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This paper conducts an analysis of peace agreements that constituted an end to civil conflict, with a specific focus on consociational conflict management in divides societies. Drawing on Arend Lijphart’s theory of consociationalism, and Anna Jastad’s two dimensions (inclusion and decentralization), this study employs a qualitative comparative text analysis of three peace agreements. These are the
When Sweden entered NATO in 2024, 200 years of alliance-freedom was upheaved. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on any of the allied states is to be considered an attack against them all, which means that Swedish soldiers may be deployed in combat on foreign soil. Given that the Swedish Armed Forces have previously only been concerned with protecting their own borders, t
The Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th 2023 constituted an event with great impact on both Israel and the Middle East, and much focus has been given to its effects in terms of the war in Gaza. Simultaneously, settlements in the West Bank have risen to unprecedented levels, and have increasingly been given explicit governmental support. Furthermore, official Israeli sovereignty over the West Ban
The Arctic Council has long been portrayed as an arena for stable and depoliticized cooperation, often referred to as exemplifying the idea of Arctic exceptionalism. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the following pause in cooperation, did however raise questions about the resilience of the cooperation in the council. This paper presents a discourse analysis of ministerial meeti
The peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the most extensive and complex missions ever carried out by the United Nations. Amongst the operational adaptation, one challenge has remained consistent; the crisis of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) committed by UN peacekeepers against the very civilians they are mandated to protect. This essay aims to explain how t
Den här studien undersöker i vilken utsträckning som Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) bidrog till att göra genus centralt i fredsprocessen i Nordirland under slutet av 1990-talet, samt hur teorin gender centrality av Fionnuala Ní Aoláin kan interpreta fallet. Utgångspunkten i studien är kvinnors historiska exkludering från den Nordirländska politiken och NIWC:s unika roll som kvinnor i fr
The Concept Soft Power was coined toward the end of the Cold War in order to explain the power of attraction, as opposed to coercion. Through the lens of Soft Power, the Beatles and Coca-Cola may be as important as tanks and sanctions in achieving foreign policy goals. Generally, periods in history when the United States cooperates with its allies and prioritises diplomacy over unilateral military
This thesis examines how Qatar has strategically employed cultural soft power to position itself as a functional bridge between the Arab world and the West. Despite its autocratic system, Qatar has emerged as a key diplomatic mediator, maintaining relations with both Western states and their regional adversaries. Drawing on Joseph Nye’s theory of soft power and Jaroslaw Jura’s model of recipient r
The emergence of alternative actors in peacebuilding has raised questions about the legitimacy of the United Nations in contemporary peacebuilding. This essay examines: Did the emergence of the Astana Process Challenge the Legitimacy of UN Peacebuilding? Drawing on a qualitative discourse analysis, the study analyzes Syria's and France's statements made to the UN Security Council from 2012
During the last couple of years, an explosion in the use of drones during armed conflict has occurred. Drones are said to be game changers that will revolutionize warfare in a broad variety of ways. One such way is evening out power imbalances between asymmetric actors by giving the weaker actor a cheap but potent weapon and access to the sky. This study examines this claim by comparing two non-st
Drawing on securitization theory from the Copenhagen School, this paper examines how Boko Haram and the farmer-herder conflict in Nigeria have been discursively framed by Nigerian political leadership during the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo (2015–2023). This paper offers a qualitative discourse analysis of public speeches and the words chosen regard
The territorial defeat of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq in 2019 marked a turning point in the country’s security and political order, foregrounding the challenge of integrating powerful Shia militias into formal politics while preserving state authority and democratic processes. This study examines why some militias have been more successful than others in translating wartime influence into elect
This essay discusses the notion of populist leaders using securitization to describe domestic political movements. The analysis consists of all speeches, remarks and interviews made by Trump one month after the first George Floyd protest in 2020, and one month after the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 respectively. By using the securitization theory, especially focusing on existential t
This study examines whether state legitimacy can contribute to peace by analyzing how legitimacy has impacted levels of negative peace in Somalia and Somaliland since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991. Despite their similar historical cultural and social societal foundations, the two entities have followed remarking different political trajectories, with Somaliland experiencing significantl
This paper analyses 56 speeches, statements and press releases made by the European Commission 3 months before and 3 months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. By utilising a framework that combines theories of sustainability and securitisation, as well as building on existing literature about the European Green Deal and REPowerEU, this essay examines how the invasion affected the balance bet
Soil microorganisms regulate carbon (C) cycling, and their growth and respiration are strongly dependent on temperature. Yet it remains unclear how warming alters microbial thermal traits, community structure, and the balance between microbial respiration and growth, particularly in subtropical ecosystems where high temperatures coincide with low soil moisture, potentially constraining microbial a
Gliomas that express the mutated isoforms of isocitrate dehydrogenase 1/2 (IDH1/2) have better prognosis than wild-type (wt) IDH1/2 gliomas. However, how these mutant (mut) proteins affect the tumor microenvironment is still a pending question. Here, we describe that the transcription of microtubule-associated protein TAU (MAPT), a gene that has been classically associated with neurodegenerative d
Plants can evolve rapidly after pollinator changes, but the response of different floral traits to novel selection can vary. Floral morphology is often expected to show high integration to maintain pollination accuracy, while nectar traits can be more environmentally sensitive. The relative role of genetic correlations and phenotypic plasticity (PP) in floral evolution remains unclear, particularl
Spherical motion is a special case of camera motion where the camera moves on the imaginary surface of a sphere with the optical axis normal to the surface. Common sources of spherical motion are a person capturing a stereo panorama with a phone held in an outstretched hand, or a hemi-spherical camera rig used for multi-view scene capture. However, traditional structure-from-motion pipelines tend
Lines and points are complementary local features, whose combination has proven effective for applications such as SLAM and Structure-from-Motion. The backbone of these pipelines are the local feature matchers, establishing correspondences across images. Traditionally, point and line matching have been treated as independent tasks. Recently, GlueStick proposed a GNN-based network that simultane-ou
