This thesis examines the emergence of contentious forms of political agency during the Libyan uprising of 2011. The wave of popular protests known as the ‘Arab Spring’ challenged prevailing assumptions about the politics of the region. It was argued that, through their unfettered, claims making practices, Arab publics had undermined authoritarian structures of power, and become imbued with new, empowering self-understandings. Positioning itself within this literature on Middle East politics, the thesis sets out to analyse authoritarianism as a mode of domination, and to investigate the extent to which moments of radical contestation both transform authoritarian regimes and generate new political subjectivities. The analysis is centred on the Libyan uprising, which emerged under Qadhafi’s authoritarian Jamahiriya, yet witnessed widespread protests, civil activism and an armed conflict from February to August 2011. The thesis integrates multi-institutional politics theory with theories of contentious politics in order to conceptualise domination as located in social ‘institutions’ that are simultaneously material and symbolic. In turn, it understands agency as a strategic and symbolic representational practice that is capable of transforming institutional structures. Drawing on interviews with Libyan activists, and on the analysis of social movement discourses, the thesis advances three core arguments. Firstly, it argues that Qadhafi’s Jamahiriya embedded political agency into its system of domination by engendering complicity. Secondly, it argues that in 2011, Libyans undercut the Jamahiriya’s monopoly over meaning and practice by generating mobilising ‘collective action frames’, and by subverting its symbolic and classificatory schemas. Lastly, it indicates that representational practices ultimately struggled to transform authoritarian domination because they were bound up with the strategic logics of collective action, and because they re-inscribed the Jamahiriya’s definitions of power and collectivity. In proffering these arguments, this thesis generates a new body of empirical material on an understudied case, and critically applies, challenges and extends theories of authoritarianism and contentious politics.

The 'peace process' is a common expression in international politics. It describes and explains events in seemingly disparate locations as Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and Southern Africa, which share only the common occurrence of violent conflict. One outstanding feature of these peace processes is the active participation of international actors or external 'third parties'. Whether they are states, international organisations or nongovernmental organisations, these external actors comprise an industry focussed on the peace process. However, in providing assistance to countries making the transition from war to peace, as an industry these external third parties often reconfigure the political space of host societies in a manner which frustrates the intended goal of attaining peace. The following analysis focuses on the process of implementing a comprehensive peace settlement to show how the peace process industry operates, using the case of Mozambique. The Mozambican peace process was selected because it is generally presented as a success which justifies similar activities in future cases. Therefore it is crucial to examine whether the intervention was a success, what kind of success and a success for whom. As Mozambique was inundated with international actors engaged in all kinds of activities, supported by substantial funding, it serves as a useful example from which to study the peace process industry at work. Mozambique is also one of the poorest countries in the world and is thus representative of larger processes in the developing world and its relationship with donors and the United Nations. This thesis draws out a number of themes on the aggregate impact of external third parties on the political space of Mozambique and uses this as a basis for reaching conclusions applicable to other cases. It seeks to contribute to debates in international relations on how questions regarding the role of international actors in peace processes and the assistance they provide should be answered.