Browsing by master's degree program "Globaalin politiikan ja viestinnän maisteriohjelma"

In February 2022, Russia started the invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Russian media claim that “denazification” of Ukraine is one of the invasion’s main goals. Russia seems to have a strategy of justifying the invasion of Ukraine by using denazification propaganda against Ukraine and the West and labelling other nations that do not support their invasion as Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. The goal of the research is to examine, how Russia’s state-owned media uses propaganda about Nazism to justify the invasion of Ukraine to foreign audiences. Research’s theoretical framework draws from propaganda studies and post-foundational discourse theory. This research’s data consists of 141 news articles publish by Russia Today and Sputniks News between February 24th and August 31st, 2022. Both media outlets are owned by the state of Russia and are known as distributors of pro-Russia propaganda. Research’s method on analysis is post-foundational discourse analysis, that draws from Ernesto Laclau’s and partially Chantal Mouffe’s post-foundational discourse theory. The results show that Russia’s state-owned media uses propaganda about Nazism to justify the invasion of Ukraine to foreign audiences by contesting the meanings of Western understanding of Nazism. Russia’s state-owned media attempts to dominate the Western discoursive field by claiming that Ukraine has a long history of Nazism, and it is still run by them, the West is morally degraded like how the Nazis were, Ukraine and Western nations are manipulating history, and that Ukraine and the West support violence and discrimination against minorities in a way Nazis did. By trying to dominate the discoursive field, Russian media attempts to fix meanings to Nazism that are not equivalential with the common Western understanding of Nazism and engages in hegemonic struggle with the Western established meanings. The results indicate that contesting the foundations of Western understanding of Nazism operates as a powerful propaganda tool for Russia in its attempts to change the public opinion in its favour. The research concludes that ungrounding foundations of different concepts and ideologies can be used as a propaganda tactic to further influence the opinions of targeted audiences by challenging the hegemonic meanings of a given concept. In addition, it is suggested that by strengthening the foundations of concepts or ideologies that are, or can be, under attack by different propagandists might be an efficient way to increase resilience against such propaganda.

Sovereignty plays a significant role in the governance, recognition and legitimisation of semi-autonomous jurisdictions. Since the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in the 17th century, sovereignty has played a role in global political and economic affairs, yet for overseas territories and semi-autonomous jurisdictions the lack of independent sovereignty can leave these territorial anomalies without a seat at the table. With technological advancements and the rise of globalisation, the flow of people, capital and information has never been higher. As capital moves across the globe at high speeds, issues of taxation and its regulation arise. This thesis explores Stephen Krasner’s framework of the four types of sovereignty in order to propose a fifth form of sovereignty: economic sovereignty. To introduce an understanding of sovereignty that does not require a jurisdiction to be an independent nation state in order to be recognised, represented and held accountable regarding global economic issues. By illustrating how semi-autonomous jurisdictions can develop a flexible and prosperous system of international participation that does not require full sovereignty, this thesis aims to explore how a new form of sovereignty could potentially aid in improving the global governance of tax regulation. By analysing the positives, negatives and compromises of statehood and sovereignty, it possible to explore sovereignty as a spectrum that falls outside traditional understandings of the nation-state which has the potential to open up new opportunities for international cooperation and communication. The ‘outcome explaining’ variant of process tracing was used for case selection where cases are chosen based on the outcome of a mechanism. As a result, the British Crown Dependencies and in particular the island of Jersey were used as the focus case study, alongside a comparative study of the literature. This thesis highlights the growing role of self-governing semi-autonomous jurisdictions on the global economic stage and finds that independent sovereignty should not be a required criteria in order for a territory to be a recognised stakeholder in international financial and tax governance.

This study delves into the practical application of the United Nations principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) within the complex context of the Central African Republic (CAR), focusing on key events such as the 2012 civil war, the 2013 ethnic and religious conflicts, and the Boali Massacre. Adopting a qualitative methodology rooted in constructivism theory, the research aims to evaluate the effectiveness of R2P in preventing and addressing mass atrocities in CAR. The study explores the complexities of the international community's response to these crises, scrutinizing the timeliness of their intervention. The research also seeks to identify and analyze existing limitations and challenges that impede the successful implementation of R2P in CAR, considering the intricate issues that may hinder its transformation into an established norm. By investigating the involvement of regional and international actors, the study aims to unravel the enduring repercussions of R2P on peace, stability, and state-building in CAR. This research contributes valuable insights into the dynamics of humanitarian intervention, the concept of state sovereignty, and the practical application of R2P within conflict-ridden settings. The findings hold implications for refining international responses to mass atrocities in CAR and similar challenging environments, ultimately enriching the broader discourse on the Responsibility to Protect.

Artificial intelligence (AI), as a constantly developing technology that is difficult to define, strains a society not prepared for its impact. On the other hand, AI represents the future and comes with many opportunities. The European Commission has taken both views into account in its policy for AI, the European approach to AI. The European Commission’s AI policy, that introduces a regulation-based approach to AI as the first policy initiative in the world, offers a timely and intriguing topic of study. This thesis critically examines how AI is represented as a problem in the European Commission’s policy over the course of a four-year time frame from 2018 to 2021. It uses a combined set of methods: qualitative content analysis together with Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach to inspect five selected European Commission’s policy documents. Four of these policy documents are communication papers with an additional white paper. With the help of qualitative content analysis, the main repetitive themes of AI challenges and opportunities are teased out. The WPR approach is used to examine the progression of the AI policy and analyze the problem representations found in policy. Research questions are the following: how has the European Commission’s policy on AI come about and how has AI been represented as a policy problem by the European Commission? The thesis presents the formation of the AI policy by going through policy documents over the period of four years. Additionally, the thesis demonstrates how the Commission’s AI policy is one piece of the puzzle that is EU digital politics aiming for technological sovereignty. From the Commission’s problem representation of AI, the challenges and opportunities, it is possible to analyze the implicit representations of AI in policy. Although, the policy highlights trustworthiness and competitiveness through its regulatory actions there are other aspects present as well. AI has been represented in policy through eight perspectives, including safety and security, ethical, legal, competitiveness, AI leadership, socioeconomic, ecological, and education. All perspectives rationalize ways for AI to be embraced inside the European Union borders and participate in the shaping of how AI is to be approached. The analysis of each category shows that issues related to safety and security, ethical, legal, competitiveness, and AI leadership seem to stand out whereas socioeconomic, ecological, and education matters are not as strongly stressed. Overall, this thesis has demonstrated how AI has been represented as a problem in the European Commission’s policy.

This thesis examines the moral political economy of technology and well-being. This is be done assessing Finnish policymaking in the context of global political economy, using a moral political economy approach and critical semiotic analysis. The material of the thesis consists of a recent government resolution on technology policy. The objective is to critically explore the normative foundation of technology policymaking and to identify underlying moral-political norms. The findings suggest that underlying moral-political norms relating to ideals of welfare and technology, as well as neoliberal economic understanding are identifiable within the resolution. This further suggests, that policymaking related to technology and well-being reproduces existing power structures. The findings suggest further research is needed to engage in moral political economy in the context of digitalising world economy.

Taking the Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP) as a case study, this thesis contributes to the understanding of how the SDP and centre-left parties more generally were neoliberalised, this is to say how they became to embrace the idea that society is best organised through markets and competition. Drawing from the work of Stephanie Mudge, the thesis focuses on party experts, those party actors oriented towards producing truth-claims of society, hence affecting the way parties conceive the world and speak. Expert’s knowledge, however, is contingent on their social locations. They are often also situated in professional fields that tend to condition which ideas count as legitimate, making their positions explanatory relevant with regards to parties’ disposition and rhetoric. Methodologically the work draws from the tradition of historical sociology and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields. The material utilised consists of (auto)biographies; past historical and social scientific research; reference works; SDP’s archival documents; and historical newspaper and magazine writings and interviews. The central argument is that Mudge’s account—taken as the work’s hypothesis—of the neoliberalisation of centre-left parties in “core countries” (the UK, the US, Sweden, and Germany) is inadequate in the case of the SDP embedded in Finland’s peripheral context. Mudge asserts that a central driver in the parties’ neoliberalisation was the interdependence between the political field of the party and the field of economics, which developed as interwar economic disruption incited an intense search within economics for novel ways to control the economy via public spending and demand management. This also led to an influx of academic economists with a “Keynesian ethic” to centre-left parties. The interdependence, however, allowed for economics’ politicisation from the 1960s onwards, this then influencing the field’s reorientation away from Keynesianism and towards monetarism and subsequently leading to the emergence and triumph of new party experts possessing a “neoliberal ethic”. Relatively stable interwar economic development, the bourgeoisie’s post-Civil War dominance in the society and academia, and the Finnish economics’ “backwardness” meant that no comparable need for seeking novel solutions existed nor was there responsiveness for the ideas developed abroad. Consequently, no interdependence between the SDP and economics developed in interwar or immediate postwar years. In the 1960s economic experts did gain a central position within the party. But these experts were not connected with the academia nor did the SDP embrace “Keynesian” prescriptions, the party and its experts instead banking on the combination of economic planning and export-led growth strategy. Neither was evidence found of economics’ politicisation as a left-wing discipline. Instead, it was oft precisely the SDP’s economic experts that critiqued “Keynesian” academic economists. In sum, arguably no interdependence between economics and the SDP developed either in this period. Instead, a new hypothesis is posited as an alternative account, namely that the SDP’s neoliberalisation can be better accounted for through the interdependence that developed between the bureaucratic field’s economic institutions and the party. Conjecturally, the interdependence, owing, among other things, to the SDP’s political appointments to the state, was politicised and the ideas of economic planning and the state’s control of the economy’s important elements were discredited in the context of the 1970s economic downturn. The interdependence, however, also led to novel kinds of experts—the state economists—gaining a powerful position within the SDP and making their interpretation of the economy common sense in the party. These experts perceived that their role in politics was to advance the “general interest” of the nation and the amorphous “people”, not any segment of it. With the export businesses hegemonic in society, in effect, this meant an emphasis on their profitability, cost competitiveness, and inflation and subsequently wage repression and budget constraint. The affinities between neoliberal notions and this policy conception and the habit in the Finnish state to conceive the world in terms of “external necessities” meant the state economists possessed great responsiveness to neoliberal ideas. While gaining preliminary support from evidence this hypothesis requires further work on several counts.

Swedish migration policy has undergone a historic shift in the last decade. The aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of the role of research and researchers in Sweden’s migration policymaking process at a time of heightened politicization and policy change. Based on consensus, the Swedish policy process aims for informed decision making, drawing on research through governmental committees and research institutes. This mixed methods study utilizes a unique data set of 78 Swedish governmental committee reports that discuss migration and integration from 1980 to 2022. This quantitative data traces the number of committees and representation of researchers within these committees. Three expert interviews were conducted to address researchers’ perceived role in policymaking and how changes have impacted the use of research. This thesis employs Paul Sabatier’s Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), focusing on coalitions within the migration subsystem and viewing policy change as a change in values. The expert interviewees highlighted how most researchers hold liberal views on migration, striving for open policies. This thesis found that the influence of researchers was greater when their values aligned with the values of the majority coalition and that researchers’ role was minimal in the shift towards restrictive policies. As migration became a salient issue in Sweden in the 1990s, there was a clear peak in the number of governmental committees and percentages of researchers, indicating that researchers had influence in defining migration policy. These numbers continued relatively high until 2022, but with more significant gaps. Committee reports were increasingly published in the second or third year of the governmental cycle, allowing the reigning government to initiate the committee and to vote on the proposed legislation. As migration became politicized, legislation was expedited, leaving little time for researchers’ input and using research symbolically at best. This was especially evident in the dramatic migration policy changes following the refugee crisis in 2015. This thesis concludes that ACF is an underused theoretical framework for migration subsystems, as explaining the policy process and change through values and beliefs was relevant in the case of Swedish migration policy. The findings illustrate that politicization and shifts in values have limited the role and instrumental influence of researchers in migration policymaking. Nonetheless, Sweden’s committee system and organizations such as Delmi continue to provide a channel for researchers to inform policymaking.

This thesis explores the voluntary carbon market (VCM). The central research question for this work is: Should there be limits to the voluntary carbon market? as a marketplace for carbon emission offsets. Offsetting means investing money into a carbon-removal project and quantifying the monetary contribution in terms of the volume of carbon removed. The research topic links to a central contradiction in the mitigation of climate change: the capitalist economic system has been recognised as a root cause for climate change, yet the tools for mitigation do not challenge its structures. The theoretical framework for this thesis is heterodox political economy. It is a critique of orthodox political economy, which, in turn, stems from the tradition of neoclassical economics. The theoretical framework has implications for the methodological choices in this thesis. Heterodox political economy aims to distance itself from orthodox methods of economic research. The economy and society are ever-changing non-closed systems and analysing them accurately through quantitative methods and drawing generalisable conclusions is challenging. For the purposes of this work, a selection of heterodox thinkers in political economy is chosen, and their arguments on limits to the market are reviewed. Examples include the doughnut economics model by Kate Raworth. Additionally, the thesis introduces critiques by heterodox thinkers on commodification of nature and its effects to the relationship of humans and non-human nature. The results of the work highlight the differences between the heterodox and orthodox views of the appropriate limits to the market. The central norms of orthodox political economy, such as methodological individualism, the free market and the assumed value neutrality of the economic space shape the mainstream ideas about the limits to the VCM. Contrastingly, heterodox political economy offers alternative ways of understanding the possibilities for the construction of the economy and highlights the importance of recognising the purpose of the economy. The thesis concludes that seen from the heterodox perspective of political economy, market orthodoxy should be challenged and thus there should be limits set to the VCM to start shifting responsibility for climate mitigation from the individual to the structural level. These limits may take the form of stronger regulation from the part of the state or international authorities. However, at present, the strong embeddedness of the orthodox economic norms in the market leads to a situation, where imaging alternative economic solutions is challenging, and thus structural change remains difficult. Therefore, it is important to recognise and challenge these hegemonic norms trough research and practice in heterodox political economy.

This thesis evaluates the utility of Stephen Gill’s concept of new constitutionalism in understanding the functioning of the European Economic and Monetary union (EMU) in 2015– 2020. New constitutionalism is defined as legally locked in rules-based market discipline. The thesis has two research questions: 1) To what extent does the concept of new constitutionalism aptly describe the economic policy space of EMU member states? That is, to what extent the EMU, with its associated rules and criteria, constrains the economic policies of its member states? 2) To what extent are new constitutionalist principles “locked in” in the EMU? That is, to what extent is new constitutionalism really constitutional in the EMU? Chapter 1 outlines Gill’s contributions on new constitutionalism in the EMU, defines the key terms and introduces the research problematic. Chapter 2 evaluates the effects of EMU membership on economic policy space. This chapter draws extensively on data on fiscal deficits and levels of public debt well as the fiscal stimulus packages implemented in the context of the corona pandemic in EMU states and other advanced economies. It is shown that although average levels of debt have been lower in EMU states than in advanced economies overall, none of the major member states have remained within the required limits for public debt in this period. This renders the applicability of the concept of new constitutionalism dubious. Similarly, although EMU states stimulated their economies less than other advanced economies in response to the corona pandemic, this was not due to pressure from EU institutions as Gill’s argument would suggest. Chapter 3 addresses the political contingency in the application of rules-based market discipline in the EMU. Most notably, beyond the extreme case of Greece in 2015, there has been a reluctance by the European Commission to discipline member states for breaking the fiscal rules. The last two sections of this chapter consider the extent to which the actions of the European Central Bank have undermined market discipline in the EMU, and the pertinent question of whether the corona pandemic has ushered in a fundamental change in economic thinking in the EU. Drawing on this analysis, it is argued that the concept of new constitutionalism most aptly described the situation faced by Greece in 2015, but its applicability has subsequently waned. Specifically, the concept of new constitutionalism fails to capture the political contingency and flexibility in the application of both fiscal rules and market discipline in the EMU. Chapter 4 is dedicated to the second research question – that is, to what extent new constitutionalist principles are constitutionalised in the EMU. This chapter analyses the practical possibilities for EMU reform. However, given the unanimity requirement between member states for fundamental reform of the EMU, it is here that Gill’s argument about new constitutionalism being “locked in” is found to have the most applicability. The overall argument of this thesis is that the original Maastricht vision of the EMU has not come to fruition. In fact, the EMU experience illustrates that attempts to impose fixed visions of order onto social systems tend to produce disorder. While the eurozone crisis itself was generated by unbalancing tendencies inherent in the EMU, it has subsequently survived only through circumvention of its rules.