This inter-disciplinary thesis takes an ethnographic approach to the European Parliament (EP) in order to bring actors, agency, and social context into the study of MEP behaviour. It explores how MEPs practice politics at the everyday level inside the EP. The study approaches politics as an activity performed on a daily basis by individuals within particular social spaces. It takes an individual level and holistic approach to MEP behaviour by exploring their everyday practice of politics inside this institution. The thesis attempts to provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of MEP behaviour than is currently available in the literature. The thesis primarily responds to gaps in the European Studies literature which mean we lack understanding of how MEPs practice politics within European structures as active, dynamic agents. The research design includes participant observation, elite interviews, and a survey. An inter-disciplinary theoretical framework is applied which combines tools from Goffman (1959), Wenger et al (2002), and Bourdieu (1990, 1977). It sees MEPs as actors accumulating capital and preparing backstage to give credible and thus persuasive performances to different audiences in this transnational political field and its habitus. This research particularly explores the role of the national party delegations and EP groups in MEPs' everyday practice of politics and the local meanings generated around these structures. The key narrative woven throughout this thesis concerns their role from participants' perspective. This thesis finds that these structures play a vital support role and that they can be conceptualised as collegial communities of practice in which members routinely exchange knowledge with trusted colleagues to enable them to cope with the work environment they face and to pursue their chosen interests more successfully.

The thesis examines how parties in Serbia and Croatia have responded to the significant challenges brought by European integration since 2000. It seeks to identify and categorise the broad, underlying stances on the substance of the European integration as expressed by relevant, parliamentary parties across both countries. The thesis also intends to discern the most important factors that determined the formation of their attitudes. It explores the interaction and effects of five explanatory variables: party ideology, party strategy, position within the party system, relations with electoral constituencies and socio-economic groups, and transnational and bilateral party linkages. As a qualitative comparative study, it draws on a qualitative content analysis of party programmatic documents as well as interviews with senior party officials, country experts and officials of the EU and European transnational parties. The thesis makes a major empirical contribution to our knowledge on party responses to Europe by looking systematically and comparatively at two under-researched cases. It also makes a more general theoretical contribution by using a new set of cases to test, amend and develop the literature on party positions on the EU. The thesis found that party ideology and strategy were the most important drivers of parties' attitudes towards the EU. Although Serbian and Croatian parties had generally loose ideological underpinnings, a party's ideology was the single most important source of motivation for a response to Europe in the majority of these parties. This was due to the nature of European issues, closely related to identity and statehood issues, in the context of these post-communist and post-conflict societies. Additionally, due to the specific conditions pertaining to the political milieu of candidate countries, a number of former nationalist and Eurosceptic parties fundamentally shifted their long-term positions on the EU. This volte-face was a strategically driven response to internal and external incentives in the context of dynamic electoral competition and strong EU presence, and aimed at maximising their chances of securing executive office. Other factors generally proved to be of secondary importance since their effect was mostly mediated through party ideology and strategy.

This thesis presents a critical analysis of the property rights in terms of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (P1-1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to the property conflict in Cyprus. The theme that runs through the paper is whether property disputes in Cyprus have had an impact on the established case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Also addressed is the extent to which Cypriot property claims caused the Court to depart from its traditional approach concerning property rights under the ECHR and whether these cases before the Court have introduced a new aspect to the understanding and interpretation of the protection of property rights in the Convention system, specifically the application of the P1-1 to the Convention. The Court's approach, in its various precedents, in examining property rights within the remit of P1-1 will be compared with the property claims from Cyprus in order to determine the unique and significant character of the Cypriot property cases and to analyse their relationship with the right to property under P1-1 to the ECHR.

The European Union (EU) policy of gender mainstreaming has been discussed at length in the context of embedding gender equality into the EU's internal market. The effectiveness of gender mainstreaming has been less analysed in other areas of EU competence. This PhD draws on feminist theory to explain the EU's gendered treatment of vulnerable women within the asylum system. Using a range of theories of gender equality, notably separate spheres, radical feminism, and intersectional feminism, the thesis analyses the relevant asylum legislation, judgements and guidelines in international law, EU law and the national legal systems of two EU member states: the United Kingdom and Ireland. These feminist theories provided a perspective which allowed this research to explain how the EU has failed to address significantly and meaningfully the gendered aspects of the asylum system in member states. Despite the EU's stated attempts to ensure through gender mainstreaming that the member states rely on a theory of gender equality which provides protection to women in the asylum system, this PhD found both that the EU has not sufficiently embodied an intersectional approach to gender and asylum and that member states are still more influenced by their national political culture and treatment of gender equality than that of the EU. This thesis uses that research to make recommendations at both an EU and national level to help the EU and its member states better incorporate gender mainstreaming in order to ensure human rights protection for vulnerable women. As the EU manages increasing refugee applications and increasing nationalist sentiment, this presents an opportunity to embed more thoroughly intersectional gender mainstreaming in both EU asylum policy and the EU's political culture.

The aim of this thesis is to add to the growing literature on Euroscepticism by providing an in-depth comparative study of groups in civil society that actively campaign against European integration in Denmark, Estonia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. This study labels these groups as ‘Eurosceptic Protest Movements' (EPMs). Five explanatory factors drawn from the literature on Euroscepticism and social movements are used to ask the research question of why EPMs are formed. These are namely, Euroscepticism in the party system, the number of referendums in each case study, the availability of resources, the openness of the policy making process, and the perceived pro-EU bias of the media. Empirically it proceeds on a case by case basis, providing an in-depth account of each state's relationship with the EU from party system, public opinion, referendums to case specific factors to allow for an appreciation of the environment in which EPMs are formed. Data is gathered primarily from interviews with the founders and both current and former members of EPMs, with additional information coming from EPM documents, referendum manifestos and posters. Contextual information is provided by interviews with academics, journalists and pro-European activists, and secondary literature in EU studies and social movements. The thesis comes to two key conclusions. Firstly, in relation to the literature on social movements, EPMs conform strongly to the political opportunity structure paradigm in that body of work. More specifically is the importance of referendums to EPM formation, an element of the political opportunity structure that has not been researched in relation to social movements. Secondly, with regard to Euroscepticism the thesis concluded that EPMs emerge because of a lack of available space for contestation on the EU issue and the inability of political parties to act as an interlocutor between the electorate and the EU.

This thesis studies Turkish migration policies as an outcome of the interactions between the European Union, international organisations (UNHCR, IOM) and domestic migration governance. Counterbalancing a tendency in the literature to focus on external influences and specifically the EU's power over candidate countries, Turkish migration policy is seen to result from interrelationships between external and domestic actors that vary according to context of policy type, time and relative balance of power between the actors. Changes in international relations, Turkey's relationship with the EU, and internal to migration governance, can relativize the power asymmetry between EU and Turkey, leading to opportunities for domestic authorities to exert influence. The study has a comparative design across four cases of migration policy decision-making and by actor-type. This allows investigation of interrelations and an actor's efforts to exert influence relative to the others. A prominent policy is examined for each of the main four fields of Turkish migration policy: legislative reform (Law on Foreigners and International Protection), irregular migration (EU-Turkey readmission agreement), regular migration (adoption of the EU's visa lists) and asylum (removal of geographical limitation clause from the 1951 Refugee Convention). Document analysis is supplemented by original data from twenty-one semi-structured interviews, conducted with experts from Turkish Ministries, international organisations and the EU Commission. The main finding is that the degree of external influence over Turkish migration policy is contextually shaped, by time, the substance of a specific policy field, and most notably by the degree to which a policy field is politicised. EU influence is strongest when a policy field is politicised and driven by ‘conditionality'. International organisations are less influential actors but present in shaping more technocratic and less politicised policies through ‘social policy learning'. Turkish authorities exert clear agency and use international negotiations to gain leverage to advance domestic migration interests.

The purpose of the present study is, by employing the methods of process-tracing and pattern-matching, to compare the policy-processes with regards to the cases of student and patient mobility. While the case-study approach to EU policy-making from a comparative perspective was introduced in the late 1970s, so far there has not been a study, which compares the cases of student and patient mobility. This gap in the academic literature is important in order to examine what conclusions can be drawn from such a comparison and as a result their consistency with previous theoretical work. In particular, and in contrast to current theoretical themes in the field of European studies and in the policy studies literature more generally, both of which stress policy change as opposed to policy stability, the comparison stresses the latter due to the interests of the most powerful member-states, that is, France, Germany and Britain. The role of interests is manifested with the adoption of the Erasmus Programme and of the European Health Insurance Card, which do not concern the free movement of students and patients. Through a synthesis between liberal intergovernmentalism and the concept of path-dependence it has been possible to create a model in order to explain why those particular policies were chosen when the alternative of free movement was also available. This interest-based account comes in direct opposition with those studies which stress the role of ideas in the policy-process but it also emphasizes the role played by the supranational institutions more specifically the Commission and the court.

This study contributes an original, practice-based analysis of knowledge brokering in inter-organisational communities of practice in the not-for-profit sector. Defining characteristics of the not-for-profit sector include its social values, principles and practices. Existing literature understates or overlooks the significance of values and principles that are manifested in and enlivened through every day social practices and practitioner encounters. The study contributes by presenting knowledge brokering as a knowledge sharing intervention which integrates people, processes, values and principles into practice. Knowledge brokering and other practice interventions in the not-for-profit sector have to align with its social mission, if they are to be compatible and effective. This is especially so in multi-agency partnerships and inter-organisational communities of practice where collaboration and co-existence rather than assimilation are the primary objectives. This study finds that values-compatible knowledge brokering interventions, boundary bridging, co-creation, common artefacts and knowledge sharing, enable inter-organisational communities of practice to evolve without sacrificing individual autonomy. Foundational knowledge brokering literature emphasises the structural position of the knowledge broker, their knowledge superiority and the benefits they accrue by operating on the periphery of a social network. The study contributes by arguing that knowledge brokering processes and roles can be examined through an alternative practice lens with the knowledge broker as an internal co-practitioner located within a network. The study was carried out in a new, time-limited multi-agency partnership project in the not-for-profit sector. The partnership constituted an inter-organisational community of practice comprising advice, information and support agencies that had agreed to work collaboratively to improve local services. The author was employed as the project s Knowledge Management Officer and carried out the study over a two year period using an insider action research approach. As an insider practitioner-researcher, the author contributed to the project s objectives, worked collaboratively with practitioners and gathered rich data. Action and research occurred simultaneously and the iterative processes enabled the cumulative learning to inform, develop and analyse the practice. The combination of using insider action research approach, an examination of knowledge brokering as a practice intervention and a multi-agency, not-for-profit setting, makes this a unique practice-based study untapping knowledge management lessons from the not-for-profit sector.

Social Tagging und soziale Netzwerke sind zentrale Bausteine des Web 2.0 und Enterprise 2.0. In diesem Beitrag werden die sozialen Aspekte von Social Tagging beleuchtet und ein Ansatz aufgeführt, um in Folksonomies Personen mit ähnlichen Interessen zu finden. Ferner wird ein Tagging-Framework beschrieben, das im Use Case Alexandria im Rahmen des BMWi-Projekts Theseus entstanden ist.

Der Aufbau der Sifa-Community, einer virtuellen Gemeinschaft für Fachkräfte für Arbeitssicherheit (Sifas), findet im Rahmen der vom Hauptverband der Berufsgenossenschaften beauftragten „Langzeitstudie zur Wirksamkeit der Tätigkeit von Fachkräften für Arbeitssicherheit“ (Sifa-Langzeitstudie) statt. Diese Langzeitstudie ist angelegt als 8-Jahres-Längsschnitt in Form einer repräsentativen Online-Befragung von Sifas aus allen Wirtschaftszweigen der gesetzlichen Unfallversicherungen und wird durch eine vertiefende Befragung in ausgewählten Unternehmen begleitet. Zwischen 2005 und 2011 werden über 4000 Sifas zu vier Erhebungszeitpunkten mit einem Online-Fragebogen über ihre Einstellungen und Erfahrungen in ihrem Tätigkeitsgebiet als Sifa befragt. Die Längsschnittstudie ist unter www.Sifa-langzeitstudie.de erreichbar. Die Sifa-Community, die seit Juni 2005 im Testbetrieb online ist, soll in erster Linie den Erhalt und die Motivation der Stichprobe über die Laufzeit der Studie hinweg unterstützen. Durch die exklusiv angebotenen Möglichkeiten der Information und Kommunikation haben die 4000 Studien-Teilnehmer die Möglichkeit, berufsbezogene Informationen individualisiert abzurufen und über berufsbezogene Fragen und Probleme mit räumlich entfernten Arbeitskollegen zu diskutieren. In der Ausschreibung der Langzeitstudie wurde darüber hinaus die Entwicklung von Konzepten gefordert, die die Fortführung der projektbezogenen Internetplattform über die Förderdauer hinaus sichern können. Dem versuchen die Autoren Rechnung zu tragen, indem eine funktionierende, zu großen Teilen selbst verwaltete virtuelle Gemeinschaft entwickelt wird, die auch nach Abschluss der Befragungen alle Fachkräfte für Arbeitssicherheit zur Verfügung stehen kann (Kahnwald & Köhler, 2005). Die Community ist unter www.Sifacommunity. de erreichbar.