International Law and Power: A Theoretical Perspective on Statehood and Self-Determination

The purpose of the present thesis is to investigate the foundations for statehood and self-determination—two seminal points of international law—through the concept of discourse and its notion of power. The starting point is that language and representations of reality are not merely ‘objective’ depictions, but in fact shaped by the practices that convey the representations. This constitutes the theoretical framework, inspired by Michel Foucault, with a focus on the intricate connections between power and knowledge. To this an investigation of statehood and self-determination is applied, and the result is that the narrative of international law can be seen as influenced by discourse, with structural bias giving primacy to statehood and thus posing obstacles for a development towards greater diversity

Playing it Safe? The Costs and Adverse Effects of Counterterrorism.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate international counterterrorism efforts to estimate their costs and potential adverse effects over time. An underlying presumption of the study is that flawed counterterrorism measures to some extent are counterproductive, and building on this idea a comparison is made between the distinguishing features of the 'War on Terror' and an alternative model in the form of The UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. It is the argument of this paper that although it is difficult to speculate on future results, the Global Strategy constitutes a more promising approach for counterterrorism. The ?War on Terror? contains measures that violate human rights and damage legitimacy, and as such risk a backlash and an increase in terrorist recruitments, while the Global Strategy focuses on building bottom-up and addressing the root causes of terrorism in a wider, more thoroughly planned and sustainable long-term perspective