Security is a universal human right and a highly valued societal good. It is crucial for the preservation of human life and is of inestimable value for our societies. However, in Latin America, the right to security is far from being universally established. The aim of this sequential, exploratory mixed methods study is to explore the logic of security provision in six neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro (Vidigal, Santíssimo, Complexo do Alemão, Tabuleiro*, Botafogo and Novo Leblon) and assess its implications for citizens’ right to security. The findings from the research show that, on a city level, Rio de Janeiro’s security network can best be understood as an oligopoly because different security providers (police, municipal guards, military, private security companies, militias and drug trafficking factions) are connected through cooperative, neutral or conflictual relationships and need to consider the actions and reactions of other groups when taking strategic decisions. On a neighbourhood level, the preferred option for security providers are monopolistic-type constellations, characterised by relative peace and stability. However, all actors are willing to engage in violence if the perceived political and/or economic benefits are great enough. The thesis shows that the relative power and influence of the security providers are primarily determined by the way they are perceived by the local communities and by their capacity to use violence effectively. Despite its appearance as chaotic, violence is therefore an instrument which is negotiated and managed quite carefully. The thesis concludes that insecurity and violence in Rio de Janeiro are primarily fuelled by the struggle for territorial control between conflicting security providers within the oligopoly. The oligopolistic constellation of security providers leads to an inequality of security, defined as a condition in which the right to security is not enjoyed by all residents to the same extent.

This thesis analyses the interrelated concepts of diasporic postmemory and how they apply to the oral narratives of a small group of second generation Chileans and Argentineans living in the UK, whose parents were political exiles and economic migrants linked to the Chilean (1973-1990), and Argentinean (1976-1983) dictatorships. Diasporic postmemory as a ‘multidirectional’ theory is used to discuss these narratives in a ‘delocalised’ context where it is argued that two central memory fields overlap: the first being the field of the ‘politics of memory’ in the Southern Cone, and the second the ‘diaspora field’. It will be argued that these narratives occupy a mobile and situated diasporic ‘in-between’ space, indicative of ‘translocational positionalities’ that shift between a UK context and abroad. By presenting these postmemory narratives together, we can come to explore how the legacies of the dictatorships in Chile and Argentina continue to have resonances beyond the stable boundaries of the field of the politics of memory in those countries. As such, they hold the possibility to move beyond the direct victims of state terrorism and their kin, encompassing a wider ‘affective community’ of diasporic positionalities and subjectivities tied to wider societal responses to the legacy of state terrorism and trauma. Furthermore, I will also discuss how in this diaspora space, the positionalities of the researcher and interviewees are intertwined, and form part of subjectivities that can become ethical and reflexive subjects of postmemory, in mutually articulating alternative possibilities for more diversified and collective forms of multidirectional memories to emerge.

The Reconstruction era has been subject to countless studies seeking to vilify or celebrate citizens and politicians of the time. From an initial consensus on its immorality and opportunism, to a revisionism where its achievements were celebrated, and a post-revisionism where the cause of its downfall became the focus, the racial, social and political aspects of Reconstruction have been subject to over a century of debate. Within this historiography, though, the significance of Ulysses S. Grant has been predominantly ignored. Challenging the view that Grant lacked political and racial ideals, the aim of this thesis, and my original contribution to knowledge, is to define his Southern Policy in the context of a personal political and racial philosophy, rather than a record of achievement. An examination of the development of his viewpoint on Reconstruction, the rights of the freedmen, and the power of the President and Federal Government, reveals a struggle at the heart of Grant’s Southern policy as he sought to protect the results of the Civil War whilst hastening a close to the work or Reconstruction. Furthermore, careful study of his correspondence reveal him to be an egalitarian who, if permitted, would have been willing to manage the South with greater force and in far more absolute terms. The tension of his ideals and the dichotomy between thought and action resulted in an inconsistent approach to Southern state crises, counter-productive policy choices and ill-timed changes of course. The outcome was a Southern policy that was not only a political failure for Southern Republicans but, as revealed by a study of Grant’s philosophy on the political and racial issues of the day, a personal one for the President.

This thesis explores land reform, land markets and indigenous mobilisation in Highland Ecuador (1964-1994) through the lens of Karl Polanyi’s concept of the “double movement”. The concept suggests modern capitalist societies comprise two forces: the movement towards the creation, expansion and liberalisation of markets (commodification) and the countermovement towards the regulation of markets, the strengthening of the state, and the promotion of non-market forms of organisation (decommodification). The thesis adopts a radical reading of the concept which sees the double movement as a fundamental contradiction in modern capitalist societies. The empirical investigation offers support for this reading and provides fresh insights into the use of the concept. The value of narrowing the lens of the double movement to examine struggles that emerge around specific economic issues and involve particular social groups is also demonstrated. The thesis also sheds new light on Ecuadorian land reform and the role indigenous peoples performed in the process. Greater clarity is provided on the impact of land reform in the highland region and the land redistributed to indigenous families and communities. One of the central points to emerge from the analysis is that the collective organisation and mobilisation of indigenous peoples were required to secure land through agrarian reform. The relationship between indigenous peoples and land markets is also explored. A new concept is developed which provides insights into the opportunities and threats land markets created for indigenous peoples. The thesis places the 1990 and 1994 indigenous levantamientos within a long-term struggle over land which contrasts with accounts that interpret the uprisings as reactions to structural adjustment and neoliberal reform. The contemporary relevance of the research is demonstrated through the analysis of recent developments in Ecuador, concentrating on indigenous and peasant attempts to bring the use and distribution of land under social control.

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Presenting Belize as an illustrative and critical case of clientelist democracy in the Commonwealth Caribbean, this thesis explores the origins of clientelist politics alongside the pre-independence birth of political parties, analyses its rapid expansion after independence in 1981 and assesses its implications for democratic governance. Based on qualitative research, including interviews with major political leaders, the thesis contends that, despite Belize’s positive post-colonial reputation for consolidating formal democracy, the concurrent expansion of clientelism, as both an electoral strategy and a mode of participation, ranks high among the worrying challenges affecting the quality of its democracy. Although intense party competition in a context of persistent poverty is central to explaining the trajectory of clientelism in Belize, the Westminster model of governance, the disappearance of substantive policy distinctions among parties and the embrace of neoliberal economic policies fuelled its expansion. Small-state size and multi-ethnicity have also been contributing factors. Even though the thousands of monthly dyadic transactions in constituencies are largely rational individual choices with short-term distributive benefits, the thesis concludes that, collectively, these practices lead to irrational governance behaviour and damaging macro-political consequences. Political participation is devalued, public resources are wasted, governance reform becomes more difficult and political corruption is facilitated. As a parallel informal welfare system has become embedded, politicians and citizens alike have become trapped in a ‘big game’ of mutual clientelist dependency. A comparative analysis of post-independence political developments in other Commonwealth Caribbean states shows that the expansion of political clientelism in the context of competitive party politics is significantly path dependent. Besides contributing to the political historiography of modern Belize, this thesis demonstrates that national studies of small clientelist democracies can provide valuable insights into the ways in which informal political practices interact with a state’s formal institutions to shape the quality of democracy itself.

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This paper contends that without the Tory dimension no factual account of the Civil War in 1774 and the beginning of the Revolution in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay is possible, and that there is no better way of demonstrating actuality in this, as in other historic problems, than by direct examination of events through the lives of those who shaped them. This paper is the first historic study of the last and most crucial crisis of Colonial Government in Massachusetts - that is, from the setting up of the Committees of Correspondence in 1772-3 (the Whig extension from Boston of single-party rule by caucus to supplant the Constitution-Charter of 1691 and political pluralism in Town Meetings) to the strategic and military victory in the Siege of Boston of rebellion, created and manipulated by a dedicated Radical minority, and the enforced withdrawal of the Loyalists, the Loyal Militia(including Brig. Timothy Ruggles' corps of Loyal Associators) with the Regular forcer, to Halifax, I. arch 17,1776-as it happened, and from the experience of one of the most active and prominent of the largely Tory soldier-Representative-magistrates that since the Mayflower Compact served as the leaders of Massachusetts: Col. Elisha Jones (1710-1776), the "famous" Tory squire of Weston, on Charles River in Middlesex County and less than a day's walk from Boston. None more than Col. Jones stood for one of the two main Tory political groups in Massachusetts in the 1770's, the "Reformers, " so often at cross-purposes with the Hutchinson- Sewall-0liver faction that supported the status quo and the undivided sovereignty of Parliament, and who when the Civil War began at the time of the Powder Alarm,Sept.1,1774, left their homes for Boston, and the fighting of the Whig political mobs with their weapons of assault and violence to property to men like Col. Jones, Brig. Ruggles, and Col. Thomas Gilbert and the Regulars, and who became the early "refugees"in England. Col. Jones was a leader of the "Reformist" Tories that supported the Constitution-Charter of 1691, and government by law and precedent in the manner of Blackstone(a best-seller in the Colonies) and who worked for the greatest measure of "home rule" and needed reforms(such as adequate pay for judges)initiated whenever possible by the General Court. Their "Charter" was the Middlesex Magistrates' Address to Gov. Hutchinson of May, 1774(signed by Col. Jones and possibly drafted by him) which looked toward an association with Britain based upon mutual economic and political interest: concepts so forward-looking as not to he fully accepted until the 20th century, and so dangerous in their own time as to merit oblivion by the Whigs and vetoes for such measures as the "Prevention of Bribery and Corruption" bill by Hutchinson. It was the "Reformers"that carried the burden of resisting the Whig assault upon the rule of law and maintenance of public order. One of fewer than a dozen Tories elected to the House in 1773 and 1774, Col. Jones opposed all the unconstitutional Whig measures, including Committees of Correspondence, impeachment of Chief Justice Oliver and the Continental Congress. One of the last magistrates to hold court he raised (Nov 1774) one of the first military Tory Corps of the War. Driven to Boston (Dec 1774) by the mobs, he served under Gage and Howe as Forage Commissioner, and three of his sons with Ruggles' Associators. Col. Jones died in Boston just before the Evacuation, but the ideas he fought for were taken to Nova Scotia and Upper Canada by five of his Tory sons, who with their descendants took a distinguished part of the foundation of a new Empire and independent nation of Canada.

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