In the matter of a few decades, the Supreme Court in Mexico has gone from being a passive institution that served the interests of the federal executive to a genuine enforcer of law and the final arbiter in an increasing number of disputes over power and resources between different branches and levels of government. My thesis traces how and why this change happened and analyses the consequences of a more independent and active Court for the processes of federalism and democratisation in Mexico. My research contributes to a growing body of literature on the judicialisation of politics in Mexico. I analyse the ways in which a more genuine separation of powers has begun to take shape in Mexico. Specifically, I look at how a more independent Supreme Court has provided different government powers at the federal, state and municipal levels with a means of defending their respective jurisdictions against competing powers. While I focus on the Supreme Court, my research situates the judiciary within the wider web of government institutions; increased political pluralism has enabled the legislative branch and state and local governments to exercise stronger checks and balances on the federal executive, with attendant consequences for the emboldened Court when it comes to involvement in the policy-making process. At the core of my thesis is an empirical analysis of the Supreme Court's involvement in federalist issues via the use of constitutional controversies filed before the Court between 1995 and 2005 to resolve federal intragovernmental (between the three branches of government) and intergovernmental (between levels of government) disputes. The analysis operates on two levels: the national, and the subnational via an examination of legal recourses in seven case study states. It also looks at the role of the electoral tribunal in national and local election disputes. A wide variety of political actors are resorting to legal channels in order to resolve political deadlock. The Supreme Court in Mexico has had the last word on issues that range from the generation of electricity to indigenous rights. While my research focuses on Mexico, I compare judicial reform in Mexico with parallel processes in the other three presidential and federal systems in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela). Methodologically, my PhD thesis includes a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including structured and semi-structured interviews and extensive documental research in public and private sector archives, as well as national and local newspapers and specialist magazines.

Since the mid-2000s, the idea of Open Government Data (OGD) has emerged in the United Kingdom as a strong demand for the free and unrestricted re-use of data produced by public bodies. This thesis aims to better understand the social forces and interests that have been working to shape the UK’s Open Government Data (OGD) initiative and to what ends. It focuses on the period 2010-2012, when OGD was adopted as a core policy objective by the new Coalition (Conservative-Liberal Democrat) government that came to power in May 2010. Through analysis of interviews, observations and online documentation, and the adoption of a neo-Gramscian analytical framework to guide the data collection and analysis, the thesis produces an explanatory framework for better understanding and conceptualising the development of the OGD initiative in the UK during this period. Contextualising the emergence and development of the UK’s OGD initiative within the contemporary political and economic crises of the neoliberal project, the thesis adopts the neo-Gramscian concept of trasformismo to explain the domestication of the OGD agenda into a project - counter to many of the initial civil society OGD advocates intentions - which is aimed at the reproduction of the UK’s neoliberal state. In particular, it highlights how OGD policy is being used with the intention of leveraging the full marketisation of public services and the further expansion of capitalism into the exploitation of societal risks, and to help rebuild the fracturing consent for the neoliberal project. It is shown that whilst a radical, and potentially counter-hegemonic, political energy exists within sections of the civil society OGD community within the UK, these OGD advocates are necessarily restricted by both the structural conditions of OGD’s emergence and tactical decisions taken by OGD advocates. The thesis concludes with a number of suggestions for those aiming to direct the OGD initiative in a more egalitarian direction, counter to neoliberal hegemony. The thesis’s contribution to Information Science can be understood as providing a deeper critical understanding of the political economic domain which structures the discipline and its subject of interest at the most fundamental levels. The thesis’s contribution to Political Science is to utilise ideas developed in neo-Gramscian International Political Economy to draw insight into the complex political processes that have unfolded around OGD. In particular, it is the first neo-Gramsican analysis that considers the adaptation of neoliberal capitalism to the logic of ‘openness’.

This thesis discusses the contribution of voluntary associations to the civic ideal in Leicester between 1870 and 1939. It demonstrates the growth in local voluntary associations over the period and illustrates the role they played in public life. Voluntary associations throughout the period 1870 to 1939 helped in the management of local public affairs and provided an organized social life in the town. They promoted social cohesion and a perception of civic unity as well as allowing an expression of difference. Associational life in Leicester became denser between 1870 and 1939, mutating from an elite to a more inclusive model and involvement in voluntary groups that embraced the civic ideal helped previously marginalised groups to integrate into public life. Although national influence encroached on local associational life over these decades there remained a balance between local bodies and those with a national dimension, with branches of some national associations assuming a strong local identity. The meetings of the voluntary associations helped structure an annual local calendar that was represented by the Leicester newspapers as part of a shared culture of interest to all Leicester residents. This regular programme of associational life underpinned the organisation and credibility of a ‘one off’ spectacular, the Leicester Pageant of 1932, an event which was supported by local voluntary associations, through which thousands of Leicester townspeople were mobilised to participate. The success of this occasion demonstrated that, in the 1930s, Leicester residents still retained a sense of civic and local identity. This is contrary to a perception in recent scholarship that the popularity of civic ceremony in provincial towns had decreased from the end of the nineteenth century and that this was symptomatic of a decline in the credibility of the civic ideal.

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This thesis analyses the terms in which collective identity and regional institutions can explain state action towards the unfolding of regionalism in the Andean Community (AC). This analysis develops a constructivist approach that assesses constitutive and casual effects of ideas in order to provide explanations. For the assessment and distinction of these effects, the thesis proposes an interpretive method that consists of focusing on transitive verbs and metaphors denoting causation that state officials and regional bureaucrats use to refer to the role of ideas in orienting state action. The analysis of the explanatory role of collective identity and regional institutions is carried out in three case studies of the AC, namely, Peru remaining an AC member while being reluctant to adopt the Andean Free Trade Zone (FTZ) and the Common External Tariff (CET); collective negotiations of a free trade agreement between the AC and the European Union; and the adoption of the Integrated Plan for Social Development (PIDS). The thesis shows that constitutive and causal effects of ideas are possible to observe in the three case studies of the AC. By observing these effects, the thesis provides a better understanding of a relationship of mutual constitution and causation between collective identity and regional institutions in the AC, and suggests a number of issues that may explain the AC’s maintenance despite its little achievements and low material benefits it provides to member states. The thesis also makes a significant contribution to constructivist theorising inasmuch as it provides a method to operationalise constructivism’s aim of providing explanations based on the role of ideas. To the study of the AC, this thesis represents a major contribution inasmuch as it is the first work that analyses the views of some of the main performers of state action and of the AC as a regional organisation, which accounts for the closest approach to how member states act in the AC.

L’action extérieure du Parlement écossais est l’objet de notre étude. D’abord, nous avons identifié la capacité opérationnelle de cette institution au sein du système institutionnel britannique, sur la scène communautaire et dans les échanges internationaux. Puis, nous avons détecté les facteurs structurant cette action. Selon notre étude, trois pôles prennent forme dans l’action parlementaire tels que les îles Britanniques, l’Europe qui couvre l’espace géographique européen, l’environnement institutionnel communautaire. Enfin, le troisième pôle est l’espace hors d’Europe, notamment les pays du Commonwealth et les Etats-Unis d’Amérique. Nous avons également établi une certaine spécialisation des méthodes et des moyens d’action dans les trois pôles évoqués. / The focus of my dissertation is the external action of the Scottish Parliament. My study identifies the operational capacity of this institution within the British institutional system, on the European Union arena and in international relations. I have identified the factors structuring the parliamentary action that shaped three poles such as the British Isles, Europe and outside the geographic European space. The pole of Europe covers both Continental Europe and the EC institutional environment. I have also identified the specialisation of methods and tools of action within the above mentioned poles