Movements based on conspiracy theories and a fundamental rejection of liberal values are on the rise in traditionally democratic societies and those with authoritarian legacies. This article develops a theoretical approach that treats non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that generate and spread disinformation on international critical events as black knight NGOs and draws attention to their role online. We ask: whether and, if so, how disinformation by black knight NGOs spreads and what factors may facilitate this process? Empirically, we build on a case of a Swedish NGO, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, in the context of the Syrian Civil War using X (formerly, Twitter) data from 2015 to 2019. We show that black knight NGOs can be damaging during critical events when information is scarce and uncertainty prevails. Additionally, they may affect the information ecosystem through two distinct mechanisms of legitimation: claiming authority in a particular subject and utilising legitimacy attributes, that is, appealing to authoritative figures and social roles conducive to forming a positive attitude towards the disinformation they provide. The findings contribute to the literature on non-state actors and their role in international disinformation.

As climate change is becoming an ever more pressing global policy challenge, the linkages of climate change to other issue areas are diversifying. This article seeks to explain why some climate linkages are more likely to spread across international organizations (IOs) than others. Drawing on organizational and framing theories, we argue that the framing of climate linkages affects how such linkages disseminate across IOs. Distinguishing between three framings of climate change––technical, emotional and emergency––we develop and test novel hypotheses about the effects of framing climate linkages on their spread on social media. We use an original dataset on the dissemination of climate linkages on the social media platform Twitter (currently X) among eight IOs with a global mandate during the period 2008–2019. The results suggest that both the characteristics and the framing of climate linkages influence their spread across the studied IOs, as we find, in the context of the climate-development and climate-disaster risks linkages, that technical and emotional framings affect how linkages spread across several United Nations agencies. In all, we show the importance of the interplay between climate change linkages and the framings of these linkages for their spread across IOs.

One of the instruments by which the European Union (EU) promotes democracy abroad is conditionality attached to its aid. By providing material incentives before countries meet a set of conditions (ex post) or after progress has been made (ex ante), the EU aims to alter the behaviour of third countries. Consistency in applying ex post and ex ante conditionality is essential for the EU's international credibility. Although extensive research has explored ex post conditionality, much less scholarly attention has been paid to ex ante conditionality. To address this gap, we ask: ‘Does the level of democracy impact EU aid allocation, and if so, is the EU consistent in applying ex ante conditionality?’ Empirically, we focus on aid from EU institutions allocated to the neighbourhood in its broader understanding—countries in the eastern and southern neighbourhood, as well as the Western Balkans and Turkey. Using time-series cross-sectional data that cover over 20 years of EU aid (2000–2020), we demonstrate that improvement in the democratic performance of beneficiaries is positively associated with more aid, suggesting that EU institutions indeed allocate aid based on democratic performance. The findings further reveal the lack of consistency in performance-based aid allocation—the EU is more likely to reward improved democratic performance in strategically important neighbours. Namely, a higher level of democratic performance is associated with more aid in countries from which the EU imports energy. Additionally, countries from where migration originates receive more aid, disregarding their level of democracy. The findings reveal both the performance-based and instrumental use of aid by EU institutions, contributing to the literature on EU credibility.

Wars naturally restrict citizens’ rights and limit the functioning of democratic institutions. However, being major existential threats, wars can also create conditions for reforms. In Ukraine, both the process of European integration and reforms have accelerated since Russia’s full-scale invasion. To address these parallel processes and investigate their inter-relationship, we ask: To what extent, how, and why does the EU integration accelerate reforms in Ukraine amidst the war? We build on compliance literature to explain significant developments in the policy areas of justice, anti-corruption, and gender equality. We demonstrate that reforms in these policy areas are enabled by the change in compliance calculations of domestic elites and the increased leverage of the EU. At the same time, not all the reforms can be explained by European integration: changing needs as a result of the war also drive reforms in Ukraine. The chapter makes two contributions. First, it traces Ukraine’s reforms examining their links to European integration. Second, it demonstrates how the changing domestic context leads to the realisation of the necessity of reforms.

Having a patchy record of compliance with the environmental provisions of the Association Agreement, Ukraine demonstrates alignment with the norms of the European Union’s Green Deal. We explore and explain Ukraine’s reforms in the domain of environment and climate by asking: What drives the Europeanisation of Ukraine’s environmental and climate policy and why? To answer this question, we analyse Ukrainian laws, by-laws, and policy documents from 2016 until mid-2023, when we concluded our observations. We demonstrate that conditionality-based instrumental compliance and forward-looking anticipatory compliance are two mechanisms of Europeanisation of environmental and climate policy in Ukraine which reinforce and complement one another. We also show that, aspiring to become a European Union member state, Ukraine does comply with the provisions of the Association Agreement. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s alignment with provisions of the Green Deal constitutes a parallel process that reflects planning for the future competitiveness of the Ukrainian economy and rebuilding in the context of war-induced uncertainties.

Illiberal actors are on the rise in many parts of the world. Young democracies and countries in transition are especially vulnerable to these movements. We consider the protection of already limited liberal values in Europe’s wider neighbourhood – Eastern Europe and Central Asia – from further decline. Focusing on the critical case of the diffusion of illiberal laws from Russia throughout the region, we ask: What factors might prevent governments from adopting these laws, thus hindering the spread of Russian-inspired illiberalism? We focus on two examples: a so-called foreign agent law, which imposed restrictions on civil society organization, and a so-called gay propaganda law, which targeted LGBT people. We find that the diffusion of these laws is more contingent on demand-side conditions and generally less effective than commonly thought. Comparative evidence covering the two regions suggests that ties to democratic international actors, most importantly the European Union, account for variation in the diffusion of illiberal legislation from Russia. This supports the claim that ties to such actors can contribute to protecting countries in the shared neighbourhood from the influence of illiberal regional actors.

The European Union (EU) is one of the most active promoters of democracy in the world. Stakeholders of democracy promotion frequently criticize the Union for its lack of sensitivity to country-specific contexts. This critique concerns both the concept of democracy and the means through which democratic development ought to be supported from the outside. We examine the validity of this claim by exploring whether the substance of the EU's democracy promotion efforts is sensitive to contextual factors in third countries. We build on Merkel’s (2004) analytical framework of embedded democracy to trace the substance of the Union’s understanding of democracy in 250 country progress reports from 2004 to 2020. We employ qualitative and quantitative content analyses to demonstrate that the EU’s understanding of democracy has evolved over time depending on the contextual situation in individual countries. This article contributes to the literature on EU democracy promotion in third countries, as well as the role of time-and country-varying contextual factors in EU democracy promotion.

What drives China’s peace engagement in conflict-affected countries: does China provide peacebuilding support where its help is needed the most or to advance its own interests? Despite a growing body of literature addressing this question, the analytical scope remains limited to China’s short-term peacebuilding measures and individual case studies. In this article, we build on longitudinal large-N data addressing China’s long-term peacebuilding. We detect a strong association between Chinese peace engagement and the economic needs of recipients. Mixed results are obtained regarding the role of China’s interests. While security and diplomatic interests appear to drive its peace engagement to some extent, there is no clear evidence of its economic interests influencing the engagement in conflict-affected countries. The article makes three contributions. First, we add to the growing literature on China’s peace engagement by adopting a broad definition of peacebuilding and, by doing so, expanding the analytical scope. Second, we contribute to the literature on emerging peacebuilding actors drawing on the case of China. Last, we make a policy-relevant contribution by demonstrating the complexity of peacebuilding actors’ motivation in engaging with conflict-affected countries.

There is increasing public debate about the governance of climate change and its repercussions for nature and human livelihoods. In today's digitalized communication landscape, both public and private actors involved in climate change governance use social media to provide information and to interact with stakeholders and the broader public. This Focus Article discusses two main aspects of debates about climate change and climate governance on Twitter, which previous theories suggest to shape climate governance across domestic and global levels: non-state climate action and public opinion formation on the social media. We see significant advancement in the environmental social sciences studying these two areas. Yet, we also see the need for a better understanding of how public and private actors in the climate governance complex interact on Twitter, and how these actors shape, and are shaped by, experiences, values, and positions. This understanding will help to advance climate governance theories. This article proceeds in three steps. We first discuss previous social media research on non-state climate action and public opinion formation related to climate change and its governance. Then we sketch avenues for future research, elaborating how Twitter data might be used to investigate how non-state climate action and public opinion formation on social media are linked to and influence climate governance. We conclude by making the case for drawing together Twitter data and climate governance research into a more coherent research agenda.

Existing research typically sees European Union (EU) development co-operation as one of its tools for influencing third countries. By contrast, in focusing on technical assistance as a part of EU development co-operation, this article examines third countries' influence on this co-operation. The article builds on unique data on the EU's technical assistance to third countries and third countries' requests for technical assistance from the largest EU technical assistance instrument - the Technical Assistance and Information Exchange. The findings demonstrate that third countries are selective in the assistance that they request and that via such requests third countries can influence the extent of technical co-operation with the EU. The article provides a novel outside-in perspective on the EU's development co-operation and contributes to our understanding of how the EU's technical assistance functions.