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This thesis combines public policy approaches to the study of policy development with theories of migration and applies them to analysis of New Labour immigration policy between 1997 and 2007. In particular the thesis engages with the insights of Lowi and Pierson in examining the degree to which immigration policy can be seen to have made immigration politics, and then to relate such insights to the feedback effects of that politics impacting on future policy. Through the analysis of four Acts of Parliament and the debate around those Acts, it is argued that a dual policy was created, with the quiet encouragement of wanted migrants accompanied by a hostile discourse related to the unwanted, particularly asylum seekers. This is shown to have created an immigration politics in which hostility has been institutionalised and has expanded beyond those initially identified as unwanted to include other categories of migrants. This, it is argued, has implications for the Government's future aims with regard to the wanted migrants, but also for the lives of those migrants who live in Britain.

Many scholars celebrate the emancipatory potential of alter-globalisation networks. This thesis tests this claim, using a case study of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), and analysing what the powers which constitute this network reveal about the powers 0/ it. GCAP is one of the largest networks of its type, mobilising nearly 175 million people on a single day in 2009 via national coalitions of civil society organisations in 115 countries. The PhD research focuses on two of these national coalitions in India and Malawi, as well as GCAP's broad governance structures, and utilises semi-structured and ethnographic interviews, participant observation and documentary analysis. The data was analysed through a methodological frame of governmentality and post-governmentality literatures, to analyse the full range of discourses and agencies which construct GCAP. The thesis interrogates the agency of GCAP through an exploration of three power-related themes, namely: the relationships GCAP enacts with processes of statist and neo-liberal hegemony; how GCAP develops relations of solidarity across distance; and the manner in which GCAP constructs subjects of legitimation. The thesis finds that GCAP embodies a monitored subjectivity vis-A-vis statist and neo-Iiberal hegemonic power, yet also retains a monitory agency on those powers. It furthermore finds that relations of solidarity developed in GCAP between areas of structural advantage and disadvantage are imbued with both colonial and postcolonial discourses, which simuhaneously buttress and contest neoliberal discourses of managerialism, resource-dependency and the fetisbisation of 'the poor'. These different sets of relations construct GCAP with a contingent, contradictory, yet at times emancipatory and transcendent subjectivity. By creating a snapshot of an alterglobalisation network in diverse social contexts, this thesis reveals the ways in which the power of such networks is uneven and immanent, dependent upon confluences of the various internal and external powers which constitute them

The continuousu seo f emergencym easuresb y Colombiang overnmentsi n the last decadesa, long with a complex combination of generalizedv iolence and social dislocation, has had a deep impact on the Colombian criminal justice system. Such a political tendency to enforce exceptional mechanisms and institutions to investigate, prosecute and sentence what governments and an emotive public opinion regard as dangerous criminals, has structured the Colombian emergency crin-dnal justice -a punitive system characterized by the hardening of criminal procedures and punishments, on the one hand, and the limitation of the human rights and legalg uaranteeso f thosep rosecuted,o n the other. The aim. of this dissertation is, to borrow Foucaules (1979) expression, to make a history of the present of Colombian emergency criminal justice. That is, critically to explain how it is currently structured and how it functions; how it came into being and how it has been shaped by the social, economic, cultural, and political transformations that late modernity has brought about. The normalization of emergency penality, together with the rise of conservatism and neoliberalism in the Colombian political and economic fields during the last three decades, have created a penal commonsentshea t encourages the hypertrophy of the penal state and the reduction of the social state. Thus, governments are mainly concerned with enhancing control mechanisms in order to provide security for markets and investment with the argument that only then can economic and social rights flourish. The normalization of emergency penality is by no means peculiar to the Colombian context, but is rather the manifestation, in rather extreme circumstances of violence, inequality, and social exclusion, of a global trend which I call authoritafian liberalism. that is, the intensive use of punishment to uphold neoliberalism.

This thesis investigates the impact of the European Union (EU) on the way political parties emphasise and frame environmental issues in their election manifestos. In particular, I formulate a set of testable hypotheses regarding the impact of the EU on parties' policy positions on environmental issues and draw on competing theoretical arguments to derive alternative hypotheses which are contrasted to Europeanisation. The thesis reduces the methodological divide in comparative politics by adopting a 'mixed methods' research design that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. In the quantitative part, I test the hypotheses statistically by using the data of the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) for 54 parties in 19 West European party systems. In the qualitative part, I focus on causal mechanisms and compare three parties in Belgium , Britain and Greece by using empirical evidence drawn from extensive archival research conducted in the aforementioned countries. The primary empirical conclusion of the thesis is that the impact of the EU is certainly observable but rather minimal when compared to the impact of variables at the national or party level. Furthermore, on a methodological note, the thesis illustrates the usefulness of political text in estimating parties' policy positions especially when the content analysis of the CMP is supplemented with a qualitative discourse analysis.

I use a neo-Poulantzasian conceptual framework and argue that Thatcherite politics were specific in terms of how they addressed class relations. The Thatcherites marginalised working class militants and implemented a repressive form of trade union law by exploiting divisions in the trade union movement and the Labour Party. In addition, their privatisation of council houses and liberalisation of the mortgage and consumer credit markets tended to cover up inter-class divides and deepen intra-class divides. Accordingly, I see Thatcherism as a class political regime, that is, a relatively coherent ensemble of policies aimed at reproducing capitalist class domination. I contend that this was flanked by the emergence of an authoritarian neo-Ricardian regime in the areas of economic and state policy. The Thatcherites were committed to >free competition<, whilst also extending the state's repressive capacities. On the whole, they facilitated both an offensive of the power bloc and a neoliberal regime shift. As a result, class relations of forces shifted from an impasse to the dominance of capital. Thanks to the Thatcherites defeating their adversaries in the trade union movement, this shift became entrenched and their offensive became stabilised - something unprecedented in the post-war era. At the point of victory, however, divisions over strategy emerged among leading circles in the Conservative party. Consequently, they failed to respond to the transition from an offensive to a consolidating step of the power bloc. Thatcherism eroded and was eventually replaced by Blairism as the next class political regime, whilst authoritarian neo-Ricardianism remained.

In the post-Cold War world, a multi-party election is now almost always seen as the crucial culmination of a peace process after a protracted but inconclusive civil war. The inputs and outcomes of post-conflict elections in Africa, however, are far from homogenous. The breadth and relative strengths of candidates and the range of results that have emerged from four national polls in Sierra Leone and Liberia after similar highly destructive civil conflicts are testament to this conclusion. The varying degrees of stability and instability that have ensued are further evidence which has had enormous impacts on the countries concerned. Although in essence a domestic procedure to select a new political dispensation, outside forces also hold considerable influence. While the political capacity of nascent parties, often transformed from former military rebel groups, varies considerably and has huge repercussions on the elections, the shift to a more liberal international discourse has also had its effects, particularly in the criminalisation of former combatants and the arbitrary application of post-conflict 'justice'. Both factors intertwine to shape the candidates, results and outcomes of the polls. The post-conflict election serves to select a new government and leader, but its other important role must be to avoid a return to conflict. There is then an underlying need for political solutions and inclusivity in the peace process. Equally, the election has an important role in reconciliation, whether by starting the process of addressing grievances pent up over decades which played a considerable part in the outbreak of conflict, or conversely by frustrating any potential for positive political change that has emerged from the violence.

Using the UK Social Science Research Council (SSRC)lEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC)l as a case study, this thesis tests the hypothesis that government funding of social science research has altered research directions. Academics often assume a causal link between government policy, ESRC-funded research and research directions but no adequate evidence has been presented to support this claim. As a senior ESRC figure puts it, 'Most of the people who say these things, even though they are social scientists, speak without looking at very simple .... evidence that's publicly available.' This research examines this evidence in detail and draws upon extensive interviews with ESRC figures. Various governments have viewed social science as either the equivalent of, or inferior to, natural science. The ESRC has been caught in the middle of this conceptual and ideological battle. An understanding of the history of social science in the UK Research Council system, and of the development of the disciplines of sociology and economics in particular, is crucial in revealing how the Left and Right have confronted the idea of a 'science of society' and the impact, if any, upon social science research via the ESRC. This thesis concludes that there is no evidence that government policy has deliberately been filtered through the ESRC in order to direct the social science research effort. There have, however, been indirect consequences of government funding social SCIence through the Research Council system. An ex-ESRC Secretary explains that governments do not understand what social science is so they support 'social science that makes sense to natural scientists', which is 'social science in the service of natural science and technology'. Through fear of budget cuts the ESRC never sought to correct this image and has more recently strategically promoted this brand of social science to its advantage. This has led to a picture of the ESRC as positivistic and directive but, as an ex-committee secretary says, this is 'more apparent than real'. A closer examination of the ESRC's relationships with government, its research priorities and the secretariat's dealings with academics reveals a very different day-to-day picture.

This thesis is focussed on an interpretive evaluation study of a large and complex e-government project that was intended to further the achievement of improved governance in the management of public sector funds in Sri Lanka and was actively supported by one of the international financing institutions. Why is this important? The learning lies not so much in establishing 'the facts' of the matter - the processes through which the project initially failed and then later succeeded in meeting its performance targets - but rather in facilitating the building of a shared view of these processes that will inform the design and implementation of future e-govemment projects. The conclusion is reached that the concept of' good governance' in financial management that was held by the international financing institution at the time of the research exercise was inadequately supported by the available e-govemment project design and implementation tools. An integrated information system was deemed to be necessary for fiscal accountability and transparency. Yet an international 'best practice' model was rejected as inappropriate during the process of localisation in the Sri Lankan Ministry of Finance. Improved governance was eventually achieved - but through local information systems improvisations. This process study employs three complementary analytical frameworks from Actor- Network Theory that have rarely been applied together. A synergy is created that is able to exploit the interpretive powers of the theory, with the whole of the analyses being greater than its constituent parts. As such, this is a potential model for future qualitative evaluation studies of information systems projects.