Since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, the country has continuously been confronted with among other issues, the problem of a weak and unjust social structure resulting in widespread social injustice. It is at the root of most of the crises and social malaise of the Nigerian society and is made more serious by the problems associated with ethnicity and arbitrariness by the state and government. Part of the resultant effects of this weak structure include unjust public institutions and social, ethnic, religious and political crises due mainly to a lack of social cohesion, political integration and an unfair principle of distribution of income, resources, goods and burdens in the society. All attempted palliatives by different administrations have all failed and a very bitter 3-year civil war between 1967 and 1970 in which more than a million lives were lost was the first major manifestation of the problem in post colonial Nigeria. This condition of affairs not only makes political stability and development difficult but also stifles the natural ingenuity of the people to grow. And very serious poverty and underdevelopment of the people in addition to a complete absence of liberty and rights have become institutionalised. In reaction, some Nigerians have resorted to all sorts of immoral, illegal and criminal actions and conduct, including corruption, lawlessness, indiscipline, tribalism, nepotism, and ethnicism, etc. Others have joined the political class and accepted the status quo of injustice as justice and hold this to be the proper and easiest way to achieve their life goals. This has inadvertently led to a warped and distorted sense of justice in the society. This sense of justice sees nothing wrong with vices such as public and institutional injustice, crime, fraud, corruption etc and embraces them wholeheartedly. I propose in this research therefore, the analysis of the fundamental ideas and ideals of John Rawls’ political liberalism as contained in his Political Liberalism as a way of addressing these social-political challenges. In doing this, the merits and intentions of Rawls’ two principles of justice which centre on liberty, equality and differences are examined to deduce their level of coherence, relevance and utility to the Nigerian society. An argument will be made that these two principles represent the closest philosophical and sociological paradigm that have the core ideas and ideals necessary in addressing the twin problems of social injustice and political instability in a third world disordered society such as Nigeria.

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Financial crimes have become one of the most destructive types of crime in post-industrial societies in terms of economic and financial consequences. While the importance of financial institutions in the modern economic system cannot be negated, their critical function in the society with their enormous powers brings about many questions, especially in relation to systems of checks and balances. The increasing number of adverse examples in the last decades provide evidence for the enormous negative consequences of corporate failures resulting from shortcomings in the checks and balances. This study, hence, is motivated by the current financial failures, and aims at exploring and examining financial crimes in terms of the process of becoming a financial white-collar criminal in various financial systems, namely capitalist, socialist and Islamic systems, as well as exploring the vulnerability and propensity of each system in relation to financial crimes. In addition, this study, departing from the shortcomings of Eurocentric understanding and referring to cultural and religious norms, aims to re-conceptualise some of the concepts, subcategories and dimensions with the objective of developing and theorising an improved version of rational choice theory in criminology for a better comparison. In fulfilling the aims of the study, a discourse analysis approach through a deconstruction method is utilised to locate and identify the underpinnings of the existing theoretical frameworks through comparative case study as a method, by comparing extreme cases of market/capitalist finance, socialist/transitional and Islamic/moral finance. In addition, grounded theory is used as a method to construct a modified version of the existing theories by using a number of formal codes such as ‘motivation’, ‘environment’, ‘target’, ‘guardian’ as concepts and ‘opportunity spaces’, ‘real, perceived selves’, ‘ideal and feared’, ‘need and guarding gaps’, ‘haste’, ‘expectations’, ‘deviance’, ‘crime motivation’, ‘act of crime’ etc. as subcategories and ‘material’, ‘social’ and ‘moral’ as dimensions. Such an attempt is rationalised on the ground that the current criminology theories are unfortunately linear theories and they do not make decisions about a regular person. Therefore, there is no crime theory that is confident enough to receive a regular person and make dynamic, relativist, complex analysis about them in prospect, depending on the changing conditions of the inner and outer world of the individual, unlike the ‘complex theory of crime’ produced by this research through grounded theory. A comparative analysis to order the financial systems according to their vulnerability to financial crimes is also provided in this study using the ‘opportunity spaces’ concept of the grounded theory which develops the classical ‘opportunity’ argument of the rational choice theory to almost a small theory of opportunity. This analysis suggests that the most vulnerable financial system to financial crime is the market based financial system, which is followed by socialist/transitional and Islamized financial systems. The comparative analysis of the study on crime propensities of financial systems also confirms the literature on economic and financial systems that argues that the financial systems are converging despite their strong and distinctive ontological and epistemological differences and capacities to enrich and improve each other. The theoretical model developed in this study reveals that crime motivation is only an extension of ordinary motivation and has a dynamic nature. Dynamic in both the micro world of the individual and his/her close social/physical environment and also the macro environment in terms of the wider space of political-economy and social culture. This study fills an important gap in criminology literature which has been sought for decades since the 1970s. Indeed, the resultant theory in this study is unique in its approach because it is a micro-founded macro theory, unlike all the criminology theories which have either micro (biological, psychological theories, control theories) or macro (i.e. symbolic interactions, social bonds theory, life-course theory, conflict theory) foundations.

Liu Shaoqi, the Chairman of the People's Republic from 1959 to 1968. had a coherent set of theories of transition which was distinctive from Maoism. Liu's theory resembled state capitalism, and the theory of transition of Nikolai Bukharin and Lenin, who believed that as long as the major industries were in the hands of the proletariat, the existence of a limited market economy and the retention of private ownership would not hinder a nation's progress towards socialism. Expanding from this principle, Liu believed that if the proletariat were in a ruling position, the purge of the bourgeoisie was not necessary as they could be educated and transformed into socialists. Therefore, Liu disliked class struggle, and did not see the ideological fractions within the Party as a threat to the central authority. The bottom line is that if the Communists' grip on power had not been challenged, a certain level of multiplicity should be tolerated. He distrusted mass mobilisation, and believed that transition to socialism could only be successful if it was under the guidance of the Party. As the nation's Chairman who carried out his job as Mao's front man, Liu had still managed to insert his line of thoughts into mainstream politics in disguised form, though from time to time he had to succumb to Mao's political power. Most writers from the West would regard Liu as Mao's puppet, particularly in view of his involvement in the Great Leap; whereas most Chinese writers from the PRC would try to portray him as the pioneer of market economy in support of China's economic policy. This study aims to show that beneath the facade of Mao's faithful lieutenant, Liu had been applying his own thoughts of transition in a coherent and defiant manner.

Development of Africa has featured in many debates, writings and researches about the continent. It is vivid that there exist a lot of theories that compete for the attention of the continent. This is primarily because there is no approach that can be said to be most suitable for rescuing the continent from its deprivation and economic backwardness. Botswana is a country that unlike others in the continent seems to be doing exceptionally well both economically and politically. However, some experts are not credulous to take the praises that are directed at Botswana without raising questions. They echo that underneath the praises exists abysmal poverty arriongst the citizens of this glorified country. The existence of Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in this country gives hope to many people who are relegated to deprivation and want, in a country that is acclaimed for its political and economical prosperity. This study attempts to demonstrate that Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are useful in development. However, they are faced with immense challenges that render them economically and politically powerless. Amongst those challenges is their inability to generate their own resources to fund their own projects, which inevitably makes them dependent on resources from the donors or governments. Most studies on NGOs have indicated that the problem of lack of resources have some negative impact on their relationship with their beneficiaries. This is often as a result of pressure that. they exact on their beneficiaries to meet terms and conditions that are drawn by the funding agencies. This arrangement fundamentally defeats the ideals of Sustainable Development that advocates for active participation of those people that are directly affected by their interventions. It comes to light that even in cases where NGOs display some willingness to involve their beneficiaries in their activities; it is always not easy due to insurmountable task of parrying influence from governments. The government of Botswana for instance, maintains its power over disempowered communities, so that it can act unilaterally without having to face resistance from politically and economically empowered communities. This study pointed out to the problem that is caused by the exclusion of NGOs by governments from their policies formulation structures. For instance, the government of Botswana used policies that were formulated through consultancies instead of those that are 10 inputted by poor people through NODs. It has to be made clear that even where NOOs attempt to enlist on the active participation of poor people, such efforts are usually undermined by their unwillingness' to formulate some withdrawal strategies. These strategies could fundamentally strengthen their quest to empower communities to realise both acceptable and necessary socio economic and political levels of development. There is a tendency for NOOs to give communities some falsified impression that they would always be available to assist them. This is often not communicated, but has a significant bearing in encouraging dependency of communities on NODs and other development agencies. Interestingly, this study has found out dep~ndency to be amongst the reasons why Sustainable Development, like other attempts made before, to have not succeeded. This study demonstrates adequately that NOOs in Botswana did not have any impact on Sustainable Development. It is evident that with programmes and projects' that NOOs obtrude on communities that they targeted, their beneficiaries are not empowered enough to sustain their level of economic and political development. They also do not get empowered to account for environmental resources that are supposed to be under their charge. The beneficiaries do not also account for the resources that are made available to them by the donors through NODs. The beneficiaries cannot demand accountability from their civil leaders because they are not empowered to do that.

This study examines Syria's foreign policy in the post-colonial period and presents Syria as a state that exhibited the basic characteristics of the states of the global South that came to independent statehood burdened with varying degrees of underdevelopment, vulnerability, dependence and permeability. It is contended that foreign policy in a country like Syria was bound to be preoccupied with the task of overcoming these debilitating conditions or making them manageable. A political economy approach in which socio-economic needs of the country are taken as a source of foreign policy and the acquisition of foreign economic resources as a major foreign policy objective is adopted as a point of departure in this study. While Syria is presented as part of the global South, it is recognised that Syria has a shared Arab identity with the other Arab states of the Middle East. Therefore this study also draws on Constructivist insights on the impact of shared-identities on state behaviour. Moreover, as it is recognised that policy makers have multiple objectives that may reinforce or undermine one another, two other major objectives are considered alongside mobilisation of resources for economic development. These are the goals of independence/autonomy and leadership maintenance/regime consolidation. This study contends that the interaction of these three objectives as a complex process that involves trade offs and changing priorities is worth pursuing because it provides fundamental insights into a polity's foreign policy and contributes to its understanding. This study also makes a case for and provides empirical evidence that reflects the interconnectedness of 'considerations of plenty' and 'considerations of power'; the overlapping of domestic politics and foreign policy; and the contextual nature of the separation of issues of 'high' and 'low' politics. With its emphasis on the quest for resources to foster economic development, this study makes a contribution to the study of foreign policy and enhances our understanding of the processes of state formation and regime consolidation.

The break-up of Pakistan and the transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh in 1971 was seen by many, particularly those in India, as destroying the nationalist basis of the 1947 partition of the south Asian subcontinent. The emergence of Bangladesh as a secularist state was widely thought to have invalidated the Two-Nation theory which claimed that the Muslims were a different nation from the Hindus, the basis on which the original state of Pakistan had been created. The present study is an attempt to examine how far this assumption is correct. It sets out to identify the roots of the people of Bangladesh and the factors which in the first place led them to join in the formation of the Pakistan state. It then examines the nature of conflict between the two parts of Pakistan - East and West - particular emphasis being placed on the issues in dispute in the civil war of 1971 which led to the creation of Bangladesh. "The response of the people of Bangladesh and their leaders to this new situation is also considered. The study has been organised in six chapters with an introduction and a conclusion, summing up the major findings. It has been found that the nationalist basis of the 1947 partition has not been challenged by the break-up of Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh. The origin of Bangladesh is to be found, not in the civil war of 1971, but in the historic Hindu-Muslim conflict in the region called Bengal. As a consequence of this conflict the Bengali Muslims formulated a nationalist doctrine based on their religious affiliation and religion- based culture. Although local in origin, this religious-based nationalism was shared with the Muslims in other parts of the subcontinent, and at the time of partition led to the creation of the original state of Pakistan. Pakistan, geographically divided into East and West, was by no means the ideal state as far as the Bengali Muslims were concerned. However, the alternative, a separate Muslim state in the East was ruled omit because of Congress opposition. The drafting of a Constitution for the new state presented difficulties from the outset but these were eventually resolved in 1956 These arrangements ware however unacceptable to the military "bureaucracy which had acquired power in 1951 and was determined to retain it. The civil war of 1971 was the culmination, not of a nationalist, "but a constitutional struggle between an entrenched military elite and the advocates of popular government. Its outcome depended on many variables none of which were intrinsically inevitable. The transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh did not involve the abandonment by its Muslim population of their Muslim nationalism. The adoption of a secularist ideology for Bangladesh was temporary, a tactical device which was dropped at the first opportunity. The Two-Nation theory has not been invalidated by the break-up of the original Pakistan. The existence of Bangladesh, on the contrary, has reinforced it.