Browsing by master's degree program "Euroopan ja pohjoismaiden tutkimuksen maisteriohjelma (European and Nordic Studies)"

This thesis aims to provide an analysis of the decision of the Parliament of Åland to join the European Union in 1994. The chosen time frame is the period between the Korfu Summit on 24 June 1994 and the decision of the Parliament to join on 2 December 1994. While the EU process has its roots at the end of the Cold War and Finland’s membership to the Council of Europe in 1989, this timeline is chosen to emphasize the deliberative process in which Åland decided to join the European Union. The theoretical approach is discourse analysis as foreign policy analysis by Ole Waever. This rests on the post structuralist understandings of language which due to its constitutive power can be used to explain the foreign policy choices which lie upon historical and identarian legacies. This is done by analysing the relationship between the “core concepts” such as “state” and “nation” with “Europe” in which the national identity is constructed upon. This thesis aims to analyse the Ålandic decision to join the EU by using 7 parliamentary debates as primary data alongside newspaper articles to construct a chronology of the referendum process while at the same time adjusting Waever’s framework to suit the regional context of Åland. This study shows that the Ålandic EU debate took place in a context in which the Regional Parliament had to consider the choices of its immediate environment and the lack of enthusiasm of the Ålandic voter. On the pro EU camp, the prospect of EU membership was understood as new field for Åland’s external relations, an economic opportunity and further recognition of Åland’s status according to international law. The anti-EU camp drew arguments from a fear of centralisation, transferring legislative authority and concern regarding the competences of the EU in agriculture and fisheries. This study also shows that the choice of certain arguments was structured by the regional parties’ conceptualisation of Europe and the relationship between that and their conceptualisation of “autonomy” and the “people” which are in turn constructed by the two main cleavages on Åland: the autonomy policy cleavage and the urban-rural cleavage.

The contemporary crisis between Russia and the EU, reflects, among other things, in the identity construction in both European and Russian domestic discourses. In view of the current conflict between Russia and Europe, it is crucial to comprehend how both actors perceive each other and the reality(ies) of the current status of their bilateral relations. According to the post-structuralists, foreign policies are dependent on the representations of “us” and “them”, articulated in national discourses. Such constructs are often represented through mass media, and given the growing adaptation of IT technologies, social media specifically become a suitable platform for the distribution of the images of “us” and “them” for both domestic and foreign audiences. The study seeks to identify which images of the EU are framed by Russian officials in social media and whether such frames correlate with some aspects of Russian domestic and foreign agendas. The thesis focuses on the images of the EU framed by Russian officials in the period between March 2019 and December 2019, a drastic period of EU-Russia relations, triggered by the Ukrainian crisis. Social media posts of 10 Russian officials on matters related to the EU are examined with post-structuralist discourse approach. The adopted methodology allows to explore, identify and explain images of the EU framed by Russian officials in online dimension. In addition, the method sheds light not only on the way Russian officials perceive the EU but also on the way they construct Russia itself, as a political, social and values antithesis of Europe, through the framing of the EU. The identified images, framed by Russian officials, constitute mainly negative framing of the EU, albeit seldom neutral and positive framings appear as well. The analysis determines the central aspects of the EU’s domestic and foreign policies, reflected by the officials. Besides, the results of the study demonstrate how Russian officials implicitly perceive the political and social situation in Russia as well as Russia’s foreign policy status, by comparing these aspects with Europe. The framing, which Russian officials discursively construct in social media, exhibits a comprehensive political and normative split between Russia and the EU. This process had been gradually evolving until 2014, and then sharply accelerated. At this point, the current situation appears to be the lowest point for bilateral relations between Moscow and Brussels. Even though Russian officials regularly appeal to Moscow’s determination to cooperate with the EU and the West in general, such a peacekeeping message had no considerable effect on EU-Russia relations.

This thesis is about the World Happiness Report and Finland. Finland has been chosen as the world’s “happiest country” for four consecutive years from 2018 to 2021 in the World Happiness Report and is often reported as the “happiest country” in both national and international media outlets. Yet many Finns seem to question the idea of Finland as the “happiest country” in the world. This paper explores both why Finland ranks high in the World Happiness Report and why Finns tend not to agree with the results. It examines the concept of happiness in scholarly literature and analyzes the responses to a questionnaire regarding Finns’ attitudes toward the report. The leading hypothesis is that the usage of the particular word “happiness” is a major reason why Finnish people tend not to believe the results of the World Happiness Report. The research consists of two parts. The first part analyzes the concept of happiness and topics around happiness in relation to the World Happiness Report. It also overviews how the related terms, such as subjective well-being and life satisfaction, are used in the World Happiness Report. It shows happiness is a concept that can be understood in various ways and that the term happiness is ambiguously used in the World Happiness Report. In addition, topics related to happiness and life satisfaction in Finland are also discussed to present that life satisfaction in Finland has been high but that the feeling of happiness may be different. The second part is social research using a questionnaire survey. The survey asked Finns how they think about the results of the World Happiness Report. The results of the survey support the hypothesis that ambiguously used terms would be one of the reasons why Finns tend not to agree with the results of the World Happiness Report. Overall, the conclusion is that Finland’s high ranking in the World Happiness Report owes much to the contentment with the current situation explained by the social structure with comprehensive support. More Finns would agree with the results of the World Happiness Report if the report stated more clearly that the ranking is based on people’s life evaluations instead of using the term happiness.

Where is best? Much like the pay-for-access services, profiteering, and mystery that in-part defines the nation brand ranks that form the subject of this work; cross my palm with enough money and it might just be you when the results of this work’s index are revealed! Provocation aside; the concepts of nation branding and nation brands have quickly entered the spotlight of the world’s stage since Anholt first coined the term in 1996. Quickly, it has become big business. From Cool Britainia to ESTonia, nations have been quick in ‘corporatising’ their image to gain attraction and favour around the world. This work is not interested in the brands created by countries per say, rather it is interested in a country’s brand strength, that is how effective countries are in achieving the goals they set out to accomplish through their branding efforts. This work is not the first to be interested in such a thing, for within a decade of Anholt coining the term, he had developed a rank to measure and compare the strength of nation’s brands himself. Jump forward to 2020 and the world has multiple such organisations - often consultancy firms - seeking to do the same through the development of their own ranks. This work seeks to cast a critical eye over these ranks, developing an index of European country brand strength itself. Specifically, this work does three things. Firstly, it provides an understanding of ‘nation brand’ from a country level perspective, generating its findings based on literature (and lack of literature) from thirty-five countries. Secondly, it critically assesses the success and failures of nine prominent nation brand ranks, and in doing so draws from outside literature on University ranking and ranking in general. Thirdly, the crux of the work. Based on the findings gleaned from the previous aim’s outcomes, it develops an original index of country brand strength that is less analytically flawed than its comparators. Through the building its own index of country brand strength, a more holistic understanding of the challenges of indexing and ranking is developed, whist also evidencing that at least some of the shortcomings of its comparators can be overcome. This undertaking is done following OECD guidance, and inspired by the 2010 work of Marc Fetscherin. To compliment its aims, the work provides a detailed discussion on key interlinked and underlying concepts including soft power, geoeconomics, and globalisation. The index is not without fault, failing one test of soundness, but it does yield that Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Ireland and Estonia share the strongest country brands within the EU. The ranks it casts a critical eye over are not without fault either, with the biggest problems reviled to be those of black boxing, subjectivity in surveying, and enablement of misinterpretation through presenting only rank positions of countries, and not index scores.