Lisa Sundstrom

This research investigates why high levels of discontent—particularly that stemming from socioeconomic inequality and malaise—have generated different responses and collective demands from a discontented citizenry in the Chile and Argentina. It will ask the following question: during times of socioeconomic crisis, what promotes radical demands for change within a country? The two case studies will be used to compare how organized mobilization in Chile eventually escalated to calls for constitutional change; whereas in Argentina, the discontent, strategies, and demands shared during one period of protest remained virtually the same three years later. The study will examine two years (2016, 2019) of significant protest instances for each of the countries under examination using a most similar systems research design.

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This thesis argues that the internet impacts social movement mobilization in multiple ways which diverge from the expectations of traditional theories, necessitating the revision of theories to account for these effects. I conduct a comparative case study analysis of gender-based violence and anti-abortion movements over time, as they emerged and resurged in different phases in the United States in the 1970s and 2010s respectively. Drawing on various data sources, from historical news articles to Twitter and Instagram posts, I qualitatively analyze the grievances, resources, political opportunities, and cultural frames which characterize each phase of each movement. The findings demonstrate that in the digital age, the internet may be used as an organizational resource, as a means of circumventing political constraints to mobilize in challenging political contexts, as a way for movements to appeal to broader audiences beyond traditional support bases, and as a tool for audiences to engage in the construction of cultural frames alongside professional movement leaders and organizations. These effects differ across movements, suggesting that future research could investigate under which conditions online tools can lead to particular effects.

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This study examines the complex issue of accountability in the context of the Fédération Internationale de Football Associations (FIFA), a global entity with a dual identity as both a non-profit organization (NPO) and a transnational corporation (TNC). The research focuses on FIFA's involvement in human rights malpractices and the challenges posed by its ambiguous nature to existing accountability mechanisms. The study investigates the interplay between FIFA's non-profit and for-profit aspects and their implications for holding the organization accountable for human rights violations. By analyzing case records collected by the Center for Sport and Human Rights and involving FIFA's human rights violations, this study utilizes a qualitative content analysis to demonstrate how FIFA presents itself as either an NPO or a TNC in different contexts. While FIFA's adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises signals progress in integrating human rights, the organization's dual nature complicates efforts to enforce accountability. This research underscores the need for tailored accountability mechanisms that address the unique challenges posed by non-state sporting actors (NSSAs) like FIFA, emphasizing the importance of defining clear criteria and adaptable approaches to ensure consistent human rights protection. The study contributes to discussions on the governance of international sports organizations and the development of effective accountability measures in the realm of human rights and global sports governance.

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India witnessed one of its most gruesome gang rapes, of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi on 16th December 2012, which ignited angry protests around the country as well as across the world. The barbarity of the sexual assault shook the conscience of the nation. Because the victim fought fearlessly for her life till the end, she was called Nirbhaya, the ‘fearless one’ in Hindi. The protests in turn, sparked a global media frenzy, drawing attention to sexual violence in India and exposing patriarchal attitudes prevalent in its culture. The Nirbhaya case is still being addressed in the mainstream press, a decade later, underlining the importance of the case in the discussion of sexual assault and women's security. In this thesis, I explore the issue of violence against women in India through the lens of the Nirbhaya rape case. The literature reviewed unveils India’s patriarchal structures and stigmatization of rape, as well as how its victims are treated. Further, I investigate if Nirbhaya’s case brought about significant change in Indian society, through a media content analysis of two renowned English newspapers using three time periods: before, immediately after, and five years after the rape case. The results indicate that Nirbhaya’s upheaval positively changed the media narrative regarding sexual violence to some extent. This is followed by a critical analysis of the Criminal Law Amendment (2013), a legal reform outcome of the case. The analysis helps uncover that a pattern of continued increase in violent crimes against women to this day can be attributed to state negligence, in addition to a lack of sufficient implementation of the amendment and similar laws.

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Shrinking civic space has become increasingly widespread worldwide since the mid-2000s, including in recognized liberal democracies. A component of shrinking civic space includes violent and non-violent state backlash against civil society organizations to restrict their activities. The Council of Europe, armed with the ratified European Convention of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, has been widely regarded as the most effective human rights system in the world. Thus, using the Council of Europe as a case study, this paper examines the CoE’s response to non-violent state backlash against NGOs. How is the Council of Europe responding to CoE member states increasing use of legal and administrative tools to restrict civil society freedoms? Are they acting to their full capacity? If not, why not?

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What explains variation in Spanish transitional justice policy over time? Following decades of silence on this issue, the Spanish state began to implement transitional justice policies in the early 2000s. But these efforts have gone through periods of significant progress and regress over the past 20 years that prevailing explanations in the transitional justice literature do not fully explain. In this thesis, I argue that the key variable that best explains the path of post-transitional justice policy in Spain is the political opportunity structure (POS). To test this argument, I employ process-tracing to determine whether positive transitional justice policy events align with a favorable POS and negative transitional justice policy events align with an unfavorable POS. I also test this hypothesis against two alternative hypotheses based on the literature, namely that transitional justice policy implementation is best explained by international pressure or civil society mobilization. This thesis ultimately concludes that the POS has been a critical factor in shaping Spanish transitional justice policy over time. Periods of policy progress have resulted from electoral outcomes that forced more lukewarm supporters of transitional justice to negotiate with smaller parties that supported transitional justice in order to form a government, or that disrupted existing political structures and provided new incentives for parties to compete on and emphasize transitional justice issues for votes. Reversals in transitional justice policy occurred when parties opposed to transitional justice policies controlled the legislature with an absolute majority.

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This thesis analyzes the effect energy insecurity has on perceptions of Russian interference in postcommunist Europe. It operationalizes energy insecurity as the level of energy dependence and hypothesizes a positive relationship between this and concerns of Russian interference: the more energy dependent a country is, the more it worries about Russian interference. The first section of this thesis explicates and defines energy insecurity as part of a trilemma wherein a state has unaffordable, unreliable, or undiversified energy prone to domestic and or foreign politicization. The second section tests energy insecurity’s effect on concerns over Russian interference by creating a new metric: ‘net dependence’. This metric goes beyond existing literature to consider energy production and exports in conjunction with Russian imports. However, contrary to the primary hypothesis, the second section finds that the relationship between energy dependence and fears over Russian interference is inverse: the more energy dependent a country is, the less it worries over Russian interference. Macro-level alternative variables find similar results. The third section examines three case studies: Poland, Romania, and Hungary. These cases show the importance of history, contemporary politics, and the legacy of the post-Soviet transition as key to perceptions of Russian threat and the severity of a state’s energy insecurity. Energy insecurity is more complex than previously considered and can be attenuated by domestic production or exacerbated by excessive exportation. Furthermore, its effect on concerns over Russian interference are contextually based.

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This thesis analyzes the contemporary case of Ukraine and its shifting posture towards the ethnic minority group, Crimean Tatars, by tracing the relationship of Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian Government prior to and following the 2014 Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. After annexation, Ukraine has pursued a policy of recognizing, embracing, and advocating for the indigenous rights of Crimean Tatars in the wake of Russia’s annexation of this strategically located peninsula and the lingering territorial dispute between the two countries. This is significant as it represents a distinct departure from how national governments have traditionally accommodated this ethnic minority with indigenous claims to the Crimean Peninsula. On 20 March 2014, Ukraine officially recognized Crimean Tatars’ indigenous claims to Crimea, with Ukraine only prioritizing these claims once Crimea was de facto controlled by Russia, suggests an instrumentalization of the Crimean Tatar’s indigenous claims. This thesis argues that the actions of Ukraine in this instance could be the first of more to come for small states hoping to perpetuate a particular conception of state sovereignty which relies on the compliances with international legal norms—now including respect for indigenous rights. This particular conception of sovereignty is most advantageous to small states, who often have fewer resources to secure their sovereignty in other realms.

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Food and Agriculture are two of the most direct factors in human and environment health. However, the global industrial food system benefits large agribusinesses, and skews the state – industry power dynamic in the favour of economic growth, not human or environmental wellbeing. Traditionally, agribusiness exercises power in three key ways – media and outreach, market power, and lobbying – impacting agricultural, food and nutrition policy. Therefore, in cases where federal policy changes, it can generally be understood as a response to a shift in one or more of these three factors. In early 2019 Health Canada released Canada’s Food Guide, the newest edition in over 70 years of nutrition advising. However, unlike prior versions which prioritized industry over nutrition, this new food guide is a more accurate reflection of both nutrition and environmental research. Most remarkable in this change, is that the power and interest of agribusiness in Canada does not appear to have changed considerably in order to initiate these changes. As such, five additional factors that collectively minimized the power given to agribusiness are explored - increased awareness of nutritional information, the rise of vegans and vegetarians, demographic and political economy trends, social pressure and bureaucratic changes, and consideration of diet co-benefits and costs. I conclude by highlighting that regardless of the reasons behind the changes to Canada’s Food Guide, without changes to agriculture policy to meaningfully increase the accessibility of the recommended food, the new recommendations are unlikely to impact Canadian eating habits.

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Ever since the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia handed down its final verdictin November 2017, there has been much speculation regarding the achievements and legacies leftbehind by the historic judicial institution. However, less attention has been given to the Tribunal’snormative influence. By outlining three of the ICTY’s normative legacies the study seeks toilluminate the Tribunal’s unique normative capacity. The ICTY’s role in the codification of thenorm against wartime sexual violence is further analyzed to explore how internationalorganizations such as the Tribunal can contribute to norm development and norm diffusion. Limitsto normative influences are revealed, which put into question whether the Tribunal has actuallyleft a lasting impact in the region that matters the most; Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.Analyzing the Tribunal’s normative capacity will shed light on the prospects and limits ofmandates for future international judicial institutions.

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The recent surge in literature on economic inequality in the United States has provided new insights into the political ramifications of growing economic stratification. This literature has also revealed particular methodological standards by which such inequality is measured and understood. In lieu of more robust, sociological conceptions of class, political scientists largely conceive of group-based economic inequality in terms of continuous proxy variables, such as income. This paper addresses the underlying logic and motivations of this practice, sometimes referred to as the ‘income paradigm.’ The paper is divided into two sections; in the first, prevailing income-based research strategies are evaluated in terms of their generic and specific advantages and disadvantages. I argue that income is a less productive measure in describing the nature of actual inequality than is frequently assumed, and suffers from problems of causal ambiguity in the explication of satisfying and comprehensive causal explanations. In the second section, I propose three alternative conceptualizations of class developed in the sociological tradition of class analysis. These class models, derived from Weberian, Marxist and contemporary empirical traditions, are advantageous over proxy-based standards because of their a priori theoretical robustness. I argue that political scientists should transgress the disciplinary boundaries which have implicitly prohibited the use of class-based methods.

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The concept of trauma has been playing an increasing role in contemporary culture and politics, and more nuanced understandings of this concept have begun to slowly influence conversations around identity and historical memory in the transitional justice literature. This thesis explores psychobiological, historical and cultural/social forms of trauma, considering the relationship between these forms of trauma and mainstay transitional justice mechanisms. It examines the differences that emerge in how civil society and government actors in Guatemala understand the concept of trauma and the bearing this has on the transitional justice mechanisms they view as necessary to address the country’s violent past. This data was gathered via eight semi-structured interviews in Guatemala with four members of civil society and four government actors and a critical narrative analysis was used to uncover the connections between participant conceptions of trauma and views of transitional justice mechanisms implemented throughout the country. Specifically, this thesis asks how participants understand trauma and to what extent this understanding informs their views of transitional justice in Guatemala. It identifies key differences between civil society and government conceptions of trauma and the way in which these conceptions inform their approaches to transitional justice. These differences serve to highlight the importance of actively including civil society in the design and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms.

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In 1981, Canada ratified the Convention of Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in what would be perceived as an attempt to create a more just and equal society for women. However, with the implementation of harsh neo-liberal policies that emphasize privatization and minimal government intervention, women in Canada, particularly those most disadvantaged, are facing human rights violations. The past decade has been especially damaging as Canada’s conservative government led by Stephen Harper made drastic funding cuts to women’s organizations and serious cutbacks to social services through austerity measures. These neo-liberal policies are not only incompatible with the CEDAW, but are in direct opposition to its mandate, and democratic values in general. I will outline the recommendations made by CEDAW to the State of Canada, and discuss the State’s blatant disregard towards the CEDAW and its principles of eliminating discrimination against women. I will describe the actions that the Canadian government, specifically the current conservative government, has taken to intentionally hinder the advancement of women’s rights. I will argue that that these violations are an attempt to suppress threats to the current politico-economic system, neo-liberalism, which, I will argue, is inherently discriminatory. I will further argue that, especially in light of its colonial past and neo-colonial present, Canada must support autonomous women’s rights movements and provide extensive social services if an effort to eliminate discrimination against women is to be made.

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The literature on Russian politics has devoted limited attention to the role of ideational factors in the development of the post-Soviet political system. The aim of this work is to bring ideology back in the discussion on the evolution of the regime under Vladimir Putin. This work argues that Putin’s regime has used ideology as a political tool to achieve two main goals: to foster consensus and to assure regime continuity beyond leadership change. Consensus was imposed around patriotism and through the figure of a super partes president. The emphasis on patriotic rhetoric allowed the Kremlin to gain control over the political spectrum and provided an ideational backing to the centralization of political power. Regime continuity was promoted by increasing the ideational capital of the presidential party – United Russia – in a threefold strategy: the formulation of “sovereign democracy,” the formalization of intra-party wings, and the adoption of “Russian conservatism” as an ideological label. This process to endow the party of power with an ideology marked a temporary decline in the regime’s personalist component and a permanent strengthening of its party element. Because ideology was formulated post-hoc to consolidate power, its coherence and persistence are subordinated to its utilitarian purpose. The result is an ideological product that sacrifices coherence for political expediency and discards certain ideological tenets when they fail to achieve their goal (sovereign democracy) or when they are no longer needed (Russian conservatism).

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Civil society development is one of the measures of the democratization process. Yet the examination of civil society is complicated due to varying understandings and approaches. This thesis suggests an analytical framework that enables us to investigate the existence of civil society space, its institutionalization, its actors, and the internalization of democratic values and norms. Using the framework advanced here, it examines Mongolian civil society, which is often described by scholars, politicians, and civil society practitioners as ‘vibrant’ and ‘strong’. The thesis concludes that while civil society space does exist in Mongolia, it is neither fully institutionalized nor respected by the state, by politicians, by business or by other actors. Moreover, democratic values and norms are not internalized because internalization is something that takes several generations to accomplish. The widespread reliance on informal networks undermines efforts to promote democratic values and norms as well as trust in democratic institutions. Mongolian civil society is therefore vulnerable.

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This thesis analyzes generational differences that create social and linguistic ‘disjunctures’ (Meek 2010) influencing revitalization ideologies among members of the Dene Tha First Nation of northern Alberta. Unlike many First Nations people in Canada, most Dene Tha adults still speak their language, Dene Dháh, the Dene language, fluently. Individual fluency among younger generations, however, varies as language shift to English has begun to affect the extent to which children learn and use Dene Dháh. Dene adults and Elders observe increasing disinterest among younger people in maintaining their heritage language and culture, and they often contrast these observations with their own experiences of learning about traditional customs and values. Nostalgia for the past, and romanticizing a “proper” Dene way of living and behaviour, is commonplace among older generations of the Dene Tha. I argue that, although young people are criticized for their disinterest in the Dene language and culture, their narratives, which I describe as ‘counter-narratives’ following McCarty et al. (2006), suggest deeply felt concerns about the future of their language and culture. In particular, youth are developing eclectic ways of blending traditional culture and contemporary practices that may not necessarily fit with “proper” Dene ways, as understood by Elders. Their ‘counter-narratives’ instead reveal youths’ interest in maintaining and ‘modernizing’ their own language and culture.

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For scholars of political change, the Arab Spring movements constitute a major world event with both obvious short-term consequences and more elusive long-term and diffusion effects. This thesis contributes to the literature on regime change and political dissent by modelling the conditions under which one key group of elites (academics) are most likely to take-up an anti-state platform in the wake of a key world event such as the Arab Spring. Ultimately, the herein proposed model hypothesizes the relationship between the likelihood of an academic dissent movement and three country-level indicators: (1) the level of legal protections for academics, (2) feelings of relative economic, social, and academic deprivation by university faculty, and (3) the social and scholarly prestige associated with the social sciences and humanities (SSaH) in comparison with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In addition to a literature review and formal model construction, the thesis includes a focused discussion of a mixed-methods approach to the study of academic dissent in non-democratic countries. Bringing such methods as Cost-Benefit Analysis, qualitative interviewing, J-Curve modelling, and ex-ante hypothesizing to bear on the study of academic dissent, opens a previously understudied area of inquiry to rigorous empirical testing.

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Civil society development is one of the measures of the democratization process. Yet the examination of civil society is complicated due to varying understandings and approaches. This thesis suggests an analytical framework that enables us to investigate the existence of civil society space, its institutionalization, its actors, and the internalization of democratic values and norms. Using the framework advanced here, it examines Mongolian civil society, which is often described by scholars, politicians, and civil society practitioners as ‘vibrant’ and ‘strong’. The thesis concludes that while civil society space does exist in Mongolia, it is neither fully institutionalized nor respected by the state, by politicians, by business or by other actors. Moreover, democratic values and norms are not internalized because internalization is something that takes several generations to accomplish. The widespread reliance on informal networks undermines efforts to promote democratic values and norms as well as trust in democratic institutions. Mongolian civil society is therefore vulnerable.

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Post-Communist Europe poses a theoretical puzzle for students of democracy. There is a large body of political science literature that argues that civil society is not only good for democracy but critical for democratic deepening. While civil society is generally regarded as an essential feature of stable democracy, twenty years after the collapse of communism, post-communist civil society is relatively weak. This thesis examines the relationship between civil society and democracy in post-communist Europe. Using the 2008 European Values Survey I conduct regression analysis to test whether or not there is a statistical link between relative differences in the strength of civil society and indicators of democracy at both the country and the individual level. I find no statistical link between civil society and democracy at the country level and found a relatively modest link between democratic values and membership in civil society organizations at the individual level. These results suggest that the link between civil society and democracy in post-communist Europe is relatively modest. The thesis concludes by conducting a case study of Poland where I explore the relationship between civil society and democracy in a more extensive manner.

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This thesis analyzes generational differences that create social and linguistic ‘disjunctures’ (Meek 2010) influencing revitalization ideologies among members of the Dene Tha First Nation of northern Alberta. Unlike many First Nations people in Canada, most Dene Tha adults still speak their language, Dene Dháh, the Dene language, fluently. Individual fluency among younger generations, however, varies as language shift to English has begun to affect the extent to which children learn and use Dene Dháh. Dene adults and Elders observe increasing disinterest among younger people in maintaining their heritage language and culture, and they often contrast these observations with their own experiences of learning about traditional customs and values. Nostalgia for the past, and romanticizing a “proper” Dene way of living and behaviour, is commonplace among older generations of the Dene Tha. I argue that, although young people are criticized for their disinterest in the Dene language and culture, their narratives, which I describe as ‘counter-narratives’ following McCarty et al. (2006), suggest deeply felt concerns about the future of their language and culture. In particular, youth are developing eclectic ways of blending traditional culture and contemporary practices that may not necessarily fit with “proper” Dene ways, as understood by Elders. Their ‘counter-narratives’ instead reveal youths’ interest in maintaining and ‘modernizing’ their own language and culture.

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