This research examines the parliamentary representation of Jewish and Muslim minorities. It is assessed drawing upon the behaviour of MPs from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds and their engagement with issues of concern for the respective minority in high- and low-cost parliamentary activities. The analysis is conducted on the content of 96 votes, 708,429 Parliamentary Questions for written answers (WPQs), and 5,160 Early Day Motions (EDMs). Voting divisions are examined using methods of descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis, whereas relational, computer-aided, dictionary-based content analysis with time series cross-sectional data analysis is applied to examine the content of EDMs and WPQs. The analysis demonstrates that coming from a religious minority background has a limited impact on the behaviour of MPs and is largely inferior to the institutional predictors of behaviour, such as legislative role and the party-related predictors. This suggests that MPs from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds do not necessarily act for their minority groups driven by their heritage alone. Instead, MPs’ engagement with minority issues depends on their duties, responsibilities and party affiliations, even when the party discipline is loosened. The findings of the research have significant policy implications. They show that the presence of minority politicians in a legislature does not necessarily lead to better substantive representation of these minority groups through minority MPs’ engagement with minority issues. That is because minority parliamentarians are bound by the same constraints as the rest of the House, which reduces their ability to deliver expertise on minority issues.

[From Introduction]. Time has revealed two distinct tendencies in the history of thought and art in Europe. That development in European culture which began in Ancient Greece is marked by a positive confidence in the relationship of man to his world. Parallel with but in opposition to this development is a separate progression in culture. The continuity of art in Northern Europe appears to be associated with the adherence of Northern man to a negative, fatalistic sense of being - to a spirit which is in conflict with a hostile violent environment. The purposo of this investigation is to determine, through art the nature of this sense of being in Northern Europe. No direct definition would be capable of conveying the fullest meaning of that spirit. lt is a feeling. To understand this morbid fatalism, it is therefore necessary to refer to the pre-Christian religion of the Germanic Barbarians - through which the Northern spirit manifested itself in the form of ragnarök. Ragnarök which can be translated as a moaning obscurity, shadows, twilight, fateful destiny, was a term used by Nordic bards in its broadest sense to describe the end of the world - the inevitable destruction of life.

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This thesis explores the role of learning communities in the evolution of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It engages the academic debate on institutional learning and the "practice turn" in IR to shed light on the factors leading the EU to learn by policy failure, as well as by ten years of practice in crisis management. Specifically, the work investigates the role of the knowledge and practice-based communities that shaped the consensus towards the comprehensive approach, with a strong emphasis on civilian means. Ideational factors, as opposed to material ones, are critical in understanding why the EU has developed a "soft" provider of security, in spite of the St Malo commitment to develop hard security capabilities. In the absence of a direct threat, EU member states’ preferences towards CSDP were driven by a set of new ideas, which in turn resulted from an emerging international agenda advocating the development of non-military crisis management approaches and tools. Through a critical appraisal of the "practice turn" and its application to the study of EU security and defence, the thesis sheds additional light on the overlap between knowledge and practice, which bears relevance for the research agenda on learning communities and norm diffusion. The empirical analysis makes an evidence-based reconstruction of the rise and evolution of civilian crisis management (CCM) and security sector reform (SSR). The comparison between the two case studies assesses the extent to which, at critical junctures, ideational factors influenced security policies. CCM and SSR, in fact, shared a similar learning process, yet the former had a much deeper impact on the shape and activities of the CSDP than the latter. To account for such variation in outcomes, it is argued that the emergence of "learning by doing" shaped CCM evolution. On the contrary, the introduction of SSR by knowledge-based communities failed to produce a common practice. Therefore, when policy innovation is supported by the re-elaboration of practices, the ideas diffused by learning communities are more persuasive and impactful on policy-making.

This thesis demonstrates the powerful relationship between ethnicity, culture, nation and state in the Basque Country and the Former Yugoslavia. In placing Basque and Yugoslav sub-state nationalism in comparative relief this study argues that political state or autonomy seeking behavior on the basis of an ethnically defined or imagined community continues to have powerful contemporary salience. Furthermore when situated within the literature on nationalism, these two cases suggest that the theoretical literature needs to be reworked beyond the positions of Anthony Smith and Ernest Gellner. The endurance of cultural claims to a political state suggests that the connection between ethnicity and the nation is stronger then many contemporary observers have suggested. It is argued that the cultural, political and territorial rights of sub-state nations are likely to remain highly divisive sites of historical, cultural and political contestation. As a force, nationalism is by no means relegated to the past by cosmopolitanism or a ‘post-national’ shift as a number of high profile commentators in the contemporary social sciences have argued. Rather, it remains an active and powerful idea that will continue to shape the sociopolitical landscape of human societies into the twenty-first century as it has the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

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This thesis examines the development of the internal political situation in Poland from the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation in mid-l944 to the consolidation of communist power at the turn of 1946/47. It concentrates in particular on the way the organisations and political strategies of the Polish Workers' Party and the main non-communist forces: the Polish Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party , the Catholic political movement and the anti-communist underground evolved during these years. Chapter .One describes the re-establishment of the Polish communist movement from 1941 and the shaping of its strategy of the national front during the period until the Soviet liberation of eastern Poland in 1944. Chapter Two examines the relationship between the communist-led 'Lublin Committee' and the underground movement loyal to the Government-in-Exile in London. It identifies the hardening of the Polish communists' stance towards the underground from October 1944. Chapter Three looks at the political and economic situation in Poland following the liberation of the country in early 1945. It examines the factors which caused the communists to moderate their line in May 1945. Chapter Four considers the impact of the legal opposition movement which arose around the Polish Peasant Party following the formation of the Provisional Government of National Unity in June 1945. Chapter Five describes the increasing polarisation between the communists and the opposition in the first half of 1946 and examines the unsuccessful efforts of the Polish Socialist Party to restore national unity. The political offensive launched by the Polish Workers' Party and its allies against the opposition at the time of the elections in late 1946 and early 1947, and the consolidation of the communists ' hold on power are described in Chapter Six. The thesis argues that the national front strategy which the communists followed between 1942 and 1948 underwent a series of major modifications. These modifications were in response not only to external pressures, but to a very considerable degree to developments in the internal situation in Poland. Ultimately the communists were able to achieve the objectives of the national front strategy only to a very limited extent. In particular, they were unable to achieve a broad base of popular support for their vision of Poland's future and had instead to rest it on force and the state-Party apparatus.

The recent proliferation of jihadist incidents of terrorism in recent years has heightened interest in the modus operandi of terrorist operations. Available literature suggests a strong link between criminality and terrorism and the emergence of a crime-terror nexus. Current research on the nexus is based on dated examples and very rarely incorporates theory or an analytical lens. The purpose of this thesis is to explore modern manifestations of the crime-terror nexus from a social perspective in response to emerging data. The research reviews recent open-source data and literature at the institutional level, organisational level and the individual/social level. Analysis was approached from selected social and criminological angles including rational choice theory and a social psychological standpoint. Conclusions pointed to the increasing importance of social factors in areas such as radicalisation and group interactions to the processes of terrorism. Rather than attempting to explain causality, the study simply encourages the use of alternative perspectives when addressing the threat of terrorism. The thesis encourages academics and policy-makers to address the crime-terror nexus as a social problem that is fast becoming a national security threat. The research also highlights the importance of...

L’évolution des stratégies de croissance des jeunes entreprises<p><p>La recherche sur la croissance des jeunes entreprises s’est fortement développée au cours des trente dernières années. La situation est particulièrement marquée en Europe où le nombre de jeunes entreprises en forte croissance est réduit alors qu’il est admis que ce type d’entreprises contribue à la création d’un nombre important d’emplois. La communauté scientifique reconnaît que la recherche actuellement disponible manque d’intégration, d’ancrage théorique et d’approches longitudinales. De ce fait, elle n’est pas en mesure d’expliquer comment et pourquoi les jeunes entreprises adoptent différentes stratégies de croissance et suivent des trajectoires hétérogènes. L’objectif de cette thèse est de produire un cadre analytique, aussi intégré et dynamique que possible, permettant de mieux comprendre le pourquoi et le comment de la croissance des jeunes entreprises. Pour faire face à ce défi, elle s’inscrit dans la foulée des travaux séminaux de Gartner et Marchesnay respectivement sur le cadre d’analyse de la création d’entreprise et le système de gestion des petites et moyennes entreprises. Elle adopte le paradigme épistémologique du réalisme critique et recourt essentiellement à la méthode des cas. L’approche générale se veut donc longitudinale, qualitative et exploratoire.<p><p>La recherche est développée en trois temps qui correspondent à autant de chapitres présentés sous forme d’articles scientifiques. Le chapitre 1 remonte aux sources de sept grandes approches de recherche qui ont été adoptées pour expliquer la croissance des jeunes entreprises. Il montre que, prise isolément, aucune d’entre elles ne peut expliquer la croissance mais il souligne également à quel point elles se répondent et se complètent. Le chapitre 2 propose une modélisation systémique qui capitalise sur l’approche configurationnelle telle que développée par Miller et Mintzberg et celle par les processus telle que développée par Van de Ven. Ces deux approches permettent en effet d’intégrer de nombreux acquis des recherches existantes. La modélisation développée suggère que les jeunes entreprises adoptent des configurations associées à différentes stratégies qui mettent en cohérence les éléments caractéristiques de la démarche entrepreneuriale (c’est-à-dire l’entrepreneur, les activités, les ressources, la structure organisationnelle et l’environnement) alors que ceux-ci évoluent sous l’influence de multiples processus. Le chapitre 3, rédigé en anglais, s’intéresse plus particulièrement au cas des jeunes entreprises de services informatiques. Il approfondit la modélisation proposée au chapitre 2 dans un contexte où les entreprises sont, entre autres, confrontées au choix de se développer en tant que sociétés de services et/ou ont l’opportunité de se redéployer vers le développement de logiciels. Sur le plan méthodologique, l’approche choisie consiste à développer une typologie de configurations stratégiques déduite des littératures académique et pratique puis à comparer les idéaux-types qui la compose aux configurations réellement adoptées par des entreprises.<p>La modélisation et la typologie sont testées et conceptuellement confirmées par plusieurs études de cas d’entreprises belges. L’ensemble confirme bien que le développement des jeunes entreprises passe bien par l’adoption de configurations successives, associables à différentes stratégies de croissance, sans que celles-ci et leurs séquences soient prédéterminées du fait de l’influence concomitante de plusieurs processus.<p><p>Bien qu’essentiellement conceptuelle, la thèse confirme le bien-fondé de l’adoption conjointe des approches par les configurations et par les processus pour la compréhension du phénomène complexe qu’est la croissance. Elle ouvre également une porte à de futurs travaux de validation quantitative. Au niveau de la pratique, elle permet d’envisager le développement d’outils d’aide à la décision pour les entrepreneurs afin de les sensibiliser aux conditions et implications de différentes stratégies de croissance.<p><p><p>The evolution of the growth strategies of young firms <p><p>Research on the growth of young firms has developed significantly over the last thirty years. The situation is particularly noteworthy in Europe, where there is only a limited number of young firms experiencing strong growth, even though it is widely recognised that this type of firm contributes to the creation of a substantial amount of jobs. The scientific community recognises that the currently available research is lacking in terms of integration, theoretical anchoring and longitudinal approaches. Consequently, it is not able to explain how and why young firms adopt different growth strategies and follow heterogeneous trajectories. The aim of this thesis is to create an analytical framework, which is as integrated and dynamic as possible, so as to make it possible to understand the why and the wherefore behind the growth of young firms. In order to respond to this challenge, the thesis follows in the footsteps of the seminal works of Gartner and Marchesnay respectively, on the conceptual framework for describing new venture creation and the management system of small and medium enterprises. It adopts the epistemological paradigm of ‘critical realism’ and makes use, essentially, of the case study method. The general approach is therefore intended to be longitudinal, qualitative and exploratory. <p><p>The research is developed in three stages, which correspond to the same number of chapters set out in the form of scientific papers. Chapter 1 goes back to the sources of the seven major research approaches that have been adopted in order to explain the growth of young firms. It demonstrates that, when considered in isolation, none of them can fully explain the growth of young firms, but it also highlights the extent to which they respond to, and complete, one another. Chapter 2 proposes a systemic model that capitalises on the configurational approach as developed by Miller and Mintzberg, as well as the process approach as developed by Van de Ven. Indeed, these two approaches make it possible to integrate a large number of elements that have already been established through existing research. The model suggests that young firms adopt configurations associated with different strategies that tie the key elements of the entrepreneurial phenomenon (namely the entrepreneur, the activities, the resources, the organisational structure and the environment), while these elements change under the influence of numerous processes. The third chapter, which has been written in English, places particular focus on young IT services firms. It takes a more in-depth look at the model proposed in chapter 2 in a context in which firms are, amongst other things, faced with the choice of developing as service firms and/or have the opportunity to turn their efforts and attention towards software development. From a methodological point of view, the chosen approach consists in the development of a typology of strategic configurations deduced from academic and practical literature and then to compare the ideal types with the configurations that have been actually adopted by the firms. <p>The model and typology are tested and conceptually confirmed by several case studies of Belgian companies. The overall findings serve to confirm the fact that the development of young firms is achieved through the adoption of successive configurations that are associated with different growth strategies, without these and their sequences being predetermined because of the influence of multiple simultaneous processes. <p><p>Although it is essentially conceptual in nature, the thesis confirms the relevance of the joint adoption of the configurational- and process-approaches in order to understand the complexity of the growth phenomenon. It also opens up the door to quantitative validation research work. In terms of its practical application, the thesis enables us to start the development of a toolbox that may help entrepreneurs in the decision-making process so as to raise their awareness regarding the conditions and implications of different growth strategies. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The thesis begins with a short section on the nature of neutrality in Europe in the 1930s, and briefly introduces the political circumstances of the six nations that remained neutral throughout the war. The primary subject of the paper deals with the relationship between the belligerents and the neutral states, especially the extent to which military strength and preparedness was responsible for the latter maintaining their neutrality.