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

This thesis aims at researching the recent history of the EMU and the monetary policy shift of the ECB in addition to its presidents roles in shaping the economy. This thesis will provide background information on the economic constitution of the EMU and how it has transformed over the course of Euro crisis and the years after. Additionally, the monetary policy actions of the ECB amongst Euro crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic will be studied. I argue that by transitioning to an expansionary monetary policy earlier than originally happened, some of the more severe economic impacts of the Euro crisis could have been prevented and it would not have led to a lost decade for the growth of the Eurozone. Additionally, I argue that the central bankers' implications for molding our future is enormous as it is clear that market actors react to their statements. My research questions are as follows: What problems or flaws have been identified within the EMU and how could they be improved? What are the presidents’ implications and effects on influencing the economy? Furthermore, how has the shift of the ECB monetary policy from hawks to doves happened over the years? This thesis utilizes critical discourse analysis in researching the materials, which comprise of the presidents annual hearings before the Plenary of the European Parliament, with the exclusion of the last nominated president as she has only been through one. In her case, quarterly Economic and Monetary Committee hearings will be utilized. The key findings suggest that the ECB presidents have viewed the EMU flawed and have emphasized the completion of the union as too much responsibility has been left for the ECB. The call for more fiscal capacity is repetitive for all three presidents. Furthermore, this research also suggests that the shift from hawks to doves happened because no other way was seen. Additionally, the roles of central bankers have been heightened during the recent history and it shows that they have a great influence on the economy based on the reactions by the market actors and the public.

This study examines the climate responsibility, a sub-category of corporate social responsibility (CSR), of two oil companies, ExxonMobil and Shell. The study is a comparative case study of the climate responsibilities of two private oil companies, that makes use of academic literature and recent primary sources of the case companies, such as sustainability reports and statements. The study has a theoretical emphasis, and at first, it discusses the theoretical debates involving CSR. The separation of ownership and control in corporations that occurred in the early 20th century enriched the later discussion about the contradictions between capitalism and CSR, which was emerging slowly. From the 1970s, the practice of CSR became more familiar, and for instance, the orthodox liberal viewpoint became more positive about it: It was possible to combine profit-maximizing and CSR. Later, in the 21st century, governance studies gave a new perspective on interdisciplinary CSR studies. The study shows that climate responsibility might differ extensively between two same-sized oil companies. ExxonMobil’s climate responsibility has changed in the past twenty years: First, the company doubted whether climate change was true. Later, it admitted that it is a fact, and the company has committed to the Paris Climate Agreement. However, it commits to greenwashing regarding finding solutions. The company emphasizes its expertise and authority and is against government climate regulation. For ExxonMobil, the responsibility remains on the level of talk. It is not attempting to withdraw from oil. Shell’s climate responsibility, however, materializes in practice, too, even though the company has committed to greenwashing in the past. Shell has invested substantially in renewable energy sources and states that it aims to transform its business model to correspond with ambitious climate objectives. Further, contrary to ExxonMobil, Shell relies on a climate scenario, which follows an estimate that global warming from the pre-industrial era will not exceed 2°C. The study underlines that instrumental factors can explain the forms of corporate climate responsibility. However, the study does not exclude institutional, relational, nor philanthropic reasons for climate responsibility. This study discusses broad instrumentalism, which includes profit-maximizing and pursuit of corporate power. Profit-maximizing explains the form of climate responsibility that both companies practice. ExxonMobil’s climate responsibility speech is explained by maintaining a reputation and advertising matters, that is, short-term profits. However, its climate responsibility in practice remains modest, even irresponsible: The company is not withdrawing from oil nor investing in renewable energy sources. That is because, whereas the new oil resources are becoming harder and harder to exploit, ExxonMobil has relatively large oil resources compared with other oil companies. In turn, Shell’s climate responsibility is explained, especially by the long-term profits. Shell has relatively low oil reserves. Thus, it prepares for future regulation and positions as a progressive actor regarding energy transition to maximize profits in the 22nd century. Also, the case companies differ in the way they pursue corporate power. In the case of ExxonMobil, its climate responsibility speech is an attempt to pursuit corporate power against government regulation and to obtain autonomy. On the other hand, in climate issues, Shell highlights cooperation with the government and other stakeholders instead of self-regulation through its CSR. In the end, the thesis discusses the implications of the results to a broader question of global climate governance. When sustainability has become a growing business, and there are challenges in global climate governance, it is important to recognize the limits of climate responsibility, and more broadly, the limits of corporate social responsibility as a long-term solution. However, in the short term, the climate efforts of corporations are necessary to fill the regulatory gaps of global climate governance.

Intelligence agencies have become a significant element of security in contemporary societies. While new, more expansive intelligence methods have been utilised to contain potential security threats, national intelligence cultures have been challenged by more democratic understandings of intelligence and security on a societal level. As part of this transformation, intelligence agencies have encountered growing demands in the public sphere to strengthen their transparency and accountability. In this process, news media have a special role as an arena and an intelligence stakeholder to promote the democratisation of intelligence. The aim of this thesis is to study the democratisation of intelligence by analysing the shaping of national intelligence culture in news media discourses that covered the intelligence reform in Finland. Its theoretical framework is anchored to the concept of national intelligence culture and intelligence stakeholder theory which are linked to security and human security intelligence paradigms. The theoretical framework is complemented with Hallin’s theory on news media coverage in the spheres of consensus, legitimate controversy, and deviance to study how the news media discourses regarding Finnish intelligence reform have shaped the national intelligence culture in Finland. The qualitative case study is based on a data set of 216 online news articles published between August 2015 and June 2019 in a national news media outlet Helsingin Sanomat. The news content is analysed using qualitative content analysis and Fairclough’s approach to critical discourse analysis. The results of this study imply that the intelligence stakeholders represented in news media discourses can agree on the foundations of Finnish national intelligence culture. The study findings indicate that in the sphere of consensus, the stakeholders agreed on the necessity of intelligence reform, the existence of new threats in the security environment and the stagnant development of Finland’s intelligence powers compared to its Western counterparts. However, in the sphere of legitimate controversy, several intelligence stakeholders including news media considered constitutional rights more important than national security interests, demanded more transparency and accountability in intelligence operations and challenged the public trust in the legislative process. Finally, the findings in the sphere of deviance revealed that significant stakeholders, such as citizens, civil society organisations and businesses, were excluded from the news media discourses. Thus, the results indicated that the stakeholders who were strongly represented in the news media have been able to significantly influence the discourses on the purpose and future of intelligence in Finland.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the Finnish state monopolies, Alko and Veikkaus, as hybrid organizations from an institutional plurality viewpoint, since their duty is to decrease the consumption-related harm of their products. Hybrid organizations have existed for long, but societal changes have induced an increase in institutional pluralism. Hybrid organizations have not been studied very thoroughly despite a recent growing interest. State-owned organizations have been examined from a hybridity viewpoint specifically regarding mixed ownership, but constitutional monopoly research is scarce. Research questions inspect what kinds of pluralistic tensions Alko and Veikkaus face, and how the organizations cope with them. Data collection first included background interviews for confirming relevant research themes. One interview was conducted in each company, with employees whose position includes stakeholder contact. Next, annual reports and responsibility reports for 2015 and 2017-2019 were retrieved from the companies’ websites, and processed with qualitative content analysis, which utilized themes identified in both previous research and background interviews. Results showed that the monopolies faced distinct tensions due to different operating environments. The organizations used different coping mechanisms, which is partly due to differences in the core products. Veikkaus’ mechanisms slightly favored responsibilization and decoupling, while Alko benefitted from a strong organizational identity and collaboration with other organizations. This thesis identifies some specific challenges and tensions related to the monopolies in industries of addictive products and contributes to the understanding of coping mechanisms in hybrid organizations.

This study aims to explore how family influences graduates in higher education and occupation markets, in the processes of opportunity, selection, purpose and motivation and performance in Hong Kong and Helsinki, Finland by applying the economic, cultural and social capitals introduced by Bourdieu and Coleman. Interviews (N=20) have been conducted to analyse the personal experiences of interviewees in both cities. However, results show that only cultural capital is the most influential resource provided by particularly parents in both Hong Kong and Helsinki. And the way of how parents in both cities contribute to and affect graduates is different from the claims of Bourdieu and Coleman. Thus, some sources of errors i.e. interview questions and interviewee’s answers and limitations are identified to support why results are not strong enough when applying Bourdieu’s and Coleman’s ideas of capitals. Also, diploma disease (Dore, 1976) is identified as one of the key problems in the education system, specifically in Hong Kong, which will be discussed at the end of this study.

This study aims to analyze institutional change and transparency practices of the National Audit Office of Peru (NAO), whose job is to promote accountability in public administration but paradoxically faced an accountability crisis in 2017. This study analyzes the combination of logics of explanation that fostered the changes in the NAO during 2010 to 2020, and the role of transparency practices in institutional change. This study answers two research questions about the logics of explanation that were decisive to promote institutional change and the role of transparency in institutional change at the National Audit of Peru during the ten-year study of 2010-2020. In that regard, this theory-based qualitative research is based on institutional change theories and the four logics of explanation proposed by Vivien Schmidt: institutional design, evolutionary, appropriateness, and communication, the perceptions of seven decision-makers, managers, authors, or participants who worked during the time of the study frame of ten years, plus the analysis of statistical data. Since only one logics of explanation cannot explain the changes, a combination of the four logics of explanation were necessary. Each of the logics of explanation merge with thematical axis proposed after coding the interviewees' perspectives to explain how the changes were produced and the role of the transparency practices that fostered the changes within an accountability public institution between 2010 2020. Moreover, theories of accountability, trustworthiness, transparency and communication are presented to answer the research questions. This study uses the content analysis method and other qualitative research tools such as document review, website review, and information from the organization, which is of public domain. Finally, the conclusions of this study show that the combination of the four logics of explanation was crucial for the changes at the National Audit Office, and the practices of transparency were effects of those changes.

The platform economy has emerged in the past two decades to become a remarkably profitable and increasingly global industry. The explosive growth of platform firms can be attributed to the outsourcing of almost all aspects of business operations to minimize costs. This is coupled by their motivation to grow rapidly to capture disproportionately large market shares. Consequently, platform firms have become global behemoths, and the labor which sustains their growth has come to be known as “gig work”, in which self-employed contractors work whenever they please, without the traditional protections provided to formal employees. The goal of this dissertation is to explain these mechanisms in relation to their potential impacts on income inequality. This dissertation tests two hypotheses: the outsourcing hypothesis and market concentration hypothesis. Each hypothesis proposes a causal chain whereby outsourcing and market concentration in the platform economy lead to disproportionate economic power and greater economic insecurity, and consequently links these outcomes to a double movement in the U.S. income distribution. Methodologically, this research employs contrastive comparisons, whereby exemplary platforms are compared with their traditional competitors, namely Uber with the taxi industry, Amazon with Walmart, and DoorDash with Domino’s Pizza. From these contrastive comparisons, evidence is gathered to demonstrate key differences between platforms and their traditional competitors. Additionally, this research is contextualized in terms of historical and ideological trends, particularly the gradual re-emergence of income inequality and the development of neoliberal hegemony. The findings demonstrate that through unique combinations of the hypothesized mechanisms, platform businesses do proliferate greater economic insecurity, and generate disproportionate economic power between platform providers and platform managers and owners. However, evidence directly linking these outcomes to downward or upward pulls in the U.S. income distribution remains inconclusive. That said, substantial evidence was found for the rejection of the outsourcing hypothesis. Evidently, given the complexity of social systems, the findings from this research may be inherently difficult to generalize on a global or systemic level. As such, I conclude that further research is necessary to draw more decisive and generalizable conclusions regarding the interplay between income inequality and the platform economy.

This thesis examines how urban sustainability is constructed in the local implementation plans of Sustainable Development Goals, and whether a common discourse can be outlined of them. Cities and other local authorities are increasingly assuming the global responsibility for sustainable development actions alongside the nation-states. In this case, the commitment is demonstrated by voluntarily committing to monitoring progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals as part of a global city network. The potential reasons for cities to engage in such global city networks for sustainability are a disappointment to global cooperation efforts by nation-states, a possibility for peer learning, sharing new practices, and seeking branding possibilities. A sample of local commitments, Voluntary Local Reviews, are analysed in terms of their discursive construction. The analysis is based on the theoretical constructions of environmental policy discourses by Maarten Hajer and John Dryzek. By focusing on policy discourses, it becomes possible to understand how certain issues are organized into politics while others are organized out. The research focuses on nine Voluntary Local Reviews released in 2019 by Bristol, Buenos Aires, Hamamatsu City, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Oaxaca, Mannheim, New York City and Taipei City. The research shows that although cities have internalized the common principles of sustainable development, mainly deriving from the Agenda 2030, many of them are interpreted in various ways. The common framework by Voluntary Local Review offers only a vague guideline for the reviews which leads to cities rather resorting to copying the models from each other or developing their own. The inherent ambiguity that is connected to the term sustainable development is not addressed in any of the reviews, nor is an explicit definition of the used sustainability concept offered in any of them. This supports the notion that cities engage in the discursive construction of (urban) sustainable development with the reviews. Based on the reviews, the following Sustainable Development Goals are considered as most relevant for cities: goal 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), goal 8 (Decent work and economic growth), goal 10 (Reduced inequalities) and goal 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions). Cities also actively position themselves as global sustainability actors in their reviews. They position themselves as eager to bear a global responsibility and as most relevant actors for citizens, close to their everyday lives. Furthermore, they express an urge to inspire other cities nationally and globally to also join in reporting and commit to sharing their progress on global arenas, such as in the United Nation’s High-Level Political Forum. In their connection to national sustainable development reporting, broadly two approaches can be identified. In some situations, national reporting is not mentioned in a review at all and, consequently, its role is highlighted. This applies mostly in situations where national actors are not considered as active as city actors. In other situations, cities see their reporting as complementary to the national one and even consider cooperation as their duty thanks to shared values with national actors. Voluntary Local Review reporting offers an interesting case of voluntary bottom-up commitment by cities to engage in global sustainability spheres and its significance is likely to only increase in the future. Based on results, reporting on the local level requires a careful balancing between adapting goals and indicators to locally relevant form, on one hand, and ensuring that they are general enough to allow for comparison, on the other hand. As sustainable development and Sustainable Development Goals are characterized by ambiguity concerning their precise definitions, the current local reporting offers considerable judgement for cities in terms of what to include in the reporting. More precise frameworks and indicators would allow that also cities with lesser resources could engage in this sustainability reporting.

This thesis assesses the relative performance of different theories of money in the contemporary world economy. This thesis aims to qualify some of the claims of Modern Monetary Theory (hereafter MMT) by assessing how accurate the theory is as a description of money. Furthermore, it seeks to more precisely define ‘the state’ as a political entity in order to more fully qualify some of the constraints a state’s currency may face. Three theories of money are discussed: the commodity theory of money, the positioning theory of money, and the credit theory of money (the last of which is compatible with MMT). Three authors’ work are analyzed that each advocate for one of the three theories. These theories are assessed according to their relative concordance with historical evidence. It also assesses some of the consequences for economic analysis that emerge as a result of these different conceptions of money’s functions. A theory of the state postulated by Bob Jessop is adapted for identifying constraints on states’ currencies under the assumption that the credit theory of money (MMT) is accurate. The performative effects of the commodity theory of money and expectations of appropriate state behavior limit the fiscal policy space of states beyond that which is proposed by MMT. Further limiting the fiscal policy space of states is the global free-trade system, which imposes a structural need for some states to earn foreign currency reserves so that they can produce and procure essential economic goods. The thesis concludes by suggesting two paths forward to resolve these limitations. The first involves reframing public economic discussions by using MMT’s metaphors; the second suggests a return to discussions of managed global trade governance, for example John Maynard Keynes’ “Proposals for an International Clearing Union.”

Different studies have assessed, in the past, the potential effects of showcasing inclusiveness of different identities in popular media. Those research often about TV series and movies, have shown the media’s potential to “participate in the construction of the imagined community, the nation, and the membership of that nation” (Nikunen, 2013, p. 307). However, too few of those studies concern video games, even though the relevance of researching that form of media is growing incessantly along with its popularity. The recent events of Gamergate and other criticism in the last years also highlighted that need. In the last years, some members of the gaming industries, touched by the awareness-raising campaigns on the potential effects of representation – or lack thereof – in video games, have attempted to improve the inclusiveness in their designs. That is the case of the Blizzard team creating the first person shooter Overwatch. Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch’s game director, has been explicit about the developers intend to send a message of “inclusiveness and open mindedness” through their game design (Kaplan, 2017), which is why the game was selected for the present research. This thesis includes theory drawn from social sciences concerning representation, visuality, and media effect. As the subject of analysis is a video game, a part of the theory comes also from the field of game research: game analysis essentials, and the notion of the transformativity of games. This basis allows a short analysis of the game Overwatch in order to evaluate partially the inclusiveness and the type of representation observable in the game. How are players reflecting on and reacting to developers’ attempt at inclusive design in the video game Overwatch? To answer the question, in-depth interviews were led with active players of the game. The participants told their first reactions to the game, then expressed their thoughts about the game’s level of inclusiveness, the necessity of that inclusiveness, and the potential effects it could have on themselves or other players. Their answers were compiled and analysed. Although the scope of this work doesn’t allow definite conclusions, it has been found that the interviews are welcoming the inclusiveness in the game Overwatch. Some of them were even to see more diverse representation added to it in the future. Most of the players are however making the distinction between Overwatch and other genre of games, saying that such inclusiveness should not be required from the developers, but encouraged; the participants give value to the developers’ creative freedom and don’t want to see it hindered by pressure from critics. Regarding the potential effects of the game’s values on the players, the participants were mostly unsure about the possibility at first. Yet, towards the end of the interview, as they became more comfortable, some of them shared personal experiences of media effect from Overwatch. Those testimonies were especially interesting as they are comparable to Bandura’s social cognitive theory, which is discussed in the thesis (Bandura, 1977; Kirsch, 2010). The results of this study invite interested researchers to investigate further in that direction.