Through an ethnographic study of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) - an organisation renowned for its persistent fight against corruption in India - this thesis explores the aspirations and tensions of anti-corruption activists. In their commitment to improving governance structures by means of campaigning for transparency and accountability laws and policies, these activists ultimately aspire to strengthen democratic practice and to improve statecraft. By studying in detail the forms of actions, dynamics, politics and relationships among anti-corruption activists, the thesis explores how ideas of the state and democracy come to be internalised and addressed by civil society actors. The context is the nation-wide anti-corruption agitation that swept the country through most of 2011. This agitation gave rise to friction between civil society actors otherwise working for similar ends, leading to tension and competition on what constitutes democratic process and procedure. Based on extensive fieldwork, the thesis examines the ways in which MKSS responded to the shifting political landscape of anti-corruption activism. Drawing on the notion of relationality, I argue that political positions and identities are shaped and consolidated circumstantially through an oppositional stance and through processes of 'othering'. In considering the diverging understandings of democracy among civil society actors, this thesis seeks to expand ethnographically the theoretical concept of 'agonistic pluralism' (Mouffe 1999), that postulates that political conflict and disagreement is not only integral, but, moreover, crucial to democratic debate. Based on this conceptualisation, the conflict over the meaning of democracy among the anti-corruption activists is considered here as creating space for the expansion and enrichment of democratic debate. The very essence of democracy in India, as will be concluded, is constituted by such a productive tension.

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n modern democratic consumer societies, decentralized, participative, and consensus-oriented forms of multi-stakeholder governance are supplementing, and often replacing, conventional forms of state-centered environmental government. The engagement in all phases of the policy process of diverse social actors has become a hallmark of environmental good governance. This does not mean to say, however, that these modes of policy-making have proved particularly successful in resolving the widely debated multiple sustainability crisis. In fact, they have been found wanting in terms of their ability to respond to democratic needs and their capacity to resolve environmental problems. So why have these participatory forms of environmental governance become so prominent? What exactly is their appeal? What do they deliver? Exploring these questions from the perspective of eco-political and sociological theory, this article suggests that these forms of environmental governance represent a performative kind of eco-politics that helps liberal consumer societies to manage their inability and unwillingness to achieve the socio-ecological transformation that scientists and environmental activists say is urgently required. This reading of the prevailing policy approaches as the collaborative management of sustained unsustainability adds an important dimension to the understanding of environmental governance and contemporary eco-politics more generally.

Agriculture based livelihoods in arid and semi-arid areas encompass limited physical resources and evolving relationships between environment, population and the state. Northwest China encounters constant socio-economic changes, changing climate, agriculture and land practices and political relations that impact the social-ecological system. This thesis investigates how policy, environmental changes and local action interact with each other and affect the livelihoods and determine the environment in the Shiyang River Basin. Focusing on increasingly severe water crisis, environment degradation and endangered livelihoods that define arid and semi-arid environment, this thesis examines local people's perceptions of and interaction with their environment and water-related interventions in the Shiyang River Basin, a typical inland arid area in Northwest China. In 12-months fieldwork, mixed methods were used including semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, group discussions and participant observation. This research explicitly applying a socio-ecological system lens shows that people's perceptions of water crises can be highly divergent, regarding access to and control over local water resources and the roles of internal and external interventions. A wide range of factors result in uneven access to resources and inequitable consequences across space and even within local communities. In the Chinese contexts, personal experiences together with geographical factor, lands area and income levels have significant impacts on villagers' water perceptions. Political trust, social capital and collective action play a key role in the understanding, implementation processes and outcomes of government-enforced water reforms at local levels. This research is the first known study to use the tools of social analysis to examine water, society and the state interactions and their consequences on governance of the irrigation commons, local livelihoods and sustainability in rural China. It shows the everyday water struggle over water control, access and economic opportunities among different water stakeholders. Although a majority of population still depend on irrigated agriculture for their livelihoods, the future of agriculture in studied basin or in China generally is uncertain as farmers migrate, the population ages and next generations become better educated and migrate to the city. This thesis enables a new perspective on the global water management debate within a context where research has stresses the natural and technocratic approaches and creates new opportunities for more effective and appropriate governance of common pool resources. Interdisciplinary understanding regarding stakeholder perceptions, water resources management and environmental change are enriched. Potential barriers and solutions are transferable to other regions and countries where water crises are accelerating due to population growth, urbanization, industrialization, agriculture and economic development, climate change and other socio-political changes.

L’objet de notre thèse est de mettre en lumière, à partir de l’étude des fédéralismes allemand et suisse, le modèle de gouvernance de l’Union européenne qui se trouve être compris entre deux courants de pensée : l’Intergouvernementalisme et le Fédéralisme coopératif. Nous avons essayé de montrer comment, à travers le financement des Etats-Nations, la consolidation de son modèle de gouvernance, l’Union européenne cherche d’une part à métamorphoser son espace territoriale tant aux plans politiques, économiques qu’identitaires et, d’autre part, à légitimer son influence au niveau de ses Etats membres et des citoyens. Notre analyse nous a confirmé, qu’à travers l’interaction entre les institutions européenneset les Etats membres, les actions des dirigeants, de chefs d’Etat et de Gouvernement, l’impact de ce « fédéralisme coopératif émergent » est réel ; il contribue, en effet, non seulement à créer mais aussi, à modifier et à donner une forme particulière à l’Union européenne (les « Vingt-sept »). Ainsi, en essayant d’apporter des réponses aux « peurs » des citoyens, vis-à-vis de cette incapacité des Etats-Nations à répondre aux défis de la mondialisation, l’Union européenne insuffle le sentiment d’appropriation de cette identité commune européenne en gestation. Cette situation est confortée par ce contexte actuel de crise économique, financière et sociale mondiale, qui a amené l’Union et ses Etats membres, malgré leurs divergences de représentation et de perception de l’« objet-Europe », à faire un « saut quantitatif » vers une « Europe fédérale », préalable à l’émergence d’une « Europe politique » / The aims of out thesis is to highlight, from the study of German and Swiss federalism, the European Union model of governance which is made up of two ways of thinking: intergovernmentalism and federalism. We have emphasized how, through the financing of Nation-States and the consolidation of its model of governance, the European Union is trying to, on the one hand, transform politically, economically and from the perspective of its identity, its territorial space, and, on the other hand, to legitimate its influence on member States and citizens. Our analysis has confirmed that through interaction between European institutions and member States, through leaders and heads of State and Government’s actions, the impact of an “emerging cooperative federalism” is real; it has a role not only on the creation but also on the transformation of the European Union, shaping it in a particular way (the “Twenty-Seven”). Therefore, trying to bring answers to the “fears” of citizens in relation to the Nations-States inability to face issues and challenges brought by globalization, the European Union gives a new lease of life made up with the rise of a “mutual European identity”. The situation is reinforced by thecurrent context of the economical, financial and social worldwide crisis which has brought the European Union and its member States, despite their different views and perception of the “Europe Object”, to take a quantitative leap toward a “Federal Europe” prior to the emergence of a “Political Europe”

This thesis addresses the question as to why multilevel politics is becoming an integral part of politics in Europe. Multilevel politics is conceptualized as a system which functions through a complex web of political relations within and across levels of decision making. The thesis argues that the rise of multilevel politics can be explained by its institutionalization in terms of the emergence, the evolution and especially the effects of relevant institutions. Based on a mixed-method research project, the influence of European institutions on subnational actors and the alignment of actor motives with institutional characteristics are empirically shown. The first chapter of the dissertation establishes the centrality of institutions for political transformation, examines the role of transnational and domestic institutions for multilevel politics, and contextualizes the research question in terms of institution-actor relations. The second chapter develops a new-institutionalist theoretical framework that explains the emergence, the evolution and the effects of the institutions, and formulates a series of hypotheses with regard to freestanding institutional influence, power distribution, material benefits and political identification. The third chapter outlines the mixed-method research design which addresses individual-level and institutional-level variations through a Europe-wide survey and a comparative case study. The fourth chapter on survey results shows generally favourable views on multilevel politics, and strong associations of these views with the independent variables under scrutiny. The fifth chapter specifies a multivariate model which includes all posited variables and confirms the majority of the hypotheses. Therefore, the new-institutionalist argument is broadly confirmed, while there is relatively weak evidence to sustain sociological explanations. The final chapter compares the Committee of the Regions and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, and examines the institutional characteristics which correspond to the hypothesized variables. It is then concluded that the two institutions share several overarching similarities, and display complementarity in other aspects.