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This work looks at the present day situation of Scots language and whether or not there is a link between attitudes towards Scots and nationalism in Scotland. An outline is given of the history of Scots, which was once the most widely used language for administrative as well as literary purposes in Scotland, indicating which factors contributed to its demise. The result of this demise is that today people are very uncertain about the status of Scots and whether to see it as a language or a dialect. An investigation as carried out in Edinburgh to find out to what extent people are familiar with what is meant by Scots language and to see how important it is to the formation of a Scottish identity. The results of this investigation were very interesting as they showed a link between people's knowledge about the concept of Scots language and their political opinions on the Constitutional Question in Scotland. The results demonstrated a difference in attitude and perception between the group informants classified as being in favour of independence and those in favour of the Union. There was a clear discrepancy between the answers of the Independence group to the first part of the Questionnaire and the third part. This discrepancy was not as noticeable in the answers of the other two groups (Unionists and Devolutionists). It also seems to be linked to the perception of the identity of the concept "Scots language".

To the study of the establishment of the European Commission in 1958 and its administrative structures, a "new" dimension can be said to have been added with material that has become available with the opening of the Historical Archives of the European Communities. Through this material one has been able to study from first-hand sources influences and aspects of the setting-up of the European Commission which has hopefully cast new light on this process. An interview with former Secretary-General of the Commission, Emile Noël, has given first-hand experiences of the work of the early Commission from a personal source. Approaching the study of the European Commission, one cannot avoid the High Authority. This was as close as one could get to a predecessor to the Commission. Their differences, however, were partly due to the scope of the High Authority, which covered a much smaller area of society, dealing only within the industries of coal and steel. Secondly, the Treaties of the ECSC and EEC approached the legislative process rather differently. Within the ECSC, legislative powers were given to the High Authority alone, whereas in the EEC, this was shared between the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, making the EEC less "supranational". Furthermore, differences between the two executive bodies can be found in the characters of its two Presidents, Jean Monnet and Walter Hallstein respectively. Monnet approached the setting-up of the High Authority in a minimalist way, only expanding and developing its administration according to needs. Hallstein believed in developing administrative structures first, for then to be able to concentrate on the developing of policies. It was also in this way that the Commission was able to perform its most characteristic, and unique feature, that of a political leadership. The influence of President Hallstein was here to prove considerable, together with the rest of the College of Commissioners, operating in a strictly collegiate and independent manner. Particularly during the Free Trade Area negotiations between the Six and the rest of the OEEC, the Commission showed its ability to take political initiatives. The Free Trade Area negotiations had started in an intergovernmental fashion in 1956, two years before the EEC and the Commission came into operation. Nevertheless, the Commission proved capable of entering the negotiations half way through, seeking to carry them on as the single voice of the Six.

As part of Islamic identity development, in the postcolonial era Islamic economists, while dissatisfied with the western approach toward economic and institutional development, initiated a project of developing an economic system. Since, Muslim countries were faced with socio-political problems such as inequality, lack of political rights as well developmentalist failures, such cruel realities on the ground led to call for the revival of Islamic Moral Economy (IME). This socio-religiously constructed economic system understanding places the wellbeing of society at the centre and achieve human development through fair distribution and establishment of social justice and equity as proposed by maqasid al-Shari’ah or the objective of Shari’ah. While the IME project was being conceptualised, the emergence of OPEC in 1960’s and increases in wealth in the Middle East countries due to petrol price shocks added to such demand for Islamically permissible financial products and eventually led to the creation of Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) resulting in a paradigm shift from ‘searching an authentic development strategy’ to ‘financialisation of economy’. IBF was hailed as first step toward a unique and comprehensive IME, growing with more than 15% annually, which would allow Muslims to create a society based on justice and equity. However, development of debt like instruments and utilizing of such controversial instruments in majority for financing on the balance sheets of IBF clearly shows that IME discourse is only limited to the contractual aspects of these instruments. Such preference of economic incentives over religion has shifted IBF to become an integral part of international financial system. Thus, IBF, an operational tool of IME, failed to produce the economic development based on justice and equity in Muslim world as envisaged by IME, as majority of Muslim countries are still faced with basic issues such as health, education and overall wellbeing and are lagging behind on various development indices. The aim of this study, hence, is to explore IME within alternative system approach in an attempt to propose an Islamic development model, while integrating both worldly developments from Islamic perspective with the spiritual development representing a search for an Islamic authenticity in economic development. In an attempt for doing so, this research located the economic development issues in the Muslim world through an extensive analysis and also extensively analysed the aspects of Islamic banks to identify the ‘social failures of IBF’ with the objective of developing ground for the development of an authentic model. The theoretical model proposed in this study is, by definition, value laden in the sense of being determined by Islamic ontology and epistemology, integrating both qualitative and quantitative aspect of human life proposed by maqasid al-Shari’ah that not only helps to formulate policies related to economic aspect of human life but also broad enough to cover all aspects of human life in order to achieve falah in akhirah. In the model, axioms of IME and maqasid al-Shari’ah, serve as higher-order generalisations from which specific statements of lower order generality are deduced about the moral imperative which motivates individuals to work for social good. Furthermore, theoretical model of Islamic development is compared with the Sen’s capability Approach to establish parallelism in terms of processes and outcomes with the objective of identifying articulation and also the essentialisation of justice as the main crux of IME in the development process within the tawhidi knowledge universe.

This research explores the connection between political imaginations, media technologies and social movements in Britain. The relationship between media and dominant ideologies is a central issue of academic debate, but the role of alternative media in the construction of oppositional political discourses is largely under-investigated. This research project explores this relationship by relying on the theories and methodologies of both anthropology and media studies and provides an original and cross-disciplinary reflection on alternative media and political identity; on internet technologies and new forms of political imaginations; and on the possibilities and challenges people encounter in the everyday construction of mediated political action. Drawing from the ethnographic context of campaigning organisations and the Trade Union Movement - and looking in particular at the case of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign - this thesis argues that internet technologies have become the channels within which new political imaginations and possibilities are embedded and transmitted. Yet, to understand the way in which these new political imaginations are re-defining the terrain for political action, it is important to explore the complex dialectics between transformation and continuity - between the technical and the social - rather than emphasising disruption and novelty. It is only by looking at continuity that scholars can understand the complex and imaginative negotiations that enable activists to re-imagine social change in order to adapt to the techno-historical transformations of the last fifteen years.

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This thesis examines coffee activism III the UK in order to discuss the possibilities and hindrances for civic engagement within the wider debates on the decline of political participation and the mediation of politics online. Coffee activism is an umbrella term for the fair trade movement and actors beyond the official network. This research is based on the analysis of selected activists' websites, online and offline interviews with activists and citizens, as well as events observation and survey questionnaires. I interrogate the landscape of coffee activism through spaces which allow political expression and participation to emerge, and question the possible colonisation of such spaces by consumer narratives and mobilisation calls. By portraying the online growth of both civic and consumer-related information, as well as communication and consumption flows, I argue that the internet has served mostly as an enhancer of a neoliberal consumer-driven rationale. Such narratives and directions belong in the repertoire of political consumerism, which has signalled a distance from previous types of civic engagement. There is a shift in the placement of personal experiences of political engagement from public to private spaces. Civic engagement here consists of mostly individual acts, which become politically meaningful on a collective level. This is discussed as collective individualism, signifying a mass scale of individual acts of citizenship. Distance from civic habits of the past assisted by liquid politics online and offline and infiltrated by consumer culture and the politics of neoliberalism allows for both optimism and scepticism for a politics within the capitalist modus operandi. Concurring with literature on the prolific, though fragmented, nature of citizenship and the politics of political consumerism, I argue for the restrictive enactment of forms ofparticipation and the restrained use of the internet for political revival.

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The Mediterranean is a complex area where many interests converge. For long, France has been the leading actor in Euro-Mediterranean policies. However, since the 1990’s, this privileged position has been challenged with the emergence of a ‘new’ member-state with entrepreneurial ambitions: Spain. What kind of entrepreneurial action has been undertaken by France and Spain and under what conditions? To what extent have these two key Mediterranean policy actors been able to collaborate? This thesis analyses the strategies of Paris and Madrid in relation to European foreign policy- making towards the Mediterranean in their attempt to focus more attention on the south. The comparative method adopted in this research presents the role played by France and Spain in projecting their national preferences onto European foreign policy-making towards the Mediterranean. During the Barcelona Process, Madrid played a more significant role than Paris and Spain emerged as an important regional partner with capacity to influence European policy by adopting a collaborative role with other partners and the European Commission, although not without certain contradictions during the different governments of Felipe González, José María Aznar and José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero. France’s role in the Mediterranean, however, has gone through different approaches: the government of Chirac adopted a new regional strategy based on a return to the Arab Policy of France which entailed a reorientation of French strategy with the Barcelona Process becoming a secondary interest. The change of incumbents at the head of the French government again put the focus on the Mediterranean under Sarkozy with a new controversial proposal that, initially, left out the European Union, and represented a new ‘leadership’ style. Although, there has been ‘continuity’ in the different strategies of the Elysée towards the Mediterranean, in the sense that all governments have given great attention to the inland sea, the focus differed greatly under Chirac and Sarkozy. This thesis argues that the Barcelona Process meant the consolidation of a ‘tandemship’ or duo between Paris and Madrid that has gone through different phases from 1995 to nowadays.

This thesis seeks to address to what extent the Conservative Party has re-ignited its interest in the broad sphere of social policy since 1997, which some political commentators believe the party neglected following the demise of the ‘years of consensus’ from the mid-1970s onwards. Having experienced one of its worst ever general election defeats in 1997, the Conservative Party spent an unfamiliar thirteen years in opposition, providing an original context to this study. During its sustained exile from national office until 2010, the party reviewed the perception of its primarily economic policy agenda, and it has subsequently revised its position on various social issues from the late 1990s onwards. Following the introduction, the first four chapters provide a broad theoretical framework to the overall academic study that identifies the key ideas, theories and ideological traditions that have shaped and influenced Conservative Party policy-making since the emergence of mass democracy in the early 20th century. Links are subsequently made with key policies and attitudes that have been associated with the Conservatives while in office throughout the 20th century. The three further chapters are more policy-orientated and seek to link such ideas and ideological influences with practical policy-making while in power, with specific contemporary areas of social policy highlighted as case studies. Chapters five to seven subsequently highlight some notable social policy initiatives that the post-2010 Conservative-led government has developed in opposition and pursued in power, The Big Society, The Free Schools programme and the reform of the NHS, and they are framed within the context of David Cameron’s depiction of the ‘broken society’. Each chapter offers a rigorous concluding judgment relating to just how much ‘change’ the modern Conservative Party appears to have initiated within this particular policy sphere. In chronological terms, the thesis addresses the social policy-making agendas of recent governments in order to make comparative analysis. The administrations led by Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, dating consecutively from 1979, alongside the David Cameron-led coalition from 2010, are therefore the key periods of modern government focused upon. However, as the thesis title suggests, specific attention is given to the evolution of Conservative Party social policy development from 1997 onwards. Having made the link between ideas, ideology and theory to practical contemporary policy developments over seven rigorously constructed chapters, an attempt to reach a measured judgment is then provided. The central question of the thesis and the initial issues raised within the introductory chapter are again focused on, and the extent to which the Conservative Party has changed within this particular policy area is explicitly addressed throughout the concluding section, as well as the various social, political and electoral dimensions that emerge in the process of constructing such a conclusion.