This thesis explores the limits and possibilities of multiculturalism in Brazil through two urban indigenous groups and two urban Afro-descendant quilombo communities in three cities of Brazil’s southeast. These included Quilombo Sacopã and the Indigenous Association Aldeia Maracanã (AIAM) in Rio de Janeiro, Quilombo dos Luízes in Belo Horizonte, and the indigenous Pankararu students of the Pindorama Programme at a São Paulo university. This thesis is fieldwork-based, conducted for a total of 13 months between December 2013 and August 2016. It explores multiculturalism by asking ‘Who counts as ethnic, in this case specifically indigenous and quilombola?’ ‘What has it cost the four groups to count as ethnic?’ I contend that Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, which marked the turn to multiculturalism, contains important advances in indigenous and black rights that have been instrumental in the successes of the four groups. Nevertheless, these possibilities are entrenched in settler colonialism. The structures of authenticity, the filter defining who counts as ethnic, manage multiculturalism’s complicity with settler colonialism. Therefore, multiculturalism as it is currently structured in Brazil ultimately maintains the status quo, failing to pave the way to deeper change. Within this context, this thesis challenges what it means to talk about de-colonisation in Brazil and urges us to imagine more radical horizons.

This thesis explores the tensions between the underpinnings of Normative Power Europe (NPE) and the use of the military as a way of norm diffusion, with a focus on Somalia. It is specifically concerned with the impact of the European External Action Service (EEAS), as part of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), on the evolution of the EU as a ‘normative power’. By focusing on this particular interrelation of normative and military power, this project will illustrate the importance of actorness as a constructive element of the EU’s normative identity in its external action. This thesis’ contribution stems from critiques of NPE, particularly with reference to its discursive nature. Simultaneously, it emphasises symbolic manifestation as key in addressing the tension between “military” and “normative” power. Whilst it contributes to the literature on CSDP, this thesis is concerned with demonstrating the catalytic role of the establishment of the EEAS in the evolution of the EU’s normative identity. Through the exploration of the EU’s military operations in Somalia - EUTM and EUNAVFOR - this research establishes the compatibility between normative power and military means. This is achieved through content analysis and subsequent critical frame analysis of official EU documentation. The critical frames of ‘comprehensive approach’, ‘effective multilateralism’ and ‘partnership-ownership’ are applied to the strategic documentation, sub-strategies and EU documents relating to Somalia and the Horn of Africa in order to demonstrate the normative elements of the EU’s external action as well as how they have altered since the establishment of the EEAS. By examining the consistent operationalisation of the EU’s demonstrated intents and subsequent impact in Somalia, this thesis ultimately provides an evaluation of the Union’s overall power in normative terms. Most importantly, it makes the case for NPE’s pertinence in the study of external action.

No description available.

By adopting Social Movement Theories (SMT) as a basic framework to analyse the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East, I disentangle the role of alternative networks and other forms of political conflict in reference to the Egyptian case in mobilising and forming a potential revolutionary movement. However, the intervention of the military junta, on the one hand, did not allow the proto-movement to develop into a revolution and, on the other hand, hindered the fulfilment of demands for “Social Justice” coming from the people. This dissertation aims to test the hypothesis of how during the Egyptian 2011 uprisings the encounter in public spaces of more organised political oppositionists with other anti-regime elements demobilised the social movements associated with the so-called “Arab Spring”. Through participatory methods, the research hypothesis of this dissertation will be tested with reference to field work research involving Popular Committees and independent trade unions in two areas of Cairo and Mahalla al-Kubra. Driving factors for the differential impact of state repression and Political Islam on mobilisation will be identified through the analysis of the two in-depth case studies and, in a comparative perspective, with similar forms of political conflict in other Middle Eastern countries. Semi-structured interviews and participatory research will be used in order to conduct the analysis. In this dissertation, I argue that during the 2011 uprisings in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood monopolised the space of dissent preventing the formation of common identities among the protesters. Especially social actors in the “Egyptian Street” (e.g. independent trade unions and Popular Committees) and other opposition groups (Liberals, Socialists, Leftists, anarchists) did not find any place within the post-uprisings government and finally have been demobilised by the politics and political discourse of a pseudo Neo-Nasserism, implemented by the regime after the 2013 military coup.

This thesis is aimed at exploring a different interpretation of the spectacle. The existing literature is based on Situationism and the Frankfurt School’s interpretation within which the society of spectacle is demonstrated to not only visually encapsulate the subjects in an enchanting commodification but also restrict the perceptual experiences to regular boredom through such repetitive and exclusive rendition. This criticism rests on a Hegelian and Marxist reading and suggests that the alienating and un-lifelike phantasmagoria of commodification haunts people's daily lives and subjugates the personal struggle that emancipates the subject from being reified in alienation to being unitary in intimacy. The dialectical negation imposed upon the spectacle is challenged in this work by a divergent hermeneutics, which relocates the spectacle in an epistemological complex drawing inspiration from Bataille’s general economy of excess expenditure, Foucault/Deleuze's genealogy, Benjamin's historiography, Barthesian semiological analysis, and Baudrillard’s hyperreal simulacra. Illuminated by this different hermeneutics, the spectacle is rather a kind of unproductive expenditure, which is heterogeneous to dissipate the excess restrictively exuded from the homogeneous mechanism of production in utility as irreducible to realistic production. Thus, the society of spectacle is not negative to the productive mechanism but inhabits it to have incapacity wherein an unreserved play of images is restricted by utility and territorialised fragmentarily by different political-sociological milieus to prohibit the channel of excess towards an unconditional expenditure as an unruly and destructive torrent. The solution is to blur and transgress the restriction, rather than negate it, whereby to fuse the prohibited and the allowed in restriction as a visual hybridity of incompatibilities. Then, a journey of spectacle between London and Shanghai is a concrete method of substantiating this visual fusion as an experiential and incommensurable distribution that drifts between different spatiotemporal fragments on the surface of multiple images. This optical disparity is not restricted to a bourgeois-ruled phantasmagoria but transgressive to uncover time flow to recollect and merge the hidden and accursed heterogeneities outpoured from revolution.

The present study is an inquiry into power transition and how it relates to international social structure comprised of state practice, norms, international law and international organisations. It examines how the behaviour of rising powers and international political change in the context of power transition are governed and guided by international social structure through exploring the interface between three themes in International Relations scholarship: power transition, the interwar debate on peaceful change and reform of the UN Security Council. Via integration of elements of English School theory and hitherto neglected, but nevertheless valuable insights from the interwar debate on peaceful change, the study sets out the socio-structural conception of power transition—or, to be more accurate, of international political change in the context of power transition—as an institutionally governed process, presents a distinctive way of theorising power transition that radically departs from the materialistic, mechanistic and state-centric conception of power transition prevalent in the existing literature on power transition, and develops a framework for analysing actual cases of power transition from the socio-structural perspective, taking Security Council reform as a case study. The study emphasises the diversity of institutions governing change in international society, highlighting the role of international law and international organisations designed for the maintenance of international peace and security, such as the League of Nations and the UN, in managing international political change in the context of power transition, and showing the role that the Security Council as an agent of international political change plays in entrenching the institution of peaceful change in contemporary international society via exercise of its powers under Chapter VI and potentially Chapter VII of the UN Charter. From this standpoint, the study questions and reframes the existing debate on Security Council reform, specifying key issues to be addressed in future debate thereon.

This study investigates the constitutional and conceptual underpinnings of Kuwait’s system of government. The Constitution of Kuwait, which was ratified in 1962, promulgated democracy as its government system; yet curiously, the Constitution lacked any actual explanation of the concept of democracy. Instead, it merely identified the system of government as ‘democratic’, with ‘the people of Kuwait’ as the source of all powers. To explain what Kuwaiti democracy and its government system truly involve, the study has traced its roots and origins: first, by shedding light on the ruling traditions since Kuwait emerged and flourished as a small city state in the seventeenth century. Second, by demonstrating how the Constitution and its Explanatory Memorandum explain Kuwait’s system of government. Third, by narrating the tale of the Constitution and its ratification in 1962 by the elected members of the Constituent Council. The study also focuses on the controversial history of the Islamic Sharia clause in the Arab world, reflected in the Minutes of Proceedings of both the Constituent Council and Constitution Committee. In addition, it highlights the evolution of representative councils, encompassing the 1921 Shura Council, the 1938 Legislative Council, and the 1961 Constituent Council; and applies David Held’s classical models of democracy to the theoretical model adopted by scholars of Kuwait constitutional law. Historical, constitutional and conceptual narratives on democracy lead the research to conclude that Kuwait’s political experience is rich and unique. In the early 1960s, Kuwait successfully withstood all regional challenges to become the first independent, democratic state in a region known for its autocratic regimes. Yet for over half a century since, it has never tackled the constitutional and conceptual shortcomings inherent in its adoption of a hybrid system. Accordingly, the study finds that the system of government in Kuwait is mixed; with its political system infused with rudimentary features of hereditary, representative, parliamentary and presidential systems, and profoundly influenced by its Arab-Islamic roots.

This thesis makes both a substantive and methodological contribution to knowledge. Firstly, it assesses the moral issue of a worrisome increase in the use of small-scale force post-9/11 from a Thomistic just war perspective. Concentrating on one such use of force, namely the practice of targeted killing, it engages in a “renegotiation” of the inherited Thomistic jus ad bellum in order to address the moral questions raised by this recent development in military conduct. Secondly, the thesis seeks to recover the method of traditional casuistry built around the ethics of Aquinas. Employing “Thomistic casuistry” can, it will be argued, approximate the analytical rigour of the revisionist just war while it does not have to disregard the use of history for moral reflection. In addition, “Thomistic casuistry,” as a distinct “third-way” approach to just war, is capable of triggering an exchange between Walzerians and revisionists, the two dominating contemporary approaches which have faced each other in a “war of ethics within the ethics of war.”

No description available.

This thesis examines the institutionalisation of ideas in Russian foreign policy in order to gain a better understanding of Russian foreign natural gas policy and its broader implications on Russian/CIS relations. The main goal of this study is to explore how the Putin’s Presidency marked a change in Russian foreign policy (after 2000) after the previous decade of ‘liberalisation’ and ‘westernisation’. Drawing upon an engagement between historical institutionalism and Foreign Policy Analysis, the thesis focuses on how domestic arrangements, and relations between formal and informal institutions within Russia, impact on foreign natural gas policy. The thesis argues that after 2000, we see the emergence of a renewed form of Russian nationalism which has broader implications for the practice of government. Under the notion of the new "Russian idea", Russian-ness became increasingly defined by civilisational superiority and this underpins a new style of governing called ‘sovereign democracy’. This shapes the direction of foreign natural gas policy, and is even articulated through informal institutions such as the media and private companies. Utilising a case study on the Ukraine, the thesis reveals how the institutionalisation of the ‘Russian idea’ at the domestic level has important implications for Russia’s relations with its ‘near abroad’. As the 2014 Maiden crisis illustrates, the politics of Russian civilisational ‘patriotism’ also has wider repercussions for Europe and the ‘West’. Whilst focussing on natural gas policy, this thesis reveals the importance of the 'Russian idea' on foreign policy.