Browsing by master's degree program "Euroopan ja Pohjoismaiden tutkimuksen maisteriohjelma (European and Nordic Studies)"
Now showing items 41-52 of 52
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(2024)The purpose of this thesis is to analyse The European Parliament (EP) as an actor of parliamentary diplomacy during its ninth parliamentary term, in the context of its relations with China. The relations between the EU and China have felt a major shift from the late 2010s onwards, and the EP has been increasingly vocal about Chinese human rights matters through its various resolutions and declarations. This thesis pursues to analyse the public outputs of the European Parliament through two research questions: How does the European Parliament operate as an actor of parliamentary diplomacy? and how is the European Parliament’s China policy characterized in its resolutions? while also comparing the EP’s public outputs to that of the EEAS’ through the question of How do the public outputs of the European Parliament compare to that of the EEAS’? This thesis relies heavily on the definition of parliamentary diplomacy and sees the European Parliament as an increasingly important actor in the multilayered and evolving international field. This thesis consists of focusing on the overview of foreign political conduct in the EU, the definition of parliamentary diplomacy, focusing on the European Parliament as an actor of parliamentary diplomacy along a case study. The case study of this thesis is an analysis of the EP’s resolutions, other publications & delegation work, and EEAS publications, divided into three subchapters. The methods used consist of coding along with qualitative and quantitative content analysis. The findings are, that the EP pursues to be a particularly vocal foreign political actor when it comes to China. The publications of China are increasingly negative by their nature, and in a way, it seems that the EP has abandoned the central idea of parliamentary diplomacy of conducting mutual relations, in favour of protecting its normative ideals. As part of its public outputs on China, the EP has also put much emphasis on the need for the EEAS to act in a particular way to tackle some of the China-related issues. The conclusion is, that the EEAS’ China policy does not seem to differ much from that of the EP, the clear exception seemingly being the case of Taiwan relations.
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(2023)This thesis explores the possibility of analysing political speeches through a structuralist literary theoretical approach. The analysis focuses on Eurosceptic rhetoric in the United Kingdom (UK) and whether this rhetoric shares codified similarities with the way monsters are constructed in cultural narratives. This hypothesis is based on the us versus them cleavage and the process of Othering present in both Eurosceptic rhetoric and monster narratives. The reluctant role of the UK in the history of European integration has developed into an us versus them cleavage, with UK politicians repeatedly applying the process of Othering to the European Union (EU). In monster narratives, the monster represents the ultimate Other, embodying the fear of difference. The purpose of this analysis is to show that the potency of populist rhetoric goes deep into the level of fundamental human anxieties that manifest through narrative monsters. The thesis aims to identify the mechanics of monster-making in Eurosceptic political speeches by analysing three speeches from conservative British prime ministers through the structuralist literary theoretical approach: Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges Speech, David Cameron’s Bloomberg Speech, and a speech by Boris Johnson. The structuralist approach takes an underlying universal narrative structure as a frame of reference, codifies it, and then identifies occurrences of these codes in a text. The underlying universal narrative selected for this analysis is Jeffrey Cohen’s monster theory that he presents in seven theses, which represent the building blocks of narrative monsters observed in monster stories throughout human history. Four theses were selected for codification suitable for analysing political speeches, and the resulting codes are: Liminality, Otherness, Warning and Perception. The occurrences of these four codes in the three speeches is termed as the mechanics of monster-making. The results of the analysis show a clear presence of the mechanics of monster-making in the three selected speeches, proving that Eurosceptic rhetoric does share similarities with monster narratives. All three speeches contain occurrences of all four codes, and while the number of occurrences varies, the overall number of occurrences increases notably over time. This not only shows that the conservative politicians paint a picture of the EU as an escalating threat that is becoming more and more separate from the UK, but it also shows that in Thatcher’s time this monstrous threat is indicated to be in the future, whereas in Cameron and Johnson’s times the threat is conveyed as imminent. The results support the idea that applying an approach from cultural theory can contribute to the research of political narratives. Since humans are cultural beings and political speeches do not exist in a political vacuum, applying codes from an underlying universal narrative to political speeches can reveal depths of interpretation the more common discourse analytical approaches cannot reach.
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(2023)In my thesis, I study the evolving role of the European Union in facilitating the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue. Since 2011, the EU has acted as a facilitator in the dialogue that aims to normalize the relations between Kosovo and Serbia. I focus especially on the development of the EU’s negotiating approach in the dialogue. In my thesis, I present three research questions: 1) What kind of a negotiating approach does the EU adopt in mediating the dialogue? 2) How does the EU incentivize Kosovo’s and Serbia’s participation in the dialogue? 3) How actively does the EU engage in the facilitation of dialogue? The theoretical framework of my thesis is twofold. Regarding the EU’s negotiating approach and engagement in the dialogue, I follow the categorization presented in Zartman and Touval’s (1985) mediation theory, where mediators working in conflict resolution are divided into communicators, formulators, and manipulators. Concerning the incentives offered by the EU, I rely on Schimmelfennig ja Sedelmeier’s (2004) classification within Europeanization theory, where Europeanization is presented as following from external incentives or social learning. As my research data, I use the European Commission’s yearly reports on Kosovo and Serbia, as well as the EU’s General Affairs Council conclusions on the Enlargement and Stabilisation and Association Process, which describe the dialogue’s progression and the EU’s positions on the dialogue. I analyze the data through the use of Qualitative Content Analysis by assigning coding categories to the documents, which enable me to examine the EU’s mood in various phases of the dialogue, the development of the input the EU exerts on the dialogue, and the use of incentives the EU offers Kosovo and Serbia. As the result of my thesis, I show that the dialogue can be divided into a progress phase (2011-2016) and a stagnation phase (2017-2022). I find that in the progress phase, the EU acts as a neutral arbiter, but as the dialogue progresses into the stagnation phase, the EU attempts to create progress by increasing its engagement in the dialogue and by strengthening the incentives it uses, introducing sticks in addition to carrots. This transforms the EU’s mediator role in the dialogue from an arbiter to a mediation participant protecting its own interests.
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(2023)Finland has the highest per capita coffee consumption in the world. As one of the national drinks, drinking coffee is considered an essential cultural habit in Finland. Among them, coffee breaks at workspaces are a well-established and important cultural practice. This thesis tries to reveal what is represented to be Finnish about coffee breaks in Finnish working life. First, it analyses the background of the spread of coffee culture among Finnish people. Secondly, it assesses their experiences and opinions of the coffee break in recent years by using Oldenburg’s idea of “the third place” and previous studies about the coffee break. The survey was conducted on 18 Finnish people in the spring of 2021 and autumn of 2022. Moreover, it asked about changes and experiences caused by the corona pandemic. The Finnish coffee break substantially affects health maintenance, work efficiency, and social relationship/community formation. Remarkably, the role of social relationship/community formation is significant because the coffee break has provided cosy spaces for participants and opportunities to socialise since coffee was introduced to Finland. Recently, working life has become more individualised in Finland, as working hours and locations have become more flexible, and remote working has become more common after the corona pandemic. However, the coffee break has overcome such social changes and plays a role like a bond to keep people well connected, and many of them demand such opportunities.
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(2024)Monuments and the memories they represent are constantly responding to political and cultural changes in the human environment around them. This thesis analyzes how Soviet monuments, primarily the T-34 Narva Tank in Estonia and the Victory Monument in Latvia, were securitized following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In particular, the study dissects the role that external actors and other motivating factors had in these processes, and what causal mechanisms can explain for the subsequent removal and destruction of these memory edifices. Expounding upon established theoretical and conceptual frameworks of memory securitization, mnemonic security dilemmas, and the hardware of memory, this thesis explores how seemingly benign objects in a memory landscape can be mobilized by conflict situations and result in escalatory securitized measures between states. The method of process tracing allows the two cases to be considered parallel to one another, constructing a timeline of events through an extensive analysis of news articles, public statements, and legal documents released in Estonia, Latvia and Russia. Elite Interviews conducted with memory experts in these states also inform the analysis, and provide critical perspectives on non-reported elements and variables that impacted events. Site analyses conducted at these sites of memory further nuance the findings of this research, providing an ethnographic understanding of how the removal of these monuments not only altered the physical landscape in which they existed, but the human communities around them as well. Key evidence is revealed regarding the primary role that articulated Russian threats played in the securitization and subsequent removal of these monuments, presenting compelling avenues for future research on the role that external actors play in internal memory processes. As memories of the past continue to find themselves intertwined with conflicts of the present, this research presents novel contributions to understanding how memory wars are waged, and through which means, if any, they can be de-escalated.
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(2022)The goal of this thesis is to better understand the role and the impact of the DiscoverEU initiative. It allows 18 year-old EU citizens to travel and explore Europe for up to a month by giving them a free Interrail pass. The Interrail programme however, was not created by the EU but is being used as a tool by the latter to promote European solidarity, their vision of a European identity and to further a sense of belonging. To conduct this study, I used Instagram to gather the participants’ posts and captions. All the data I gathered was public and the participants remained anonymous throughout my thesis. I proceeded with qualitative content analysis to analyse my data in order to observe what kind of narrative was being created online by the participants. European identity, the significance of travel and the decision to target the younger generations were topics of particular interest throughout this thesis. DiscoverEU aims at providing a shared experience these young people can relate to and bond over so that the EU becomes something concrete in their mind, something they can identify with and support later on in their life as well. This thesis finds that the EU is using DiscoverEU as a tool to promote European identity in numerous ways. The participants are sharing mostly positive experiences but only a few European statements about European identity. However, criticism towards the better off was also raised.
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(2021)This study examines the concept of Nordic added value in Nordic cultural cooperation through the case study of the Nordic Culture Fund. This study aims to understand how the Nordic culture fund implemented the concept and to identify regionalist logic utilised during this process. By doing so, this work aims to contribute to the scholarship on the Nordic added value, exploring its practical application within the cultural sector of Nordic cooperation. To achieve this goal, non-negative matrix factorisation topic modeling was used to analyse a collection of policy documents and web pages of the Nordic culture fund published between 2002 to 2023. This study found a shift in how the concept is operationalized, alongside its regionalist logic. Initially, the Fund emphasised internal Nordic collaboration, based on heritage identity to foster the sense of Nordic community and legitimise Nordic cultural cooperation. However, since the late 2010s, the focus shifted towards the global context, integrating neoliberal values to promote Nordic culture on the global stage. This extension of scale from the regional to global level illustrates a relational characteristic of Nordic added value. By mapping the aforementioned shifts of the concept, this study contributes to the holistic understanding of the Nordic added value.
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(2023)This master's thesis compares two quite different areas of Nordic cooperation, the passport union and defence cooperation. The research question seeks to find answers to whether the failures of the passport union have been connected to the advantages in defence policy and if they have not, which factor have promoted the shift of attention form passport union to defence cooperation. I seek to demonstrate how the atmosphere in cooperation has changes and the time of growing cooperation and supranationalism is turning to a traditional realist, intergovernmental cooperation. The first form of cooperation, the passport union, at the time of its founding in the 1950s was distinctively deep form of cooperation, especially considering being a traditionally sensitive political area.. The importance of defence cooperation, on the other hand, has increased especially in the 2010s and thereafter due to the changes in the European security environment. The most important events are the Russian conquest of the Crimean peninsula and later the war in Ukraine, as well as Finland's and Sweden's NATO application in 2022. Both areas, defence, and the passport union, include a lot of other international cooperation, the most important of which is the Schengen area in connection to the passport union and NATO in defence cooperation. By comparing these two areas, we see the many forms of Nordic cooperation and changes in the most important themes over the decades. With the definition of the borders, the quality of the passport union becomes evident. Borders are diverse, can create inequality and equality, unite and separate people, and act as the physical borders of the state, representing states’ power and rights. With the diversity of borders, their opening has been a significant step in Nordic cooperation. Even though the passport union has faced challenges, it is still in operation and plays a significant role as a builder and facilitator of Nordic cooperation. Defence cooperation, on the other hand, has largely developed under international organizations. The most important of these is NATO, whose founding members Denmark, Norway and Iceland were, and to which Finland and Sweden submitted their application to join in 2022. Cooperation under the European Union as well as commitment to UN and NATO exercises and peacekeeping have also developed Nordic cooperation in defence forces. NORDEFCO, founded in 2009, is important achievement as a facilitator of Nordic cooperation outside other institutions. By using the reports and texts of the Foreign Policy Institute and its Nordic counterparts, we get a picture of the effects of crises to these chosen policy areas. These crises are most prominently the 2015 refugee crisis, the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's attack on Ukraine. The historical analysis is based on academic literature as well as political statements, opinion polls and news articles. When comparing these two areas of cooperation, it is clear that global events have affected the level of cooperation, and cooperation often sparks as a reaction to external events. Because of this, defence cooperation has been more significant and received more attention in the recent years. The passport union is still a significant part of cooperation, but it seems that its peak has already passed, and other things are attracting more attention. At the same time, international cooperation around the world is experiencing similar changes. The conclusion is that whereas it is true that the passport union has struggled while the defence has bloomed, the changing focus has been due to global events. However, while the hypothesis was that similar events were failures for one and successes for the other, the most important events shaping cooperation have been different.
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(2024)The interrelation between politics and sport is seldom discussed within academia, despite its prominence in both historical and modern diplomacy, and media. This thesis contributes towards filling in these gaps, highlighting why it is beneficial as an emerging academic topic. Whilst it has been argued that sport diplomacy is detrimental towards international relations, the overwhelming majority conclude that sport diplomacy helps to move international diplomacy forward. This thesis addresses these developments, considering the historical developments since the Cold War period. It analyses specifically the frame-setting of diplomatic action within sport since February 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This thesis builds upon on the literature on soft powers and nation branding, addressing how they play a role within diplomatic events in sport. This framework recognises how sport diplomacy has been, and still is, used to project a nation’s values and political interests. The concern lies between sporting diplomatic action between Europe and the Russian Federation in the twenty-first century, and identifying how sporting mega-events (SMEs) have been used as a vehicle of political messaging. This thesis considers two particular cases of how sport diplomacy has been received within news media. It addresses the international case of the 2024 Olympic Games, and the national perspective of the Finnish ice-hockey team Helsingin Jokerit’s 2022 withdrawal from the Kontinental Hockey League. The thesis utilises a qualitative frame analysis upon these two cases, focusing on clusters of media publications surrounding two key events within the discussion. It then compares the frame-building of sport diplomacy, and the frame-setting of these reports (whether conscious or unconscious) to consider how it may affect public perceptions of sport diplomacy. Fundamentally, the thesis establishes the changes in the use of sport diplomacy since 2022, and recognizes how its impact varies between international and national cases. This opens up a discussion for further research, and considerations of how sport diplomacy should be recognized from various state and non-state actors. It concludes that sport diplomacy is an impactful vehicle for political messaging, and, although the Cold War acted as a catalyst for cultural diplomacy, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has opened the floodgates for the use of sport diplomacy within Europe, and a greater recognition of its potential should be recognized by academics, politicians and non-state sporting actors alike.
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(2023)Developed economies face increasing pressures of to produce innovations that improve their competitiveness and resilience in a globalized economy. The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development of the European Commission as funding instruments for innovation have therefore gained significance in the increasing of its geopolitical power through competitiveness and resilience. While the Framework Programmes as a policy have been researched widely, the roles of its funded projects, that is consortia, as actors within the larger political context of research and development have been researched little. This research aims to contribute to the understanding on the ways in which researchers, commercial entities and third sector actors as part of research consortia influence the development of Framework Programmes from the bottom-up perspective. Through a political sociology approach, the role of consortia formation, social networks and role characteristics within consortia are used as concepts to their extent of explaining the ways in which non-state actors use Europeanization processes such as Framework Programmes to advance their interests and visions. The data was collected through in-depth semistructured interviews of ten Horizon 2020 consortium participants and two R&D experts and a reflexive thematic analysis method was applied. Consortium initiators were found to have a high relevance in their ability to interpret the call for proposal and thus determine the outputs that contribute to the overall impact of the Framework Programme, presenting a circularity in the Europeanization of R&D. By choosing to exercise their gate-keeping or agenda-setting power, the consortium core participants steer their interpretation of the call for proposal towards their desired direction. The social networks were mainly found to function as pools of contacts and as insurance against the uncertainties that come with the acting in an international setting but could also provide insider knowledge that advanced their social position and competencies of the consortium core, strengthening the ability to influence the Europeanization from bottom-up. The results indicate that the consortium formation, social networks and role characteristics can explain some of the impact that actors exert on the ouput of the Framework Programmes from the bottom-up, but more research needs to be done to measure their impact
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(2015)Various approaches have been applied to explore the populist discourse by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister. Although many studies define populism as a discourse that pits ‘the people’ against ‘the elite’, they fail to explain how these categories come into being. As a result, they cannot clarify how Orbán has been able to reshape his populist messages consistently and preserve political power. To address this gap in the current scholarship, I have analysed how Orbán constructed his populism between March 15, 2010, and March 15, 2018, using his selected National Day Speeches. My inquiry has been informed by Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism, which focuses on how various components are articulated within political discourse. Additionally, I have drawn on Marina Vulović and Emilia Palonen’s interpretation of Laclau’s perspective, which provides a unique formula for applying Laclau’s theoretical framework. My thesis investigates the populism in Orbán’s National Day speeches by utilising post-foundational discourse analysis and the Laclaudian formula of Vulović and Palonen. Specifically, it centres on the political themes he refers to in his speeches and how his populism is demonstrated based on these themes. My analysis reveals how Orbán constructed the identity of the Hungarian people by leveraging antagonism against adversaries and employing emotional engagement in the process. My findings contribute to the literature on Orbán’s populism by illustrating the effectiveness of investigating his discourse through Laclau’s outlook.
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(2021)Nordic welfare states are globally admired success stories with the happiest people, high level of education, and equal redistribution of resources. Change in the welfare state’s ethos since 1980s and the recent crises in the contemporary world have left their imprints to these northern countries and the strong welfare states have been claimed to be in decline. This thesis is analysing if the welfare state and its ethos have started to fade away or are they still resilient and stabilising actors in the society. The aim of this study is to evaluate the Nordic welfare state from the perspective of the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Kela, and evaluate the argument of the declining welfare state by the people, who are working in one of the most visible welfare producing institutions in Finland. The Nordic welfare model is compared with other European welfare regimes, based on Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s classic “Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism”. As any of these models are impeccable, the critique of the Nordic model is also presented in this research. Another main theory used in this research is liquid modernity by Zygmunt Bauman, which argues that modernity today is liquid by its nature and a system that is forgetting issues, such as community and trust towards each other in the society. Replacing security and feelings of commonness with neoliberal and market-oriented welfare policies is causing the declination of the welfare state and alienation of people from each other. These neoliberal ideas have also their effects on Kela. In addition, Kela’s role in the Finnish welfare state will be analysed in this research. Eight qualitative interviews are constituting the empirical data for this research. Theory-guided content analysis is being used to analyse the interviews, which were conducted in spring 2021. Interviews done with Kela’s customer service specialists are being contrasted with the theoretical framework. This research argues that the declination of the welfare state is caused by the fluidity of modern society which is causing unpredictability and insecurity to people’s lives even in the safe havens of the Norden. The results show that the concerns of the contemporary welfare state are real, and according to the professionals interviewed worry for the future. Polarisation, fragmented employment relationships, and social exclusion were seen as threats to the welfare state. On contrary, acting as a nanny-state and saving people with money, and increasing benefits’ levels were not seen as solutions to the eternal problem of the Nordic welfare state. What is a sufficient level of activation on behalf of the society and what is the role and responsibility of an individual? All in all, the Nordic welfare state is seen as an institution, which guarantees security to its residents and acts as a safety net, if needed. Welfare-producing institutions, such as Kela, are a part of this safety net, and replacing them does not seem likely in the future. Instead, combining the unpredictable future and the competitiveness society with the welfare state is seen as a problem, to which the welfare state needs to find answers in the future.
Now showing items 41-52 of 52