Foreign focusing events: How politicians use foreign events strategically

The last centuries of political history have seen numerous foreign events that have, in one way or another, changed the political landscape of another country, as political actors took advantage of these foreign events to reshape politics in their own country. Such events that take on our attention and are utilized to change politics are seen as focusing events. How, then, do politicians use foreign focusing events strategically? That is what this thesis focuses on as it investigates how politicians use the opportunity of foreign events to fulfill their political goals. To do this, the thesis builds data sets of Danish parliamentary debates from 1910-1929 and from 1974-2009. These data sets are analyzed through, mainly, quantitative text analysis to find out how politicians take advantages of foreign events. The thesis makes several contributions. First, it develops theoretical frameworks for analyzing and understanding how politicians use foreign events to gain political advantages. Second, the thesis provides a methodological contribution as it shows how we can in practice study the impact of foreign events. Third, the thesis also provides empirical contributions. The thesis builds two comprehensive data sets of Danish parliamentary debates, from 1910-1929 and from 1974-2009, that very substantially increase the number of years for which legislative debate data for Denmark is available. Moreover, the thesis shows how issues such as unemployment support and working hours gained attention on the political agenda right after the Russian Revolution, lending credence to the claim that the Bolshevik threat was vital to bringing forward the social state. Finally, the thesis shows how the fall of the Berlin Wall brought more attention to pro-market discourse on the political agenda. These contributions advance the ability of future research to understand and analyze how political actors exploit foreign events to gain political advantages.