Poliitika ja valitsemine digiajastul – Master´s theses

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10062/82875

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Between Brussels and Moscow: authoritarian learning as a tool of power consolidation in Georgia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Rogava, Nikoloz; Kursani, Shpend, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how authoritarian learning functioned as a tool of authoritarian consolidation in Georgia after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Georgian Dream maintained formal pro-European positions while adopting anti-Western, illiberal strategies increasingly similar to those used in Russia, Belarus, and Hungary. The central puzzle for this research is how authoritarian learning contributed to this process of consolidation. The study uses interpretivist qualitative research methods, combining discourse analysis of Georgian Dream’s elite, a secondary literature-based review of three reference states, and nine semi-structured interviews. The thesis finds that authoritarian learning played a crucial role in consolidating authoritarian rule. Firstly, Georgian Dream selectively adapted authoritarian logic to the domestic context. War, peace, and sovereignty narratives transformed public pro-European positions into skepticism, helping the Georgian Dream legitimize its authoritarian decisions. To achieve that, the strongest evidence of authoritarian learning, “Foreign Agents Legislation,” was used. This law institutionalized suspicion towards civil society, media, and opposition actors. The narratives mentioned express an authoritarian repertoire that helped Georgian Dream legitimize its language for regime survival. However, beyond language, authoritarian learning was important on a practical level, reducing the costs of experimentation associated with authoritarian decisions. Beyond domestic consolidation, authoritarian learning also affected global and regional politics. Georgian Dream’s survival sabotaged Georgia’s European path and increased Russia's influence in the region.
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Democratic legitimacy of algorithmic public services across citizen–system interfaces: the case of Bürokratt’s algorithmic governance in Estonia (2020–2025)
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Sibata Haag França, Ana Beatriz; Muhhina, Kristina, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines the degree of democratic legitimacy of Bürokratt’s governance arena that involves the algorithmic mediation of public services in Estonia between 2020 and 2025. Bürokratt is analysed as an interoperable, LLM-based virtual assistant that aims to facilitate citizens’ access to public services and strengthen Estonia’s digital government infrastructure. The thesis combines literature on algorithmic governance, transparency and legitimacy with the framework of democratic anchorage in governance networks. Methodologically, it adopts a qualitative single-case study design based on public documents and public-facing textual materials that directly mention Bürokratt. The corpus includes government strategies, policy documents, public webpages, technical reports, European Union materials, academic studies, opinion articles and newspaper articles. The analysis assesses Bürokratt’s governance across four anchorage points: democratically elected politicians, participating groups and organisations, territorially defined citizenry, and democratic rules and norms. The findings show that Bürokratt’s democratic legitimacy is institutionally strong but democratically uneven. The strongest evidence appears in its anchorage in elected politicians and politically accountable institutions, especially through ministerial sponsorship, national AI strategies, agenda-setting and public-sector coordination. The evidence is more limited regarding participating groups and organisations, where actors appear mainly as implementers, adopters, or technical partners rather than as representatives connected to membership bases. In the citizenry anchorage, citizens are highly visible as users and beneficiaries of improved public services, but much less visible as actors able to participate in, contest or influence the system’s governance. Democratic rules and norms appear only partially, mainly through stakeholder involvement, openness, and references to rights protection, but are not consistently translated into explicit procedures for deliberation, justification, or contestation. The thesis concludes that Bürokratt’s legitimacy is largely constructed through state capacity, service efficiency and Estonia’s broader digital government narrative. Its democratic anchorage remains more limited where legitimacy would require clearer citizen influence, membership-based representation and visible mechanisms of public justification.
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Managerial perceptions on co-creation implementation challenges in cross-border projects of e-public services
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Förster, Isabell; Alishani, Art, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Co-creation has become an expectation rather than an exception in EU Horizon projects aimed at creating digital public services. However, understanding co-creation in a cross-border setting has been lacking, despite concerns in the literature about its proper implementation. To address this, Q-Methodology was employed to reveal three differing perceptions of co-creation challenges amongst project managers in the mGov4EU project. The Project Afterthought viewpoint found co-creation poorly integrated into the project structure, leaving unclear how it was intended to add value and help achieve project goals. The EU-Level Mismatch viewpoint struggled to integrate co-creation with citizens due to creeping requirements and uncertainty surrounding the influence of emerging EU policies on the project's technical specifications. The Frontline viewpoint seemed to feel let down by EU and project leadership for not providing sufficient structure to the co-creation in the pilot projects to facilitate meaningful contributions. Thus, it was revealed that the EU and mGov4EU project managers implicitly assumed a shared understanding of co-creation, despite differing interpretations leading to a fractured implementation.
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Beyond seat share: evaluating voting-power indices in government formation
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Samoilova, Sofia; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis evaluates whether cooperative game-theoretic voting-power indices improve empirical explanations of government formation relative to models based solely on parliamentary seat share. While seat share is the dominant measure of bargaining power in the coalition formation literature, it captures numerical size rather than strategic necessity - two quantities that diverge substantially in fragmented multiparty legislatures. Four indices are examined: the Banzhaf Power Index and Shapley-Shubik Value, which compute pivotality across all winning coalitions, and the Deegan-Packel and Holler-Packel indices, which restrict attention to minimal winning coalitions only. The analysis covers 4,939 party-election observations from 626 elections across 37 parliamentary democracies between 1945 and 2023, using nested logistic regression models evaluated through four complementary criteria: McFadden pseudo-R², likelihood ratio test, Bayesian Information Criterion, and area under the ROC curve. The results are asymmetric. The all-coalitions family consistently outperforms seat share across both outcome variables and all four criteria. The minimal-winning-coalition family does not, because its restriction to minimal winning coalitions embeds an assumption about rational behaviour that the empirical record systematically violates. For researchers operationalising bargaining power in coalition research, the Banzhaf or Shapley-Shubik index is the appropriate structural measure; seat share, while interpretable, is a less precise substitute.
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Digital authoritarianism and political settlements: a theory-building framework for understanding regime survival strategies in Eastern European hybrid regimes
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Shavdatuashvili, Davit; Muhhina, Kristina, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examined how personalised political settlement types shape digital authoritarian strategies for regime survival in Eastern European hybrid regimes. Existing scholarship on regime survival, digital authoritarianism, and political settlements analysis addresses different dimensions of this problem but lacks a framework connecting the structural configuration of ruling coalitions to the organisation of digital governance tools. The thesis developed a six-layer analytical framework bridging these three literatures and conducted a plausibility probe of its first three layers through a structured, focused comparison of Georgia and Serbia across 2022–2024, combining qualitative document analysis with quantitative triangulation. The findings indicated that settlement type shaped not which digital tools regimes possessed but how overlapping repertoires were organised into distinct configurations. Serbia's personalised dominant settlement produced a knowing–behaviour operative axis, where surveillance directly generated behavioural compliance through chilling effects and institutional intimidation, with beliefs serving a complementary role. Georgia's personalised competitive settlement produced a belief–behaviour sequential linkage, where narrative construction delegitimised organised outsiders before legal-administrative instruments codified those categories into enforceable obligations. The enabling logic also diverged: Serbia's digital means were institutionally embedded through captured institutions, while Georgia's were legally constructed, application-layer, and functionally deniable. The probe found evidence consistent with three propositions and partially consistent with the fourth, which required qualification due to observational limitations on insider targeting in secondary sources. The findings also generated refinements: knowing can itself become disciplinary under dominant conditions, deniability varies by governance function rather than by settlement type, and legal construction and institutional capture operate in sequence rather than as alternatives. The framework offers a structural explanation for variation in digital authoritarian configurations and identifies directions for geographic extension, methodological deepening, and full operationalisation.
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Securitization in media regulation: a comparative analysis of EMFA implementation in the Czech Republic and Estonia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Kloužková, Eliška; Sinisalu, Arnold, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how securitization is reflected in the draft laws implementing the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) in the Czech Republic and Estonia. Although the EMFA is a directly applicable EU regulation formally uniform across all Member States, the two draft laws differ significantly. The thesis combines Differentiated Policy Implementation (DPI) with securitization theory to explain this variation, applying qualitative content analysis (QCA) to both draft laws and their explanatory memoranda. The findings show that Estonia embeds security logic directly into its licensing system and regulatory architecture, framing certain media actors as threats to societal security, a pattern shaped by long-standing concerns about Russian information influence. The Czech draft law contains no securitization elements and instead strengthens procedural protections for journalists against state interference, reflecting a media environment defined by domestic political pressure and ownership concentration. The thesis demonstrates that securitization can be embedded directly in legislation rather than only in political discourse, and that meaningful implementation variation occurs even within directly applicable EU regulations.
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Migration and EU enlargement attitudes: analysis of public opinion
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Kovalova, Daria; Ehin, Piret, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The European Union's consideration of further enlargement has reemerged as a significant geopolitical question following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, raising questions about the factors that influence public support for admitting new member states. This study investigates the relationship between public attitudes toward migration and support for EU enlargement, examining whether negative perceptions of migration correlate with lower willingness to expand the Union. The research employs multilevel logistic regression analysis utilizing Standard Eurobarometer survey data from all 27 EU member states, examining three dimensions of migration attitudes: perceptions of intra-EU mobility, attitudes toward immigration from outside the EU, and beliefs about immigrants' societal contributions. The empirical analysis confirms a significant relationship between migration attitudes and enlargement support, with attitudes toward external immigration demonstrating a stronger association with enlargement preferences than perceptions of immigrant contributions. Pronounced regional variation emerged in this relationship, revealing an East-West divide where Western European countries displayed strong positive correlations between favorable views of external immigration and enlargement support. In contrast, Central and Eastern European nations exhibited weaker or even negative correlations. The findings indicate that while addressing migration concerns is necessary for building enlargement support, broader attitudes toward European governance and integration play a more determinative role in shaping citizens' preferences regarding the Union's expansion. These results contribute significantly to post-functionalist integration theory by demonstrating how cultural and identity considerations increasingly structure European integration attitudes, providing crucial insights for policymakers navigating the complex terrain of public opinion as they consider the EU's future institutional boundaries.
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Predicting the success of Ukraine's restoration projects: a machine learning analysis using DREAM ecosystem data
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Ksienich, Volodymyr; Khutkyy, Dmytro, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Ukraine’s full‑scale war has generated 157 billion USD in infrastructure losses and an urgent 524 billion USD reconstruction bill. While prior scholarship isolates single drivers of project delivery, it rarely combines finance, governance, digital capacity and societal sentiment in one empirical frame. This study merges five open datasets (DREAM project register, DREAM‑Completeness audit, Transparent Cities scores, Digital‑Index metrics and IRI opinion surveys), yielding a moderate‑N panel of 190 fully documented wartime restoration projects. A six‑pillar theoretical model is operationalised through logistic regression and three ensemble learners. Results show that fragmenting procurements into additional contract lots multiplies completion odds by ≈9.8; publishing real‑time finance schedules raises success probability by 12 percentage points independent of budget size; and a one‑SD increase in regional digital maturity adds five points, but only where e‑services accompany raw openness. Findings nuance ‘transparency backlash’ theory and suggest an integrated policy bundle: mandatory micro‑lotting, conditional disbursement upon schedule disclosure, and targeted e‑government investment.
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Aid as an authoritarian gift: the associations between the Chinese aid and democracy
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Zhang, Yang; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
As China’s global economic footprint deepens, growing attention is paid to how its aid and loan programs affect regime trajectories in recipient states. While existing scholarship often speculates that Chinese engagement supports authoritarian durability or undermines democratic institutions, it frequently relies on aggregated aid flows and overlooks variation across regime types and aid modalities. This study addresses that gap by analyzing data from globally harmonized sources, AidData, the China Africa Research Initiative, and Polity V, to assess the relationship between Chinese economic engagement and changes in democratic quality. The findings reveal that, in the African context, higher levels of Chinese aid are consistently associated with increased probabilities of regime autocratization despite volatility detected in the permutation. However, in the global sample, this association is less uniform; interaction models show that hybrid regimes face the greatest risk of autocratization, with even modest increases in aid predicting higher autocratization probabilities. Sectoral disaggregation further refines this pattern: aid directed toward the extractive industries, particularly mining, correlates strongly with autocratization trajectories, whereas aid in transportation sectors is linked to weak democratic improvement, presenting modeling volatility. In addition, the presence of Chinese contract labor exhibits a negative association with autocratization, suggesting a potential, albeit limited, association with democratic resilience. Jointly, these results emphasize that the political effects of Chinese aid are not uniform but instead vary systematically by sector and initial regime type, challenging approaches that treat Chinese aid as politically monolithic.
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The legacy of left-wing authoritarian regimes on parties' dispersion on the left-right scale: a study of post-communist democracies in the European Union
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Kopytsiak, Yuliia; Braghiroli, Stefano, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The collapse of left-wing authoritarian regimes in Central and Eastern Europe initiated a transformative journey toward democratization and European integration. However, the legacy of these regimes continues to shape party competition decades later. While previous studies have explored structural and institutional consequences, the long-term impact on the dispersion of parties along the left–right scale remains understudied. Using ParlGov Releases (2010–2024) and focusing exclusively on EU member states, this thesis analyzes party system polarization (Dalton Polarization) and the ideological center of gravity (Country Ideology), and introduces a novel variable – Right-Wing Concentration (RWC) – to capture the simultaneous rightward shift and ideological narrowing. The study shows that in post-communist democracies, the far left is marginalized without a compensating far-right ascent, resulting in more right-leaning and less polarized party systems compared to consolidated democracies. This pattern intensifies over time within the studied period. By comparing countries with and without left-authoritarian legacies, the study demonstrates that historical background outperforms conventional structural variables in explaining ideological party configurations. These findings underscore the enduring imprint of authoritarian legacies and highlight the need for future research on party polarization in the EU to account for historical determinants alongside institutional, structural, and political factors.
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Just transition as a political strategy: just transition initiatives and citizens’ climate policy preferences in the U.S.
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Suzuki, Julia Noelle; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis empirically investigates whether just transition initiatives, designed to ease the socioeconomic impact of decarbonization on fossil fuel-dependent communities, can influence public support for climate policies in the United States. Against the backdrop of a politicized climate change discourse and opposition from fossil fuel communities, the study explores whether measures with justice targeting these communities can mitigate resistance to climate policies. Using data from the Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM) survey and funding data on two federal just transition initiatives, this research applies a quantitative method across U.S. census regions to analyze shifts in citizens’ policy preferences before and after the just transition initiatives took place. Results suggest that the medium and highly funded regions had a smaller increase in policy support relative to low-funded regions. Thus, the effectiveness of just transition initiatives as a strategy to overcome climate policy opposition is yet to be seen. The findings highlight the need for more targeted, long-term, and consistent implementation and contribute to the field by suggesting future research directions.
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Understanding the relationship between political trust and populism. Evidence from 26 European countries, 2020-2022
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Bushuieva, Yeva; Ehin, Piret, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
A comparative analysis of 26 European democracies between 2020 and 2022 examines how populist ideology and institutional trust interact under varying conditions of political power. Drawing on Cass Mudde’s thin-centred definition of populism and Pippa Norris’s multidimensional model of political trust, the work disaggregates two pathways: one in which low trust precedes populist support, and another in which populist success reshapes citizens’ confidence in state institutions. Harmonised data from the European Social Survey, PopuList, and ParlGov are used to construct an index of trust in parliament, the judiciary, and political parties, alongside a binary indicator of populist voting and measures of cabinet participation and parliamentary seat share. Fixed-effects OLS regressions with clustered standard errors and controls for demographic and socioeconomic covariates reveal a “power-contingent trust cycle.” In countries where populists remain in opposition, supporters exhibit significantly lower trust (over one point on a 0–10 scale), whereas in those where populists govern, support is associated with a modest trust boost. Seat-share magnitude exerts no consistent additional effect. These findings underscore that populism’s impact on democratic legitimacy is highly context-dependent: exclusion amplifies scepticism, while inclusion can restore or even elevate confidence among its electorate.
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Multi-level party politics in the European Union: assessing the coherence between European political parties and their member parties’ positions on EU enlargement
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Gegia, Nana; Ehin, Piret, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Political parties constitute an integral part of democratic representation in the European Union (EU), however, their ability to formulate coherent positions across national and EU levels is still contested. Despite extensive research on the institutional structures of European political parties, limited attention has been paid to position coherence across party levels on specific policy issues. Even less is known about how such coherence changes over time, especially in light of major geopolitical events. Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, enlargement has become a controversial topic within the EU, providing a timely and relevant case to study multilevel party dynamics. This thesis examines 115 party manifestos from the 2019 and 2024 European Parliament elections to assess how coherent the Party of European Socialists (PES), the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), and the European Green Party (EGP) and their member parties have been on this policy area. It evaluates coherence across five key areas: overall stance on enlargement, temporal scope, geographical focus, internal EU reforms and security and geopolitical justifications. The findings suggest that over time, there has been an increase in coherence between Europarties and their member parties as well as among member parties. Although several areas showed coherence already in 2019, by 2024, coherence had strengthened in support for enlargement, a gradual approach to this process and security justification of enlargement. Nevertheless, this trend is not uniform; some categories have become fragmented on issues such as EU internal reforms, suggesting that coherence is not a static process.
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Telegram-based Russian hacktivism as a new phenomenon and the influence of media visibility on target selection
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Berner, Simon; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in a rise in cyber threats and initiated a continuing surge of coordinated cyberattacks by Russian-speaking hacktivist groups targeting countries expressing solidarity with Ukraine. This thesis explores the emergence of Telegram-based Russian hacktivism following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and examines the extent to which domestic media coverage influences the frequency of cyberattacks claimed by these groups. While prior academic literature has focused on hacktivism as the use of the internet to promote or resist sociopolitical agendas due to ideological beliefs, often targeting cyberspace itself as a means to achieve social change, this thesis argues that a distinct new era of hacktivism has emerged. This Telegram-based Russian hacktivism is characterized by centralized, openly malicious collectives operating through Telegram, combining geopolitical motives with financial incentives and media-driven strategies. The thesis employs a mixed-methods research design consisting of a qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative exploration of the phenomenon reveals that post-2022 Russian hacktivist groups operate in a reactive and opportunistic manner, frequently targeting civilian infrastructure with low-sophistication attacks such as DDoS, while seeking visibility and legitimacy through public announcements and propaganda. The quantitative component evaluates the relationship between media coverage and attack frequency using two original datasets: over 20,000 claimed cyberattacks and more than 5,500 media articles across 16 EU countries. The findings show a generally positive but inconsistent correlation between media visibility and cyberattacks, with clear evidence in some cases (e.g., Germany, Slovenia) that media attention precedes increased targeting. However, other cases suggest that strategic or geopolitical relevance may override visibility as the primary driver of attacks.
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Introduction of an e-voting system in Azerbaijan: readiness of citizens and government
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Gojazade, Parvin; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Citizen-centric public services are currently a popular subject of discussion. E-voting services are increasingly popular. However, academic research has given relatively little attention to this phenomenon due to its recent emergence in Azerbaijan. The issue of citizens' and government readiness to accept such services remains unexplored in Azerbaijan. Government and citizens' acceptance is crucial for the successful implementation of personalized public service provision. This thesis investigates government and citizens' readiness for e-voting services. This study seeks to establish the preparedness of government and citizens for e-voting services and determine the primary factors that affect it. The author queries whether Azerbaijan's citizens and government are prepared for the implementation of an electronic voting system. When it comes to the readiness of Azerbaijani citizens for electronic voting, it is approached from the perspective of their level of technological readiness and trust in electronic services. In the context of the Azerbaijani government's readiness, legal, political, and IT infrastructure readiness issues were considered. A comprehensive analysis of literature on technology, politics, legal, social, infrastructure preparedness was conducted. The author employed a qualitative research method by administering interviews to collect data. The interviews yielded valuable insights towards achieving the objective of the master thesis and addressing the research question. Based on the analysis conducted on the basis of the research work, it was determined that the citizens and the government of Azerbaijan are partially ready for electronic voting. There is a need for a more thorough analysis of the readiness of Azerbaijani citizens for the social perspective. There is also a problem with the readiness of the government in the political context and serious reforms are needed in this area.
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The role of religious beliefs in shaping public attitudes toward EU integration in Serbia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Xu, Chongtian; Ehin, Piret, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how religious affiliation, particularly to the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), influences public attitudes toward European Union membership in Serbia. The relatively low public support for EU integration in Serbia highlights the importance of identifying contributing factors. Religion emerges as a key determinant, especially in contexts where religious institutions have a significant impact on societal values and political preferences. The Serbian Orthodox Church, beyond its role as a religious authority, serves as a symbol that is deeply tied to Serbian national identity. The thesis uses data from the European Social Survey (ESS10) and applies quantitative methods, including logistic regression, interaction, and variance analysis, to assess the impact of religious affiliation on attitudes toward EU membership, with national attachment as a conditional effect. The findings reveal that being a Serb Orthodox alone does not significantly affect attitudes toward the EU, while religiosity plays a more important role, with higher levels of religiosity associated with stronger opposition to EU membership. Incorporating European attachment as an additional moderator provides a deeper and statistically significant interpretation of the conditional effect of national attachment; as European identity strengthens, the conditional effect of national attachment diminishes among Serb Orthodox individuals. Variability in attitudes was more pronounced among Serb Orthodox individuals, particularly those with higher levels of religiosity, reflecting greater ambivalence on the issue. Overall, the thesis highlights the critical role of religious faith and identity dynamics in shaping public opinion on EU membership in Serbia, offering valuable implications for policymakers aiming to bridge societal divides and strengthen support for EU integration.
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Political discourses of the pandemic in the United States: a comparative study of the causal stories of COVID-19 in Alabama and Iowa
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Paris, Jeran Donn; Muhhina, Kristina, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges globally, necessitating quick policy responses from governments worldwide. This thesis examines the role of political discourse in forming and justifying policies during crises, focusing on the early first-wave responses of the U.S. states of Alabama and Iowa. Using Deborah Stone's (1989) causal stories framework, the study identifies four causal story types: intentional, accidental, inadvertent, and mechanical. Through qualitative content analysis of public communications by Governors Kay Ivey and Kim Reynolds, this thesis explores the relationship between crisis communication and policy stringency, highlighting divergences between theoretical expectations and empirical findings. Contrary to expectation, the intentional causal story was overwhelmingly dominant across both states, irrespective of policy stringency. This suggests that leaders may employ intentional narratives universally in crises to convey a sense of control and action. Also unexpectedly, the accidental causal story appeared more frequently in Alabama, a state with higher policy stringency, than in Iowa. The inadvertent causal story, while limited to Governor Ivey’s rhetoric, emerged earlier than initially anticipated. Lastly, while mechanical causal stories were deemed unlikely to appear in the theoretical framework, they nonetheless appeared in Alabama through religious invocations, adding an unforeseen dimension to the analysis. The results of the analysis contribute to the existing literature through the framework of how political leaders use certain narratives to legitimize policy decisions. Focusing on regional executives fills a gap in the literature left by the predominant study of national executives. These insights deepen the understanding of crisis communication by executives while highlighting the potential for future research to investigate broader contexts, mixed-methods approaches, and comparative analyses across political systems and party affiliations. The study’s limitations in scope reveal possible avenues for future research into the dynamics of crisis communication, testing the universality of intentional causal stories indicated in this study and the conditions under which accidental, mechanical, or inadvertent causal stories might emerge.
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Russian propaganda techniques: the case of the Russia-Ukraine war
(Tartu Ülikool, 2025) Lopina, Anastasiia; Khutkyy, Dmytro, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Russia, which has been promoting its propaganda narratives for years, is a complex and acute topic for research. The reason is that the Kremlin’s propaganda is characterised by its complexity, diversity, and multi-orientation. Despite the immense interest in its investigation since the beginning of the Russian Federation’s war in Ukraine, few works have examined how its propaganda has changed over time. This raises a research problem that I attempt to close in this thesis. Hence, I analysed two periods of the Russia-Ukraine war to find out how Vladimir Putin’s propaganda techniques changed and what their proportion was during the hybrid warfare and the beginning of the full-scale invasion. By creating a more systematic approach to analysing propaganda techniques in the form of three separate categories — emotional, social, and cognitive propaganda methods, I detect that propaganda has altered since the beginning of 2022, compared to 2014. The findings show there have been changes in the prioritisation and proportion of propaganda techniques. The work facilitates a better understanding of the approaches of Russia’s information warfare, its strategies during the war, and what countermeasures should be developed to resist the Kremlin’s propaganda. The comparative analysis was carried out based on a selection of speeches by President Vladimir Putin. It included 152 articles mentioning information about Ukraine, where examples of propaganda techniques were identified.
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Green Deal, clean break: assessing securitization of clean energy transition in Europe in the process of energy decoupling from Russia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2024) Terentjev, Jan; Makarychev, Andrey, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The weaponisation of energy by Russia before and after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine has underscored the vulnerability of Europe's dependence on imported fossil fuels. This has catalysed a growing demand for a transition towards green energy, characterised by local sustainable energy productive and reduced vulnerability to energy market manipulation by external actors. Central to this transition is the European Green Deal, a comprehensive set of policy measures aimed at enabling the European Union to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. This thesis investigated the impact of Russia's energy weaponisation and the war in Ukraine on the EU’s policy regarding the transition to clean and renewable energy sources, employing a conceptual framework of securitization using discourse analysis as the analytical framework. The primary objective was to assess whether the weaponisation of energy by Russia following the invasion of Ukraine has elevated the transition to clean energy from a climate sustainability issue to a security imperative for the European Union. Through a comprehensive analysis of European Commission’s policy proposals, this paper determined that the European Commission has successfully securitised the issue by framing Russian weaponisation of energy supply as an existential threat to be resolved with extraordinary measures aimed at expansion of clean energy transition initiatives in the EU. The continued securitisation of the European Green Deal may thus be crucial to ensuring the success of the clean energy transition in the European Union.
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Winners’ bliss, losers' discontent: the impact of affective polarization on satisfaction with democracy in Europe
(Tartu Ülikool, 2024) Kondratyk, Yurii; Mölder, Martin, juhendaja; Reiljan, Andres, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Scholars worldwide increasingly argue that polarization is intensifying, impacting democratic processes. The issue of increasing polarization has been proven to be concerning and threatening, leading to violent political behavior, as evident in the case of the US Capitol storming. Yet, the academic debate surrounding this issue is itself deeply polarized. There is significant discussion about the nature of polarization, with the affective perspective on polarization emerging as a noteworthy alternative paradigm. Furthermore, there are assertions that claims regarding affective polarization's undermining of democratic norms are speculative. This polarized academic debate, lack of empirical evidence, the primary focus of the research on the US, and the knowledge gap regarding the impact of affective polarization on democratic satisfaction among electoral winners and losers serve as the catalyst for this thesis. This study, examining 33 different elections across 25 European polities, illuminates the contrast in democratic satisfaction between electoral winners and losers. It highlights that electoral losers, who are strongly attached to their party, experience a significant decline in their perception of democracy's function in their country. In comparison, such a tendency was not observed among the winners. However, a thorough exploration of each case demonstrates varying effects of the relationship.

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