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The purpose of this study is to examine the effect that international trade, or trade dependency, had on China’s propensity to achieve peaceful international relations in the period between 1970 and 2005. The hypothesis put forward is that there will be a negative correlation between China’s international trade pattern, or trade dependency, and the state’s aggressive international relations towards other states. For easy assessment three research themes are formed; trade, conflict and peace, each considered separately. Evaluation of the research themes is done by means of simple regression and statistical analysis. In order to support the hypothesis, a negative and significant correlation between the two variables has to be found. The conclusion of the study is that no negative correlation between the variables can be established, proving the hypothesis wrong. Furthermore no significant correlation, negative or positive, is found. However, there are indications in the data that there might be something to the liberal peace theories that form the basis of this study and further study is encouraged and recommendations for alterations are given.

This essay examines Jon Krakauer’s novel Into the Wild from an ecocritical perspective. It aims to analyse three representations of nature: its interdependence with culture, its connection with transcendence, and nature as a linguistic or cultural construct in Into the Wild and relate them to ecocriticism today. The analysis uses Peter Barry’s introduction to ecocriticism in Beginning Theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory as its main theoretical framework, along with theories by famous ecocritics such as Laurence Coupe, Kenneth Burke, and William Rueckert. Christopher McCandless’ journey in Into the Wild highlights how it may no longer be possible to consider nature and culture as two separate entities due to the domestication of nature and humans alike. This analysis further discusses the potential reasons why individuals such as McCandless may feel a need to turn to nature as a solution for the problems they may experience in their lives. This exploration also considers how the attitude towards nature and wilderness has shifted and been reconstructed through time and how this may have helped shape McCandless’ mental image of nature and wilderness, which Krakauer explores in his novel.

Objective: The empirical study of member-group mutual influence in group therapy is an emerging area of study. However, few replications have tried to generalize prior findings related to mutual influence. The aim of this study is to conceptually replicate the longitudinal group actor-partner interdependence models (LGAPIM) employed by Lo Coco et al. (2019) measuring how mutual influence and other factors affect the codevelopment of the group therapeutic relationships. Method: 343 clients were included in this archival analysis. Group Questionnaire (GQ) main subscales, positive bond (PB), positive work (PW), and negative relationship (NR), were gathered from early, middle, and late timepoints. These timepoints were used to generate intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and LGAPIM models for the GQ subscales. Results: Significant and increasing ICC over time for PB, PW, and NR support codevelopment; however, mutual influence was not significant for PB or PW. There was significant mutual influence between the middle and late stages on the NR subscale. All relationship constructs showed significant similarity, stability, and residual correlation of individual member and the other group member scores. Conclusions: The current findings support codevelopment of group therapeutic relationships, replicating parts of Lo Coco and colleagues' (2019) findings. However, the role of mutual influence was mixed. For PB and PW, we did not find mutual influence, in contrast with Lo Coco et al.'s (2019) findings. With NR, the pattern of mutual influence was different than Lo Coco et al. (2019), partially replicating their results. Our results on similarity, stability, and residual correlations were all significant, in contrast to Lo Coco et al. (2019). This underscores the importance of replication and power when examining mutual influence.

This thesis investigates the European Union (EU) effect on the economic activity across the Green Line in the divided Cyprus between 2004 and 2016. The primary focus is on the development and implementation of the EU's Green Line Regulation (GLR), which regulates and enables such activity from three aspects: movement of goods, services, and persons. In tracing the EU effect, this thesis provides a critical appraisal of the GLR on whether it provides an adequate legal framework for the economic activity in those three aspects and the extent to which it has contributed to the development of economic cooperation between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities across the divide. The analysis also pays an equal level of attention to the extent to which the EU effect has been mediated by the factors at the domestic level: the roles of legal framework, ethno-politics in political elites, ethno-politics in civil society, and governance. The investigation of this study is pegged in two academic literatures. The first one is the Europeanisation debate, which concerns with the EU effect in the domestic affairs of countries associated with the EU. This thesis borrows three mechanisms of Europeanisation from this debate in order to test the EU effect on the three aspects of economic activity across the divide in Cyprus: i) institutional compliance, ii) change of domestic opportunity structures, iii) cognitive change. The second academic literature is the liberal peace, which it proposes that greater economic interactions and development of economic interdependence between countries facilitate resolution of their conflicts. The insights from this debate is utilised for conceptualising the EU's GLR as a liberal peace project. While Europeanisation is portrayed as a 'process', liberal peace objectives are seen as the 'ultimate destination', which the 'vehicle' of the EU's GLR will drive the island towards it. This thesis argues that the GLR has only achieved a limited success and largely failed to contribute to the development of economic cooperation across the divide in Cyprus. This is mainly because the Europeanisation process have been heavily mediated and negated by the design shortcomings of the GLR as well as the factors at the domestic level, which are inherently linked to the politics of division. In this context, this thesis aspires to make contribution in both empirical and conceptual terms. The in-depth and critical investigation of the GLR as well as of the economic activity across the divide in Cyprus provides a much-needed contribution to the contemporary politics of Cyprus, which has been largely ignored by the existing academic literature. Additionally, the conceptual framework developed in this thesis allows exploring synergies between the theoretical literatures of Europeanisation and liberal peace and combines them with examination of new empirical evidence. This focus captures insights on how Europeanisation can be used as a 'tool' for pursuing liberal peace objectives in contested statehood, beyond what has been researched so far and also provides a blueprint for other similar cases of conflict.

This diploma thesis examines the Norwegian policy of cooperation in Education and Research as a soft-power tool for Norway's foreign policy. Within a European context, three levels of Norway's participation in Education and Research programmes will be analyzed. The first level is Norway's cooperation policy toward the EU, though as a weaker actor. The second is Norway's value of cooperation as an equal partner, which is typical in the Nordic region. And the third is cooperation via EEA Grants and Norway Grants, in which Norway is a dominant player. This thesis combines a theory of international cooperation and Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye's theory of soft-power, complex interdependence and asymmetry of relations between the participants. In the research, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods are used. This thesis reveals that Norway decreases the financial spending to the areas where it has more influence and can utilize more of its soft power, while it also invests into areas where it plays the role of substandard actor. An explanation is found in the theory of international cooperation and the game of Chicken, where the longstanding and successful corporation strives to achieve a compromise rather than a win, i.e. to moderate any power fluctuation and strive for an equilibrium state.