Browsing by master's degree program "Master's Programme in European and Nordic Studies"

Using a comparative case study analysis of the 2014 and 2021 IIHF World Championships, that are supplemented with a geopolitical code assessment, this thesis demonstrates that as of 2021, Belarus has entered a new pro-Russian stage of the cyclicality of Belarus-Russian relations following the pro-Western stage that had been observable since 2014. However, given the lack of a geopolitical narrative in Belarusian politics, this thesis analyses how the cyclicality of Belarus-Russian relations can be seen via the politicisation of sport. As such, this thesis addresses the research question of 'how the Belarusian regime, led by Aliaksandr Lukashenka, has used sport for political ends?' This includes how the regime have used mega-events to promote its political agenda of forming international partnerships, nation-building, and regime survival, all while preserving Lukashenka's style of adaptive authoritarianism. This thesis concludes that how the political agenda is carried out varies depending on the stage of the cyclicality of Belarus-Russian relations in which the regime finds itself. Consequently, during a pro-Russian stage, the Belarusian regime will use sport to develop Eastern partnerships that will be dominant within Belarusian policy, promote a nation-building process that incorporates the Russkiy Mir concept, and ensures regime survival through suppression of the domestic opposition. However, during a pro-Western stage of relations, the Belarusian regime will use sport to construct dominating Western partnerships, a nation-building process centred on Rzeczpospolita, and assures regime survival through economic investments to strengthen public support.

The goal of this research is to gain better understanding of the EU legislative system through a case study of the trilogues of the Erasmus+ 2021-2027 programme. Trilogues are a series of informal negotiations between the EU legislative bodies and are a central part of the modern EU legislative process. A rich field of research exists on the topic, focusing especially on the roles of the legislative institutions and the transparency of the informal practice. The data used for the research is gathered from interviews and legislative files. A series of expert interviews were conducted with people who participated in the negotiations, representing both EU colegislators, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. The legislative files were gathered from publicly available sources and include most importantly the Commission legislative proposal, the Parliament first reading position, the Council first reading position and a four column document from late 2020. Three interesting topics that caused intense intra- and inter-institutional negotiations are identified: the DiscoverEU initiative, inclusion and governance. These provided three different methods of finding compromise. Firstly, it is shown how the Council position can shift to correspond to the Parliament position. Secondly, it is shown how it can still be difficult to agree on the exact words of the legislation even when the goal is a shared one. Thirdly, it is shown how the Parliaments demands can turn into a compromise that is significantly closer to the Council position. A brief summary of transparency over the Erasmus trilogues is given. The main findings of the study are the methods in which the EU legislators are willing to seek compromise: in the case of Erasmus trilogues, they negotiators were more consensus seeking than adversarial.

As an early adopter and promoter of the EU’s human rights policies, the UK can be regarded as a relative bastion of LGBTQIA+ rights. Its further progression to legislate in favour of same-sex marriage confirmed that. But the exit of the UK from the EU has caused a shift in tensions and revealed potential risks for the rights and safety of the UK’s LGBTQIA+ community. Therefore, this thesis investigates in what ways Brexit has impacted the UK’s LGBTQIA+ community. It identifies those impacts by engaging with LGBTQIA+ - focused points of articulation both surrounding the referendum and subsequently, identified via fractures in not only LGBTQIA+ rights but also lived experiences. With a particular focus on the exclusion of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights from Brexit discussions, it then uncovers a lack of media discourse on the potential effects of Brexit on the LGBTQIA+ community, before identifying possible causes for the increase in LGBTQIA+ - related reported hate crimes in the aftermath of the EU referendum. This study progresses those three topics—the Charter, media discourse, and an increase in reported hate crimes—by employing a triangulate approach to both its data and its theory. This thesis combines qualitative and quantitative research, the latter via a constructed dataset of UK media articles to highlight the lack of focus on LGBTQIA+ rights during the EU referendum campaign. It develops a poststructuralist queer discursive perspective to theorise the linkage between the three impacts. It discerns that LGBTQIA+ rights—and, consequently, human rights—in the UK remain vulnerable and at the behest of political motivations. The implications of Brexit for the LGBTQIA+ community already exist, and pose negative outcomes if they are further realised. Any argument that they are not likely to be realised is not enough of a protection for a minority group. This leads to the LGBTQIA+ community being in an abyss regarding any certainty as to the freestanding right to non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and gender identity.

This thesis analyses the sex work debates in Polish media from March 2017 to March 2018. In the context of Europe, Poland is remarkable both as a country of origin as well as a transit country for migrant sex workers, so unsurprisingly a public debate about sex work exists there. Additionally, Catholicism has a great influence on the Polish society, so a religious dimension is expected to be present in the discussion. Through the published interviews of three Polish women in the sex industry, two of whom live abroad, and the discussion inspired by them, attitudes and perspectives towards sex work in the public debate in Poland are scrutinised. Combining politics of the body, subject-in-process, and intersectional feminism as a theoretic framework, and critical discourse analysis as the method, the agendas and power structures found in the debate are brought to light. For categorising the attitudes found in the material, a framework of different perspectives towards sex work is applied. According to the material, all of the interviewed women see themselves as independent agents who have knowingly chosen their jobs or lifestyles. However, the commentary from other people seeks to discredit the women. Some see them as mentally unstable, while others think that through publicity they are trying to lure other women into the sex business. It can be seen in the debate that the dominant discourses of sex workers as victims or evildoers are resisting the struggles for power of competing discourses. These new discourses are using the tactic of presenting an essentialist sex worker subject with a demand for worker’s rights. While this stable subject is deployed to gain recognition for the sex worker cause, the sex worker identity is often fluid and temporary, and many sex workers keep their activities secret instead of giving public interviews.

This thesis aims to examine the representation of the policy problem behind inclusion in education at the compulsory education level. The other purpose is to analyze how the inclusive education policies differ from the others at different levels: global, European, national, local and new philanthropy. The thesis examines policy papers by the actors at three highest-level actors: global-level the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), European-level the European Union (EU), and national-level Finland. The perspective is to respect children’s rights and interests. The thesis theorizes inclusion in education historically, conceptually, and linguistically in Europe and in Finland. The thesis argues that inclusion in education is a value-based ideology and can be defined as a continuous process. Policies of inclusion in education are part of the broader global ideological objective of inclusive societies, which are against social exclusion. Along with globalization and Europeanisation, education policy as well has been globalized. As a result, the education policy can be seen as multilevel network governance where all actors cooperate. However, the OECD is at the of the network as an umbrella in global education policy and monitors the education policy of all actors. The thesis applies the post-structural What’s the problem represented? (WPR) approach by Carol Bacchi (2009) in order to examine the problem representation and conceptual logics behind social exclusion. Additionally, the WPR approach provided to problematize differences between the policies of the actors. According to Foucauldian post-structuralism, governed changes towards more inclusive education systems are slow because of different languages, cultures and welfare states. Inclusion in education as a value-based ideology is based on economic integration in order to provide quality competence-based education and lifelong learning in order to maintain employability which is a primary factor to involve all citizens in fast-growing diverse societies. Regarding the findings, inclusive education policies by all actors are against social exclusion, but the principles of subsidiarity define the effectiveness of the policies. In conclusion, the conceptual logics of the prevention of social exclusion are an accumulation of risks such as unemployment, lower socio- economic status and immigration. The main objective of the policies is to maintain employability. The most fundamental difference between the actors is linguistic or terminological. In conclusion, problematisation questions why Finland uses the term “equality”, whereas the other actors admit the current use of the term “equitable”, which provides diverse comprehension of non-binary individuals instead logics of binary gender. This problematisation, as a significant finding, emphasizes that there is a demand for broader research in gender studies in education policy. The thesis argues that underachieved “boys” in Finland might be something other than binary-defined boys who are at risk of social exclusion in adulthood.

This thesis investigates the phenomenon of security and defence political rapprochement between Finland and Sweden in 2009-2022, exploring the hypothesis of bilateral shelter-seeking in response to a deteriorating security environment. The study examines the changes in and alignment of threat perceptions, substantive security dimensions therein, and the formulation of policy objectives in bilateral cooperation, against the backdrop of the worsening security environment owing to the increasingly aggressive neighbour politics by Russia since 2008. This research problem posits two research questions: (1) “What kinds of security and defence political threat perceptions did the changing regional security dynamics invoke in Finland and Sweden, particularly in light of Russia’s increasingly aggressive neighbour politics, since 2008?”, and (2) “What roles did the Finnish-Swedish bilateral cooperation play in the security and defence policies of Finland and Sweden during the period under study?”. Qualitative answers to these questions are obtained through document analysis, process tracing, and content analysis of official government reports on security and defence policies issued between 2009-2022. Moreover, the study deploys an additional conceptual tool, drawing from the work of Christopher Daase, to analyse the substantive dimensions of security evident in the threats perceived. The theoretical framework of small states and shelter theory suggests that small states naturally seek alliances, patrons, and international organizations for political, economic, and societal shelter from external security threats. The findings of the analysis reveal a gradual convergence in threat perceptions, and in the substantive dimensions therein, and a notable development in bilateral cooperation objectives since 2015, suggesting a deliberate move towards seeking shelter amidst escalating security challenges. The study contributes to small state studies by applying small states and shelter theory to an unexplored case and sheds light on the role of bilateral cooperation as a source of shelter in navigating complex security threats. Limitations include the relatively niche policy focus, potential data constraints, and challenges in establishing causality between bilateral cooperation and perceived threats, indicating the need for further research in broader policy areas.

While humanity is experiencing a worsening climate crisis, its mitigation has been significantly hampered by far-right leaders and parties around the world. Understanding how these political movements manage to mobilise their voters and make their communication effective is thus extremely important. Climate scepticism correlates not only with socio-political ideology, but also with gender. Growing research has noticed how far-right climate scepticism expresses misogyny, as a reaction to white patriarchal masculine identities being threatened in the face of climate justice. Research on climate scepticism, the far-right and gender is still a rather new field of research. This study seeks to fill a gap in the research from a Finnish context, by examining how hegemonic masculinities and misogyny are expressed in the Finns Party's climate sceptic communication. The study examines two decisive publications by the Finns Party’s think tank, entitled Manual for the Climate Realist and Floods and Brimstones. Furthermore, this study utilizes as its methodology critical discourse analysis. The results of the discourse analysis are analysed using theories on masculinities in climate scepticism and misogyny in climate scepticism. The results show that climate change in the documents is constructed as a masculine problem, demanding masculine solutions and masculine intellectualism. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the documents construct the green left as excessively emotional and irrational using misogynistic language. Consequently, the study confirms that underlying misogyny and opposition to gender equality exists in the Finns Party's climate sceptic communication. The study contributes to the research on gender and climate scepticism, and shows that the fusion of hegemonic masculinities, misogyny and climate scepticism also occurs in the Finnish context.

The European Commission and the Finnish government have released their respective roadmaps in sustainable forest policy. With the European Commission pushing for further cooperation and integration in a field with no dedicated framework, it becomes vital to have a consensus on the concept of “sustainable forestry” with Member States such as Finland. Finland, on the other hand, as the most forested Member State in terms of percentage of total land area, manifests opposite views regarding how the administration is supposed to effect policy. This thesis consists of an analysis of respective documents from the European Commission and the Finnish government: the New EU Forest Strategy for 2030 and the Government Report on Forest Policy 2050. Similar in scope and structure, they clearly reflect these different attitudes towards policymaking and the role of policymakers themselves in the coming decades. The focus of this analysis is, however, their respective use of metaphors. With the theoretical support of the Advocacy Coalition Framework of Hank Jenkins-Smith and Paul Sabatier and the Critical Metaphor Analysis of Jonathan Charteris-Black, these metaphor choices are then observed to explain which stakeholders—either forestry, administrative, or environmental—are favored in each document. In this thesis, metaphors are words whose basic meaning, which is usually the one easiest to imagine, is not the one used in their textual context. From associating that missing, metaphorical meaning to chosen key concepts, this analysis shows that the metaphors found are used in cohesion with each other. This reveals a re-conceptualization of those key terms according to the accompanying metaphors. For example, the European Commission presented forests in its Strategy as “towns”, while the Finnish government saw them as “(ore) mines”. The results of this thesis reveal the consistency of metaphor choices in discourse and their significance in depicting a potentially different set of narratives from those contained in conventional language, both overtly and covertly. With these results in mind, scholars can further pursue research in other fields thanks understanding of metaphor and its prevalence in communication, or even expand this line of research into the role of media, for example.

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The Benelux Union is an international intergovernmental organization consisting out of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg. It is not a very well-known institution, but it has been existing for many decades. As the three member states are also founding members of the European Union, these two institutions have an interesting dynamic. For as long as it has existed, the Benelux Union has been functioning as laboratory for European integration. The Benelux can thus be seen as frontrunners, and therefore as some sort of leaders. The research goal was to find out if the Benelux Union is used as a vehicle by the Benelux countries to increase their influence in the European Union. This thesis draws upon the concept of multi-speed integration, where countries who decide to integrate further than the current European integration pressure other states to follow. Thus by being frontrunners, countries could increase integration within the European Union. These frontrunners also have more to say about the way and degree in which integration takes place. It can therefore be beneficial for EU member states to act as frontrunners. In order to find the answers to the research and sub-questions, the choice was made to use qualitative methods. To be more precise, a combination between document analysis and elite interviews have been employed to provide the answers. Evaluations by the Dutch government on the Benelux Union or Benelux cooperation in the EU were the most important documents. These evaluations, together with some other documents, were supplemented by nine interviews conducted with one academic expert and officials from the three countries and the Benelux Union itself. There are three main findings. Firstly, the Benelux puts a huge emphasis on its role as laboratory because it sends out a signal to the other European countries. A signal that expresses the Benelux’ support for European integration, which increases trust towards them. From the Benelux Union itself, it sends the signal they are still a relevant institution, even though the EU has taken most policy fields in which the Benelux is active. Secondly, in some occasions, Benelux integration may serve as a catalyst for further European integration. If the Benelux countries launch successful projects, many other European states may decide to join this initiative. Whenever enough countries have joined, the project might be scaled up to the European level. The last and main finding gives an answer to the research question. The Benelux Union increases Benelux influence in the EU indirectly by supporting coalition building among the Benelux states. Moreover, it gives its member states a very positive image on the international stage. If this is not enough, the Benelux states might decide they want to implement a new project in the Benelux Union to use these results as an argument to implement this at the European level. It has to be noted that there are not a significant amount of examples of this direct form.