This thesis investigates Swedish people’s experiences following the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar from a globality, cosmopolitanism, and cosmopolitanization perspective. The 2022 World Cup was controversial due to allegations of human rights violations in preparations for the Cup in Qatar as well as allegations of corruption within the FIFA organization. As a result, this thesis investigates how Swedish people's experiences may have been affected. This research seeks a link between a potential global mindset originating from globalization and the experiences of Swedish people following the Cup. Theories of globality, cosmopolitanism, and cosmopolitanization are all used to explore this. This thesis uses data from semi-structured interviews. Based on the data, this thesis concludes that awareness of human rights does affect Swedish people following the World Cup and that the media plays the most significant role in raising consciousness. Also, this thesis concludes that globality, cosmopolitanism, and cosmopolitanization may all be related to respondents' experiences or future visions of the Cup.

Are there any consequences of using sports diplomacy? This thesis will look into sports diplomacy in the recent FIFA 2018 and 2022 cases from the lens of the European Parliament. Large sporting events have grown into an international phenomenon, that has been studied from the premises of power. As critique did rise from the cases of FIFA 2018 and 2022, my approach is to analyse the consequence of failed sports diplomacy, how using soft power tactics play in the international political field and how sports play a part in politics. This thesis will use discourse analysis to find the key reasons for EP’s dissatisfaction with FIFA 2018 and 2022.

The role of Public Diplomacy (PD) in conducting foreign relations has emerged as a critical component for modern statecraft, foreign policy and arguably for the state’s global existence. With the world now more interconnected than ever before, public diplomacy has taken on new meaning and new importance. However, despite these marked shifts, public diplomacy remains under-researched and under-utilised both as a concept and as a vital activity. The complexities that underscore the development and evolution of public diplomacy within a dynamic international milieu therefore warrant renewed attention. The benefits and opportunities that accompany public diplomacy are equally complicated by a number of challenges to its practice. This research identifies and advances a critical understanding of public diplomacy through a theoretically rigorous perspective that accounts for the fluid environment in which it operates, the evolving nature of stakeholders and audiences involved in shaping it, the sweeping impact of global information and communications development, the persistence of cultural divides and conflicts of interests and how they contribute to the lack of strategic frameworks in place to advance public diplomacy practice. This thesis investigates Qatar as a case study due to its international stature and influence despite it being a small geographical state. Renowned for its international role as a leading actor in conflict reconciliation and commended for its contributions to international humanitarianism, the ambitious, forward-looking and steadfast foreign policy of Qatar has faced increased pressure in recent years. Qatar has encountered significant challenges in the form of the Nepali workers’ crisis that ensued following its selection as host for FIFA World Cup 2022 and with the diplomatic siege against it by a number of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. This study critically analyses Qatar’s public diplomacy practice considering these pressing developments and advances an original strategic public diplomacy framework that can assist Qatar in managing and mitigating the effect of these crises on its global image and reputation. This research contributes to enhancing public diplomacy practice within the diplomatic context of statecraft and foreign policy by developing a nuanced and original framework that can be utilised by Qatar and other states to manage and mitigate modern public diplomacy challenges. The thesis utilises a mixed-methods research approach that includes literature reviews, media analyses, interviews and questionnaires. The study contributes to knowledge and practice by advancing research in an understudied field and by developing and implementing an original strategic PD empowerment framework.

Yes / This paper provides a management perspective of organisational factors that contributes to the reduction of food waste through the application of design science principles to explore causal relationships between food distribution (organisational) and consumption (societal) factors. Qualitative data were collected with an organisational perspective from commercial food consumers along with large-scale food importers, distributors, and retailers. Cause-effect models are built and “what-if” simulations are conducted through the development and application of a Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) approaches to elucidate dynamic interrelationships. The simulation models developed provide a practical insight into existing and emergent food losses scenarios, suggesting the need for big data sets to allow for generalizable findings to be extrapolated from a more detailed quantitative exercise. This research offers itself as evidence to support policy makers in the development of policies that facilitate interventions to reduce food losses. It also contributes to the literature through sustaining, impacting and potentially improving levels of food security, underpinned by empirically constructed policy models that identify potential behavioural changes. It is the extension of these simulation models set against a backdrop of a proposed big data framework for food security, where this study sets avenues for future research for others to design and construct big data research in food supply chains. This research has therefore sought to provide policymakers with a means to evaluate new and existing policies, whilst also offering a practical basis through which food chains can be made more resilient through the consideration of management practices and policy decisions.

This thesis explores the political use of branding in international relations by focusing on the branding exercises of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the State of Qatar over the last two decades. In most of the existing literature, branding is theorised as a representational and instrumental practice that is strategically used to increase a country's competitive edge. Adopting a critical constructivist lens to the study of International Relations (IR), this thesis challenges this reading and argues instead that branding is a productive and inherently political practice that (re)produces dominant interpretations of state-identity rather than merely describing them. Based on the core constructivist claim that much of politics revolves around the competition to give meaning to the world, this thesis argues that the version of the state promoted through branding is neither neutral nor brand new, but inherently politicised and tied to the conversation and legitimation of the incumbent political regime. Inspired by the ongoing practice turn in IR, the starting point for the analysis is a focus on the display of the state through a range of everyday practices long ignored by IR scholars. In particular, it focuses on how the political leadership in both Kazakhstan and Qatar has used the urban development of their capital cities, the hosting of international sports events, and the construction of 'world-class' universities to present new ideas about their state to various inter/national audiences. Using an original data corpus of multimodal primary and secondary material, the analysis traces how branding practices produce and normalise a certain interpretation of Kazakhstani and Qatari statehood, and then interrogates how we can understand this interpretation as politicised and tied to the interests of the regime. The goal of the analysis is twofold. First, this thesis aims to elucidate how relevant instances of state- branding unfold and travel across different empirical contexts (Kazakhstan and Qatar) and cases (urban development, sports and education). Second, it aims to push current scholarly understandings by (re)conceptualising branding as a genre of contemporary identity politics, and produce broader insights about the characteristics and mechanisms of this increasingly normalised - yet often as politically non-salient dismissed - practice of international relations.

Ce travail étudie l’évolution des politiques de défense et des acquisitions militaires du Qatar et des Emirats arabes unis (EAU) depuis les années 1990. Il cherche à évaluer la prégnance du rôle des déterminants extérieurs et intérieurs dans l’élaboration des stratégies de ces deux petits Etats du Golfe et s’interroge sur la raison pour laquelle, confrontés à des défis en apparence assez similaires, ils ont adopté des stratégies différentes. Tandis que le Qatar a privilégié son rayonnement diplomatique et peu ou prou délégué sa sécurité à ses partenaires extérieurs, les EAU ont quant à eux organisé leur doctrine militaire autour de la consolidation de leurs outils de sécurité et de défense intérieurs tout en veillant à rayonner sur la scène régionale et internationale par divers canaux souvent identiques à ceux choisis par leurs voisins qataris. La thèse montre que les mutations du contexte régional doivent être articulées avec celles du contexte international pour comprendre les dynamiques communes aux politiques de défense et aux acquisitions militaires du Qatar et des EAU. Puis, elle montre que ces déterminants structurels doivent être articulés avec des variables intervenant au niveau national (territoire, démographie) et infranational (perception et réseaux du Prince) pour comprendre les contrastes entre leurs politiques. Pour finir, la thèse interroge la pérennité de l’économie et de la sociologie politique de ces « petits Etats-Princes » en les confrontant à des reconfigurations endogènes et exogènes susceptibles de les faire évoluer. / This thesis studies the evolving defence policies and military acquisitions of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from the 1990s onwards. It seeks to assess the role of external and domestic incentives in shaping the survival strategies of these two small Gulf states and to understand why, while they were confronted with apparently similar challenges, they adopted different strategies. While Qatar has favoured its diplomatic influence and essentially guaranteed its security through its partnerships with external powers, the UAE have consolidated their internal security and defence tools while gaining regional and international influence through various channels which often were the same as those chosen by Qatari leaders. The thesis shows that the mutations of the regional context must be articulated with those of the international context to understand the common dynamics in Qatar’s and the UAE’s defence policies and military acquisitions. It then shows that these structural determinants must be articulated with variables at national (territory, demography) and subnational (the Prince’s perception and networks) levels to understand the contrasts between their policies. Finally, the thesis questions the sustainability of the political economy and political sociology of these “small Princes-states” by confronting them to endogenous and exogenous developments which are likely to make them evolve.

No description available.

According to Tinto (2000a), institutions have fewer retention and persistence problems when their students are not only academically prepared, but are also engaged on campus as well as satisfied with the resources and support provided by the college. A student that has a positive first semester experience is more likely to achieve academic success and re-enroll the following term. The purpose of this study was to explore the differences in experiences, perceptions, expectations, and engagement levels of entering male versus female students and returning male versus returning female students at the gender-segregated Community College of Qatar during the first three to six weeks at the college. The study also attempted to determine if any student support services such as advising, tutoring, counseling, new student orientation program, and participation in student activities were useful and had any influence in promoting student engagement. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. For entering male and female students survey responses were classified using questions from five Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) benchmarks: (1) Engaged Learning (2) Early Connections (3) Clear Academic Plan and Pathway (4) Academic and Social Support Network and (5) Effective Track to College Readiness. While questions from four Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) benchmarks: (1) Active and Collaborative Learning (2) Student Effort (3) Support for Learners (4) Student-Faculty Interaction were used for returning male and female students. One-Sample t-tests were run to determine if significant differences in engagement levels existed between the four independent groups for each of the benchmark categories. Cohen’s d calculations were used to measure the effect size and the standardized differences between the means of the variables. For the purpose of this study, Cohen’s d effect size of 0.35 or higher was used as the criteria for interpreting statistically significance. The results of this study revealed entering and returning female students reported statistically higher engagement levels than entering and returning male students in most of the variables indicating that they are more likely to utilize student support services at higher frequencies and have a more positive first semester experience than their counterparts. / text

Cette thèse s’attache à déconstruire, à localiser et à inscrire dans des dynamiques politiques locales d’abord, régionales et internationales ensuite, la perception qui s’est faite jour à compter du milieu des années 2000, que « le Golfe », espace aux contours rarement définis, serait devenu le lieu d’un développement culturel de très grande ampleur. Cette nouvelle image internationale des principautés arabes du golfe Persique, éloignée de leur association traditionnelle aux hydrocarbures et à la guerre, repose sur deux phénomènes distincts, voire opposés : la formation d’un marché de l’art arabe et iranien basé à Dubai qui se fait le reflet de la formation de nouvelles bourgeoisies dans les grands pays voisins, et la multiplication des annonces de musées à forte visibilité internationale au Qatar et à Abou Dabi qui ont pour cible prioritaire un public européen. Les musées sont l’objet principal de cette étude, le marché son objet secondaire. En croisant l’histoire et la science politique, une typologie binaire des musées golfiens et l’évolution du rapport de force entre les trois grandes composantes sociales des populations nationales des principautés depuis les années 1960, il apparaît que le musée, cette institution d’origine européenne qui sous sa forme moderne est apparue au XVIIIe siècle et qui compte au nombre des premières formes d’espaces publics, est dans les principautés arabes du golfe Persique un outil de renforcement de l’autoritarisme. Ce rôle qui est le sien depuis le temps de sa genèse dans les années 1960, s’est accentué au Qatar et à Abou Dabi depuis la Guerre du Golfe de 1990-1991. / This doctoral thesis aims at deconstructing, spatializing and inscribing in local and then international political dynamics the new perception emerging in the West that presents « the Gulf », a region whose boundaries are rarely defined, as the place for a large scale cultural development. This new international image of the Arab principalities of the Persian Gulf, that no longer reduces them to oil and war, but associates their names to culture, relies on two different phenomenons : the birth of an Arab and Iranian art market based in Dubai that reflects the formation of new elites in the neighbouring regional powers on the one hand, and the rise of a new type of museums targeting a European audience first, characterized by their international visibility, in Qatar and in Abu Dhabi on the other. The museums are the main object of this research, the art market its secondary one. By mixing political science and history, a binary typology of the museums and the evolution of the balance of power between the three main social components of the national communities in the Arab principalities since the 1960, the museum, this institution of European origin born in its modern form in the 18th century as one of the earliest forms of public spaces, appears as a tool for the consolidation of authoritarianism. This role that the museums has been playing since the 1960s, when the regional importation of this cultural model started, has even increased in Qatar and in Abu Dhabi since the end of the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Since that period, the new museums are actively taking part to the political marginalization of the national bureaucracy.

L’arbitrage dans les pays arabes connaît aujourd’hui une nouvelle dynamique se traduisant pas la promulgation de nouvelles lois d’arbitrage et l’implantation de nouveaux centres d’arbitrage. Cette dynamique est d’autant plus particulière qu’elle se caractérise par la mise en place de zones franches juridiques conduisant à la division du pouvoir judiciaire et à la coexistence de deux systèmes juridiques, on-shore et off-shore. Cette nouvelle dynamique est-elle pour autant le reflet d’une approche désormais favorable à l’arbitrage ? Quelle est la place faite à l’arbitrage dans les pays arabes? La réponse à ces problématiques majeures ne peut s’effectuer qu’à travers l’étude du recours en annulation des sentences arbitrales. En effet, l’approche de l’arbitrage dans les pays arabes ne peut être évaluée qu’à la lumière de la position des tribunaux étatiques lors du contrôle judiciaire de la sentence arbitrale. Il s’agira d’examiner la nature du recours en annulation, sa coexistence avec les voies de recours ordinaires, son exercice et les différents motifs d’annulation. Il s’agira également d’analyser les règlements d’arbitrage qui prennent position sur les voies de recours et in fine sur le sort de la sentence arbitrale à travers l’étude de la demande de reconnaissance et d’exécution des sentences arbitrales, aussi bien dans les zones on-shore que dans les zones off-shore. Cette étude permettra ainsi de déterminer la perception de l’arbitrage dans les pays arabes et les réformes qui doivent être entreprises en vue de sa promotion comme mode normal de résolution des litiges du commerce international. / Today, within Arab states, a new dynamic in arbitration is taking shape. This is reflected in the proliferation of new arbitration legislation and the establishment of emergent arbitration centres across the region. What makes this new dynamic even more remarkable is the contemporaneous establishment of legal free-zones where judicial power is divided and co-exists between two systems best described as on-shore and off-shore. This thesis seeks to explore the possible implications of this new dynamic with a view to determining whether or not it can be considered a reflection of a developing, more favourable approach to arbitration in Arab countries. In order to address this issue effectively, this thesis will examine the present and immediate approaches to arbitration of judiciaries in 10 Arab states. This will be achieved through the study and analysis of the action for setting aside arbitral awards in these Arab states. This thesis will look at the nature, exercise and application of the action for setting aside arbitral awards. In addition, it will explore the grounds for this action and how, as a recourse, the action for setting aside exists alongside and interacts with other avenues of recourse. In order to assess the current approaches of judiciaries, within Arab countries, this thesis will also analyze current arbitration legislation and institutional regulations. This is in addition to the emerging trends and common practice, that is, in the context of the recognition and execution of arbitral awards, in both on-shore and off-shore legal systems.