The violent clashes between farmers and herders in Nigeria have sharply intensified over the last couple of years. Not only has the number of clashes and casualties increased but the violence has also dramatically evolved, from spontaneous reactions and minor disputes to carefully planned attacks where militias eradicate whole villages. The predominant explanation is that the violence is caused by

This thesis examines what content contemporary national Swedish media attributes to the subject “immigrant”. Through a social constructivist perspective, the various conflicting and taken for granted perceptions articulated in the portraying of immigrants are outlined. With consideration to the current right-wing populist ethnonationalism that is sweeping across Europe and Sweden, the identified p

Democratic peace theory, or DPT, has in recent academic studies had its explanatory power and validity questioned and examined. One of the contenders against DPT is civil-military relations. This paper aimed to examine whether democratic peace and civil-military relations could explain conflict behavior and conflict escalation in militarized interstate disputes, as opposed to the common method of

This essay will handle the subject of how the municipality of Malmö along with its real estate company MKB construct a discourse on how the neighborhood of Augustenborg should be understood. The essay uses critical discourse analysis to understand how the discourse is constructed, and what social consequences this has. The structure of the discourse has been mapped out with the concepts of the voi

Social movements are a way for individuals to engage in environmental policy issues. In today's political climate, a great variety of movements have risen in as a result of great technological advantages. Social movements have adapted to societies technical advantages and started recruiting new members via viral movements instead. Viral movements have great power given its ability to reach out

This study has two purposes. The first one is to explain in what consists the originality of the Gilets jaunes movement. This is done by comparing it to four earlier French protest movements. It is found that the original feature of the movement is its lack of organization and refusal to take political sides. The second purpose of the study is to explain which societal factors acted as prerequisit

Since the introduction of the co-decision procedure in the European Union (EU), the Council of the EU and the European Parliament have become more interdependent in order to reach an agreement on a legislative file. The interdependence has led to a significant increase in the number of trilogues, which is problematic as these informal meetings are secluded and have no references to the treaties. D

Despite a relatively highly institutionalized and developed policy field, the EU environmental legislation suffers from a persistent implementation deficit. Although the challenges concern the supranational actors of the EU as well, the academic focus has been on the Member State level and in attempts explaining the challenges the national authorities face while implementing the EU environmental l

The phenomenon of political parties that fluctuate on various issues is nothing new in either Swedish or other countris’ politics. Why do parties change stance on different issues and how can we understand this? The aim of this paper is to create an understanding of why the Center party's leadership acted as they did during the government negotiations of 2018/2019. The purpose of this essay is

This thesis aims to address the military’s role in democratization studies by identifying the variable that determines whether the military’s role in the transition is successful or unsuccessful. The study has been done through a comparative study by most similar case design, by studying Benin and Nigeria. By looking at previous literature and thus structuring the thesis around their theories, the

Energy transition towards renewable energy resources is seen as a major way of tackling the challenges of climate change and limited fossil fuel resources. And while developed countries are advancing on this path, the importance of such transition is growing in developing countries, as these countries are largely expanding their greenhouse gas contributions due to the increasing demand on energy s

Twitter's open network structure enables us to quickly and easily share our political thoughts and views. But how well does social media provide an arena for a rich political conversation? The aim of this thesis is to provide knowledge about the digitized political dialogue, citizens' abilities to influence through public discussion and the conditions Twitter as a platform provides for an

Since the 1990s a great deal of literature has been written predicting the behaviour of right-wing populists, explaining their policies and ideology but until Brexit, there had been no such clear victory for right-wing populist policies. Drawing from the current state of the art, data from the national and European electoral party manifestos as well as Eurobarometer survey data from France, German

Five years after the “eurosceptic earthquake” of 2014, the anti-EU far-right is set to make further gains in the upcoming elections for the European Parliament. Eurosceptic MEPs have been accused of not participating in the Parliament's legislative work, which, if so is the case, could damage the future legitimacy of the European Parliament as a democratic institution. This thesis has studied

Climate change – considered as the most acute risk to our planet – is mostly fuelled by the oper-ations of influential corporates who are financially supported by financial institutions, which have traditionally specialised on profit-maximisation and neglected climate risks in investment processes. However, considering economy’s increasing financialisation and the growing science behind the financ

Emphasis of this thesis is to understand how historical and political myths can be used as a weapon in ethnopolitical conflicts. In order to examine this, the conflict between ethnic Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in the Bosnian war is used as an example, where the rhetoric’s of the Serbian aggressors are analysed through the methodology of an idea analysis. Through this analysis, the historical myth o

This thesis purpose aims to examine if organizational reforms, connected to the concept of New Public Management, have led to quality differences in elderly care at the sub-national level. Theories that form the basis of the research problem are based on information problems and rationality linked to economic aspects. The hypothesis suggests that profit-making actors overlook the quality of welfar

The Centre Party is one of the oldest political parties in Sweden that is still represented in the Swedish parliament. They are also currently the only party that originally developed from interest groups in the countryside. This paper focuses on the Centre Party’s church politics. The purpose of the paper is to find out how this agrarian party has shifted its’ policies regarding their church poli

On July 2018, for the first time in modern Mexican history, a leftist candidate won the presidential elections in Mexico. With large promises on the eradication of corruption and ending social injustice, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his party secured both the presidency and both chambers of the Mexican Congress. This paper inquires into to what extent a president belonging to the political left

This thesis wishes to contribute to identifying potential discrepancies between the way the European Commission perceives the role of the EU within the international arena and the way the EU’s foreign policy materializes. To do so, it analyzes the reports of the European Commission on the implementation of the strongly criticized EU-Turkey Refugee Agreement. The analysis identifies several inconsi