Rahvusvaheliste suhete ja regiooni uuringute õppekava magistritööd – Master´s theses

Selle kollektsiooni püsiv URIhttps://hdl.handle.net/10062/56853

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The EU–NATO regime complex and its influence on national AI strategies in Europe
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Ahafonova, Daria; Linsenmaier, Thomas, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly crucial in global politics, states develop national strategies to define their approach to this technology. This development does not occur in a vacuum and is influenced by external normative frameworks from various international organisations (IOs), leading to regime complexity in which overlapping mandates and norms can complicate governance, particularly given AI's dual-use nature for both civilian and military applications. The EU–NATO regime complexity exemplifies this, as states with dual membership must navigate contrasting civilian EU norms and military NATO principles that address the same issue area – AI. The study aims to analyse how this regime complexity affects AI governance in the national strategies of four European states: Ireland (EU-only), the UK (NATO-only), and dual members Estonia and Croatia. Based on the concepts of regime complexity and institutional overlap, this study employs qualitative discourse analysis to analyse over 50 official documents covering the period 2017–2026. Analysis shows that all states implement the norms of the IOs they are members of and EU–NATO regime complexity affects the formulation of national AI strategies by leading states to adopt mixed AI strategies that include normative elements from both the EU and NATO. However, Croatia's case demonstrates that there are potential mediating factors that can influence this process, as evidenced by its current predominantly civilian approach despite the presence of military NATO elements in strategic documents. Notably, all AI governance begins with a civilian focus, suggesting that civilian discourse precedes defence one, which explains the UK's mixed strategy case. These insights contribute to regime complexity theory by introducing a technological dimension and by highlighting the need to further explore mediating factors.
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Sovereignty and alliance purpose in regional international society: the case of the CSTO in Eurasia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Paine, Mari; Linsenmaier, Thomas, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) presents a persistent puzzle in international relations scholarship: despite two decades of existence and largely stable membership, the alliance deployed military forces to a member state only once, in Kazakhstan in January 2022, while remaining inactive in the face of numerous other conflicts involving member states. Existing scholarship typically frames the CSTO as either an instrument of Russian influence or as a functionally irrelevant “paper alliance.” This thesis argues that neither interpretation adequately accounts for the continued investment member states make in the organization, nor seeks to identify internal logic guiding its selective activation. Drawing on English School (ES) theory, this thesis examines how Eurasian regional international society has developed a differentiated conception of sovereignty as a primary institution, and how this regional understanding shapes the perceived purpose of the CSTO as a secondary institution. Using framing analysis applied for a corpus of Russian-language documents from the CSTO’s website, this study traces discourse across five instances of member-state challenges to sovereignty between 2010 and 2024. The analysis reveals that the CSTO operates according to a two-threshold legitimacy structure that reflects a regionally elevated conception of Westphalian sovereignty. Simultaneously, the alliance exhibits a comparatively permissive attitude toward pooling domestic political and legal resources, reflecting lower emphasis on domestic sovereignty consistent with its members’ authoritarian regime type. The CSTO’s consistent framing of threats in non-state actor terms further delimits where the alliance is considered an appropriate instrument of security provision. Rather than evidence of dysfunction, these patterns reveal a coherent regional security logic with implications for how scholars understand alliance behavior in non-Western contexts.
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How do the writings of Aleksandr Dugin matter? The prominence of his geopolitical codes in Russian foreign policy, 2008–2022
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Pankratov, Andrei; Berg, Eiki, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines the relationship between the geopolitical writings of Aleksandr Dugin and the official foreign policy discourse of the Russian Federation between 2008 and 2022. Moving beyond anecdotal claims of Dugin as “Putin’s brain,” the study employs qualitative content analysis to derive and compare nine major codes forming a unified geopolitical discourse based on Dugin’s “The Foundations of Geopolitics” (1997) and “The Geopolitics of Russia” (2012) with strategic doctrines and leadership speeches surrounding three landmark events: the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Findings reveal a pattern of selective resonance rather than direct lexical borrowing: Duginian codes such as ‘Multipolarity’, ‘Atlanticism’, and the ‘Civilizational State’ appear consistently in official publications, particularly after 2014, but are translated into a restrained, state-centric register. The salience of Dugin-aligned language increases markedly across the three events, with the 2014 annexation serving as a critical juncture. The study concludes that while Dugin is not a direct policy influencer, his geopolitical codes have become increasingly resonant within the central corpus of Russian foreign policy documents, reflecting an expansion of accepted geopolitical language as state assertiveness has grown.
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Military manuals and the Danish Straits: explaining divergent legal interpretations of peacetime minelaying
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Sarapuu, Johannes; Eenmaa, Helen, juhendaja; Jänes, Mati; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
The aim of the thesis is to explain why otherwise similar countries – Germany, Denmark and Norway – interpret the legality of using naval mines in peacetime in the exclusive economic zone differently in their national military manuals on the law of armed conflict. I hypothesize strategic culture to be the explanatory factor for divergent legal interpretations, functioning as a perceptual lens for interpreting law. I expect that a more idealpolitik-oriented strategic culture constitutes a more restrictive approach to the legality of using naval mines in peacetime. I study this through a legal analysis of the manuals and a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis to determine the dominant strategic culture in each country. Results exhibit support for the hypothesis: Germany is the most idealpolitik-oriented of the studied countries explicitly interprets the laying of mines in peacetime in the EEZ to prohibited, while Norway as the country with the most realpolitik-oriented strategic culture shows an implicit permission of the activity along with Denmark, which falls between the two. These results imply that strategic culture may not only influence specific foreign or military policy decisions, but also the way in which international law is interpreted.
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Religeopolitics in action: analysing religion-territoriality nexus on the basis of Holy Rus’, Serbian World, Ulster, and Megali Idea discourses
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Zolotarjov, Roman; Kilp, Alar, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
In this MA thesis, a comparative analysis of religeopolitical discourses is conducted on the basis of four empirical cases: Holy Rus’, Serbian World, Ulster and Megali Idea. The central concept used throughout this thesis is religeopolitics – i.e., particular spatial imaginations based on religious discourse. The major goal of this thesis is twofold: on the one hand, it is the formulation of a new theory of religeopolitics, while on the other hand it is an intellectual contribution to better understanding the role of religion in the process of place-making and the transformation of geographical space into metaphysical notions of religious communities of belonging. This topic is important for two reasons. First of all, four selected empirical cases have been historically related with some form of intra-state conflict and violence, which specifies the societal importance of the topic. Second of all, the contribution of this thesis to the academic debate is a valuable intellectual enterprise. Methodologically, this thesis is grounded in the post-positivist research paradigm and it uses a qualitative approach to social analysis. In this case, discourse analysis is conducted in the form of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Norman Fairclough. Selected corpora of texts are analysed through the prism of the pre-defined theoretical framework. Particular semantic elements (including the “sacred dimensions of nationalism” of Anthony David Smith and linguistic aspects of proximization of Piotr Cap) are identified and further analysed from a comparative perspective. The results suggest that religion plays a crucial role in religeopolitics: not only is it a marker of social identity, but also the point of reference of a specific value-system in relation to which the identity of the Self is constructed. Religeopolitical discourses represent specific communities of belonging identified through their juxtaposition to the threatening Other that is portrayed as near, imminent and dangerous. The result of this is the call to action, chief among them is the physical extermination of the enemy. Religion also adds an essentialist, messianic dimension to it: religeopolitical communities are not only imagined communities of belonging, their function is the restraining of Evil and prevention of the Apocalypse.
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Weaponizing the mind and instrumentalizing the Valdai Discussion Club: Russia’s cognitive warfare against the West
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Mihhin, Maria-Elisabeth; Makarychev, Andrey, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This Master’s thesis’s aim is to study the Russian Federation’s use of cognitive warfare against the West by instrumentalizing a think tank. The Valdai Discussion Club, a think tank in Russia, is founded with the support of the government’s funding and is affiliated with the state through personal connections to this day. However, there is no empirical link to see whether the Russian government uses the think tank to construct, promote, or reproduce its official narratives about the West. Russia’s narratives about the West are important because the former uses the rhetoric and image construction of the West to justify the aggression in Ukraine. This is a question of security – which agents are instrumentalized by the state to reproduce and reinforce the state’s narratives, biases, and beliefs. Therefore, by using critical discourse analysis, this dissertation analyzes the narratives created about the West in the official foreign policy document, the Concept of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (2023), and the Valdai Discussion Club’s works, and compares them. The main findings indicate an evident link between the actors’ narrative construction of the West and, therefore, allow for a conclusion that the Russian government instrumentalizes the think tank for its narrative construction and cognitive warfare against the West.
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Post-colonial solidarity? Estonia’s support for Ukraine: a critical discourse analysis
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Jürman, Mai-Brit; Makarychev, Andrey, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Ever since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Estonia has been a strong supporter of Ukraine. While much of the support can be explained by shared security concerns, the security dimension doesn’t thoroughly explain the vast moral support. This thesis seeks to discover which discourses were used by Estonian officials to show solidarity towards Ukraine. Using Critical Discourse Analysis on officials’ speeches and addresses between February 2022 and March 2026, the thesis uses postcolonial theory to analyze different discourses of support. In addition, the thesis seeks to answer what discourses were used to explain the root causes of Russian aggression and how a friendship was created between Estonia and Ukraine. Postcolonial solidarity was exhibited through four discourses. Those discourses emphasized the consequence of the war, helped Ukraine seek justice, created solidarity through presenting the war as colonial and made a call for support from other actors. Three discourses provided explanations for the root causes of the war: Russian need to eliminate democratic Ukraine, the domestic dimension of Russian society and politics, and inherent evilness of Russia. Postcolonial friendship was exhibited through four discourses. Those sought to integrate Ukraine into NATO and the EU, showed how the war had united other states with Ukraine, showed the closeness between Estonia and Ukraine but also actively excluded Russia to create unity between other states and Ukraine.
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Preventing and controlling organised crime, at what cost? Examining human rights impacts of strategies from Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Allen, Charlie; Belova-Dalton, Oksana, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Following decades of failed strategies in combating organised crime, 2022 constituted a turning point for Latin America – El Salvador, under the government of President Nayib Bukele, took a hard-on-crime approach that, for the first time, appeared to successfully prevent and control organised crime. This thesis asks at what cost for human rights did these measures take place? The investigation analyses the targeted nature of organised crime prevention and control strategies in Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala between 2015-2025, looking at state of emergency usage, mano dura attributes, and the prevalence of securitising language used during the period. Using securitisation theory as a point of departure, this small-n study uses the above methods to contribute to an under-researched element of securitisation, namely perpetual cycles of fear and perceived vulnerability, and their role as a catalyst for the continued popularisation of hard-on-crime measures. This thesis posits that less targeted strategies have a negative impact on the level of human rights, which is mostly proven to be the case. These conclusions are derived from an analysis combining established quantitative trends with qualitative insights that seek to explain them.
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Contesting European secular modernization: the instrumentalization of Orthodox rhetoric in post-Rose Revolution Georgia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Patsatsia, Ana; Kilp, Alar, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how strategic narratives of modernization, Europeanisation, and religious-traditional values are constructed and contested in contemporary Georgia. It argues that Georgian political discourse operates on two levels: an official level shaped by political institutions and religious authorities, and an unofficial level circulating through informal religious communication and popular interpretations of political events. Grounded in the concepts of strategic narratives, modernization, and Katechon, the research uses thematic analysis of political speeches, Patriarchal sermons, interviews, and corpusassisted textual data. The study explores the coexistence of support for European integration alongside criticism of liberal Western modernity within both political and religious discourse. The findings demonstrate that modernization in Georgia is framed not only as a political and economic process, but also as a moral and civilizational issue tied to identity and national values. The thesis argues that political and religious actors strategically construct competing narratives of Europeanisation and traditional values, producing ambivalence within Georgian public discourse and shaping perceptions of Georgia’s political orientation.
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Institutional design and transboundary water treaty performance under stress in Central Asia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Kuusik, Alo Ingmar; Kursani, Shpend, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how differences in institutional design explain variation in transboundary water treaty performance under stress in Central Asia. Three basin regimes - the Amu Darya, the Syr Darya, and the Chu-Talas - face broadly similar structural conditions: a shared Soviet institutional legacy, comparable upstream-downstream interdependencies, recurring hydrological variability, and a politically sensitive regional environment. Yet they perform differently when those conditions tighten into stress. The thesis asks why, and offers an institutionalist answer. The analysis uses a most-similar systems comparative design, with documented stress episodes as empirical windows on institutional performance. Ten episodes anchor the comparison: four on Chu-Talas (2020 COVID procedural disruption, 2021 Kirov dam safety, 2022 Aspara/Ashmara withdrawal dispute, 2023-2024 verification turn), three on Syr Darya (2000–2001 compensation failure, 2021–2022 corrective coordination, 2023–2024 partial stabilisation), and three on Amu Darya (2018 forecast shortfall, 2019-2020 lower-reach overuse, 2021-2022 severe shortfall). Institutional design is operationalised through five dimensions: monitoring and information-sharing, dispute-resolution and coordination, enforcement and compliance-supporting provisions, flexibility and adaptive capacity, and distributional or benefit-sharing arrangements, coded from treaty texts, commission statutes, and basin organisation by-laws. Performance under stress is operationalised in two components - procedural continuity and escalation containment - and assessed through ICWC bulletins, BWO reports, Water Yearbooks, and Chu–Talas Commission records. The empirical analysis supports the central argument. Stronger institutional design produces stronger procedural continuity and tighter escalation containment, with Chu–Talas (strong design) registering high performance, Syr Darya (moderate-low design) mixed performance with the 2000-2001 episode at the low end, and Amu Darya (moderate design) moderate-high performance. Once climate stress, power asymmetry, Soviet legacy, and regional political dynamics are taken into account, institutional design remains the most parsimonious explanation for the observed variation. The thesis contributes to institutional-design scholarship by applying it to transboundary water governance under conditions of stress, explains divergence within a region often discussed in uniform terms, and shows that environmental stress does not mechanically produce instability but rather that its political consequences depend on the institutional architecture through which scarcity is governed.
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Nation-building from below and de facto statehood: a study of online communities in the Somalia-Somaliland dyad
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Dillies, Clément Sylvain Cyril; Kursani, Shpend, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Building upon literature on de facto states and nationalism studies, this study uses a bottom-up approach to the study of nation-building in contexts marked by contested statehood. Focusing less on the nature and content of nation-building projects, this study aims to bring ordinary people back into the picture by focusing on the ways they engage with such policies. For that purpose, the study utilises the Somalia-Somaliland dyad as a single case study. This thesis is embedded in everyday nationalism and everyday nationhood, which allows ordinary people to display a sense of agency in their interactions with the nation. Fox and Miller-Idriss’s (2008) framework, centred around practices of nationhood, is utilised to determine how grassroots communities within the dyad engage with nation-building. The study benefits from textual and visual materials collected by the author within online communities on the following platforms: Reddit, Discord, Facebook and TikTok. Members of these communities were found to be engaging with nation-building projects, discursively engaging with their content and reproducing it by disseminating national symbols.
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Representation of history and geography in divided societies: the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Brytskyi, Dmytro; Berg, Eiki, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how history and geography textbooks in Bosnia and Herzegovina construct competing spatial identities and collective memories in a divided post‑conflict society. While prior research has focused on institutional fragmentation or conflicting historical narratives, little attention has been given to how temporal (history) and spatial (geography) representations jointly shape socio‑spatial socialization. Through textual analysis of Bosniak, Croat, and Serb textbooks, the study shows how each system constructs its own vision of territory, belonging, and national identity. These narratives reproduce parallel histories, naturalize competing territorial imaginaries, and sustain fragmented cognitive maps that hinder shared socio‑spatial consciousness and reconciliation.
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Factors influencing the population's belief in victory: cases of Estonia and Finland
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Edur, Ines; Pääbo, Heiko, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis investigates the factors of divergent levels of “belief in victory” between Estonia and Finland. Drawing on academic literature and expert interviews, the study examines how national identity and ethos, collective memory and political communication and rhetoric shape public morale. Findings of this study suggest that differences in belief in victory stem mainly from the unity of the population, national ethos, political communication and public involvement in national defence. While Finland`s belief in victory is bolstered by its perceived victory in World War II, Estonian population's belief is influenced by the complex legacy of the Soviet occupation – acting both as a trauma that may have a negative impact on belief and also as a unifying force against future aggression. Additionally, the full-scale war in Ukraine has also strengthened belief in victory in both countries. These insights provide a framework for Estonia to strengthen its societal resilience.
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The effect of climate change on food security: the case of the Inuit in Canada
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Savouroux, Emma Marie Régine; Kursani, Shpend, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Canadian Inuit experience the highest rates of food insecurity of any indigenous population in an industrialised nation, a paradox given Canada's status as one of the world's most food-secure countries. This study examines climate change as an underexplored driver of food security, focusing on the Inuit of the Inuit Nunangat. Using a mix-method approach combining survey data and qualitative content analysis, the study applies the six-dimensional food security framework to assess how climate-related environmental changes affect food security. Findings confirm that climate change significantly exacerbates Inuit food insecurity, with implications for both policy and the preservation of indigenous cultural identity. The research also highlights the importance of agency and sustainability in addressing Indigenous food insecurity and argues for more locally adapted and Inuit-led policy responses.
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Political attitudes and trust in big tech companies: a cross-European analysis of citizens’ confidence in GAFAM
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Allikas, Karolin; Ehin, Piret, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how political attitudes shape citizens’ trust in Big Tech companies across the European Union. Big Tech companies influence communication, access to information and political life, thus understanding how citizens evaluate these firms has become an important political question. Previous research has looked at trust in digital corporations through consumer behaviour. This thesis analyses trust in Big Tech from a political science perspective. The theoretical framework is built on the idea that political trust extends to the public sphere. It focuses on three predictors: left-right ideological self-placement, satisfaction with democracy, and trust in political institutions. The dependent variable is a composite index of trust in five GAFAM companies – Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook (Meta), Apple, and Microsoft. The analysis uses cross-national survey data from 15 EU member states and over 22,000 respondents, collected in Autumn 2024 as part of the Horizon Europe INCA project (Ehin et al., 2024). The empirical analysis includes Pearson correlation analysis, OLS regression with and without sociodemographic and country-level controls, a moderation analysis, and country-specific regressions.
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Sustainability as a tool of cultural diplomacy: Danish soft power in the case of Copenhagen Fashion Week
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Potapenkova, Jelizaveta; Pääbo, Heiko, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) as an instrument of Danish cultural diplomacy and soft power projection. Drawing on constructivist theory and Joseph Nye’s soft power framework, grounded within small state theory, the study advances the argument that structured cultural platforms can function as institutionalised sites of identity performance, contributing to the international construction and diffusion of desired state identities. Through a qualitative single case study design, the research analyses CPHFW’s mandatory sustainability requirements alongside a corpus of international media coverage from 2020 to 2026. The findings assess whether CPHFW’s sustainability agenda, embedded as a binding structural condition of participation, achieves the intersubjective recognition in international discourse to generate reputational benefits for Denmark. The study contributes to the undertheorised intersection of cultural diplomacy, creative industry, and soft power, while offering an empirically grounded analysis of how small states mobilise cultural platforms to exercise normative influence beyond their limited material capabilities.
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Ten years of the Three Seas Initiative within Europe’s East-West divide: driven by economics or politics
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Kuťka, Samuel; Eihmanis, Edgars, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
Persevering cleavages between the European Union's older and newer member states – states which acceded in or after 2004, collectively referred to as Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – continue to attract substantial scholarly attention. Variably interpreted as a developmental divide, a political one, or dismissed as an archaic relic, this so-called East-West divide forms this thesis’ theoretical background. The thesis derives five analytical concepts from existing scholarship – economic development and productivity on the economic axis; nationalism, sovereignty, and transnational coalitions within the EU on the political – and applies them to 11 Joint Declarations of the Three Seas Initiative between 2016 and 2026 through qualitative content analysis. The Three Seas Initiative, the only intergovernmental forum whose membership fully encompasses the CEE region, is treated as an emancipatory tool through which CEE states collectively engage with the divide. The thesis finds that economic factors are definitionally dominant across the Joint Declarations. Its second hypothesis proposes the role of crises as an aggravating factor heightening political salience. It is partially confirmed: the Ukraine crisis produced a marked spike in political content across the 2022–2026 declarations, whereas the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced economic rather than political factors, suggesting the aggravating effect of crises is contingent on their typology. An emergent post-2022 security logic increasingly supersedes both competing framings. The thesis concludes that the Three Seas Initiative's Joint Declarations reveal a forum whose economic foundations are structurally entrenched, but whose political expression is crisis-contingent, and whose self-conception has shifted considerably across its first decade from a convergence-seeking regional platform to an actor with ambitions beyond its region which, by 2026, demands convergence from others.
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Discursive diffusion of a security narrative - weaponization of migration on Poland’s and Lithuania’s eastern border
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Roosna, Triinu; Linsenmaier, Thomas, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis examines how the framing of the EU-Belarus border crisis as “weaponised/instrumentalised migration” diffused across Lithuanian, Polish and European Union level political discourse between 2021 and 2023. This crisis marked a shift in how migration could be framed, as it was increasingly portrayed not as a societal or humanitarian challenge, but as a deliberate instrument of hybrid aggression orchestrated by the Belarusian regime against the European Union member states. While existing literature has examined the legal, humanitarian and security dimensions of the crisis, minimal attention has been given to the discursive process through which this framing emerged, spread and became institutionalized across different levels of governance. The theoretical framework combines securitization and Europeanisation theory in order to explain both the content of the framing and the mechanisms through which it travelled between different levels. The analysis focuses on three possible diffusion mechanisms of uploading, downloading and cross-loading. The empirical analysis applies qualitative discourse tracing to official communications from the offices of the President and Government of Lithuania and Poland, as well as from the European Council and European Commission Presidents. The study systematically traces the emergence, escalation and institutionalization of key formulations of wordings in the EU-Belarus crisis across the period from mid-2021 to 2023. The findings demonstrate that the diffusion of the framing followed multiple directions. The European Union institutions were the first to use the wording of “instrumentalisation”, which was later downloaded into Lithuanian and Polish communications. Lithuania developed the “hybrid attack” framing, which was subsequently uploaded to the European Union level. Poland adopted both of these framing through cross-loading and by downloading. The thesis contributes to the literature on migration securitization, Europeanisation and hybrid threats by providing a systematic empirical account of how the “weaponised/instrumentalised migration” framing diffused across levels of governance during the EU-Belarus border crisis. More broadly, the findings demonstrate how security framings can evolve through interaction between different actors, with each political level contributing different elements of the security discourse.
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The Great Patriotic War in Putin's Russia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Osornio, Sigfried; Lepasaar Beecher, David Ilmar, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This thesis investigates how Vladimir Putin's political discourse transforms Ukraine from a brother nation into an enemy, and what role the Great Patriotic War myth plays in that transformation. The Great Patriotic War myth made this possible because of its specific character. It is a myth not of origin but a myth of survival and continuity. As a survival myth it is politically inexhaustible and the existential threat can always be renewed, the enemy reidentified, and a preemptive logic reactivated. Therefore this thesis analyses fifteen primary sources from 2014 to 2026. The analysis reveals that Ukraine's transformation was built in sequence, and that by 2026 the myth and the war have become mutually dependent where the invasion continues in part to make sense of the narrative that allowed the beginning of it.
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Japan’s responses to China’s rise: soft balancing in Central Asia
(Tartu Ülikool, 2026) Krupin, Rodion; Kursani, Shpend, juhendaja; Tartu Ülikool. Sotsiaalteaduste valdkond; Tartu Ülikool. Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituut
This paper analyses Japan's foreign policy in Central Asia from 1992 to 2025 through the lens of soft balancing. The initial analytical problem is the contradiction between Tokyo's official discourse's consistent emphasis on liberal values and institutional cooperation, and the intensity of Japan's presence in the region's history, which correlates with key stages in the expansion of Chinese influence. This leads to the research question: What explains Japan's engagement with Central Asian countries? The theoretical framework utilises the concept of soft balancing, as proposed by Robert A. Pape (2005) and T. V. Paul (2005), which posits that states resort to non-military instruments to limit the dominance of a superior actor indirectly. The study's methodological approach relies on process tracing, structured around a causal graph that included three mechanisms: the perception of a structural change in the regional distribution of power (M1), the implementation of soft balancing instruments (M2), and the regional effect in the form of diversification of the foreign policy orientations of Central Asian states (M3). The analysis confirmed the causal chain: the rise of China in the region shaped Japan's perception of the risk of Chinese dominance (M1), which led to the use of "soft balancing" instruments such as the ODA, the "Central Asia plus Japan" Dialogue, and the FOIP (M2), which in turn contributed to the institutionalisation of alternative cooperation formats and the strengthening of the perception of Japan as a reliable partner, thereby limiting the concentration of Chinese influence in the region (M3). It is concluded that Japan's behaviour in the region is most consistently explained by the logic of soft balancing, rather than by normative-liberal or resource-realist approaches.

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