This study examined the forces that affect the influence relationship between leaders and followers in a public sector organisational setting. The study is motivated by the ambition of presenting a critical perspective of the social influence process referred to as leadership. The forces were explored by studying leaders and followers engaged in their normal work context. A variation of a critical ethnographic methodology after Alvesson and Sköldberg (2005) was utilised in order to identify and explain how the dynamics impacted upon the leader follower relationship. An extended period of fieldwork was conducted within a large unitary local government authority (referred to through out the study as the ABC), during which observations and informal interviews with observed constituents were conducted and documentary evidence collected. Subsequently, an interpretive reflection of selected materials was undertaken in order to inform a critical perspective of the dynamics uncovered and the impact they had on the relationship between leaders and followers.These dynamics are shown to be predominantly external to the leader follower dyad. The dynamics of ambiguity, environment, resources, symbiosis, politics and "playing the game" impact on the relationship to create an influence relationship distinct from that detailed in normative models of leadership. The organisation comprises high levels of ambiguity; not least in the roles individuals play as leaders and followers. The transactional basis of the relationship with central government informs the basis of relationships between leaders and followers but in doing so also constricts the possibilities for leadership within the organisation. The environment is therefore an influential dynamic in leader follower relationships. Leaders and followers use the availability, acquisition and utilisation of resources to negotiate the position of their leadership and followership. Leaders are aware that they need followers as a resource and followers need leaders as they control access to resources. The relationship takes the form of a complex social symbiosis in which both component parts support each other. The relationship has a political bias. The use of politics underpins the independence of followers who are capable of acting in ways that can frustrate leaders. Finally, the two constituent parts of the relationship are engaged in playing a game, the rules of which are not explicitly stated, but can involve behaviour deemed to be illegitimate or non-sanctioned. The normative position of followers as a largely homogenous group, docile and subject to the influences of leaders is shown to be unsubstantiated. This study concludes that followers have the capacity to act under their own agency toward their own goals and aspirations; and highlights the use of political behaviour to discredit leadership as an asymmetrical influence relationship. This study concludes by asserting that political behaviour corresponds to leadership and subsequently achieves its emancipatory intent.

The Commonwealth has a history of crises: 1949, 1965, the 1970s through the 80s, 1991 and 2009. Each of these points will be examined: their historical context, the challenges and changes, and the actions it took to meet these challenges. Analysis of these points indicates that the Commonwealth is a reactive and adaptive organization that is affected by, and strives to affect, world events; that it is shaped and influenced by its members, and that crises have resulted in the Commonwealth re-focusing and revising itself. The primary suggestions are that the Commonwealth generate a culture of constant revision, while simultaneously focusing its principles and values. It may also adopt better forecasting measures as organizational theory suggests, so that it can remain an agile organization. The dissertation will also compare the OIF, the CPLP and the OEI and will draw forth lessons that these organizations can learn from the Commonwealth’s history of crisis.

I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche provides us with a political philosophy that deserves serious consideration as a uniquely anti-democratic position within the canon of modern political theory. Beyond recent attempts to democratise Nietzsche's thoughts on power and self-creation, I provide an analysis of Nietzsche's anti-democratic impulse that demonstrates how the elements of hierarchy and philosophy form the core of an antidemocratic and anti-universalist political project in Nietzsche's mature thought. Hitherto, many of Nietzsche's interpreters have assumed that his thought yields no unambiguous political philosophy because he fails to present his ideas in a systematic way. Yet it may be argued that Nietzsche's political thought does reveal a significant, if skeletal, structure that is built upon consistent ideas, however unsystematically presented. The overall aim of this thesis is to determine the best way to characterize what is uniquely political in Nietzsche. I claim that the political in Nietzsche has to do with the relationship between politics as hierarchy and philosophy as independent value creation. I present my thesis in three parts. Firstly, I develop my argument within a critique of recent democratic interpretations of Nietzsche. Secondly, I illustrate the relationship between hierarchy and philosophy through an original exegesis of Nietzsche's texts. And finally, by engaging in a comparative analysis of Hannah Arendt's political theory, I offer an example of how Nietzsche's anti-democratic project may be employed as a tool in the ongoing consideration of important issues in political theory.

[pt] O estilo literário que ficou conhecido internacionalmente como Realismo Mágico tem na laureada obra de Gabriel García Márquez, Cem Anos de Solidão, uma de suas maiores inspirações. O Boom latino-americano, movimento que impulsionou o reconhecimento original da produção literária na América Latina nas décadas de 1960 e 1970 terminou por acender um debate em escala planetária em torno da existência de uma realidade mítica e mágica que ultrapassa as estreitas concepções de realidade do Ocidente. Junto a este reconhecimento, a visão em torno de Cem Anos de Solidão passou a ser associada a uma representação metafórica da cultura e história da Colômbia e América Latina. Esta dissertação pretende problematizar o vínculo imediatamente assumido entre o nacional e o inter-nacional através deste símbolo literário do século XX. Assim, buscar-se-á uma intercessão teórica entre literatura, modernidade e póscolonialidade. Através da enunciação de Gabriel García Márquez o objetivo será interpelar os valores normativos de autoridade e de significação que são ao mesmo tempo assumidas e produzidas pelas teorias de modernização e de resquícios eurocêntricos, mormente a epistemologia das Relações Internacionais. Para esta finalidade, a compreensão de uma espaçotemporalidade disjuntiva e de uma poética da solidão pretendem deslocar as fronteiras que separam a mágica do real. / [en] The international literary genre better known as Magical Realism had on Gabriel García Márquez’s laureate book One Hundred Years of Solitude one of its major inspirations. The movement of Boom boosted the original recognition of Latin American’s authors during the 1960s and 1970s sparking a world-scale debate about the existence of whether or not a mythical or legendary reality goes beyond the strict reality of West. Aside this acknowledgment, the view around One Hundred Years of Solitude became affiliated to a metaphorical representation of Colombia and Latin American culture and history. This dissertation intends to question the link between nation and inter-national through this literary symbol of twentieth century. Therefore, an intersection will be made between literature, modernity and post-coloniality. With Gabriel García Márquez’s local utterances my aim is to question the normalized values of authority and signification easily assumed and simultaneously produced by modernization theory and Eurocentric remnants, mainly International Relations epistemology. To this purpose I take an out of joint account of time and space allied with a poetics of solitude to enable a displacement of the boundaries that split the magical and the real.

Military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq highlighted a key characteristic of contemporary Western civil- military relations. Today, a small group of volunteers fights a distant conflict while popular familiarity with military service and war declines. There is a disconnect between this way of war and enduring cultural understandings of the appropriate normative relationship between gender (particularly masculinity), military service, and citizenship. This study examines "support the troops" (StT) discourses in the United States and United Kingdom during the "global war on terror" (2001-2010) as a representation of this on-going transformation in gendered/ing civil-military relations. Methodologically, the study employs structured discourse analysis to map an original data set of previously unexamined documents produced by UK and US state and military officials, pro-military non-governmental organizations, peace and anti-war movements, and media. It is the first systematic social scientific study of the "support the troops" phenomenon. The patterns inductively generated within the mapping are interpreted using a poststructural (re)conceptualisation of the military as a discursive structural effect, as well a formal institution and social relation. The study argues that StT is a means of addressing the gendered civilian anxiety that accompanies non-service in wartime. It finds that StT is a political contestation over the appropriate normative structure of gendered civil-military relations. Through the articulation of three ideal-typical, intertwined logics of gendered political obligation, StT discourse reconstitutes military support, rather than military service, as the sine qua non of contemporary normative citizenship. Via a series of gendered associations and contrasts with "the troops", support is further produced as a means of military participation. Correspondingly, ostensibly separate "civil" society is (re)masculinised. Together, the underlying logics of gendered political obligation work to discursively instantiate and (re)produce an idealised vision of the political community, extending and legitimating the transnational liberal social order.

[pt] Esta dissertação aborda o tema das instituições internacionais fundamentais através do estudo do papel que a guerra justa desempenha na modernidade. Meu argumento é que a guerra justa pode ser interpretada como uma instituição constitutiva do internacional moderno. Primeiramente, a partir de uma análise do pensamento de Francisco de Vitoria, discuto como os ameríndios foram situados em um patamar inferior de desenvolvimento, possibilitando a justificação das guerras de colonização a partir da ideia de um propósito moral civilizatório. Baseando-me em Christian Reus-Smit, que pretende explicar o desenvolvimento das instituições fundamentais no marco de um complexo normativo, interpreto a guerra justa, na Espanha do século XVI, como uma instituição desenhada para legitimar as práticas da conquista e da expansão colonial. Em um segundo momento, apresento um desenvolvimento histórico da lei natural e discuto como ela participou da estrutura normativa dos sistemas colonial e imperial. Busco mostrar que, apesar do abandono do jusnaturalismo a partir do século XVIII, a lei natural permaneceu na expressão de uma pretensa superioridade dos povos europeus perante seus Outros. Na terceira etapa, finalizo a caracterização da guerra justa como uma instituição constitutiva do internacional moderno, a partir do entendimento de que ela representa uma via para os Estados europeus expressarem e afirmarem sua civilização diante dos povos não-europeus. Além de buscar uma relação dialógica construtiva e complementar com a Teoria Política, esta dissertação representa um esforço crítico na direção de uma maior valorização das contingências históricas e da dimensão moral no estudo teórico das relações internacionais. / [en] The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss the theme of fundamental international institutions by studying the role that just war plays in modernity. My argument is that just war can be understood as a constitutive institution of the modern international. The development of my argument is divided into three parts. First, I analyze the thought of Francisco de Vitoria and discuss how the Amerindians were placed at a lower level of development in comparison to the Europeans. That characterization permitted to justify wars of colonization under a civilizing moral purpose. Based on Christian Reus-Smit s proposal of a normative complex to explain the development of fundamental institutions, I interpret just war, in sixteenth-century Spain, as an institution designed to legitimize the practices of the conquest and colonial expansion. Second, I present an historical development of natural law and a discussion of how it participated in the normative structure of the colonial and imperial systems. I intend to show that despite the abandonment of jusnaturalism from the eighteen century on, natural law still remained in the expression of a supposed superiority of the European peoples. Finally, by understanding that just war represents a way through which the European states express and affirm their civilization before the non-European peoples, I finish my characterization of just war as a constitutive institution of the modern international. Besides attempting to establish a constructive and complementary dialogic relationship with Political Theory, the present dissertation constitutes a critical effort that calls for a greater consideration of historical contingencies and of the moral dimension in the theoretical study of international relations.

[pt] A presente tese parte do diagnóstico de Gayatri Spivak sobre a subalternidade. Mais especificamente, os capítulos 2 e 3 tomam a conclusão de Spivak sobre a incapacidade de falar do subalterno como seu centro de gravidade, ao redor do qual orbitam as problematizações teóricas, articulações conceituais, críticas e argumentos. De forma geral, a tese acompanha a proposição de Spivak, de modo que não é sua intenção provar tal diagnóstico errado. No entanto, é um dos objetivos da tese demonstrar como tal diagnóstico pode estar incompleto. Nesse sentido, o capítulo 3 questiona se o conceito de subalternidade expressa uma forma de vida moderna/colonial que pode ser identificada apenas pela marca da exclusão na arena simbólica. Com tal problematização, o argumento da tese busca distanciar-se das análises que lêem a problemática do subalterno através de lentes estritamente epistemológicas, propondo, em seu lugar, um giro ontológico capaz de apreciar a experiência de indeterminação. A fim de construir esse giro, a tese articula os estudos subalternos com contribuições advindas da psicanálise Lacaniana. Assim, a partir dos conceitos de Lacan, o capítulo 4 busca encontrar uma gramática capaz de interpretar o subalterno em duas dimensões diagnósticas: como perda da experiência e como experiência da perda. Portanto, para dar conta da primeira dimensão, a tese realiza uma releitura da teoria Lacaniana da foraclusão em conjunto com as reflexões dos Estudos Subalternos. Em segundo lugar, relativo à leitura da última dimensão, a experiência da perda, a tese mobiliza um engajamento crítico com as conceituações de Lacan sobre o registro do Real, com foco nas suas operações no campo da teoria das pulsões, as quais aparecem no texto através das discussões sobre o retorno invertido do real, sobre a dessublimação e a travessia do fantasma. O capítulo 5, por sua vez, combina as preocupações teóricas da tese com exemplos concretos, sentidos e contextos históricos na América Latina. Em particular, o capítulo 6 enfatiza uma análise do caso das trabalhadoras pobres e racializadas, cujas experiências políticas estão relacionadas às duas dimensões do diagnóstico da perda mencionadas acima. A função desse momento final é, portanto, acionar uma contribuição analítica que traga aplicação histórica à gramática conceitual proposta e apresentada pelos capítulos iniciais da tese. / [en] This dissertation starts with Gayatri Spivak s diagnosis on the subaltern. More specifically, in Chapters 2-3, Spivak s conclusion about the subaltern disability to speak becomes a sort of gravity center around which orbitate theoretical problematizations, conceptual articulations, critiques and argumentative proposals. In many degrees, this dissertation follows Spivak s proposition, in that it does not intend to prove Spivak s diagnosis wrong. It does aim, however, to show how such diagnosis is incomplete. In that sense, Chapter 3 questions whether the subaltern translates a life form of the modern/colonial system that can only be demarcated by its exclusion from the symbolic arena. With this problematization, the general objective is to move away from a strictly epistemological take on the subaltern problematique towards an ontological turn capable of appreciating the experience of indeterminacy as having an ontological status of its own. In order to construct that turn, the dissertation articulates subaltern studies with Lacanian psychoanalysis contributions. Drawing in Lacan s concepts, chapter 4 tries to find a grammar capable to interpret both the subaltern s expulsion from experience and the subaltern s experiences of denial. Hence, while that first level of interpretation is accomplished through a rereading of Lacan s theory of foreclosure along with subalternalists reflections, the second one is sustained by a critical engagement with Lacan s conceptualizations around the register of Real and its operations as drives - generally related with inverted returns, desublimation, and crossing of fantasy. The Chapter 5 combines such theoretical preoccupation with concrete examples, meanings, and historical contexts related to Latin America reality. In particular, Chapter 6 focus in the case of female workers, which points towards political dynamics that embrace the diagnoses of loss mentioned above. The role of this final moment is to bring an analytical piece capable of offering a historical application of the conceptual grammar about the subaltern as it was developed along the previous chapters of the dissertation.

[pt] Esta dissertação propõe uma perspectiva alternativa acerca da modernidade e da política moderna. Para tanto, divide-se em cinco grandes partes: além da introdução e da conclusão, há três capítulos centrais dedicados a textos de cinco pensadores considerados clássicos. O primeiro dos capítulos centrais se lança à problematização do sujeito moderno, através de alguns textos de Montaigne e Descartes. O capítulo seguinte parte das fronteiras do sujeito para as fronteiras do Estado moderno: com Maquiavel e Hobbes, a discussão se volta à produção do Estado nas articulações espaço-temporais. Em seguida, o capitulo dedicado a Kant defende que sujeito, Estado e sistema são epicentros da modernidade e que nele as aporias entre Montaigne e Descartes e entre Maquiavel e Hobbes estão expressas com ainda maior complexidade. Operando nos limites, origens e fins, desses epicentros, a interpretação aqui proposta das três críticas e dos escritos políticos de Kant busca interpretá-lo como a máxima expressão das insolúveis contradições da modernidade na relação entre o universal e o particular. A perspectiva deste texto opera na íntima imbricação entre sujeito, Estado e sistema internacional modernos. Somente dessa forma é que se pode consolidar sua reivindicação central, que poderia ser formulada da seguinte maneira: a política é a produção de limites, fronteiras e subjetividades na interação com a alteridade. Ao final do texto, pretende-se que muitas aberturas tenham sido feitas, consciente e inconscientemente, não se perdendo de vista, no entanto, que muitos fechamentos terão sido promovidos, consciente e inconscientemente. / [en] This dissertation proposes an alternative perspective on modernity and modern politics. To that task, it is divided in five major parts: in addition to the introduction and the conclusion, there are three central chapters devoted to texts from five thinkers considered classics. The first of these chapters problematizes the modern subject through some of Montaigne’s and Descartes’ texts. The next one goes from the boundaries of the modern subject to the boundaries of the modern State: with Machiavelli and Hobbes, it is discussed the production of the State in spatio-temporal articulations. Then, the chapter dedicated to Kant claims that subject, State and system are epicenters of modernity and that in Kant are expressed, in even more complexity, both the aporias between Montaigne and Descartes and between Machiavelli and Hobbes. Working in the limits, origins and ends, of these epicenters, the interpretation proposed of the Kant’s three critiques and of his political writings aims at interpreting him as the highest expression of modernity’s insoluble contradictions in the relation between the universal and the particular. This text’s perspective works in the intimate imbrications among modern subject, modern State and modern international system. Only this way can consolidate its central claim that could be formulated as follows: politics is the production of limits, boundaries and subjectivities in the interaction with otherness. At the end, the text intends to provide with many conscious and unconscious openings, without losing sight that many closures will also be promoted, consciously and unconsciously

This thesis identifies and explores a ‘return to Freud’ in the work of Jacques Derrida. Resemblances between Derrida’s method of deconstruction and the therapeutic procedure of psychoanalysis have long been a source of debate among critics. Is deconstruction little more than a psychoanalytic reading of the history of philosophy, or is Freud a Derridean avant la lettre? Revealing this dilemma to be a false one, this thesis challenges major interpreters of Derrida such as Jonathan Culler and Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak. By developing Derrida’s well-known yet little understood concept of différance, it argues that this dilemma stems from an inadequate understanding of Derrida’s treatment of time. The structure of temporality implied by différance entails that the meaning of the past is continually reconstituted in its relationship to an ever-evolving present. Far from dissolving the importance of Freud’s contribution, this structure allows Derrida to circumvent nebulous notions of ‘influence’ and ‘indebtedness’ while still engaging psychoanalysis as a key theoretical resource in his own project of deconstruction. A productive engagement with psychoanalytic theory is shown to inform every major stage of the philosopher’s career, from his early phenomenological work to his later reflections on the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Derrida repeatedly turns to Freud as a crucial interlocutor in interrogating a number of philosophical problems encountered in his own work. These problems include the nature of time, space, and memory; the role of the fictive in scientific discourse; the question of the archive; the interdependence of the psyche and technology; and the relationship between politics and the unconscious. At a theoretical level, this thesis provides a detailed account of Derrida’s notion of spacing, arguing that the unconditional belatedness entailed by différance calls us to a difficult, dual responsibility: both towards the legator of an inheritance (that is, towards the textual legacy Freud has bequeathed to us) and towards the unforeseeable future contexts in which this inheritance will require transformation. The discourse of deconstruction, it concludes, enacts a careful negotiation of these two demands.

[pt] Hannah Arendt, conhecida pela constatação da ruptura da tradição derivada dos acontecimentos sem precedentes, passou a formular pensamentos que exigiram um novo olhar. Afastando-se da filosofia política, Hannah Arendt passou a defender uma teoria política que tinha como capacidade confrontar-se com uma exterioridade radical, imprevisível e incalculável. Neste sentido, esta Dissertação tem como objetivo analisar o caminhar de Arendt, a partir do plano de sua trajetória pessoal, da filosofia para a teoria política, tentando compreender como que a experiência da judaicidade - e da consequente posição de minoria política, estigmatizada, refugiada durante o século XX - foi fundamental para a defesa de um mundo plural, pautado no diálogo entre os povos. A análise de parte de sua bagagem intelectual também é feita, chamando atenção para o vínculo da autora com a filosofia existencialista alemã e com o sionismo político, alemão e francês. O período analisado fica entre o nascimento da autora em 1906 e o ano de 1940, ano em que deixa o seu exílio na França. / [en] Hannah Arendt, known for the realization of the rupture of tradition by the unprecedented events, started developing thoughts that demanded a new point of view. Moving away from a political philosophy, Hannah Arendt started to defend a political theory that had capacity to confront a radical, unpredictable and incalculable exteriority. In this sence, this work aims to analyze the path of Hannah Arendt, from her personal trajectory, from philosophy to political theory, to understand how the experience of Judaicity - and the consequent position of political minority, stigmatized, refugee during the 20th century - was important for the defense of a plural world, based on the dialogue between different people. The analysis of part of her intelectual influences is also part of this work, focusing in the existential philosophy and the french and german political zionism. The period analyzed goes from the birth of the autor, in 1906, to 1940, the year that she leaves her french exile.