The Strategic Use of Hard and Soft Power

Sammanfattning: This thesis will research the Iranian state influence on repression in Iraq. In particular, it is a case study that will explore the Iranian state influence, in the form of ideological and financial influence, on pro-government militias in Iraq between 2014 and 2020. The main pro-government militias to be studied are the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), who were formed after the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2014. The analysis will utilize Joseph Nye’s soft and hard power theoretical framework to explore how the ideological and financial power of Iran influences the pro-government militias, in order to measure how this, in turn, affects the escalation of repressive violence in Iraq. The findings, in fact, suggest that there is a correlation between the extent of the Iranian influence on the PMF and how they become associated with higher repressive violence in Iraq throughout the years.