The State of Nations

Over the past five years, Africa’s Sahel region has been marked by increasing political tensions and a succession of military coups or putsches across its stretch of countries. This pattern of takeovers has earned the region the name ‘Coup Belt’ or La ceinture des coups d’État in French, a neologism that became popular in North American and European media. While the motivations behind the coups vary, ranging from security concerns to claims of restoring democracy, the media coverage of these events differs significantly across regions. This thesis examines how U.S., French, and West African media portray the events of the Coup Belt through lenses shaped by each region’s respective political and economic interests. Drawing on postcolonial theory, framing analysis, and geopolitical history, this study employs immersion reading of articles from prominent media outlets in each region to detect nuanced differences in language, tone, and themes to ultimately demonstrate how media framing can both sustain and subvert geopolitical hierarchies.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary have been celebrated as models of post-socialist democratization, transitioning from authoritarian regimes to liberal democracies. As member states of the European Union, they have benefited from political and economic integration into Europe, achieving significant democratic milestones. However, in the past 15 years both countries have become emblematic cases of democratic backsliding in the region, raising concerns about the resilience of democratic institutions in previous Soviet controlled states and satellite states. The rise of populist, right-wing governments – the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary – has challenged the integrity of democratic norms and structures. Although Poland and Hungary share historical and cultural similarities, the paths to democratic backsliding diverge.

Abstract: This paper argues that Irish language policy in the Republic of Ireland, particularly in regard to education and the Gaeltacht, serves to maintain Irish as a symbol of the nation while ignoring or exacerbating the problems that keep it from being a living language. These problems include the increasing economic power of the English language globally over time, an inadequate language curriculum, and the dissolution of Irish language-based communities. The 20-Year Strategy for the Irish Language is a language policy plan that claims to address these problems in service of an English-Irish bilingual population, but in practice, prioritizes the Irish language’s use as a national linguistic identity marker.

Taiwanese diplomatic actions, bilaterally and within international governmental organizations, can be described as de facto state diplomacy due to the lack of substantial formal, recognized sovereignty. In the increasingly multipolar world, study on non-traditional state actors will become critical to ensuring self-actualization and universal democratic freedoms globally. First, I ask how Taiwan has found itself in a de facto status and how we reconcile this history with our international order. Then, I discuss the alternative channels Taiwanese representatives use to maximize diplomatic knowledge and communication. By proving Taiwan’s NGOs and corporations participate in diplomatic action, we can understand the current evolution of diplomacy which increasingly includes non-traditional state actors.