Demokraatia ja valitsemise õppekava magistritööd – Master´s theses

Selle kollektsiooni püsiv URIhttps://hdl.handle.net/10062/56887

Sirvi

Nüüd näidatakse 1 - 20 51

Analysis of two models of secondary education delivery and their impact on Roma integration in Slovakia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2020) Lencsésová, Klaudia; Muhhina, Kristina, juhendaja; Petsinis, Vassilis, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The submitted research project is focused on the analysis of two models of secondary education delivery and their impact on socio-cultural integration of Roma students in Slovakia. To improve the educational situation of Roma minority in Slovakia, several measures and strategies have been implemented by public authorities. The most current national strategy is based on the establishment of so-called elocated branches of public secondary schools that are detached schools situated near marginalized Roma communities. Their aim is to make an easier access to secondary education for Roma students as they are located in the place of Roma residence. However, along with a publicly-led model of secondary education delivery, several private providers have also decided to improve the educational situation of Roma minority. These private providers have set up private secondary schools, which call for the creation of a more inclusive curriculum and learning process compared to mainstream secondary schools. The main aim of this research is to compare and contrast how these two models of secondary education delivery impact on Roma socio-cultural integration as this aspect has not been analysed yet. The study contributes to fill the research gap in understanding of how two different secondary education delivery models, which have been established with the aim to educate Roma, influence their social and cultural integration within the learning process and a broader social community as well. Additionally, the research findings may have useful applications in other countries facing the similar educational issues related to Roma minority.
The anti-vaccination movement: framing on Latvian language Facebook
(Tartu Ülikool, 2020) McGilvray, Wioletta Katarzyna; Uba, Katrin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Anti-vaccination movements promote vaccine hesitancy, a significant global threat to public health. In Latvia vaccine hesitancy is of great concern with fears being raised on maintaining vaccination rates at the level needed for herd immunity. It is therefore crucial to understand the anti-vaccination movement, and the concerns of its members, in Latvia, to inform efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy. This thesis uses digital ethnography and frame analysis to study a Latvian anti-vaccination movement Facebook page. The aim was to understand how the arguments of the movement are framed, and compares these with framing identified in other studies, in order to identify if there are any local specificities to the Latvian case. It is found that though the framing is broadly similar there is a greater emphasis on the lack of trust the movement have in the medical system and state in Latvia. This framing also elicits a greater response from those who engage with the movement. This study can be used to inform public health campaigns in Latvia, especially in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This study also shows the potential for frame analysis and social media studies as a means of researching the anti-vaccination movement.
Assessing the web-portal type of eGovernment structures and measuring their socio-economic impact on the French Metropolitan Park
(Tartu Ülikool, 2018) Chavanne, Kevin; Solvak, Mihkel, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The use of eGovernment structures is becoming increasingly popular among public agencies due to the democratization of the Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs). Its application and impact at the public metropolitan level are however not widely studied, especially in France where the concept of the metropolis is relatively new. This research aims at assessing the degree of eGovernment development in the French Metropolitan Park, by developing an eGovernment Development Score (eGDS) focused on web-portal analysis while contributing to the comprehension of the relation between the quality of eGovernment structures and the economic development based upon a set of pre-selected economic indicators. The development of the eGDS illustrated disparities in term of eGovernment development between the metropolises studied, some group of cases performed better than others, indicating room for improvement. To better understand the impact of eGovernment on the economic indicators selected, a statistical analysis has been conducted. While the application of the statistical analysis pointed at several degrees of correlation and some causal relationships between the variables and eGDS, it weakly supports the claims of the existing literature, indicating that further investigations shall be conducted. The embryonic stage of the eGovernment structure of French metropolises, explains the mild causality between the development of the eGovernment structure and the economic variables selected. Preliminary relationships have however been observed between the eGDS and the youth unemployment rate, the dynamism for employment and the entrepreneurship satisfaction. This work provides a theoretical and empirical basis for future research willing to understand the evolution of the electronic government structure of the French Metropolitan Park.
The availability of the housing program for internally displaced people in Ukraine: barriers and facilitators
(Tartu Ülikool, 2021) Abbasova, Samira; Kaldur, Kristjan, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The purpose of this thesis is to research a housing program for internally displaced per-sons (IDPs) in Ukraine and identify factors hindering its successful implementation (suc-cess in this thesis is defined as high rates of participation). Housing policy is important to be researched because it has a crucial influence on the ability of IDPs to adapt to a new community. Access to adequate and affordable housing is the first step in their pro-cess of resettlement and integration. The Affordable Housing Program (AHP) of Ukraine was designed according to the pref-erences of IDPs and provided them with funding for housing purchase since 2017, but the program lacked participants. To find out why, there was, firstly, a detailed analysis of program design and its’ requirements conducted. After that, 24 Ukrainian IDPs were interviewed including AHP participants and the control group of other IDPs. The re-search supported the hypotheses of the thesis and concluded that the main factors con-tributing to hindering the program are (hypothesis 1) administrative issues with the pro-cedure (the most important of them being the long waiting queue for the assistance) and (hypothesis 2) the high financial requirements of the program, which were difficult to be met by participants. Two other hypotheses of the research were not supported. The first one stated that the IDPs do not participate in AHP because of the lack of knowledge about the program, when in actuality they were well-informed about assistance programs. The other stated that IDPs have no need of private ownership of housing, but the interviewees expressed an aspiration to purchase housing. Despite those aspirations, IDPs were rather limited in their financial abilities to purchase housing, even with AHP assistance. Thus, it was concluded that the state should provide displaced people with different kinds of programs helping not only with purchase, but also giving options of affordable temporary accommodation. Otherwise, the general in-tegration of IDPs into a new community (as well as their employment, political partici-pation, getting healthcare, education and other services) will be hindered by the absence of such a primary need as housing.
Between homeland and fatherland: Russian identity in Estonia and Latvia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Ulasevich, Semen; Kallas, Kristina, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The Brexit effect: the UK citizens’ attitudes in the years following the referendum
(Tartu Ülikool, 2021) Churkina, Yelyzaveta; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
According to the rational choice theory, political parties seek to maximise their utility in gaining extensive support of the electorate. Hence, after the Brexit referendum 2016, the Conservative party was supposed to strategically encompass Eurosceptical policies - which correspond to the electorate’s demand - and secure its capacity to cope with the Brexit negotiations and delivering the withdrawal. In parallel, the Labour party was heavily criticised for the party leader’s vague position on the issue, insufficient and lacklustre work, and poor criticism of the Conservatives. Therefore, there is an assumption that the issue of Brexit caused aligning the two major political parties with the electorate in the context of the withdrawal. This Master’s thesis examines how the two major parties reacted to and aligned with the voters’ political demands to secure the state’s economy, control the influx of immigrants, and reform the UK-EU relations in light of Brexit. Three waves of European Social Survey data sets were selected, which made it possible to track how the two parties started encompassing the European issues in the context of the Brexit negotiations. In the logistic regression models built for 2012, 2016, and 2018, the increasing inter-parties gap, i.e. polarisation was revealed, concerning the key policy dimensions linked to the Brexit process. Over the timespan, the differentiation has become much clearer, meaning that the Conservative party - by securing its position as the party delivering Brexit - responded to the political requests of a concrete segment of the electorate demanding to “Get Brexit Done”. In opposite, the Labour party did attract voters (in the aftermath) with a lower level of economic satisfaction and rather positive attitudes towards immigrants and European integration.
COVID 19… 84? The stringency of responses to COVID-19 across the world
(Tartu Ülikool, 2021) Romanov, Bogdan; Solvak, Mihkel, juhendaja; Kabanov, Yury, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
In December 2019, the world heard about the COVID-19 virus for the first time. It has been almost two years since the date, yet political science and public policy disciplines cannot predict or explain the stringency level of introduced anti-coronavirus measurements. This MA thesis strives to fill in the lacuna from both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. For the former aspect, the paper deconstructs the process of COVID-19 policymaking on the basis of “policy diffusion” theory by Berry and Berry (2006) and other complementary theories (i.e., “external shock”, “state capacity”, “diffusion of innovations” theories). Such a complex framework allowed the paper to unpack every element of “policy diffusion” theory and, thus, produce a more detailed description of principles within the decision-making procedure. The theory computed thirteen hypotheses, extrapolated on 185 countries in the sample, which were tested in a large-N quantitative empirical analysis via the visualisations, correlations, the OLS regressions, and Bayesian Network methods. The analysis results are the following: the salience of the coronavirus crisis (number of cases/deaths; Cases Per Capita; Case Fatality Rate) is the primary explanatory variable for the high level of stringency embedded in the policy response. At the same time, as specified in the literature, the autocracies do apply more stringent policies; the malfunctioning accountability mechanism might explain this. What is more vital in terms of policy recommendations is that sufficient healthcare capacities (i.e., the number of hospital beds and healthcare expenditures) might mitigate the side-effects of the coronavirus, thus states introduce more lenient anti-COVID-19 policies. Additionally, the population density, institutional trust, and state’s economic support have a positive association with the stringency. Apart from testing the connections between the variables, the paper has also left some clues for the following research, for instance, there is a regional pattern in terms of COVID-19 responses: some regional units might be more stringent than others.
Critical review of the electoral reform of 2006 in Peru: the case of the electoral fines as a perverse incentive
(Tartu Ülikool, 2019) Barrientos, Felipe; Pettai, Vello, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The main purpose of this work is to question the utility of public policies and norms adopted by the state to promote participation in elections, in this case fines as an incentive to increase voter turnout. Considering the fine as a norm that affects the economy of people, this thesis seeks to lay out if fines affect the population in different ways according to their social class. To this end, the case of Perú -- a country with mandatory voting and an electoral fine -- is analyzed. In 2006, the government carried out an electoral reform, which ultimately divided counties in the country into three categories: nonpoor, poor, and extremely poor. This public reform established that with a higher level of poverty, lower fines are imposed. In this regard, a critical analysis of this reform is made, hypothesizing that reducing the fine would affect the participation of the poorest areas more significantly than the non-poor areas. On the other hand, certain authors point out that compulsory voting systems encourage people to make an uninformed vote. In this context, Perú is among the countries with the highest invalid voting rate in the world. Thus, within a trend of low levels of participation, the electoral behavior of those who previously voted to avoid the fine evolves. By decreasing the incentives to vote, will those really interested who show up at the polls? The second axis of this thesis will be tested through the hypothesis that reducing the amount of the fine will decrease the percentage of people that mark an invalid vote, in a country with compulsory vote such as Perú.
Democracy, economy and happiness in post-Soviet States (1995-2014)
(Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Dimitrova, Lyubomira; Ehin, Piret, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Defining and measuring happiness has been a major topic for many generations of scholars. The contemporary discussion tackles upon the main predictors of happiness and their influence on the subject. This paper focuses on the influence of democracy and economy towards happiness, using the fifteen post- Soviet countries as cases. The data for the research has been collected from 1995 to 2014 and has been analyzed both on aggregate and individual level. The results show that on individual level both the economic status and the satisfaction with democracy have significant influence towards happiness. However, on aggregate level the income inequality appears to be the only predictor of happiness in both cases where the democracy factor is controlled for or not.
The determinants of legislative speechmaking on salient issues: the analysis of parliamentary debates on Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement using structural topic models
(Tartu Ülikool, 2020) Goriunov, Artem; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Do parties and voters reward parliamentary behavior? Evidence from Estonia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2020) Lupacheva, Tatiana; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
While a wide range of literature has discussed how institutional incentives account for variation in parliamentary behavior of members of parliament (MPs), what is less clear is to what extent the behavioral strategies are eventually effective for goal-seeking purposes. The thesis addresses this puzzle by examining electoral consequences of parliamentary behavior of legislators. Specifically, it looks at whether the level of parliamentary activism of MPs affects their consequent performance at candidate nomination process, defined as running for the same party and as ranking on party lists, and at electoral stage, defined as personal vote and as gaining legislative seat. Statistical analysis is applied to the data from the 2015 and 2019 legislative elections and preceding parliamentary terms in the Republic of Estonia. The empirical results show that parties and voters reward more active behavior, although the extent varies across the types of parliamentary activities and the two examined elections. These signs of parties’ and voters’ retrospective evaluation of parliamentary work have implications for understanding the mechanisms of delegation and accountability in representative democracies.
Does presidentialism breed dictatorship - the case of Turkey and the Erdogan regime
(Tartu Ülikool, 2018) Mehdizade, Saleh; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis inquires into presidentialism and its compatibility with democracy. Despite its poor record of achieving sustainable democracy, it is still considered a democratic form of government. Presidentialism is criticized in various ways. Problems arise due to its intrinsic institutional design or due to the political environment where presidentialism is applied. This thesis discusses presidentialism in both ways. Presidentialism and its intrinsic problems and the political environment, the case of Turkey where it is going to be applied. The aim of the thesis is to examine the presidential system and its possible effect on governmental system in Turkey. Whether Turkey will manage to protect its fragile democratic institutions or fall into dictatorship is the main question of this thesis. The thesis also includes the measurement of presidential power to give a comprehensive view on the nature of the presidential system in Turkey. The examination of the constitutional amendment and the Turkish party system reveals that the new system seems likely does not have the necessary institutional tools to provide sustainable democracy.
Economic voting in the European Union: the impact of the EU economic integration index
(Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Nikolov, Adrian; Solvak, Mihkel, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Economic voting has long been a popular theory, explaining voting behavior; its application to multilevel governance structures however is not widely studied. This research takes the EU as an example of multi-layered governance structure with varying democratic practices, and applies macro-level economic voting models to a sample of 141 elections in the 28 EU member states for the 1990-2016 period. In order to assess the impact of the EU on the economic voting phenomenon, a synthetic index of European economic integration was created, based on an existing methodology. The application of regression analysis on key macroeconomic factors on the support for the incumbent prime-ministerial party found that the macro-level economic voting hypothesis holds true for a number of predictors, including the growth of gross domestic product, income inequality and the effective number of parties. In the same time, the interactions with the integration index did not lead, as hypothesized, to the complete disappearance of economic effects on the vote, so it could not be claimed with certainty that European integration disqualifies the economic considerations of voters in the EU member-states.
The effect of voting advice applications on Estonian voters' voting behaviour
(Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Ivask, Pille; Solvak, Mihkel, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
In the age of digitalisation and information overflow, it might be difficult for people to decide which information to consume and trust. However, next to all of that, we still have to make important decisions and one of them taking part in elections. In recent years, Voting Advice Applications or VAAs, as they are usually abbreviated, have become increasingly popular among voters in many countries. It is not an exaggeration to say that they are now the real part of how a voter makes his or her voting decision. The typical reason for this tends to be the fact that using VAA is rational for a voter: s/he gets the information from one place, and what is even more important, based on his or her opinions on certain matters, the program matches and also compares voter’s views to the ones of political party or candidate. Yet, quite little is known about the impact of VAAs. The aim of my master thesis is to contribute to the investigation of VAAs and have a look at their impact on Estonian voters’ voting behaviour. To do so, I will be using two datasets: panel data from European Parliament elections in 2014 and survey data on Estonian national elections in 2015. It is worth noting that in Estonia’s case panel data has not studied before in order to see the possible effect of VAAs on voting behaviour. I will pose three questions in my thesis: how do VAAs influence voting turnout, how do they change voter’s choice set, and finally, if VAAs have any effect on final vote choice. From statistical point of view, the results of my analysis are mostly insignificant. Leaving this aside, I found that based on those two datasets VAAs act more like a control mechanism: those people who already have decided to go to vote also tend to use VAA, also there is mostly no change in their choice set. One reason for this can be found from so called bottleneck theory – people who are more exposed to information, internet usage and different possibilities are therefore also less affected by VAA as it is one competing information source. From the other hand, those people, who are more likely to be affected by VAA, are not exposed to it and therefore I could not see effect of it on voting behaviour. In terms of final vote choice, I noticed that those people who used VAA were also more likely to change their final vote choice. However, as it was statistically insignificant, I cannot say that it translates to the whole population.
Effects of semi-presidentialism on party system institutionalization: does the shift to premier-presidentialism increase party system institutionalization?
(Tartu Ülikool, 2018) Pakatsoshvili, Julieta; Pettai, Vello, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Party system institutionalization has been extensively studied in the political science scholarship, however semi-presidentialism which saw the resurgence of interest among transitional countries, and as a result also in academia at the end of the 1990s, remains loosely treated in the relevant literature. Even the studies which include semipresidentialism as a regime type, tend to overlook the significant institutional differences within semi-presidentialism. The aim of the current paper is to contribute to the understanding of party systems institutionalization in semi-presidential countries by discriminating between two sub-types within the regime which create distinct institutional arrangements, systems of accountability, and incentives for the parties involved in this system. Underlying assumption behind this research is that the shift from president-parliamentary to the premier-presidential system produces increased institutionalization in party systems, based on the more individual-centric design of the first sub-type and the more partyoriented premier-presidential system in the second. By mapping out the differences within the semi-presidential regime the paper also tries to refine the existing measurement of the party system institutionalization, in order to better account for the systematic character of interactions between parties in this regime. In order to test the hypothesis five countries which underwent the shift from presidentparliamentarism to premier-presidneitalism are examined in this study. In terms of research design, the case selection employed here will permit a study of the effects of regime type on party system institutionalization, since all five cases had underdeveloped party systems at a time of constitutional amendment that brought semi-presidentialism. The results largely support the hypothesis, four of five cases showed increased levels of PSI after the shift to premier-presidentialism, while one case deviated. Based on the empirical results, conclusion is drawn that under-institutionalized party systems under president-parliamentarism, will improve their performance if they switch to the more parti-centric system.
The effects of state support on NGO sustainability in Azerbaijan
(Tartu Ülikool, 2020) Ahmadov, Tokay; Uba, Katrin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Sustainable NGOs fill the gap left by national governments in society. They address social problems that the state cannot, foster dialogue and cooperation among citizens and of the citizens with the state, and boost bridging social capital necessary for social development. For achieving social mission, NGOs may enjoy either negligible or greater state support. In both cases, however, NGOs get affected by states that seek to reach their constituencies. In this sense, states shape sustainability of civil society organizations through legal environment and financial support. This thesis investigated the effects of state support on local NGOs in Azerbaijan. It hypothesized that local NGOs are prone to be less sustainable since the NGO laws are not enough favorable in this country. The study results supported the hypothesis but further clarified the condition. The research found out that among some other minor NGO operational impediments imposed by the state, the legal environment hinders broader diversification of sources of NGO income and makes state financial support be the main source in town. Therefore, the state financial support itself does not impede sustainability of local NGOs. Although 6 out of 8 studied local NGOs are in good standing, the current legal environment limits NGOs’ opportunity to ensure their greater financial sustainability in society. Such a condition leads to deterioration of sustainability of local NGOs in general.
Elite mythmaking on the run: the case of World War Two narrative in modern Ukraine
(Tartu Ülikool, 2017) Nekoliak, Andrii; Pääbo, Heiko, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The thesis inquires into governmental memory politics in Ukraine in the aftermath of Euromaidan protests focusing on the representation of the Second World War. At the theoretical level, the thesis has scrutinized concepts pertaining to studies in memory politics: political memory, memory agents, elite-mythmaking, and narratives. It also conceptualized the European discourses on the Second World War in order to evaluate newly forged Ukrainian narrative on WW2 in their light. At the analysis level, the thesis both scrutinized official legislative and administrative measures pertaining to WW2 remembrance as well as applied narrative analysis to the case of newly introduced narrative about the Ukrainians in WW2 by developing a set of narrative analysis categories. As the thesis argues, elite-mythmaking selectively ‘Europeanizes’ Ukrainian representation of WW2 while the narrative follows the essential characteristics of the Eastern Central European (ECE) historical narrative about the Second World War.
Forecasting the party support in Estonia: comparison of machine learning regression algorithms
(Tartu Ülikool, 2018) Kaasla, Kaarel; Solvak, Mihkel, juhendaja; Märtens, Kaspar, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Forecasting political behavior using economic indicators is not a very new phenomenon with the earliest literature going back as far as the 1930s. In the present day, there exists a lot of research on the topic, but the majority of these studies have been conducted in the context of a very limited number of countries such as the United States or the Western European ones. By comparison, the research on forecasting the political behavior using economic voting in Estonia is almost non-existent. This thesis will be the first in-depth study conducted at that level and forecasts the party support of the Estonian Reform Party and the Estonian Center Party using economic indicators as the predictor variables. Based on the previous economic voting theory, it has been argued that the theoretically correct model to forecast using these variables is the linear regression due to the expected associations between the economic variables and party support. However, this thesis contests this claim and argues that when analyzing the phenomena of forecasting party support using economic indicators, certain modern machine learning algorithms could be considered as legitimate alternatives to the linear regression, as each of them addresses the different shortcomings of the model. For this reason, this thesis compares the methods of linear regression, regularized linear models, autoregressive integrated moving average, and the decision-tree models to see whether the more modern approaches are able to improve upon the default linear regression model.
From votes to nicheness or from nicheness to votes? - the relationship between electoral fortunes and political strategies in Scandinavian countries
(Tartu Ülikool, 2018) Baghdasaryan, Naira; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
How can E-Government facilitate the process of immigrants’ integration? The case of new labor immigrants in Estonia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2019) Popova, Anastasiia; Solvak, Mihkel, juhendaja; Muhhina, Kristina, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Immigrant integration is an integral part of contemporary policy. Yet, while various studies have discussed different factors that might affect integration, relatively few existing studies have devoted their attention to the impact of E-Government on migrant integration. This study intends to measure E-Government impact on immigrants’ integration. The research presents the conceptual framework for examining the linkage between E-government and integration, namely on the first stage of integration – acculturation. This is a crucial stage of integration, as identified by Favell, 2003. This paper demonstrates the experience of new Estonian labor migrants. The findings illustrate Estonian new labor migrants’ experience of the adaptation process, indicating the positive and negative impacts of E-Government. The study contributes a valuable illustration of new migrants’ experience in Estonia, and recommends a series of solutions, such as improved access to alternate languages, and access to e-Governance awareness training, as part of the welcome programme for new migrants to Estonia.

Sirvi

Sirvi Demokraatia ja valitsemise õppekava magistritööd – Master´s theses Pealkiri järgi