This case study examines contemporary Belarus as an example of a modern non-democratic regime. Two sets of questions are answered which relate firstly to the characteristics of the successful authoritarian consolidation which has taken place under President Aliaksandr Lukashenka over the years since his initial election in 1994, and secondly to the factors which have discouraged disloyalty to the authorities and contributed to the marginalisation of any opposition. The thesis argues that a concept of ‘adaptive authoritarianism’ is the most appropriate term to describe the non-democratic system constructed around Lukashenka. The research develops a conceptual framework based on existing models used in comparative politics, which are then applied in a manner which reflects the realities of the political landscape in Belarus by taking a bottom-up approach to identifying and analysing the structures in place. Adaptive authoritarianism is classified as featuring electoral authoritarianism with neopatrimonial tendencies; seeking to claim legitimacy through a mixture of charisma, populism, rational self-interest and resigned acceptance; employing both high-intensity and low-intensity techniques of state coercion; and demonstrating pragmatism, expediency and opportunism to modify and adapt the approaches and policies pursued at any given time, as deemed in the best interests of the incumbent.

The multinational corporation (MNC) to a large extent, determines its sustainable economic success through the effective management of knowledge flows within and across its boundaries. Based on the business network theory, the thesis applies a micro-perspective by drawing on an exploratory case study, which examines how a German-headquartered technology provider manages knowledge flows, which are reversed from its subsidiaries, and how these subsidiaries create their own knowledge depending on the specific external environments that they develop. The research interest was approached and operationalised by collecting and analysing qualitative data at two levels of analysis (these being at headquarters and subsidiary level). Key results that emerged from the case study indicate that firstly, the MNC manages reverse knowledge flows in close relation with the ´technology differentiation` approach that the MNC developed as a response to increasing competitive pressures that it had faced in the 1990s. Secondly, the results suggest that the dynamics of economies, the case study especially focused on China in this respect, have an impact on product development. Thirdly, the results indicate that in addition to the external environment that subsidiaries develop, the senior local management of the subsidiaries plays an important role in motivating the employees to create new knowledge and learning capabilities and in discussing drivers of this motivation with the headquarters’ management. Key words: Reverse Knowledge Flows, Business Network Theory, Knowledge Management, Multinational Corporations, Subsidiary

In this thesis we study the effect of scientific research on economic growth of the EU27 countries for 1981-2010, finding that scientific research determines national growth through patents with a ten-year lag. We also study the effect of funding on scientific research output of researchers and find that national competitive funding and other funding are positively and significantly related to research quality. National competitive funding seems to affect positively research quantity. Internal and EU funding matter only in specific scientific fields. We investigate whether past research productivity determines success in securing competitive funding at the individual level finding a significant and positive association of past cumulative citation-related indicators with the funding decision. We also examine the effect of research output and resources on FP7 applications and success at the country level for the EU28 countries in 2007-2013. We find that for research followers both scientific publications and international collaboration matter for FP7 applications and success and for research leaders, publications matter for FP7 applications and citations matter for FP7 success rates. Finally, we use the principal-agent theory framework to discuss the choices and trade-offs that research policy-makers and researchers face and find that balance in bureaucracy and research orientation within funding schemes can produce optimal results.

In Ghana Neo-charismatic Churches are non-denominational mainly indigenously founded churches that propagate the Prosperity Gospel to their followers. Drawing on a symbolic interaction framework this study explores adherent (church member) perspectives on how they construct the link between the Prosperity Gospel and their own prosperity (social mobility). Symbolic interaction concepts of symbols, meanings and reflected appraisals are employed in the analysis. In all six symbolic categories: the mainstream, automatic, transcendent, pragmatic, founding father and member networks plus fifteen symbolic constructions arising from these categories are identified. These symbolic categories and constructions are employed in the meanings that adherents attribute to social mobility, the actions that they engage in and in the formation of their self-concepts through reflected appraisals. The analysis shows that these categories and constructions inform adherent attitudes and actions towards social mobility.

This thesis examines Bulgarian migration to the UK since the lifting of work restrictions in 2014. Contesting the economic reductionism of mainstream migration literature, my aim is to provide an in-depth understanding of the diverse motivations, experiences, and meanings that migration holds for those who engage in it. By following the journeys of two groups of Bulgarians who share two different perceptions of class identity, I juxtapose their pre-migratory imaginations of life in the UK with the lived realities of migration. The phenomenon of migration is approached through the native concept of the ‘West’ (Zapadat), which simultaneously denotes the geographical region of western Europe and a place offering possibilities for a more meaningful life and a better future. By deconstructing this notion through the conceptual prism of the ‘imaginary West’ I grasp the connection between individual imaginations and globally circulating discourses and ideologies of Western modernity and civilisation and corresponding ideas about social hierarchy and class. I show how this idealised and in fact utopian version of the West foregrounds individual decisions to migrate and to sustain migration projects despite unforeseen hardships and unrealised expectations. I thus conclude that the ‘imaginary West’ is a major force structuring and sustaining migration between Bulgaria and the UK, and between global centres and peripheries more generally.

The thesis contains three empirical studies into economic effects of infrastructure, focusing on different aspects of the Vietnamese economy during the period 2000-2007, namely, economic growth, private sector employment, and private sector location choices. In addition, the empirical studies explicitly take into account the potential existence of cross-province transport infrastructure spillovers. By estimating empirical models specified in accordance with the relevant literature and the context of the Vietnamese economy, and subject to the availability of data, the thesis obtains the following main findings. Firstly, there is evidence of a positive impact of transport infrastructure on economic growth, on private sector employment, and on private sector location choices. Secondly, sectoral differences in the impact of transport infrastructure are identified in the location choice analysis. Thirdly, the cross-province transport infrastructure spillovers cannot be seen in the growth analysis; whereas, there is some evidence of a negative spillover effect on private sector employment. In the location choice analysis, the evidence of spillovers varies dramatically. Finally, higher-education infrastructure, which is assumed to be associated with the capacity of qualified labour supply, is positively related to both private sector employment and location choices.

While the financial returns to education have been widely studied since the 1960s, the research on students‟ earnings expectations is relatively scarce. This study examines students‟ earnings expectations and their perceptions of the link between education and labour market outcomes. A mixed-methods approach was adopted – questionnaires and focus groups were used for data collection. First year and final year Business students were surveyed at two universities in England and two universities in the Czech Republic. A repeated cross-sectional study design was used - the survey was conducted every year between 2011/2012 and 2014/2015. In addition, focus groups with students were carried out to supplement the survey results. Several personal characteristics were found to influence students‟ expectations. Female students had lower earnings expectations and the expected gender pay gap was found to increase with work experience. The effect of gender on earnings expectations was found to be stronger in the Czech Republic. First years students expected to earn more on average compared to their final year counterparts. Ethnicity was found to be an important factor – black British and Asian British students had higher earnings expectations compared to white British students. Students from high-income families expected to earn significantly more compared to those from less affluent backgrounds. Students expected their earnings to grow with education and experience. Students expected to earn more after graduation compared to what they would expect had they decided not to go to university. Final year English students who expected to achieve a first class honours degree had higher expectations compared with the rest of the sample. In both countries, final year students who expected to be overeducated after graduation anticipated a pay penalty. The evidence of a so-called sheepskin effect was found in final year students‟ expectations – they believed they would have been financially punished for leaving university during their final year. Students who intended to stay in their home regions after graduation had lower earnings expectations compared to those who were willing to relocate to the capital city or move abroad. Students‟ perceptions of the link between education and labour market outcomes were evaluated in the light of human capital theory, the screening hypothesis and credentialism. Students in both countries favoured the credentialist explanations of the relationship between education and future socio-economic status. English students believed that employers prefer graduates from elite universities. On the other hand, Czech students believed that graduates from more affluent families are advantaged in the graduate labour market due to their economic capital. This study has some implications for both policy and practice. However, while the sample size was relatively large, the results cannot be generalised to the entire population of Business students in England and the Czech Republic since non-probability convenience sampling was used to collect the data.

The aim of this research was to explore the implementation of the recommendations from a recent teacher education policy in Scotland, ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’ (TSF; Donaldson, 2011), in ‘real time’, as the policy was alive and continuously evolving. Shortly after the publication of TSF, the Scottish Government set up a partnership model, the National Partnership Group (NPG) to refine and begin to implement a number of its recommendations in partnership between key organisations in Scottish education. The membership of the NPG consisted of representatives from these key organisations, as well as a small number of individual teachers. The NPG, its structure, membership and the multiple ways in which it operated, was the main focus of this research. Taking a critical policy analysis approach, this research set out to investigate the representation and participation of actors within the policy process and identify the voices that were not heard within the NPG. The research employed elements of actor-network theory (ANT) to conceptualise the participation of institutional actors as a process of ‘interest translation’ and drew on literature in the area of policy networks and democratic network governance in order to examine the processes by which the NPG operated. The data used in this research consisted of interviews conducted with members of the NPG and documentary evidence in the form of minutes of meetings, policy documents and press releases. Drawing mainly on the perspectives of actors central to the process, this thesis highlights the complexity and subtly of the policy processes at work. On the surface, the development of a partnership model was regarded as evidence of the government’s apparent commitment to collaborative and democratic policy-making. However, this research shows that underneath this ‘simulacra of order’ lay great disorder: divergent institutional interests, unequal power relations, strategic institutional positioning and a conservative network culture that favoured the participation of some actors over others. Of even more concern was the exclusion and restriction of the voice of the teaching profession. The non- involvement of teacher unions and restriction individual teachers in the policy process sits at odds with the overall policy vision set out in TSF: the development of teachers as ‘agents of change’ who can shape and lead educational change. The thesis concludes that there is a significant tension between the overall intentions of the policy agenda and the process that was designed to implement it and calls for a new model of policy-making where disorder and divergent interests can be brought to the fore in a way that allows the voice of the teaching profession to be heard.

In 1893, an internal schism occurred within the British Women’s Temperance Association (BWTA), creating the National British Women’s Temperance Association (NBWTA) and the Women’s Total Abstinence Union (WTAU). The Women’s Total Abstinence Union (WTAU) has since received very limited critical attention, having been historically dismissed as a conservative organisation, only concerned with temperance work, when compared to the more radical National British Women’s Temperance Association (NBWTA). Via a critical examination of the WTAU’s periodical, Wings, from 1892 to 1910, and associated Union materials, this project interrogates the presumptions made concerning the apparently conservative nature, aims and actions of the group and the women within. Contributing to the burgeoning research area of print and periodical culture this project reflects on how women managed the contradictions posed by gender – which shaped women as private domestic individuals – and political identity – when encouraged to undertake reform work outside of the safety of the private sphere. This thesis provides an original contribution to knowledge through utilising an interdisciplinary methodological approach combining periodical culture with a study of community and gender. Its main contribution lies in the study of a neglected group, the WTAU, and their unexplored periodical, Wings. Significant research has centred around radical and/or conservative constructions of nineteenth-century femininity but the voice of the quiet majority in between, and their everyday experiences, remains largely underexplored. This project examines gender constructions within female reform work, specifically temperance, and argues that Union women used a respectable area of social reform work in a potentially progressive way. The WTAU was not solely conservative, nor was it instead radical, rather, its members, aims and actions can be placed on a sliding scale, encompassing conservatism and progressivism alongside radicalism. Moreover, this thesis suggests that this should be replicated for other female reform workers and groups more broadly, in order to provide a better understanding of the sector and how issues of middle-class, feminine respectability influenced women within. It also provides a contribution to knowledge in its methodology, utilising a three layered approach to address the complex issue of readership. It focuses firstly on a broad implied readership, secondly, using census research on a cross-section of Union membership, and finally, undertakes two case-study analyses of Union women on opposing sides of the respectability debate. In examining the Union and its members in three ways, this thesis provides a new way 7 of examining female reform work and periodical readership, and uncovers the complexity of the WTAU, situated within a wider connected world of campaign, print and platform.

The World Health Organization describes over 80% of the world's population as living without adequate access to treatment for pain. Improvement initiatives focus largely on the field of palliative care and on increasing access to opioid medications. Predominantly, they are led from the global North while targeting healthcare provision in the global South. I propose that the limited improvement seen from these programmes is in part, attributable to their narrow clinical focus and to a lack of understanding of practice at the local level. Using India as a single case of study, the aim of this research project is to assess critically how medical practitioners, working within and outwith palliative care, treat patients in pain. My research questions address the practice of pain management and clinicians' evaluations of this care, from the perspective that pain as a medical problem, is a professionally constructed phenomenon. In this cross-disciplinary research, I use mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative data, from interviews and surveys administered to clinicians, field observations in India and secondary analysis of a pre-existing oral history archive. I draw on theories of the policy process, postcolonialism and social constructionism. Through critically evaluating practice, I move beyond more familiar descriptions of care delivery and barriers to improvement, to understand how these issues are framed, formed and contested. The study demonstrates salient features of the Indian healthcare system: scarce resources, multiple providers, weak regulation, and the dominant role of the private sector. The availability of treatments, including opioids and non-pharmacological therapies, is low and variable. The framing of pain as a problem requiring medical treatment is ubiquitous and there is consensus regarding the need to improve the delivery of clinical care. There is variation, however, in opinions about how this should be achieved, particularly with respect to the choice of treatment modality. Power is wielded by clinicians in the form of knowledge, and is negotiated with other medical professionals, politicians and patients. In conclusion, although Indian clinicians' descriptions of individual practice recognise the unique local factors that impact on the delivery of pain management, their proposed strategies for improvement emphasise increasing the provision of medical treatments developed in the global North. There is, however, little acknowledgment of the assumptions and limitations of this western medical model when used to treat pain in India.