The sectarian civil war in Syria is one of the most entrenched civil wars in contemporary time and has proven hard to resolute, despite various attempts by international actors. A power-sharing system of consociationalism has often been proposed, given its ability to divide the power between sectarian groups and allocate stability within a political system. Through discourse analysis, this thesis

This thesis explores if, and how, what is written in the newspaper can be used to forecast macroeconomic variables such as inflation, unemployment and consumption. A large data set consisting of articles from the largest Swedish business newspaper is transformed using different methods from the Natural Language Processing field. The focus lies on topic modelling by Latent Dirichlet Allocation as w

The aim of this thesis was to analyse and compare how two Swedish parliamentary parties, the Left Party and the Sweden Democrats, have discursively problematized and depicted narcotics through the parties' political motions between the years 2010/11 to 2020/21. This was achieved by collecting all political motions regarding narcotics from each political party during this time span and finally

Att komma ut är något som varje homosexuell person behöver ta ställning till. Beslutet att komma ut upplevs av många som svårt och skrämmande. Många homosexuella personer är oroliga eller rädda för reaktionerna som kan följa när de kommer ut. Detta eftersom vi lever i ett samhälle där heterosexualitet ännu betraktas som norm för människors sexuella läggning. Denna studie syftar att ur ett sociolog

The purpose of this study was to try to understand what sort of impact Swedish rap-music and rap-artists have on youth behavior and identity from the Swedish suburbs Seved and Rosengård. Also, whether it influences subcultural youth groups. The hip hop-culture in Sweden has in recent years had lots of media coverage since the artists have been involved in gang activity and a lot of them have been

For many years, the United States’ inability to provide basic universal healthcare has been a mystery. Why does the richest country in the world not have the best healthcare and the best health outcomes? This study examines the disposition of US opposition to publicly funded healthcare. It is a qualitative case study comprised of articles from the right-wing media outlet Breitbart News during the

What drives change and continuity in welfare states? This master thesis contributes to the debate by examining the German cash-benefit “Kosten der Unterkunft und Heizung”. This cash-benefit is a component of the means-tested unemployment benefit II in Germany which was introduced by the Hartz-IV-Reform in 2005. 16 years later the case “Kosten der Unterkunft und Heizung” has undergone no major refo

Power reduction is becoming a critical design requirement for ASIC/SOC designers. Reducing both dynamic and leakage power is essential to meet power budgets for portable devices as well as to ensure that these ASICs meet their packaging and cooling costs. In addition, the power of an ASIC has a significant impact on its reliability and manufacturing yield. Also, low-power has become a leading des

There is a consensus in circles of academia and policy that the term ‘local’ is used to differentiate food systems that are not of a global or national scale. While many have looked to define local in specific regional settings and contexts, little has been done to understand the different discourses of local in different sectors of the food & beverage (F&B) industry. This thesis investiga

Slums are not sustainable, not healthy nor worthy places to live. But forcing the poor people out of the cities is equally unsustainable. In cities all over the world - in slums, favelas and shanty towns – the poor has started solving their housing problems in self built neighborhoods. In Mumbai, Dharavi is one of the oldest parts of the city, yet on of the most well-known and notorious slums in t

This thesis explores contradictions, inadequacies, and competing formulations within Giovanni Arrighi’s theory of systemic cycles of accumulation (SCAs) as a Kuhnian scientific paradigm. This has been carried out through a comparative study on how the theory has been applied by scholars on the issue of the prospective hegemonic rise of China in the contemporary setting. The study finds that there

The survival of our planet is in crisis, and it is affecting society at large. People recognise companies have significantly contributed to the problem, and stakeholders expect and demand businesses to do better. Nowadays, there are strong arguments in sustainability for engaging with as many employees as possible to find novel and innovative solutions more quickly. This study investigated how a p

Alt-Lit is a literary movement which first sprung up in The U.S in the middle of the first decade of the second millennia. Vaguely defined and led by aspiring writers belonging to the Y-Generation, also known as millennials, its presence and influence has become increasingly apparent. These are the first writers to use the internet, not only as a platform, but as an aesthetic and linguistic inspir

The sea level is rising and putting infrastructure and people living by the coast at risk, yet there is a global trend of waterfront redevelopment, where cities and municipalities choose to turn old harbors into attractive housing and offices despite the fact that this increases their vulnerability to flooding. The aim of this paper is to understand why Swedish municipalities decide to redevelop o

How do governments allocate scarce resources in the face of political survival? Do they allocate according to social equity or welfare criteria, or do political concerns play a role? Over the course of three decades, the literature on distributive politics documented numerous cases where governments distributed goods and services strategically for electoral gains. By building on the theories of di

This essay studies the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) employed by governments and other authorities in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden throughout the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The NPIs are accounted for and coded using a policy instrument framework by Evert Vedung. Moreover, are the NPI selections of the countries’ politicians and authorities explained through explorative

The Nordic states’ approaches to security have been painted out as differentiated because of their alliance affiliations. However, in the light of a changing security environment and increasing international collaboration on security issues, there is a need to re-evaluate the Nordic context and alliance-state relations in the construction of security. In this thesis, the influences of security com