.

The Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) was a large trade deal that was negotiated between EU and the US under the years of 2013 and 2019. The negotiations for TTIP started with big expectations for both actors but ended without any succeeded agreement. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate how this trade deal ended in failure despite the big commitment from these two negotiators.  To achieve this purpose, the study was designed accordingly to the theory of Two-level games. A theory that claims that international agreements depends on the domestic political situation. Focus was for that reason put on identifying changes in the political situation in EU and the US.  The method process tracing was then introduced to help identify these kinds of changes. Based on this method, the study found three possible changes that could have stopped the talks of TTIP: The opposition in EU, Brexit, and Donald Trump. To conclude how these three transformations affected the negotiations, evidence describing these three events was collected and thence tested in different process tracing tests. The results of the process tracing tests found that both Brexit and Trump had affected the talks negatively. Moreover, was the study also able to conclude that trade policy of Donald Trump was the factor that lastly ended the negations of TTIP.

How can we explain the paradoxical outcomes of resource efficiency? As a key pillar of worldwide sustainable development policies, the concept of resource efficiency has become increasingly important to scrutinize. The overreliance on efficiency coupled with the intention of conserving scarce resources can sometimes backfire. Understanding the intermediate process that leads to the negative, paradoxical outcome is imperative for a sustainable future, especially for societies that risks resource degradation. This study takes the explanatory route and aims to problematize the usage of efficient technology in a resource scarce developing country, namely, Morocco. It is argued that the causal mechanism which links the independent variable (drip irrigation technology) to the observed outcome (total increased resource consumption) has to do with production and consumption processes, which is theorized to be spurred by efficiency. These mechanisms have been derived from the theory of Jevons Paradox and juxtaposed with empirical findings from the Guerdane irrigation scheme, a scheme which sought to increase productivity and simultaneously reduce water scarcity. The study makes use of the case-study approach and the process-tracing method. The chosen method provides a means for establishing a timeline of events, alternative explanations, as well as providing grounds for a primary explanation for the observed outcome. The findings point to reduced labour costs and initial water savings as the empirically derived causal mechanisms. These mechanisms, spurred by the implementation of drip irrigation technology, consequently gave rise to the expansion of irrigated land which in turn increased water withdrawals and eventually resulted in a paradoxical, negative outcome where the total consumption of water resources increased. Taken together, these results deepen our understanding of the problematic usage of efficient technology when different types of social processes are not accounted for.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam built on the Nile has sparked conflicts for over twelve years now since it was first announced in 2009. But in 2020 when Ethiopia finally started to fill this behemoth of a dam hostilities ramped up between Egypt and Ethiopia. Because around 95% of Egypt's freshwater comes from the Nile and this dam is positioned upstreams of Egypt's vital water source. As such, Egypt did not take lightly to Ethiopia's challenge towards their historical water hegemony and responded with threats of violence and war. To further complicate this situation Egyp is facing an acute water shortage in 2025 and climate change will throw a wrench into the whole situation as droughts and floods will become more frequent as the world grows warmer. The empirical work of this thesis used a process-tracing approach to identify that realistic fears are driving Egypt to react with aggression and seek conflicts. However, Egypt's goal is to achieve cooperation and create a water-sharing agreement with Ethiopia. The problem is that Ethiopia does not want to give up their dam control and is satisfied with the status quo, while Egypt is striving to create a situation where they both have something to gain from cooperation. Be it through threatening to invade Ethiopia and blow the dam up or through their use of international institutions to force Ethiopia into cooperation. In the end, the conflict continues as no cooperation agreement has been signed.

This thesis intends to establish whether and to what degree possible explanations for the Visegrad Group´s response to the 2015-2016 migration crisis can be provided by Postfunctionalism and Intergovernmentalism. The purpose of this study is not to explicitly test the two theories but to use them as tools to better understand the case under analysis, by applying a non-competitive approach. Based on the elaboration of 21 official statements released by the Visegrad Group between 2015-2016, findings show that both theories could (partially) confirmed my initial hypotheses. I conclude that security matters (as Intergovernmentalist suggests) consisted in the lion´s share in the statements, while economy matters (as also suggested by Intergovernmentalism) did not. When it comes to identity matters (as Postfunctionalism suggests), I conclude that those were used in connection to security matters, with the aim of forging a common European response to the crisis and to justify the partisan reaction of the Visegrad Group.

Terrorism is a global problem and the existence of IS has been of global concern. People from all over the world have travelled to the caliphate to fight for IS, and 79 countries and organizations with USA in the lead has fought the battles against IS. This research looks into how the role of women has changed due to the military and territorial development. This is a hypothesis-testing case study where the method process tracing is used. Feminist theory is used to categorize the different roles of women, which are searched for in open sources that by the media house of IS were published in English. The findings show that the narrative of a woman as a mother and wife is seen as the most important task throughout the whole existence of the caliphate, even if women in 2015-2016 are described more as objects. In 2017-2018, women are described more as actors and even allowed to participate in combat ’under certain circumstances’. The morality codes are though maintained. Women are, for example, seen in a video participating in combat in a fully covering niqab. The main body of the thesis contains 18 407 words.

At the same time as the European Union’s (EU) influence has grown, path-breaking changes in Sweden’s social policy characteristics have appeared. Previous research gives contradictory evidence on whether and how these developments relate, and it remains unknown to what extent the EU contributed to the changes observed in Sweden.  By operationalising four theories on the mechanisms of social policy change (institutionalism, power resources approach, new politics, and new social risks), using the EU as a driving force, and two diverging policy developments as outcomes, this thesis cast the net wider than previous research and applies process tracing methods to a selection of 339 policy documents to answer: (i) How has Europeanisation affected unemployment policy and family policy in Sweden, 1990- 2019? (ii) To what extent can Europeanisation sufficiently explain the retrenchment in unemployment policy while family policies were expanded in the same period of time?  I find no support for the mechanisms of institutionalism and new politics, limited support for new social risk, and mixed support for the power resource approach explaining the Europeanisation of Swedish social policy. Although I found empirical support for parts of several, I conclude that no theory can sufficiently explain the complete causal chain of how the EU influence the two Swedish policy outcomes.

This study investigates how small states can employ different strategies to overcome structural disadvantages and exert influence within NATO. To this end, the establishment of Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) has been used as case study to explore how the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – undertook deliberate efforts during the decision-making process to serve their long-time policy preferences. As part of a reinvigorated strategic approach, the eFP multinational battlegroups would ultimately constitute leading elements of the alliance’s deterrence and defence posture. Through careful process-tracing, this study illustrates how the Baltic states, both as a collective trio and within a larger coalition, mitigated their structural disadvantages by joining efforts to influence others. The cohesiveness among eastern allies, and moreover the concrete and tangible policy preferences of the Baltic states, benefited discussions where allies’ diverging strategic preferences needed to be reconciled to find an equitable compromise. The study includes eleven semi-structured interviews with senior officials who were directly or indirectly involved in the decision-making process, allowing for credible, first-hand insights into the internal development of NATO’s strategic shift.