Ecuador codified participatory democracy and food sovereignty in its 2008 constitution. It also called for the creation of a food sovereignty bill to expand and detail legal protections for these valued practices. In 2009, legislators proposed a bill to the president. It called for indigenous and peasant farmers' increased access to state agricultural resources, such as land and loans, and the ability to direct national government agricultural policy. In essence, legislators wanted to democratize Ecuador's agricultural economic model, one that had long marginalized peasant farmers who grow traditional crops for local markets, and had favored the production of large-scale commodities for export. To accomplish this, they also included within the bill the creation of a power-sharing participatory institution, the National Council for Food Sovereignty, an institution first proposed by the food sovereignty-focused organizations Mesa Agraria and Colectivo Agrario. The institution would comprise a council of representatives from small-scale producer and indigenous organizations as well as state actors who would jointly create national agricultural policy and ensure its implementation. Legislators wanted the council to increase peasant farmer authority in agricultural policy, to establish policy that would enable more egalitarian agricultural production and consumption systems, and to oversee the state's completion of such policy. Legislators and civic groups anticipated that President Rafael Correa, who in his 2006 campaign promoted citizen participation and equitable distribution of agricultural resources, would support such a participatory council. He did not. Instead, Correa partially vetoed the bill. He restructured the institution into a temporary committee and later a permanent state agency, Plurinational and Multicultural National Conference for Food Sovereignty (COPISA), which was mandated to create supplemental food sovereignty bills with citizen participation. COPISA completed the task in 2012, but their bills have yet to become laws. COPISA claims to be a leader in creating food sovereignty policy with citizen participants and to enable their implementation; however, findings show differently. COPISA is a relatively weak state agency. The agency has yet to redistribute power or resources regarding food sovereignty or oversight of existing food sovereignty legislation. Instead, the Correa administration (2007-present) has monopolized agricultural policy decisions and exponentially increased government investment in commodity crops, to the exclusion and detriment of peasant farmers. Indeed, the Correa administration seems to monopolize several supposedly state-sponsored "participatory" platforms, to the detriment of Ecuador's democracy. This text investigates why and how COPISA was restructured into a weak state agency, the perils of COPISA's claim of being a participatory organization, and the ways that its status as a weak state agency impacts and reflects Ecuador's participatory politics, democracy, and agricultural economies.

This thesis will inquire into the practicable strategies that Thomas Hobbes described in his major works of political philosophy, on the one hand, to allow his sovereign to ensure civil peace, and on the other, to enable his sovereign to defend the commonwealth. In terms of civil peace, the exercise of Hobbes's sovereign's 'absolute' authority is tempered by, and contingent on, its practical efficacy for securing and maintaining a peaceful commonwealth. To that end, I will argue that Hobbes's sovereign is obliged to rule according to the natural laws, and entailed in this obligation are coinciding liberties which Hobbes believed that subjects must perceive themselves to possess, and which sovereigns must respect, in order for peace to be realised. However, rather than situating the purpose of Hobbes's project in terms of civil peace alone—as the vast majority of his interpreters have—I consider alongside the purpose of civil peace, and contrast it with, the purpose of defence. Evident from this comparison is that the means by which Hobbes's sovereign must ensure the capability of the commonwealth to defend itself from foreign nations simultaneously undermines and counteracts his otherwise proto-liberal system. Distinct from other prominent interpretations, I will argue that this ambivalence is not a result of an imbalance between subjects' rights contra sovereign's rights, nor yet of an unsupervised agonistic counter-balance between the two. Instead, the affirmation of subjects' inalienable rights are depicted by Hobbes as a practically ineffective means by which to ensure defence. There exists a necessary ambivalence within Hobbes's theory of sovereignty itself and is to be managed solely according to the sovereign's ideally prudent and practicable judgment. Ultimately, I will characterize Hobbes as arguing that the unfortunate necessity of preparedness for foreign defensive wars is best mitigated by the sovereign's prudent and minimal exercise of the commonwealth's power in carrying out this intended purpose.

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Recently, many authors from various theoretical backgrounds have written books or articles trying to clarify what the role of the sovereign state is within the wider political context of “global politics.” This thesis seeks to critically engage with the way in which this debate has been framed by the vast majority of these authors. Indeed, while most authors frame this debate as an essentially empirical disagreement concerning the objective composition of global politics, we will be arguing that it is really a debate that concerns the problem of political foundation and the possibly changing nature of the dominant ways of answering this problem in contemporary “global politics.” From this perspective, the vast majority of those involved in this debate simply pass over - as somehow analytically uninteresting - most of the questions that would really need to be explained and understood. This thesis seeks to address this crucial oversight

This thesis examines the enduring problem of food insecurity in Africa, with a particular focus on Ethiopia and Kenya. It considers food insecurity both in acute terms - the occurrence of famine and chronic terms - famine vulnerability. More specifically it provides a new interpre~tion of the causes of food insecurity in East Africa, with respect to some of the causal factors and viable solutions. It does so by locating the occurrence of famine, and countries vulnerability to it, in the context of the global food system. The global food system is, as yet, an under-examined factor in contemporary famine analysis, particularly in East Africa and this thesis aims to explore it more comprehensively than hitherto. This thesis also makes a substantive contribution to understanding the concept of Food Sovereignty in an African context. Food Sovereignty deserves to be a more significant part of contemporary narratives that at present dominate the political and social dilemmas about food insecurity. However there are serious obstacles such as political relationships, land tenure and the industrial system of agriculture that hinder the development of Food Sovereignty as a viable option. Natural disasters, demographic pressures and ill conceived economic policies are an ongoing part of the story but in essence food insecurity is ultimately political. This thesis concludes that Food Sovereignty should be explored as a political . solution to a political problem.

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<p>Survival of a Perverse Nation traces the ways in which contemporary Armenian anxieties are congealing into the figure of the “homosexual.” As in other post-Soviet republics, homosexuality has increasingly become defined as the crisis of the times, and is understood by many as a destructive force linked to European encroachment. In Armenia, a growing right-wing nationalist movement since 2012 has been targeting LGBT and feminist activists. I suggest that this movement has arisen out of Armenia’s concerns regarding proper social and biological reproduction in the face of high rates of emigration of especially men in search of work. Many in the country blame this emigration on a post-Soviet oligarchy, with close ties to the government. This oligarchy, having quickly and massively privatized and liquidated industry and land during the war over the region of Nagorno-Karabagh (1990-1994) with Azerbaijan, created widespread un(der)employment. A national narrative attributing the nation’s survival of the 1915 Genocide and dispersion of its populations to strong morality preserved by institutions such as the Church and the family has now, in the post-Soviet era, ruptured into one of moral “perversion.” This dissertation is based on 15 months of ethnographic research, during which I participated in the work of two local non-governmental organizations: Public Information and Need for Knowledge, an LGBT rights organization and Women’s Resource Center, a feminist organization. I also conducted interviews with 150 households across Yerevan, the capital city, and did in-depth interviews with other activists, right-wing nationalists and journalists. Through psychoanalytic frameworks, as well as studies of kinship, I show how sovereignty – the longed for dream for Armenians over the last century – is felt to have failed because of the moral corruption of the illegitimate figures that fill Armenian seats of authority. I, thus, examine the ways in which a missing father of the household is discursively linked to the lack of strong leadership by a corrupt government, producing a prevalent feeling of moral disintegration that nationalists displace onto the “homosexual.”</p> / Dissertation

The research investigated the impact of EU law and policies on direct taxation in REITs, and movement towards a harmonised EU-REIT with common direct taxation of REITs profits. It represents the first comparative study of EU member state REIT regimes to identify an emerging common understanding informed by European jurisprudence and Europeanization policy and theory. After identifying the fundamental elements of a REIT (following the original US model) within a context of Europeanization theory, the research examined EU policy mechanisms (such as goodness of fit and adaptational soft pressure) and the impact of relevant case law from the European Court of Justice. It then presented in-depth case studies of three member states: France (example of a well-established REIT regime), Bulgaria (a new accession state) and Spain (a recent REIT regime). The research found an emerging common understanding between member states’ REIT regimes, offering the prospect of a European harmonised REIT form distinguishable from the US model. It also found negative approaches to direct taxation in cross-border situations, and member state concerns about loss of sovereignty and tax base, which should be recognised within any harmonised direct tax regime. The research can claim to be the first comparative analysis of MS REIT regimes to address a common understanding, and thus is relevant to practitioners and academics in the fields of European law and international taxation. It has potential to contribute towards an improved common direct taxation approach and the harmonisation of European REITs within the wider processes of Europeanization. The research was limited to REIT regimes in EU member states, and further research could analyse relevant member state tax regimes outside the 'common understanding' REIT model, and further explores issues of loss of sovereignty and tax base in member states.

The aim of this study is to serve as an introduction to the legal issues dealing with the presence of foreign states' armed forces in the territory of the Czech Republic and in any other receiving states' territory. Czech Republic has ultimate sovereignty under international law. It has supreme independent authority over her geographic area and is only restricted by the sovereignty of other states, international law itself and by freely accepted commitments. Chapter One is introductory and defines how as a consequence of its status as a sovereign state, Czech Republic joins international and supranational organisations and is part of many bilateral and multilateral security agreements. Such acts of its free will serve as a complex system of security measures that every state needs to undertake in order to secure its geographic area and its population. National security and safety is linked to international peace and security. One without the other cannot exist. Due to rapid developments and globalised world, the threats to states' security has changed. Nowadays, states need to face not only military threats, but non-military threats as well, such as economical, environmental, social or political challenges. States use multiple instruments for the purpose of overcoming these threats. One of the...

This thesis proposes a realist analysis of the contemporary concept of popular sovereignty in its ability to make sense of the EU's legitimacy. Drawing upon Bernard Williams' political thought, a conception of legitimacy should make sense of hierarchical rule as a desirable civic order from within its own historical circumstances at the normative level. In addition, it should offer realistic guidance to political agents, meaning that its political fictions must therefore acquire a certain degree of practical resonance in order to act as heuristic tools. The modern concept of popular sovereignty sets appropriate criteria of legitimacy based upon the bonds created between citizens. Through a genealogical inquiry, I reconstruct conceptions of popular sovereignty which underpin defences of the EU's output, democratic, and identitarian legitimacy from canonical arguments. These justifications of the state consider the people as beneficiaries of security and economic prosperity, as a self-governing demos, and as a cultural nation, respectively. I propose a realist vindication of this multi-faceted conception of popular sovereignty at the normative level, because these different conceptions complement one another in making sense of the sovereign state's legitimacy. The thesis then discusses how the political fictions of the people could simultaneously make sense within the European polity. In short, the citizens of Europe's polities have become part of the normative systems which create judicial-economic, civic-democratic, and socio-cultural relationships within the territorial borders of the European states. In addition, the centralisation of decision-making power and implementation resources has given plausibility to the political fiction of sovereignty. European integration has, however, resulted in a reconfiguration of these normative systems and restructuring of power into a two-tier political order. In this novel context, a realist vindication of the contemporary conception of popular sovereignty is no longer possible. The thesis concludes by suggesting that a demoicratic reconceptualisation of popular sovereignty offers a constructive way to make sense of the EU's legitimacy.