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FN:s säkerhetsråd har en viktig funktion för samhällsskydd och beredskap på en global nivå. En utmaning för säkerhetsrådet handlar om att världen ständigt förändras, vilket sätter press på rådets förmåga att anpassa sig. Under de senaste åren har klimatförändringarna fått ett allt större fokus inom forskning och politik. Frågan om huruvida klimat bör ses som ett säkerhetshot är dock fortfarande omdebatterad. Syftet med den föreliggande studien har varit att klargöra hur debatten om klimatförändringarna ser ut på säkerhetsrådets dagordning. Materialet har bestått av mötesprotokoll som anförts i samband med klimatrelaterade diskussioner i rådet. Dessa har granskats genom en kvalitativ innehållsanalys med stöd av Hinnfors teori om argumentationsstrategier. Analysen kunde identifiera argument som använts för att ta upp klimat på dagordningen samt lyfta bort ämnet från dagordningen. Studien placerade därmed medlemsländernas representanter i rollen som aktörer för att kunna förhindra eller sätta ett ämne på dagordningen. Studien kunde slutligen konstatera att det förekom delade meningar om huruvida klimatförändringar skulle inkluderas till rådets dagordning. Ett motargument handlade om att klimatfrågan tog fokus från ”riktiga problem”  och att ämnet riskerade att urvattna säkerhetsbegreppet.

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This thesis examines the Spanish left-wing party Podemos and their populist way of expressing politics. There is a vast empirical literature which tries to capture the different elements of populist parties. This thesis seeks to go beyond this, through examining populism as a form of representation. Since scholars have claimed that mainstream parties are facing a crisis of representation, it is of great relevance to understand which sort of representation that populist parties offer in turn. Podemos has in previous research been considered as a new form of left-wing party, primarily because they actively have stepped away from using a traditional left-wing terminology. Instead, Podemos has been recognized for their populist way of expressing politics, through dividing the Spanish society into “the people” and “the elite”. However, this division of the Spanish society has not been interpreted and examined in terms of representation. To examine what I have labeled the populist form of representation, the thesis investigates the political style of Podemos secretary general, Pablo Iglesias, and his way of creating the subject which populist parties claims to represent – “the people”.   The result of the study shows that Podemos has a populist form of representation. The secretary general of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, adopts a populist style and he constructs a populist “people” through claiming to represent several groups and demands in society. Further, the thesis has shown that Iglesias style as well is dependent on several contextual elements, such as technocratic, cultural and left-wing features of performance. Moreover, even though the construction of “the people” is consisting of the claim to represent several demands, they are all tied to a general defense of the Spanish welfare state. The thesis has further shown that Iglesias creation of “the people” consists of characterizing it as the ordinary people, the colorful people, the historical people and the governing people.

The European Parliament election is one of the most extensive elections in the world and affects more than 500 million people within the European Union. Prior research have mainly been using two different frameworks to explain voting behaviour in the European Parliament elections, namely the second-order election theory and the Europe-matters framework. The second-order theory states that national issues play a major role in the voting behaviour and the Europe-matters frameworks basically imply that European issues play a major role in the citizens’ voting behaviour. Prior research has relied too much on aggregate data, has operationalised the frameworks wrongly and has not given equal weight to the frameworks. In this study, I tried to come to terms with these problems and the research question was to test which of the frameworks that best explains the voting behaviour in the European Parliament election of 2014. The results are mixed and no framework seem to explain the voting behaviour better than the other. Nevertheless, other interesting results are possible to find and two of these results are that people tend to cast protest votes against their government if they disapprove it and that EU disapproval affects abstaining from voting more than government disapproval does, in the European Parliament election of 2014.

Climate change and what to do about it, both in relation to mitigation and adaptation, is a strongly debated topic. One of the areas that has been brought forward as pivotal in both adaptation and mitigation is the forest sector. Yet, the scientific literature reveals that adaptation measures are to date seldomly implemented in this sector. Much is known about hurdles in the way of adaptation measures, but far less is known on how to empower local stakeholders to move adaptation forward. Therefore, this thesis examines if a new approach to climate change adaptation in the forest sector can help to empower local stakeholders to take adaptation actions. A theoretical framework for change that focusses on strengths in the surroundings of the stakeholders is developed with insights of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, Empowerment Theory, Asset Based Community Development, and Appreciative Inquiry. Based on this framework, a method is developed and applied in a participatory backcasting workshop with students with a focus on Västerbotten County, Sweden. The results from this case study show that the new approach contributed to the empowerment of the participants and to a more holistic understanding of local climate change adaptation in the forest sector. / Bring down the sky to the earth: how to use forests to open up for constructive climate change pathways in local contexts