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1
Simcock, Adam. "MacIntyre and green political thought : deliberative eco-politics for dependent rational animals." Thesis, Keele University, 2018. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/5151/.
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Ecologism is a political ideology that emerged in the 1970s. It challenged the neoliberal privileging of economic growth over environmental protection and a narrow conception of the self as autonomous, rational and self-interested. Ecologism’s normative challenge has grown quiet as it became perceived as too inward looking and focused on the self, rather than engaged with issues such as climate change that now preoccupy green political thought. However, in the early 21st century, neoliberalism now dominates western democracies. This turn away from the self and normative opposition to neoliberalism has clearly not furthered the environmental cause, and so there is a need to return to re-politicise the ontological arguments of ecologism. A small number of green political theorists have begun to look towards the Thomistic Aristotelianism of Alasdair MacIntyre and this thesis seeks to add to their number. I argue that MacIntyre’s work concerning the self as dependent rational animal, and arguments for the political and social structures that support this self, can be used to affirm and reengage ecological arguments with politics. MacIntyre’s thought moves ecologism away from its “inward-turn”, concerned with the self’s personal experience of the environment, to a collective politics that looks outwardly to challenge the dominant neoliberal order. In bringing ecologism into conversation with MacIntyre’s philosophy, the original contribution I offer ecological political theory is two-fold. Firstly, the virtues of acknowledged dependence can be used to reflect substantive concern for the environment within political deliberation. Secondly, I develop MacIntyre’s conception of localized deliberative democracy. In order to counter claims that such localization is naïve, I bring MacIntyre’s ideal into conversation with Murray Bookchin’s model of municipal libertarianism and consider two real world examples: Rojava in northern Syria and the ‘Idle no More movement’ in Canada. These examples offer hopeful evidence that decentralised deliberative politics, starting from acknowledging our dependence, can oppose the hegemony of neoliberalism both socially and ecologically.
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Xena, Carla. "Old measures, new implications : the meaning of political efficacy across political contexts." Thesis, University of Essex, 2015. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/15492/.
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The main goal of this thesis is to comprehend some of the factors explaining cross- temporal and cross-national variations in citizens’ feelings of influence upon the political process, namely, political efficacy. For that purpose, this work is structured in three main parts which aim to explain how contextual factors can affect feelings of efficacy and, the sources of cross-national commonalities and differences. The first part, `Electoral Outcomes, Expectations and the (de)Mobilisation of Political Efficacy' contributes to the winner-loser gap literature by assessing the effect of elections, electoral outcomes and electoral expectations on political efficacy in the United Kingdom (UK) 2005 and 2010 general elections. This papers shows that not only electoral outcomes enhance or depress feelings of efficacy but also that electoral expectations have a major impact. The second part of this dissertation, `Does the Concept of Political Efficacy Travel across National Borders?', studies the cross-national comparability of a standard measure of political efficacy used in the European Social Survey (ESS). This paper employs Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA) and shows that the meaning of political efficacy is not equivalent across the European continent but rather, among subsets of countries with a shared background. The third paper of this dissertation, `Valid Measures of Political Efficacy and their Correlates in the US and UK', uses the most recent advances in MGCFA applied to ordinal data to assess the cross-temporal and cross-national validity of a pilot battery of questions of political efficacy in the US and UK. The empirical results show that efficacy is equivalent across both countries only when significant differences in average levels of political efficacy are accounted for.
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Souza, Menezes Aline Maria. "Essays on empirical political economy." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/20066/.
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This thesis studies three channels through which elections and, ultimately, public policy may be interrelated: new media, electoral systems and vote motivation. The media has the fundamental role of providing political information to voters. New media such as the Internet brought about an enormous shift in the availability of political information during elections. Exploiting the timing and geographic variation in the introduction of Internet in Brazil, in the first chapter, I show that municipalities with higher Internet penetration voted more often in candidates who faced legal restrictions for advertising in traditional media. Electoral systems, in turn, have specific features that, in theory, may allow voters to select better politicians by providing more information about candidates and other voters' preferences. In the second chapter, using the discontinuous allocation of single- and dual-ballot electoral rules across mayoral elections in Brazil, I compare the quality of politicians fielded and elected in these systems. In general, dual-ballot candidates from major parties are more politically experienced. This experience may be translated into unobserved political skills that are required to deal with the more competitive electoral process, that, by itself, punishes female candidates, to the extent to which women's participation in politics has been historically low. No differences in performance are observed, except in the attraction of discretionary resources by dual-ballot mayors eligible for reelection, but only in election years. Finally, in the third chapter, I use a quasi-naturally generated group of voters with differential political information and voting motivations to show that politicians extract more rents in municipalities where they know a number of voters is not directly interested in public goods and do not have readily access to local sources of information.
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Tucker, Luc. "Political interactions and voter responses." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2014. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/63836/.
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This thesis investigates empirically the way in which agents in political bodies can influence their peers, as well as the ways in which voters respond to the behavior of legislators in their electoral choices. These relationships are fundamental in trying to comprehend the way in which political decisions are made. Economists should take particular interest in these topics, given their importance in understanding the incentives faced by legislators. Questions as to the possibility of peer effects between political agents are of huge importance in democratic governments. Political debates play a central role in many legislative bodies, where the assumption is implicitly made that opinions can be influenced by the other debate participants. This fundamental assumption is tested in Chapter 1, which is the first to measure the extent of peer influence regarding reported political opinions in an explicitly political environment. This has previously not been possible, given that discussions and debates in legislative chambers take place between participants with particular characteristics and political interests, making it hard to separate the role of peer effects in determining their preferences. This thesis makes use of experimental data, which offers a unique opportunity to distinguish these effects and quantify the degree to which peer effects can influence political preferences. In particular, Chapter 1 uses data from an experiment conducted in Australia in 2009 to consider whether participants showed evidence of having influenced one-another during political discussions. Each of the models used exploits the fact that table allocations were randomized in this experiment and controls for agents’ characteristics, which were also recorded. The key finding of this chapter is that when asked to assign weights to eleven criteria for an effective political system, agents who sat on the same table during the experiment reported preferences that were more similar than those who did not share a table. The effect is small at 4.8% of a standard deviation but is statistically significant and of larger magnitude than other pairing characteristics which could have been expected to influence the differences between weighting choices, such as whether the two players were of the same gender. One year after the Citizens’ Parliament, participants were asked to report their political positioning on the ‘left-right’ scale. It is not found to be the case that the table allocations influenced these reported positions. Having demonstrated that participants in legislative bodies can influence one-another’s reported political preferences, this thesis goes on to analyze the relationship between legislators and the constituents they represent, by considering the question of whether politicians who are more active in parliament are rewarded with a higher probability of being reelected. The particular parliamentary behavior analyzed is the asking of parliamentary questions. The UK House of Commons uses a ballot system to determine which members are selected to ask a question from those who expressed an interest in doing so. This chapter is the first in the literature to exploit this randomization to show that the asking of such questions increases a member’s chances of being reelected by their constituents. It is shown that while the ordering of parliamentary questions is determined at random, the practicalities of conducting debates introduce a potentially endogenous element to the determination of which questions receive oral answers (particularly the speed at which questions are answered). This chapter uses a matched sampling approach to cope with such non-random cases, but also includes alternative results, to show that the findings are not reliant on the use of this technique. Chapter 2 exploits a natural experiment to show that Members of Parliament who are selected to ask parliamentary questions are more likely to be reelected in forthcoming elections. It was necessary in this study, however, to drop certain observations as a result of the fact that the Speaker in the House of Commons, who chairs debates, has some influence over the number of questions reached in each debate, which could undermine the randomization in these cases. Chapter 3 of this thesis goes on to consider this process in more detail. This chapter shows that in fact questions posed by older and more experienced members, as well as those from opposition parties, are more likely to receive oral answers than should be expected under a true randomization. Chapter 3 offers the first opportunity to consider the Speaker’s role in parliamentary debates under the conditions of a ‘natural experiment’. Results presented here point to the role of the Speaker in controlling the speed at which debates progress as contributing significantly to the findings listed above, for example by acquiescing to pressure from more senior members by allowing them to ask their questions in debates where time constraints would otherwise prevent them from doing so. The finding is also an important consideration for future studies which aim to exploit such randomizations as natural experiments relating to parliamentary activity. Such a finding is potentially significant in the context of the UK political system, where the ballot system is in place precisely to ensure that all members of the House of Commons have an equal opportunity to ask questions, regardless of their levels of seniority. The final chapter of this thesis continues to examine the link between legislators and the citizens they represent. In particular, Chapter 4 makes use of the large Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) dataset from the USA. While this dataset has been extensively used to study health outcomes, this chapter represents the first attempt to use the dataset to study the link between political outcomes and the economic prosperity of constituents. This is achieved by matching survey respondents to their representatives in Congress and restricting attention to cases where members of the lower house seek election to the upper house. Members of the US Senate (the ‘upper house’ in Congress) are elected to serve a state as a whole, whereas members of the House of Representatives (the ‘lower house’) serve a district within one of those states. This chapter shows that members of the House of Representatives who seek election to the Senate (without necessarily being successful) tend to have previously served in districts with permanently higher incomes. Furthermore, incomes are found to be temporarily higher in districts where the representatives are successfully elected to the Senate than those where the representatives were unsuccessful in their attempt to be elected. This is interpreted as showing that in Senate elections, voters reward legislators who served districts where average incomes were seen to increase under their tenure. These chapters use a diverse range of datasets to consider the impacts of political behavior. It is shown that the behavior of agents in political environments not only influences their peers, but is also recognized and rewarded by the voters they represent. Voters are found to respond to political behavior by both reelecting legislators who are more active (by asking more parliamentary questions) and by electing those legislators who have previously served districts where average incomes increased under their tenure.
5
De, Neve Jan-Emmanuel C. J. M. "Essays in political economy and voting behaviour." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/199/.
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This thesis explores how political preferences are shaped by institutions, economic conditions, and personality. Each chapter is a distinct contribution and provides a different perspective on the formation of political preferences and, ultimately, voting behaviour. These different approaches relate to the fields of comparative political economy, behavioural economics, and political psychology. Methodologically, this thesis is empirically applied and the results of these separate enquiries into political preferences are grounded in statistical analysis. A first substantive chapter introduces a median voter data set that provides insight into the ideological position of the electoral centre in over 50 democracies. A second chapter uses this new data and studies cross-national voting behaviour in 18 Western democracies over 1960-2003. It is found that electoral behaviour is closely related to the salience of the following economic institutions: labour organization, skill specificity, and public sector employment. This research shows that political preferences are endogenous to economic institutions and implies the existence of institutional advantages to partisan politics. A third substantive chapter focuses on ideological change in the United States and tests the proposition that voters advance a more liberal agenda in prosperous times and shift towards being more conservative in dire economic times. A reference-dependent utility model relates income growth to political preferences by way of the demand for public goods and the optimal tax rate. This work thus links voting behaviour to economic business cycles and shows that ideological change is endogenous to income growth rates. Finally, a fourth chapter presents the largest study to date of the influence of the big five personality traits on political ideology. In line with prior research in political psychology, it is found that openness to experience strongly predicts liberal ideology and that conscientiousness strongly predicts conservative ideology. A variety of childhood experiences are also studied that may have a differential effect on political ideology based on an individual's personality profile. The findings of this final chapter provide new evidence for the idea that differences in political preferences are deeply intertwined with variation in the nature and nurture of individual personalities. Generally, this thesis provides some new insights into the complex world of political preference formation and does so by exploring the influential role of institutions, economic conditions, and personality.
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Rahman, Ashikur. "Essays on political dynasties : evidence from empirical investigations." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/605/.
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This thesis consists of four papers, each of which helps to understand certain dynamics surrounding political dynasties. The first paper focuses on the role of ‘dynastic identity’ in influencing the behaviour of legislators from the political class of Bangladesh. In particular, it analyses whether dynastic legislators behave differently in comparison to non-dynastic legislators by examining their parliamentary attendance level and the likelihood of them having a criminal profile. The findings from the analysis suggest that ‘dynastic identity’ may influence a legislator’s behaviour. The second paper investigates if there is a systematic relationship between dynasty-politics and corruption in a cross-country empirical analysis. In doing so, the paper produces multiple dynasty indices that try to capture the variation in dynasty- politics across countries. The key findings from this scrutiny are indicative that countries with greater prevalence of dynasty-politics are associated with higher levels of corruption. In the third paper, I study the role of political assassination in facilitating the rise of political dynasties in Bangladesh. More specifically, I construct a data set of political leaders from Bangladesh who faced at least one assassination attempt to exploit the randomness in the success or failure of assassination attempts to identify assassination’s effect on the probability that a leader will start a political dynasty. The results point out that successful assassination increases the likelihood that a political leader will have a posterior relative in office. Lastly, the fourth paper examines if political assassinations have facilitated the rise of political dynasties across countries. To this end, the paper builds on the data used in Jones and Olken (2009), which has information on leaders with at least one assassination attempt. Thus, by comparing national leaders who barely survived an assassination attempt with those who died, the effects of political assassinations on dynasty formation are studied.
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Tarlov, Jessica. "Through the looking glass : controversy, scandal and political careers." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2012. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/561/.
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This work measures whether MPs are held individually accountable for their actions through a novel analysis of the 1997 and 2010 UK general elections. Previous research suggests that MPs’ behaviour has little effect on their careers; however, developments in the media’s aggressive reporting style, the rise of personality politics and decline in traditional voting patterns indicate that this is an opportune time to examine the effect of political controversies (including scandals) on MPs’ careers. This analysis focuses on three crucial stages that form a chain of accountability: (1) exposure: the media publicises the controversy and a perception is formed; (2) internal sanction: an MP retires before an election; (3) electoral sanction: voters punish MPs at the polls. Data on MP-specific controversies between the 1992 and 1997 and the 2005 and 2010 elections was sourced from The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and their respective Sunday editions. This work also contains an original analysis of the 2009–2010 MP expenses scandal that utilises British Election Study panel survey data to examine how information on MP malfeasance affects voters’ perceptions of MPs. The findings indicate that political controversy is linked to whether an MP retires, with those MPs from the governing party driving the result in both the 1997 and 2010 elections. Overall, voters do not hold MPs responsible for their actions at the polls. Analysis of the expenses scandal supports these general findings: constituent perceptions of their MPs’ expenses behaviour respond to public information, but do not translate into election results. Internal sanction is shown to be the most powerful form of political accountability in the chain. While identifying any individual MP accountability is novel, the overall results are in line with traditional analyses of the strength of party politics, and indicate the importance of electoral system design for accountability.
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Norris, Timothy John. "Hans-Georg Gadamer : poetics and truth in the human sciences." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4925/.
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Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that understanding is rooted in conversation and that it is understanding that shapes the human sciences. By showing how words reveal their conceptual value in conversation, we have to question the human sciences attachment to method. The alienating effect of an instrumental view of language is the key issue in this work. We focus on how we communicate as ethical and lyrical subjects in the human sciences while observing scientific protocols. The key question that dominates the current work is: how can poetics and truth, seen as a primary part of our verbal experience of the world, come to capture the problem of self-understanding and concept formation in the human sciences?
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Fleischmann, Leonie. "The transformation of Israeli peace activism since the second Intifada." Thesis, City University London, 2015. http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/14051/.
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This dissertation examines the transformation of Israeli peace activism since the second Intifada. Using a framework based in social movement theory it argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, not all parts of Israeli peace activism were paralysed in the period following the outbreak of the Intifada in 2000. By placing greater emphasis on the internal dynamics of social movement theory: collective action frames, tactical repertoires and mobilisation structures, and by building a three-fold typology of Israeli peace activism: a liberal Zionist component; a radical component; and a human rights component, it argues that it was only the liberal Zionist component that demobilised following the outbreak of violence in 2000. The radical and human rights component continued to mobilise, with new groups emerging, presenting alternative and innovative ways to challenge the prevailing situation. This study is based on interviews with activists in Israel, participant observation and primary data from the publications and websites of the activist groups, focusing on the period between 2000 and 2014. Through this, new empirical data to further the understanding of Israeli peace activism has been provided. This study further contributes to the literature on Israeli peace activism by unearthing new collective action frames, the evolution of tactical repertoires and a shift in the mobilising structures. Furthermore, by disaggregating the internal dynamics before analysing how they interact with the external environment, the political opportunity structures, this dissertation identifies different cycles of contention for the three components of Israeli peace activism. The empirical analysis has also led to contributions in the field of social movement theory. It shows that impact should be conceived of beyond the policy arena, with emphasis given to other areas of impact, such as mobilisation, cultural shifts and norm entrepreneurship. It also identifies a number of aspects of social movement theory that require refinement: the relationship between the government and a social movement; the connection between the international dimension and a domestic social movement; and the role of gender dynamics.
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Gottfried, Shelly. "The ascent of oligarchy : the case of Israel." Thesis, City University London, 2015. http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/14708/.
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The aim of this thesis is to explore the development of an oligarchy in the Israeli political economy. In that, it both sheds light on the state-business relationship in the Israeli political economy, and refines the understanding of oligarchy in general. In order to achieve this two-folded objective, I rec-conceptualise oligarchy, identify its sources, characterise its structure, and analyse the main mechanisms through which it establishes its power in a national political economy, specifically - in Israel. The literature so far scarcely addresses the ways in which such cluster of wealth and power emerges and develops in liberal and developed market economies. This thesis aims to fill this gap, by examining the origins of the oligarchy rise, the key actors involved in the process of 'oligarchisation', and the modalities through which oligarchs are distinguished from other wealthy actors. In particular, this work illuminates the critical role of the state in the formation and modus operandiof the oligarchy, which, in return, has substantial influence on the decision-making process and the political economy as a whole. The term 'oligarchy' in this thesis refers to a set of institutional, political, and social linkages and dynamics, whose interests are to some extent converged and are increasingly counterpoised to the interests of the 'traditional' economy. My analysis develops on the basis of a critical engagement with theories examining concentration of wealth and power in national political economies, together with data collected from various governemental and non-governmental sources and fieldwork, examining the facets of this concentration in Israel. My study reveals that the corpus of ideas and assessments of oligarchy points to a cohesive power structure, which, in the Israeli case, can be identified as an informal political institution.
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González, Peña Andrea Del Pilar. "Exploring the impact of the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process on post-conflict peace." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/22364/.
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Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) is a milestone towards lasting peace, but not the solution for the roots of a conflict. It is considered a highly politicised process because DDR is a cost-increasing provision that not only contributes to the security, but also builds confidence among warring parties. The United Nations has highlighted that without DDR, and specifically demobilisation, civil wars cannot end. Thus, DDR is a crucial aspect of any peace settlement; its greatest challenge is to design a programme and a strategy that convinces both parties that they have guarantees for surrender and disbanding and that their vulnerability and limits will be respected. This study tries to explain why not all agreements include DDR provision during peace negotiation, what determines this, and whether the DDR can explain the resumption of war or the emergence of new types of violence in post-conflict societies. This study contributes to a broader understanding of how DDR provision is determined by specific characteristics of the rebel group, country and conflict; how various components of DDR can have different impacts on the failure of peace and the new type of violence. The findings suggest that including DDR within a peace agreement, especially a reintegration programme, has a significantly positive impact on peace and shows evidence of the importance of military reintegration in the process of peace consolidation.
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Kavak, Seref. "Transnational community politics in the diaspora : agenda and agency building experiences of the Kurds from Turkey in the UK." Thesis, Keele University, 2017. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/4367/.
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This thesis draws a picture of Kurdish diaspora politics, focusing on the community in London. Political activities carried out by the Kurds are contextualised within the framework of diasporas as transnational non-state actors, through their strong physical and psycho-social ties to their homeland, while they live in their ‘hostland.’ This work is in pursuit of understanding the attempts and strategies of the Kurds from Turkey in the UK to advance their interests as an ethno-national diaspora, and the extent to which these strategies and mechanisms provide the diaspora Kurds with necessary means to survive as a politically active group. The security concerns of the Kurdish activists have productive and destructive results for the Kurdish diaspora. The main negative outcome is the deepening of the already existing fear of politics that has been prevalent in Turkish society, including the Kurds, seemingly the most politicised segment of society since the 1980 military coup. The pressure of order-building through legal political activity and civic engagement pushed the Kurds into the pursuit of rights in various aspects of life that were conventionally seen as part of low politics; issues of secondary importance vis-a-vis national liberation, including gender equality, ecologism, social welfare, education, socialisation and cultural development, rather than issues of high politics, such as the PKK’s status, disarmament, political recognition, or autonomy. Local politics of the UK are perceived as positive, while its higher level policies and foreign policy are seen as mostly negative and "not Kurds-friendly". The diaspora Kurds emphasise negative dimensions of British state in relation to world politics and international relations. I argue that as a response to this negativity, the British Kurds pursue a survival strategy to beat “structure” with their "creative proactive agency" in the diasporan sphere, especially in local politics to which they attach more value and hope.
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Matta, Samer. "The economic impact of political instability : micro and macro estimates, with applications to the Arab Spring." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2017. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/44331/.
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This thesis examines the economic effects of mass political instability events, first of the Arab Spring on Tunisia from a macro and micro perspective, and then more broadly, how economies recover from such events. In addition to an introduction and conclusion, this thesis is composed of three self-contained empirical studies, which we term as chapters hereinafter. Chapter 2 uses the Synthetic Control Methodology to estimate the output loss in Tunisia as a result of the “Arab Spring”. Our results suggest that the loss was 5.5 percent, 5.1 percent, and 6.4 percent of GDP per capita in 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively. These findings are robust to a series of tests, including placebo tests, and are consistent with those from an Autoregressive Distributed Lag model. Moreover, we find that investment was the main channel through which the economy was adversely impacted by the Arab Spring. Chapter 3 extends the analysis to a micro level and explores the impact of political instability that stemmed from the Arab Spring on Tunisian firms. Using a new dataset, we show that political instability was a major concern for small and exporting firms as well as for those that were operating in the tourism sector, those that have suffered from vandalism and those that were located in the interior region of Tunisia. Most importantly, we find that political instability was the most damaging constraint to firm growth after the Arab Spring. Finally, chapter 4 examines the economic implications of mass political instability events, defined as a political regime crisis accompanied by mass civil protest. Using the synthetic control methodology, it is shown that these events significantly reduce output in the short run, and even more so in the long run (up to five years later), although there is considerable heterogeneity across countries. This result was further supported by Difference-in-Difference regression estimates. In addition, we find that countries with increasing investment rates and lower previous income levels are associated with a fast recovery following mass political instability. On the other hand, democratization is found to impede recovery. These results are robust to using different sets of regressors and to the exclusion of potential outliers.
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Pearson, Bethia Jane. ""The press is plural - it represents all the political parties" : media access for the transitional justice campaign during democratisation in Uruguay (1989-2012)." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2017. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/9081/.
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This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of media democratisation in post-authoritarian societies. Since the return to democracy across Latin America, research has yielded important insights into normative expectations of the media during democratisation, and country case studies have highlighted the diversity of contexts for analysis. Long-standing obstacles to media democracy in the region have not been overcome by democratisation. However, there has been little attention to exploring whether media access for civil society actors – and, so, internal plurality of the media – improves over the process of democratisation and what factors influence this. Based on a content analysis of newspaper coverage of major strategies of the campaign for transitional justice in Uruguay spanning from 1989 to 2012 and 16 interviews with journalists and civil society actors, this thesis draws three main conclusions. Firstly, it concludes that there is not a progressive increase in the quantity or quality of media access for civil society actors and this is principally due to the contingency of media access upon both journalistic routines and broader shifts associated with the process of democratisation including the return to “politics as usual” and increasing market competition. It further concludes that transitional justice campaigns face considerable obstacles in gaining media access to further their strategic ends, due to the way in which the media follows the mainstream political and public agenda during democratisation, and low levels of quality of access. Finally, it makes a methodological contribution in its mixed methods approach, which embraces the debate of de-Westernisation in media scholarship. This multi-faceted approach to researching media access reveals the way in which inequalities in media access cannot be divorced from wider power relations in society. Overall, the thesis argues that the lack of media access for civil society actors constitutes a significant and ongoing problem for the deepening of democracies in Latin America. To this end, the thesis supports a more radical account of media democratisation which incorporates a greater normative duty to represent civil society groups, particularly given the dominance of hegemonic, state-led narratives in pacted transitions. This should inform the way in which media policy is approached during democratic transitions and provide impetus for the current push for civil society-led media reform movements in the region. In addition to this, the thesis indicates the need for further and broader research into media coverage of transitional justice campaigns and mechanisms in different contexts and in comparison with other human rights issues.
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Ali, Omran Omer. "Unexpected effectiveness? : the European Union and the long journey to the 2015 landmark agreement on Iran's nuclear programme." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8981/.
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This study seeks to address the question of what explains variation in the effectiveness of the EU’s actions towards Iran. To do so, it conducts a longitudinal analysis – spanning from 1992 to 2015 – focusing primarily on the nuclear dispute, in which the EU, for many unexpectedly, played a crucial role, particularly in the final period leading to the 2015 landmark agreement. In answering the central research question, this study expands on the concept of effectiveness so far used by scholars interested in the EU’s behaviour in multilateral contexts and applying it to a single country. Moreover, this study unpacks the concept of effectiveness and explores the link between internal effectiveness – that is, whether the EU manages to act cohesively and purposefully – and external effectiveness – that is, whether the EU is able to reach the goals it sets for itself in the international arena. In doing so, the aim is that of contributing to debates on whether and how EU internal effectiveness influences EU external effectiveness and the extent to which the external context helps explain variation in the EU’s ability to reach its stated goals. By revisiting the long journey leading to the normalisation of relations between Iran and the international community, this study demonstrates that internal effectiveness is necessary, but insufficient to explain EU external effectiveness, which in fact is also contingent upon the external context in which the EU operates. In particular, the empirical findings covering three distinct periods have demonstrated that focusing only on the position of the US (and related transatlantic cooperation) cannot always provide us with a full explanation of why the EU is (un)able to reach its objectives vis-à-vis third countries. Importantly, the behaviour of the ‘target country’ and the negotiating style used by the EU must be taken into account to explain why the EU’s effectiveness towards Iran has varied across time. As for internal effectiveness, it has been argued that the EU is effective as a global actor when it is able to act autonomously, coherently and is recognised by other actors, including the target country. The level of legal competence in shaping the EU’s capacity to act coherently and effectively in world politics is less important than what has been claimed by the existing literature. Importantly, when the EU is able to articulate determinate common positions and the Member States stick to what they decide jointly, the likelihood for the EU of being externally effective is significantly enhanced, regardless of decision-making rules.
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Hall, Edward. "Realism and liberalism in the political thought of Bernard Williams." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/881/.
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This thesis offers the first systematic critical examination of the political thought of Bernard Williams; explains the relation between his political realism and his critical assessment of much modern moral philosophy, and discusses how his work illuminates the debates about the nature and purpose of political theory. I defend Williams’s fundamental claim that the central questions of political morality arise within politics and argue accordingly that political theory should not, contrary to the position implicit in much contemporary political theory, in the first instance be seen as an exercise in applying a set of external moral principles to politics. I argue that although Williams’s critique of contemporary political theory is mistaken in its claim that contemporary political theorists conventionally endorse a monolithic form of moralism, he convincingly shows that political theory should begin with an understanding of the distinctive character of politics, as this enables us to understand the goods that are internal to it. In this regard, Williams’s realism is best read as an attempt to make ethical sense of politics, and as an attempt to explain how we can continue to affirm a kind of liberalism, without recourse to the moralised presuppositions that he insists we must jettison. I go on to argue that by developing the insights of Williams’s late work we can articulate a defence of liberalism that has marked advantages over the ‘high liberalism’ that most contemporary liberal theorists defend. This latter argument illustrates the distinctiveness of Williams’s contribution to contemporary debates about realism in political theory as most of the realist thinkers with whom he is grouped endorse a form of realism in order to impugn liberalism.
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Al-Tuwaijri, Hamad Ibrahim Abdul Rahman. "Political power and rule in Kuwait." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1996. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1687/.
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Harding, Eloise Mary. "Conceptualising horizontal politics." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/12659/.
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This project investigates the likelihood of a distinctive ideology emerging from what are known as ‘horizontal’ political movements – those which, in brief, aim to operate non-hierarchically guided by principles such as affinity – and furthermore to identify the potential components of such an ideology. The methodology is broadly based on that developed by Freeden, namely an analysis of the conceptual morphology of the ideas put out by horizontal movements. The sources used derive largely from the output of the movements themselves in various forms. I conclude that horizontal politics does have a recognisable ideological configuration, and that this is distinctive from other related ideologies such as anarchism.
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Farfán-Mares, Gabriel. "Non-embedded autonomy : the political economy of Mexico’s rentier state, 1970–2010." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2010. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/247/.
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Due to its competitive political system and strong non-oil export capacity, Mexico is not considered an oil Rentier State. Yet, the consistent and intensive use of crude oil has fundamentally altered the trajectory of its political economy. State institutions, which had consistently relied on oil rents to finance their operations, tend to preserve social stability and political consensus rather than promote development. The central bureaucracy’s need to control oil rent strengthens and reinforces the role of budgetary institutions within politics and administration. Budget institutions provide the government with an inordinate degree of discretion to allocate the budget, a capacity that supports the State’s political legitimation and helps to overcome economic turmoil. Paradoxically, oil produces a policy curse that reinforces the State’s socio-political embeddedness at the expense of its economic leverage. Thus, undermining the incentives for public officials to tax and deliver expenditure quality, thereby deepening the State’s detachment from normal economic behaviour. Oil rent maximization serves to increase the size and cost of public employment and the magnitude of transfers and subsidies at the expense of gross fixed public investment, the maturation of a merit-based bureaucracy, and the Legislature’s role in controlling the Executive. In addition, rents short-term logic is inimical to the country’s long-term strategic planning because they do not provide public and sectoral policies with a sound financial basis. Rentier behaviour is enforced within the State apparatus by a structure of incentives where budgeteers and elected officials are largely exempted, given budgetary secrecy and discretion, to make enforceable and accountable commitments. In order to provide for valid causal inferences and increase explanatory leverage, research findings are supported by a comprehensive use of quantitative and qualitative primary sources (period 1970-2010) as well as pertinent comparative observations from other oil endowed States. Finally, by considering Mexico an outlier, this research refines some of the theoretical and methodological insights of the available literature on rentier States.
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Hausknost, Daniel. "The limits to change : liberal democracy and the problem of political agency." Thesis, Keele University, 2011. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/3832/.
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This thesis explores the limits to purposive change in liberal democracies. Its aim is to provide new analytical tools and concepts to understand better the basis of liberal democracy’s legitimacy, the mechanisms and limitations of political agency at work in it, and the ways in which societal change is delimited and channelled in what is today the most dominant form of political order. The thesis contains three conceptual innovations. The first concerns the nature of liberal democracy, which is shown to involve an ‘epistemic’ dimension of legitimacy on which the system’s stability relies. This explanatory account of legitimacy argues that in a modern democracy the paradoxical relation of the people to itself as both ruler and ruled can only be stabilised when both sides of the equation refer to the same ‘independent’ reality – a reality that has to be generated outside their precarious relationship and hence (for example) in the capitalist market economy. The second innovation regards an analytical distinction between three fundamental ‘modes’ of political agency – decision, choice and solution – whose deployment is strictly controlled by the systemic requirements of ‘epistemic legitimacy’. The result is shown to be an ‘agentic deadlock’ in liberal democracy, which inhibits purposive societal change. The third innovation concerns the very idea of ‘change’ itself. Based on Wittgenstein’s notion of grammar a concept of transformation is developed, which allows us to account for the subtle and long-term changes in the discursive structure of liberal-democratic societies. After comparing these conceptual innovations with the dominant aggregative, deliberative and radical approaches to democratic theory, the thesis concludes with a suggestion for an institutional innovation that might help break the agentic deadlock in liberal democracy.
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Vaccari, Federico. "The political economy of strategic communication." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/22362/.
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This thesis contains three chapters exploring the implications of strategically biased information on political outcomes. The first chapter studies how a politically motivated media outlet misreports information in order to endorse its preferred candidate during an election. The task of identifying the reporting strategy through which an interested outlet can influence the decision of voters is non-trivial as there are many ways in which this can be done. I show that there is only one plausible equilibrium, where the media outlet ``pools'' information in a way that sways the decision of the median voter -- and therefore of a majority of electors. The second chapter investigates how media bias skews electoral competition and produces distortions in the process of policy formation. I develop a model of communication with endogenous policy-making. Candidates running for office know that information passes through the lens of an interested media outlet before reaching the electorate. This generates tension between pandering to the voter with a populist policy, or pleasing the outlet with a biased policy. I show that the implications of media bias are not confined to distortions of the voters' choice at the ballot box, but they propagate back to the process of policy-making. In the third chapter, I study to what extent competing forces in the market for news are beneficial for voters. I explore a model where (i) media outlets compete for influence by providing alternative views of the same stories, and (ii) relevant information spreads quickly, and eventually voters listen to all viewpoints. In equilibrium, both media outlets reveal their private information with positive probability, and misreport otherwise. I find that even though competition triggers more news distortions, it always outperforms monopoly: ``diversity of opinion'' has a value independently of the additional media outlet's bias -- even if it is extremely biased.
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Thompson, Christopher Jeremy. "Beyond epistemic democracy : the identification and pooling of information by groups of political agents." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2011. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/333/.
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This thesis addresses the mechanisms by which groups of agents can track the truth, particularly in political situations. I argue that the mechanisms which allow groups of agents to track the truth operate in two stages: firstly, there are search procedures; and secondly, there are aggregation procedures. Search procedures and aggregation procedures work in concert. The search procedures allow agents to extract information from the environment. At the conclusion of a search procedure the information will be dispersed among different agents in the group. Aggregation procedures, such as majority rule, expert dictatorship and negative reliability unanimity rule, then pool these pieces of information into a social choice. The institutional features of both search procedures and aggregation procedures account for the ability of groups to track the truth and amount to social epistemic mechanisms. Large numbers of agents are crucial for the epistemic capacities of both search procedures and aggregation procedures. This thesis makes two main contributions to the literature on social epistemology and epistemic democracy. Firstly, most current accounts focus on the Condorcet Jury Theorem and its extensions as the relevant epistemic mechanism that can operate in groups of political agents. The introduction of search procedures to epistemic democracy is (mostly) new. Secondly, the thesis introduces a two-stage framework to the process of group truth-tracking. In 4 addition to showing how the two procedures of search and aggregation can operate in concert, the framework highlights the complexity of social choice situations. Careful consideration of different types of social choice situation shows that different aggregation procedures will be optimal truth-trackers in different situations. Importantly, there will be some situations in which aggregation procedures other than majority rule will be best at tracking the truth.
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Williams, Robert. "Libertarian politics : a socio-cultural investigation." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2015. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/26952/.
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This thesis is a case study of Libertarian Party (LP) electioneering in the American bellwether State of Ohio. Officially established in 1972, America's growing LP currently ranks first amongst third parties in their electoral challenge to Democrats and Republicans. Nonetheless, growing duopolist hegemony in the form of the U.S. two-party system has greatly diminished a long and lively history of third party resistance. A survey of American cultural logics and political economy from colonial forms to garrison state constructions together reveal an ideology of party duopoly to serve elite hegemony. The thesis then moves to examine the manner in which Old Right proto-libertarians coalesced into a Libertarian movement. As a socio-cultural investigation of unwanted segments formerly with the Republican Party and their struggles with one another to socially construct the LP, this study is rare. Whilst highlighting interactionist complexities amongst Libertarian segments, the employment of a Rothbardian conflict perspective serves to illuminate a formerly prominent segment within the Libertarian movement. Non-Rothbardian conflict perspectives in synthesis with theories of culture are also drawn upon to broadly interrogate three major segments in their collective social constructions of Libertarian electioneering: classical liberal proponents of small involuntary government, Randian advocates of limited involuntary government, and Rothbardian purists for voluntary government. How the rationalisation of corporative cultural logics impacts upon shared meanings, social constructions, and practices of LP electioneering is also explored. The central argument in this thesis is that segments vie for power to define libertarianism and the LP, but do so within culturally determined codes and parameters. The resulting interpretation in this thesis demonstrates how seemingly paradoxical social constructions of electioneering as Libertarian emerge from corporative ationalisation. Nonetheless, corporative organisational reforms have overcome a range of differentiating factors to achieve greater cooperation between remaining segments after a recent exodus of purists. The result of the corporative turn in Libertarian politics led to rising prominence for an ideology of electability that invariably reinforces the status quo.
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Nieto, Vazquez Octael. "A one-shot deal on the spot : how vote buying affects electoral behaviour : experimental evidence from Mexico." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/22353/.
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For the 2012 Mexican Presidential Elections, about 50 million voters went to polls to elect more than two thousand posts. The runner-up attributed the defeat to a massive vote-buying mobilisation in favour of the front-runner. Reports from electoral observers supported that version. Did vote buying modify voters choices? Although the literature has approached vote buying from several angles, there remain disputes and gaps in our understanding of the mechanisms involved and their direct implications for electoral outcomes. In this dissertation, I assess both, asking i) how are Mexican voters confronted by vote-buying strategies, ii) what mechanisms for targeting and buying votes do parties deploy, and iii) how strong are the effects on voting choices. First, I propose an extended two-stage model of vote-buying mobilisation to frame the analysis and to resolve conflations and confusions in previous research. Second, I employ a mixed-methods research design, analysing thousands of phone calls reporting vote-buying to a national hotline service, a series of semi-structured interviews with brokers, and a list experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey in Mexico. Qualitative evidence from calls and interviews confirm the two-stage model: that activists begin to target voters long time before polling days by knocking on doors, proffering rewards as an exchange for votes and compiling lists of electors. Near and during polling days, activists conduct the second mobilisation strategy to monitor voters and ensure compliance by distributing benefits broadly across the country. Survey evidence shows that 15% of those electors switching voting choices near polling days were contacted by activists during the Election Day, which suggests that further research on vote buying should be more attentive to the timing of the exchange. This research contributes to the literature on vote buying in three ways. First, it extends theoretical approaches of models of vote-buying mobilisation. Second, it provides qualitative evidence from both citizens and brokers to understand mechanisms of targeting and buying votes. Third, it highlights some indirect questioning strategies -including but not confined to the list experiment- that are helpful for estimating vote-buying.
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Manning, Peter. "Justice, reconciliation and memorial politics in Cambodia." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/871/.
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This thesis examines conflicts and congruities between memories of past political violence, and the implications these have for attempts to enable ‘justice’ and ‘reconciliation’ in Cambodia. The project takes the establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as a starting point that seeks to stabilise a narrow account of past political violence. The ECCC is important as a point of departure because it is the main institutional site through which Cambodia is confronting past political violence. Tasked with prosecuting crimes perpetrated by Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, the ECCC promotes a restricted reading of political violence in Cambodia, attempting to silence some pasts whilst calling attention to others. At the same time, the work of the ECCC situates the past as a field of intervention that can yield particular ameliorative social and political outcomes: providing a sense of justice, establishing the truth of political violence in Cambodia, deterring the future perpetration of atrocity, and enabling reconciliation. Memory is integral to these ends as the key target of civic renewal. Based on eight months of fieldwork in 2008/9 conducted at multiple sites in Cambodia, the project critically reflects on the ECCC’s attempt to generate a unified and consensual account of political violence in Cambodia. Three key findings are evidenced. Firstly, whilst the ECCC attempts to frame and stabilise a preferred account of political violence through a judicial process that reconstructs memory through disclosure and concealment, this process itself is contested by the subjects it animates (its ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’). Moreover, I argue that the work of the ECCC actually catalyses multiple, often conflicted claims over what justice and reconciliation mean as socio-political strategies. The ECCC continues to generate unintended and unexpected results in the way that it platforms, recues and generates demands of the past. Secondly, the research findings evidence diverse and competing regimes of memory in Cambodia that call into question the possibilities of the ECCC in reconstructing a unified, shared public memory of political violence in Cambodia, and providing a sense of justice and reconciliation on that basis. These are frequently encountered exactly at the propagation of the ECCC preferred reading of past political violence, gesturing to the way that conflicting memory occurs – or is foregrounded – in resistance to power. Thirdly, the research findings evidence competing rationales for remembering and forgetting political violence in varied ways (for example, material priorities, tourism, and attendant commercial interests). Moreover, the thesis documents ambivalence among some Cambodians toward memorials and museums and the pasts that they call attention to. In this sense, the project shows how these ambivalences are dislocated from and eschew the moral authority of the rationales grounding the ECCC’s work (providing a sense of justice and facilitating reconciliation in the name of continued memories of political violence).
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Van, Coppenolle Brenda. "Political dynasties and elections." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2014. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/883/.
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This dissertation studies political dynasties in democratic countries. Dynasties are common in all professions. However, for the profession of politics, in which succession depends no longer on dynastic succession but on running successful electoral campaigns, understanding how and why political power can be bequeathed is particularly important. Factors such as name recognition (the voter demand side) and political networks (the elite supply side) are potential explanations of the continued presence of dynasties in parliaments. This dissertation studies both the voter demand side and the elite supply side of the phenomenon. I first discuss the related literature on political dynasties, political selection, political quality, and the personal vote. Voting for dynasties can be rational, and the presence of dynastic legislators perfectly legitimate. Political dynasties may thrive in electoral systems that encourage personal voting, such as is used in Belgium. In a first paper, I show that in the Belgian 2010 General Election voters preferred dynastic candidates. Institutional changes may change such (dynastic) elite equilibria. In a second paper, we exploit the constituency-level variation in the franchise extension associated with the Second and Third Reform Acts in Britain. However, we find no effect of these reforms on the position of dynasties or the aristocracy in politics. Changes to the political career of legislators may also affect their chances of establishing or continuing a dynasty. The third paper studies dynasties in the UK House of Commons. I employ random variation in tenure length introduced by winning vs. losing a first re-election by a narrow margin. Surprisingly, I find no effect of tenure length on an MP’s chances of establishing a dynasty in the nineteenth century. However, selection into cabinet is more likely if the MP had a relative in the cabinet before.
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Fletcher, S. M. G. "'It's not a protest, it's a process' : a critical analysis of state power, class struggle, and the Occupy movement." Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2018. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/9695/.
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In September 2011, over 2000 people set up a protest camp in Zuccotti Park, New York, to contest the increasing inequality and social injustices, they argued to have been brought about by the few, at the expense of the many. This camp along with thousands of other camps worldwide, that would emerge thereafter, would come to be known as the Occupy movement. This thesis offers an examination of the Occupy movement by way of considering this phenomenon through a neo-Marxist framework, concerning, in particular the matter of class struggle. The research contained within, offers a series of elucidations regarding key theoretical and conceptual concerns, pertaining to matters of state power, in the context of the war of position in the advanced capitalist state and the neoliberal conjuncture. Presented within this specific depiction of the convoluted process that is class struggle, there is also a consideration of potential strategies for alliance. These strategies for alliance are by way of seeking to realise the making of a social class force of 'the people', on the terms of the exploited classes, that would bring with it, a material change within the state, and to that end, greater forms of equality and social justice.
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Anisin, Alexei. "State repression, nonviolence, and protest mobilization." Thesis, University of Essex, 2016. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/17165/.
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This four article journal-based dissertation builds on Gene Sharp's framework of nonviolent direct action, along with Hess and Martin's repression backfire, in order to deepen our understanding of how state repression impacts protest mobilization and historical processes of social change. After initially problematizing Gene Sharp’s notions of power and consent with aid of political discourse theory, and two case studies of the 1905 Russian Bloody Sunday Massacre and the South African 1976 Soweto Massacre, the dissertation moves onto specifically explain the conditions under which protest mobilization is likely to continue after severe state repression. A causal process model underpins the logic of the dissertation. It identifies generalizable antecedent factors and conditions under which repression backfire is most likely to occur. Numerous mechanisms are also introduced that help explain the operation of this process across different historical eras and political systems. After applying this process model and its mechanisms to the 2013 Turkish Gezi protests, a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of 44 different historical massacres is presented in which repression backfired and increased protest in some cases, but not others. Repression backfire is a highly asymmetrical and nonlinear causal phenomenon. I conclude that nonviolent protest strategy has been a salient factor in historical cases of repression backfire and is also vital for the ability of protests to withstand state repression. However, the role of nonviolence is partial and to some degree inadequate in explaining repression backfire if it is not linked to other general factors which include protest diversity, protest threat level, and geographic terrain.
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Crines, Andrew. "Michael Foot, the role of ideology and the Labour leadership elections of 1976 and 1980." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2010. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/9646/.
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The orthodox interpretation of Michael Foot's election as Labour Party leader in 1980 is that it resulted from a left-wing surge within the broader Party throughout the 1970s. This thesis challenges this assumption. It does so by presenting a contextualised analysis of Foot, the Labour Party and the leadership elections of 1976 and 1980. This thesis argues that it was Foot's reputation and loyalty in government that enabled his political evolution to accelerate towards becoming a conciliatory figure during his leadership. To undertake this reconsideration of the orthodoxy, this thesis has adapted a previously illuminating research approach as utilised by Timothy Heppell. Heppell has produced a number of analyses upon ideological compositions of the Conservative Party during leadership elections, and, more recently, the Labour Party. This research approach was initially devised to consider only ideology. The approach has been improved by this thesis by including non-ideological considerations in order to draw out Labour specific factors in this analysis, because the extent to which the approach can be transferred to a different party at a different time required scrutiny. It is also necessary to acknowledge the need for a re-categorisation of the ideological factions within the Labour Party in order to gain a more complete understanding of Labour's ideological eclecticism. The social democratic right, the centrists, the inside left and outside left demonstrate that the simple assumption of 'left' and 'right' conceals a more complex Parliamentary composition. It is important to contextualise the analysis with a philosophical and historical discussion which places Michael Foot within Labour history. This enables a greater understanding of why he became the Labour leader to emerge. Foot's appropriateness as leader can only be fully appreciated by considering those who influenced him and his career in the Party along with the divided nature of the Labour Party over the period prior to his election. Through these discussions it becomes clear that Foot was able to secure the leadership because of his loyalty to the Labour Party, his record in government, and his Parliamentary interpretation of socialism which separated him from the outside left. This enabled him to be a leader the mainstream of the Party were able to broadly accept at a time of extreme division. His increased appropriateness as leader becomes more evident when contrasted against the likelihood of destructive divisions had a more ideologically dogmatic candidate such as Denis Healey or Tony Benn secured the leadership. The prevailing circumstances as well as the man must, therefore, be considered. This thesis also evaluates Foot's leadership with a view to demonstrate his ability to navigate the Labour Party following his election. The conclusion must be drawn that Labour's ability to prevail without disintegrating illustrates Foot's success as leader, and that the simplistic view that his leadership was simply the result of a left-wing surge is inadequate.
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Akpinar, Pinar. "An emerging mediator on the periphery : Turkey's mediations in the Syrian-Israeli talks and in Somalia." Thesis, Keele University, 2016. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/2498/.
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This thesis investigates to what extent Turkey’s mediation differs from Western modes of mediation. It poses an example for understanding the ability of peripheral countries to challenge the prevalent modes of mediation and emerge as problem solving agents in the international system. The study examines Turkey’s mediation in the interstate conflict between Syria and Israel between 2007 and 2008; and in the intrastate conflict in Somalia between 2012 and 2014. It suggests that Turkey’s search for a new identity since 2002, in the context of domestic, regional and international changes, paved the way for the emergence of its mediator role by creating a sense of confidence leading Turkey to adopt a more proactive stance vis-à-vis the conflicts pertaining in its region. Turkey uses mediation as one element in its wider foreign policy which bears resemblance to Western mediators. Mediation enables Turkey to exert its interest in areas in which it has historical, geopolitical and relational ties. Turkey gains legitimacy as a mediator from its dual identity by presenting itself as both Western and non-Western. Its ability to present its insiderness, inclusiveness and cultural ties as assets come to the fore as ways in which Turkey mediates differently. While cultural ties are advantages in gaining entry into conflicts; demonstrating commitment and dealing with the technicalities of mediation played a greater role in securing Turkey’s credibility as a mediator. The Turkish model entails a broader understanding of mediation that includes aid as complementary to diplomatic talks, particularly in intrastate conflicts. There is also considerable room for civil society involvement. The thesis suggests that Turkey’s mediator role has been too dependent upon more intangible aspects of cultural affinity and identity. As a result, its sustainability depends on the willingness of policy makers to improve the condition of Turkish mediation by investing in institutionalization, capacity building and expertise.
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MacDonald, Keith. "Christopher Caudwell : a critical evaluation." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2005. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55411/.
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Therefore this thesis is an appraisal of Caudwell as a committed revolutionary thinker, a Marxist aesthetician and a scientifically-oriented dialectical materialist; a man deeply influenced by the great theorists of Marxism, especially Engels and Lenin, but also Freud, Jung and Jane Harrison and F.M. Cornford of the 'Cambridge School' of Anthropology and others not within the Marxist canon, giving strength to his exploration into the human condition and his quest for a unified Weltanshauung
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Li, Gregg G. K. L. "Governance systems for organisations : governance information control system design and development methodology for NGO boards : executive summary." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1253/.
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This submission reviews and examines the responsibility and role of non-executive directors in reinforcing the self-governance systems for non-government organisations (NGO). Corporate governance is an issue of great concern at Government and commercial levels and a prime topic in the media due to scandals at Enron, WorldCom, the British Museum, Tyco, and at a host of smaller organisations. This research explored the contributory systems and processes towards enterprise governance and provided new insight into how the boards of directors of NGOs can develop and be in a position to amend the parameters for their own information systems for self-governance. Unless these NGOs can govern themselves properly, their boards may eventually lose their mandate. The governance of NGOs is difficult because of the voluntary and part-time nature of directorship, a lack of information support system, and a comparatively lower level of transparency. Schools, hospitals, productivity councils, universities, social welfare institutions would be representatives of such NGOs. The research has used Hong Kong as the test base at a time when NGOs are given more authority and ownership for self-governance. A series of action-based case studies undertaken are summarised and 'used to identify the control components and processes leading to higher levels of self governance. These together with an extensive literature survey on corporate governance and on the development of governance information systems (GOVIS) were used to develop a new' process methodology for designing and developing governance information system for NGOs. Known as GISDER, the methodology links Rochart's Critical Success Factors (Rochart, 1979), cybernetics (Capra, 1997), systems thinking (Beer, 1985; Jackson, 2000), and adult learning (Ackof, 1999) concepts with control components unique to the organisation under review. The relevant control components for a particular NGO are identified from fifteen base components. Elements of the process methodology have been further tested in some NGOs. A thorough evaluation discussion and thoughts on the applicability of the derived methodology for other types of organisations have been provided. It is concluded that self-governance for NGO boards cannot be assumed and that the components for a GO VIS for self-governance can best be developed and evaluated through the GISDER methodology. The methodology is now at the core of a consultancy offering for NGOs in the Greater China region.
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Campbell, Janet M. "Is there a case for socialist jurisprudence?" Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1997. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4247/.
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The field of socialist law generally has incorporated two paradigms of study. The first focuses on the former Soviet Union, China and other "communist" nations and analyses how legal systems have developed in these nations and why they differ from Western ones. The second rejects the classification of the former U.S.S.R. (China, etc.) as representatives of the socialism envisioned by Marx and Engels and concentrates on a Marxist exploration of legal phenomena in capitalism. The first approach ignores he divergence between the socialism expatiated upon by Marx and the socialism which was (and is) functioning in these nations; the second disregards the problem of a regulatory system in post-capitalist society. Arguments that do address the regulatory problem in socialism often call for a re-definition of law (usually rights-based) which embodies socialist principles. Such a demand, however, is in conflict with Marx's original position (one that was expanded by E.B. Pashukanis) that law become unnecessary in such a society. The purpose of this thesis is to construct theoretically a regulatory system based on the writings of a selection of Marxist legal theorists (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stuchka, Reisner and Pashukanis), ascertain whether such a system might be considered law, and determine whether or not there is a legitimate claim for a "socialist jurisprudence". Both theoretical constructs and historical examples are used during the course of discussion. In addressing the lacuna in the two paradigms of this field, the results of the thesis indicate that there is a viable alternative to law which does not ignore the regulatory needs of society and is compatible with the Marxist critique of the legal order.
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Cant, James Farquhar. "The development of the SS-20 : a case study of Soviet defence decision making during the Brezhnev era." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1998. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4814/.
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The latter part of 1976 witnessed the initial deployment of a new Soviet missile which was codenamed "SS-20" by the United States. The SS-20 was an intermediate-range ballistic missile which could deliver each of its three nuclear warheads to within 400 metres of their designated targets throughout Western Europe from launch sites deep within Soviet territory. In addition the S8-20 was a fully mobile system which reduced significantly the likelihood of its detection and destruction by enemy forces. This, in conjunction with its accuracy and reliability, ensured that the SS-20 added a significant new dimension to Soviet nuclear forces within the European theatre. The Soviet Union's deployment of this new weapon system presaged a new era of uncertainty and tensions in East-West relations. Its initial service history coincided with the beginning of the end of detente and within a few years it had come to hold a position of pre-eminence as a focal point for superpower competition. Along with its Western counterparts - Cruise and Pershing II - the SS-20 became a name familiar to the wider public and served as an effective litmus test of superpower relations. Throughout the Cold War era a host of analytical models were promulgated with the stated aim of rationalising, explaining and, ultimately, predicting the nature of state weaponry procurement policy. Such models displayed a marked diversity of character and were the cause of conjecture and debate among their various proponents. The Action-Reaction model sought to explain weaponry procurement as a response to the activities of a potential adversary. By contrast both the National Leadership and Interest Group models stressed the importance of studying internal political factors in the pursuit of an explanation of such activities. A further alternative - the Military Mission model - contended that weaponry production was predicated upon the operational demands of specific and predetermined defence requirements. A variant which was applied with increasing frequency during the period of the SS-20's deployment was the Military Superiority model. It interpreted the development of the Soviet nuclear arsenal as evidence of her desire to establish political dominance through military power. Given both its undoubted military significance and the political symbolism it came to hold it is surprising that the development and deployment of the SS-20 was never employed as a case study through which to test the veracity and applicability of the hypotheses. New evidence gleaned during the course of this study from interviews with former high-ranking Soviet officers and officials and from restricted-access sources has necessitated a significant revision of the history of the SS-20's development and deployment. Consequently evolving Soviet theatre strategy and the United States' persistent refusal to include Forward Based Systems - medium-range aircraft and missiles capable of carrying nuclear ordnance - within the constraints of the SALT treaties are both reaffirmed as factors which did incline the Soviet Union towards the pursuit of a new missile system for the European theatre of operations. Significantly however neither factor seems to have possessed the overt influence upon the development of the SS-20 that so many past analyses have accorded them. The accepted course of the SS-20's technical development, its institutional origins and its links with other ballistic missile systems are now subject to radical re-evaluation in the light of the evidence which has emerged. Similarly the course and nature of this weaponry system's development is shown to have been subject to the vagaries and complexities of inter-elite relations to an extent previously unsuspected by all but a handful of analysts. The predominance of such bureaucratic interaction was a recurring theme in Soviet weaponry procurement throughout the period of the SS-20's developmental cycle. Analysts face considerable challenges when seeking to model a policy which was so heavily reliant upon the complexities of personal relationships and bureaucratic rivalries.
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Griffiths, Simon. "Responses to the new right : the engagement of the British left with the work of Friedrich Hayek, 1989-1997." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2006. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/325/.
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This is an examination of the context, content and significance of the surprising engagement of the British left with the arguments of Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), one of the most influential theorists of the new right and an important influence on leading figures in the Conservative Government elected in the UK in 1979. The thesis examines in detail the engagement by four thinkers on the British left with Hayek's work: David Miller, Raymond Plant, Andrew Gamble and Hilary Wainwright. Its chronological parameters are the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the election of ‘New Labour’ in the UK in 1997. Important contextual factors behind this engagement include the rise and fall of the British Conservative Party, the difficulties of statist forms of socialism and Hayek's own death. The engagement with Hayek's work provides a case study that demonstrates changes in political themes, in particular, the decline of statist forms of socialism with the left's embrace of the market and individual freedom, the decline in support for the paternalistic state and the search for more ‘feasible’ alternatives. I argue that the British left's engagement with Hayek is part of a wider intellectual break that constitutes the end of a ‘short twentieth century’ in political thought, and that the political landscape is now dominated by two strands of the liberal tradition. As such, the research will be of importance to anyone seeking a clearer understanding of recent changes in political thought and to the shape of the contemporary political landscape.
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Blühdorn, Ingolfur. "The abolition of nature : nature and ecology in German social theory." Thesis, Keele University, 1998. http://opus.bath.ac.uk/14473/.
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Choi, Gwang Eun. "Three essays on democracy, inequality, and redistribution in developed countries." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/23078/.
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The purpose of this thesis is to lay the empirical foundations for exploring the dynamics of democracy, inequality, and redistribution in advanced countries. The thesis consists of three main essays: The first essay provides a new measure of democracy that captures the dynamics of democracy in developed countries, and the second and third essays focus on the dynamic relation between inequality and redistribution. The first paper shows that developed democracies are not uniformly democratic across different dimensions by constructing the Democratic Performance Index (DPI). The DPI, which has eight distinct dimensions of democratic performance, is the result of a conceptual and empirical critique of the existing measures of democracy under a middle-range conception of democracy. The second and third papers are closely intertwined to address a long-standing puzzle of whether more economic inequality leads to more redistribution. The second paper investigates the relationship between economic inequality and redistribution at the country level. The paper introduces redistributive preferences as an intervening factor in the relationship and presents the Gini coefficient of perceived social position (perceived Gini) as a country-level measure of perceived inequality. The evidence shows that perceived inequality, not actual inequality, is significantly associated with redistributive preferences, while preferences for redistribution do not translate into redistribution. The third paper examines the role of both individuals’ objective or subjective social status and their perceptions of inequality in shaping preferences for redistribution. The paper provides new measures of perceived actual inequality, personal norms of inequality, and perceived injustice. The findings demonstrate that subjective social position has a stronger impact on redistributive preferences than objective social position and that individuals’ inequality norms play a more crucial role in preference formation than does their perception of actual inequality. The concluding section summarises and discusses the findings, highlights policy implications, and suggests future areas of inquiry.
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Vidović, Dragana. "Barriers to nonviolent resistance : identities, aims and state responses to dissent." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/21800/.
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The second chapter of this PhD thesis examines the barriers to nonviolent resistance and explains why, despite the grievances, we see uprisings in some states and not others. I argue that a lack of common ties and the existence of ethnic cleavages create additional barriers for nonviolent mass mobilization in ethnically diverse states. I test the argument by using the Ethnic-Power Relations (EPR) and Nonviolent and Violent Campaign and Outcomes (NAVCO.2.0) datasets. The results show that the probability of nonviolent campaign onset is conditional on both, the levels of ethnic diversity and the regime type – the onset being less likely in ethnically diverse non-democracies. The third chapter illustrates how ethnic divides can be used to undermine mass-scale nonviolent mobilization by examining government framing of protest events during the 2014 spring protests in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Automated text analysis approach is used to discover the types of narratives (frames) that the Bosnia and Herzegovina’s government officials used to respond to protest demands. The results show that the Government officials have predominantly used the following types of frames: delegitimizing (ex. calling protesters traitors, hooligans), demobilizing (sympathetic statements – ex. saying that protests are justified), and alternative views (sidelining/ignoring grievances by discussing more salient issues). The results indicate that ethnic divides were exploited to prevent cross-ethnic mass mobilization. In the chapter four, I explore the variability of government responses to protest events using the Mass Mobilization Data (MMD), focusing on the ignore category - the response not commonly studied in the literature. I find that contrary to the expectations, governments are more likely to ignore than repress protest events. In particular, governments are more likely to ignore protests with 1000 or more participants, and more likely to accommodate than repress protests above 5000 participants. In conclusion, this PhD thesis shows that ethnicity increases costs of cooperation and lowers potentials for nonviolent resistance. In addition, this thesis demonstrates that governments might often choose to neither repress nor accommodate protest events, choosing instead to ignore grievances and demands. In summary, the aim of this PhD thesis is to examine barriers to nonviolent resistance and state responses to dissent.
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Papaioannou, Georgios. "Essays on contemporary patronage, public administration, and reform." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/22839/.
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Hammonds, William. "Policy-making, paradigms and change : the origins of the Prevent counter terrorism policy in Great Britain between 2001 and 2011." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/23317/.
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This thesis examines the development of the Prevent counter terrorism policy between 2001 and 2011 to understand the extent to which it represented a change in policy and why. Prevent was an important element of the UK government’s response to the threat from home-grown al-Qaeda terrorism following 9/11 and the associated political conflict over Islam and the Muslim community. The study argues that the development of Prevent can be understood through two competing models of the relationship between government and society, one centralised and coercive the other distributed and consensual that are based on the traditions of Hobbes and Locke. The combination of both models by the Labour government produced a new framework for decision-making that enabled government to deliver short-term security objectives by embedding these in a longer term process of social change. However, whilst this dual approach enabled a broader response to terrorism it also came at the cost of increased conflict over decision-making that ultimately motivated a narrowing of the agenda. The study analyses decision-making through different lenses in order to understand the reasons why Prevent developed in this way. The study was based on a qualitative analysis of semi-structured elite interviews with a small targeted sample of individuals involved in decision-making, alongside primary documentation, to examine explicit and implicit influences on the process. It presents an in-depth narrative account that identified the main decisions, including both formal and informal decisions as well as relevant exogenous and endogenous inputs into the process. It then examines the influence of the decision-making community, including the structure of the relationship between central government, local agencies and civil society. The study then explored how ideas and arguments about the causes of terrorism helped to integrate the competing models of security and the associated trade-offs between the two. The study concludes by examining whether this process represented a paradigmatic change in policy and the lessons that can be drawn about policy change more generally.
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Dockendorff, Andres. "Legislative behaviour in Chile : three essays examining the effects of presidentialism and party politics on Chilean members of Congress." Thesis, University of Essex, 2018. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/23641/.
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Niker, Fay. "Living well by design : an account of permissible public nudging." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2017. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/95047/.
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The thesis provides a full assessment of the moral permissibility of a set of new belief and behaviour modification techniques, now commonly known as “nudges”, which are grounded in and justified by reference to our new insights into human psychology. It asks what forms of nudging are permissible in light of the state’s new understanding of its capacity to modify behaviour using these insights; and it develops an ethico-political account of living well that directs this normative investigation. There are two main strands to this analysis of public nudging, one relating to behaviour change policies designed for the sake of the target and the other relating to those designed for the sake of others. Across both strands, it is argued that the kinds of interventions that are permissible share a similar character: specifically, they are compatible with creating and sustaining the conditions for living well, on account of their playing an ecological-educative role in supporting citizens’ personal autonomy and practical reasoning. The thesis uses its in-depth normative analysis as the basis for engaging with current practices in behavioural policymaking and for setting out an ethically-sensitive policy framework to guide the design of nudge interventions in practice. The extended argument presented in these pages offers a distinctive and timely contribution to this debate, setting out arguably the most sustained and complete philosophical assessment of the ethics of nudging in the literature to date.
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Stanley, Liam. "The everyday politics of the age of austerity : crisis and the legitimation of fiscal consolidation in the UK." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5510/.
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In 2010, the British Coalition government came to power explicitly promising spending cuts as part of a wider fiscal consolidation programme to resolve a debt crisis. Despite this promise to reduce public services, the British public seemed to reluctantly accept as necessary the imperatives of this debt crisis. Why? Through the analysis of data from focus groups conducted around Birmingham, this thesis tackles this puzzle of austerity acquiescence by answering a double-edged central research question: how do everyday actors make sense of austerity, and what do these processes tell us about the legitimation of austerity and the wider politics of crisis? The central argument is that while austerity is a vague and highly moral idea, it is simultaneously powerful and 'successful' inasmuch that it resonates with the 'mood of the times'. In other words, fiscal consolidation has been conferred a degree of legitimacy since it can be justified in line with some of the intersubjective beliefs and experiences of the public. Through this argument, this thesis primarily contributes to the discipline of political economy through a novel empirical account of austerity acquiescence and a constructivist framework for exploring how crises and narratives are conferred legitimacy through resonating with the mood of the times.
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Chowns, Eleanor. "The political economy of community management : a study of factors influencing sustainability in Malawi's rural water supply sector." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2014. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5014/.
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Sustainability is a major challenge in the rural water supply sector, where efforts to realise the right to clean water are undermined by high levels of non-functionality. This thesis uses mixed methods to test the relative influence of ten proximate determinants of sustainability, and to critically examine the social, economic and political dynamics underlying these determinants – especially the community management model, which places responsibility for water point functionality on users. The study finds that the key proximate determinants include both technical factors (e.g. water point type and installation quality) and management factors (e.g. availability of funds and incidence of theft). These in turn are driven by the way that community management structures interact with socially embedded institutions. Contrary to the claims made for participatory approaches, the study finds that community management is frequently inefficient and disempowering. Drawing on the concepts of institutional bricolage and civil society failure, the analysis shows that community management generates conflict and reproduces inequality at community level, and embeds perverse incentives and consolidates clientelism at a wider level. The study concludes that community management leads to erosion of social capital and abdication of state responsibility, and argues that donors should reconsider their support for it.
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Akram, Sadiya. "Re-conceptualising the concept of agency in the structure and agency dialectic : habitus and the unconscious." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1266/.
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While the human agent has the capacity for consciousness, intentionality and reflexivity, the same agent must also be affected by the social and political world in which she lives: herein lies the essence of the structure and agency debate. This thesis argues that while realists are in principle committed to a dialectical relationship between structure and agency, there is much dissonance between this commitment and the concepts of agency that they develop. I highlight the exclusion of the unconscious from realist notions of agency and argue that this oversight serves to unbalance the dialectic between structure and agency. The concepts of agency developed by Margaret Archer and Colin Hay are examined and, in varying degrees, both are shown to neglect the unconscious within a dialectical approach. Anthony Giddens is shown to develop a much improved concept of agency, which includes a notion of the unconscious, however, his rejection of the independent causal powers of structure and agency problematises his commitment to the dialectic. A novel approach to theorising agency is offered and draws on insights from Pierre Bourdieu and his notion of habitus. It is suggested that this re-conceptualisation will provide realist social scientist’s with a much improved ontological account of agency and a broader conception of the nature and scope of sociopolitical motivations which inform agential behaviour. A novel methodological framework for researching habitus and its unconscious platform is also explored.
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Aziz, M. H. "How a crisis in the moral economy of development policy challenges state legitimacy." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2012. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/377/.
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This PhD thesis accounts for the legitimacy challenges faced by the state that are specifically created by organized industrial workers through their anti-state unrest. It also relates such legitimacy challenges to recurring regime breakdown in unconsolidated democracies. I thus answer the question: how can we more fully account for labour-led legitimacy challenges to the state that at key times contribute to regime breakdown in unconsolidated democracies? I build on the dominant elite-driven explanations that are already emphasized in the existing theoretical literature by highlighting bottom-up labour mobilization that has not been given sufficient consideration. Moreover, I have uniquely framed such bottom-up mobilization in terms of “shared norms” in a very particular “moral economy” centred around development policy. These norms were in part created by the state as part of its informal “legitimation project” with labour. Key to the state-labour relationship within this moral economy is workers’ expectation of certain subsistence provision from the ruling regime in return for its role in state-led industrial production and national development. Such expectation of specific subsistence provision was partly built up by the state itself through its own rhetoric and policies; but this also set up the state to frequently lose legitimacy when such provision could not be delivered or maintained.
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Whiting, Matthew. "Defying moderation? : the transformation of radical Irish republicanism, 1969-2010." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2013. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/878/.
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This thesis examines the causal pathways underpinning the moderation of radical ethno-nationalism using the case of Irish republicanism (Sinn Féin and the IRA) between 1969 and 2010. Through the application of the ‘inclusion-moderation’ framework, I argue that a strong macro-institutional framework is central to the process of moderation. Existing explanations that emphasise the role of interplay, exchange and leadership choices typically neglect the importance of this wider institutional framework in enabling and shaping the decisions made. In the case of Irish republicanism, the processes of electoral participation, bargaining to design stable democratic institutions, and securing credible guarantees to protect their interests from the United States, all combined and reinforced each other to create a scenario whereby republicans moderated. These processes hinged upon stable democratic institutions that were perceived by republicans as embodying relatively low risks for participation, providing a stable basis for future competition, and rendering the future of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom potentially uncertain. Moderation was a gradual and path-dependent process of increasing returns whereby contact with the stable institutions imposed constraints against radicalism and incentives towards moderation. Republicanism’s transformation is best understood as moving through a series of phases, beginning with absolute radicalism, moving to relative radicalism, before becoming moderate. Crucial to this process was the decision to participate in institutions, which changed and regulated their relationships with other actors, requiring them to build alliances with potential supporters and political opponents. However, moderation was a layered process with some aspects of their policies and beliefs becoming moderate while others remained radical, albeit over time their remaining radicalism became completely accommodating. This was about acquiescing to a system of political order rather than core value change. Republicans continue to assert an alternative claim to sovereignty, reject the legitimacy of British ruling institutions, and continue to assert the legitimacy of their right to armed struggle, albeit they have put the use of violence in their past. As such, rather than thinking of ethno-national radicalism as entailing value change to prove the sincerity of their moderation, it is preferable to look to the ways they demonstrated a commitment to their new moderate path, such as through the process of decommissioning, their endorsement of policing in Northern Ireland, and their response to ongoing threats of violence from former dissident comrades. In short, the inclusion-moderation theory is a powerful approach for explaining ethno-national moderation but it needs some modification for the ethno-national context.
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Kiralp, Sevki. "National identity and elite interests : Makarios and Greek Cypriot nationalism (1967-1974)." Thesis, Keele University, 2014. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/1214/.
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Within the field of Nationalism Studies, the relationship between “National Identity” and “ethnicity” has been widely studied. Likewise, the relationship between “National Identity”, “elite interests” and “ethnic conflicts” has also been investigated. In fact, there is a considerable amount of studies focused on the “inter-state” aspects of “National Identity”, “ethnicity” and “elite interests”, however, such studies tend to highlight the “elite” of the “homeland” as the political and social leaders of their ethnicity; seeing themselves responsible for defending the political interests of their ethnic relatives in transnational borders, or liberating them from other states via “secessionist” or “irredentist” policies. Nevertheless, an example of elite of “ethnic kin”, who dominates another state outside its “homeland”, has not yet been widely theorized academically, with a focus on “National Identity” and “elite interests”. This study aims to fill that gap within the literature through the example of President Makarios and Greek Cypriot nationalism. While Cyprus was a British colony, the Greek Cypriot community was mobilized to unify Cyprus with their “homeland” Greece. However, the result of such mobilization was the foundation of a Cypriot state, based on power-sharing between the Greek Cypriot majority and Turkish Cypriot minority. In the post-Independence era, particularly with the consolidation of the military dictatorship in Greece (1967), President Makarios abandoned the Enosis (unification of Cyprus with Greece) policies and made attempts to reconstruct the Greek Cypriot National Identity in favour of a Greek Cypriot-ruled independent Cypriot state. President Makarios also ignored Greek Junta's manipulations about the Cypriot politics. The subsequent struggle continued until the Athens-led coup d'état that overthrew the President (1974). This thesis shall follow Brass’ “Instrumentalist” theory and shall analyze the reconstruction of the Greek Cypriot National Identity. The thesis will also investigate the role played by the interests of both the President and the Greek Cypriots in constructing this new National Identity.
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Aslantas, M. Ercan. "The European states system and Ottoman-Russian relations, 1815- 1856." Thesis, Keele University, 2012. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/2720/.
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This thesis looks at the way that the European states system operated and affected the Ottoman-Russian relations between 1815 and 1856. The 1815 Settlements established a new system of international relations in Europe. Russia played the greatest role in foiling the Napoleonic bid for hegemony. The most distinguishing characteristic of this new system was that its structure made cooperation effective within the framework of the institution of Concert of Europe. In this respect the four victorious great powers, i.e. Russia, England, Prussia and Austria, did not exclude the defeated power, France, and they took on the governance of international affairs. The new system was built on the political and territorial balance. To this end, the restriction of France and moderation of Russia was necessary. Both countries had some revisionist objectives. Consequently, Near East became the centre stage of the international politics after 1815. Ottoman Empire did not take part in the 1815 Settlements. Therefore, Ottoman-Russian relations were to continue on a bilateral base. Russia’s strategic goal to secure her south-east frontiers clashed with her responsibility for maintaining the provisions of 1815 Settlements in Central Europe since any change in Near East would affect the territorial and political balance in Central Europe, too. Under these circumstances, Russia faced a dilemma in her relations with the Ottoman Empire. Russia was very advantageous owing to her enormous power and her treaty rights regarding the Ottoman Empire which had acquired since 1774. Ottoman-Russian relations developed around three main events during 1815-1856: the revolt of Greeks (1821-29), the rebellion of Viceroy of Egypt (1833 and 1839) and the Holy Place Issue (1852-1854). In all those events Russia was successfully restrained against the Ottoman Empire by the structure of the new system. The thesis draws a number of conclusions. The underlying economic structure of the new state system almost remained the same during the 1815-1856 period. The thesis concludes that the course of Ottoman-Russian relations was increasingly determined by the elements of relationship structure. In particular, the foreign policy objectives of France played the significant role in shaping the Ottoman-Russian relations during 1815-1856.
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Al-Marzouq, Abdullah S. F. "An exploration of the security dilemma in the Middle East : the impact of the transformative power of Iran's foreign policy." Thesis, Keele University, 2016. http://eprints.keele.ac.uk/3212/.
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This is a multidisciplinary research project that aims to explore the geopolitical dynamics, in parallel with recent developments in the Middle East, in the period 2003-2013 and beyond, to some extent. The most effective developments can be found in the shifting power relations, alongside regional and international rivalries, that led to instability, security threats and patterns of violence. With these dynamics in mind and power shifts post-2003, interactions between soft power (ideological proxies) vs military power played a crucial role in shaping the political and security landscape of the region. The thesis explores three sides of the security triangle. The first corresponds to Iran's foreign policy, as case study, which is one of the focal actors that used ideology as basis for action. The second is the presence of the US and its allies, particularly its regional allies. The third is the Middle East region as a reference point for examining power structures in light of rivalry relationships, which in turn interconnects some regional key players in the security paradigm. The objective of this thesis is to broaden the concept of security studies in the field of international relations. The thesis endeavours to incorporate non-state actor violence, sponsored by some nation-states, in this case Iran, as part of a regional strategic agenda. From this vantage point, defensive and offensive approaches will be discussed, in line with Iran's foreign policy, in order to demonstrate how Iran resists regional threats to ensure its survival, and reinforces its influence to maximise its power.