The main goal of this thesis is to explore how the encounters between public professionals and citizens affect the quality of participatory democracy. Participatory democracy was introduced as a radical alternative to representative democracy, but has often not lived up to its promises. Among the great variety of factors that have been found to matter, questions have arisen about the added value of public encounters: are problems and failures of participation because of or despite public professionals and citizens coming together? Despite a growing body of research on this subject, public encounters have so far not been adequately understood on their own terms. Building on recent contributions to the communicative turn in participatory democracy, this thesis develops a relational, situated, performative approach to analyze the communicative “in-between” of public professionals and citizens. In order to examine their communicative practices, a narrative analysis has been conducted of the stories public professionals and citizens tell about their daily experiences. Through a grounded theory process of analyzing 59 intensive interviews conducted in Glasgow, Amsterdam, and Bologna, the research formulated a theory of communicative capacity. The research shows that when public professionals and citizens meet, they develop and sustain dominant patterns of communication that limit their ability to solve local problems. Each case was characterized by a distinct communicative pattern, because local actors focused more on the substantive issues at hand rather than on the way they communicated about these. This was difficult to change because three inherent processes of participatory practice were drawing public professionals and citizens into dominant communicative patterns. Therefore, the thesis argues that the quality of participatory democracy depends on the communicative capacity of public professionals and citizens to recognize and break through these dominant patterns by constantly adapting the nature, tone, and conditions of their conversations to the situation at hand. The main contribution of this thesis is that it provides a more grounded and rounded understanding of the nature and importance of the communicative “in-between” (interaction or encounter) of public professionals and citizens for the quality of participatory democracy.

Children and young people at residential schools are among the most vulnerable and marginalized of societal groups. While increasingly research has focused upon the everyday worlds of these children and young people, there has been an absence of research in Scotland that has examined the complex matrix of children’s human rights, complaints processes and advocacy, exploring children and young people’s understandings about those key themes and the institutional relations affecting their daily lives. Situated within a theoretical and contextual framework informed by institutional ethnography and children’s human rights, this thesis provides an account of young people’s understandings about rights, ‘complaints’ and advocacy, illustrating key textual constituents of adult dominated institutional relations influencing those understandings. The thesis begins from the standpoint of young people at residential school, acknowledging young people as expert knowers of their own experiences and claiming that these experiences are located within multifarious intersections of social, generational and institutional relations. Young people revealed in the research that they had little or no knowledge about their rights and that they preferred to discuss their concerns - their ‘complaints’ - with people they know and trust. Young people also disclosed that they had little contact with formal advocates and a poor understanding about advocacy services and the residential school’s internal complaint process. By mapping institutional factors affecting young people’s knowledge and understanding, this research has illuminated the multifaceted complaints process environments located within social care, health, education and legal contexts, explicating the systemic barriers to hearing the concerns of young people about possible rights violations. As researcher, I argue that it is essential for young people at residential school to understand their rights to claim rights violations and seek resolutions to possible rights infringements. Secondly, complaints process definitions need to be informed from a rights-based perspective and coordinate with young people’s own understandings about what constitutes a ‘complaint’. Defining complaints and implementing complaints processes from a human rights perspective, together with ensuring young people have trusting relationships with known advocates in their everyday worlds, is imperative for determining young people’s access to complaint processes and ensuring young people fully realize their entitlements. This research shows how institutional texts – unseen and unknown to young people – exist in ways that may actually interfere with this objective and prohibit the implementation of young people’s participation, protection and provisions rights. By extending our knowledge of young people’s everyday worlds beyond the scope of what is readily apparent in the ordinary ways in which we live our lives, this research has identified sites of potential change within the system of institutional texts, making it possible to effect change that will facilitate, rather than obfuscate, the implementation of young people’s human rights.

Within the social sciences, the extensive literature on homosexuality as a socio-cultural construct and on ‘queer’ identities and experiences generally focuses on Western European or Anglo-American societies. Sexuality and homosexuality remain relatively unexplored fields of enquiry within Russian studies, even if it is usually acknowledged that the complex transformations undergone by Russian society since the fall of the communist system have deeply affected sexual practices and attitudes to sex and sexuality. This thesis addresses a gap in the literature by exploring how ‘lesbian’ identities, broadly understood as encompassing the whole spectrum of LBT (lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual) women’s sexualities, are (re)constructed and (re)negotiated in contemporary Russia. It draws on data generated through participant observation, ethnographic interviews with sixty-one queer-identified women, and expert interviews with activists in local community initiatives; ethnographic data is framed within a broader analysis of discourses on lesbianism in popular culture and the media. The thesis critically assesses the centrality of the ‘East/West’ binary in the existing literature on Russian sexualities. Rather than imposing Western-centric categories of identity, it explores women’s own identifications and the meanings they attach to them, framing them within shifting discourses on sexuality, gender and morality across the Soviet and post-Soviet period. The thesis also looks at how sexual identities are performed, negotiated and expressed across everyday contexts such as the home, the workplace, and the street. It interrogates women’s strategies of identity negotiation, highlighting the constraining effects of heteronormative and gendered notions of respectability, but also foregrounding the importance of individual agency. The thesis also maps ‘lesbian/queer’ space in the different urban settings of Moscow and provincial Ul’ianovsk. It explores how ‘lesbian/queer’ space is collectively carved out of the city landscape, while also examining the cultural practices and patterns of socialising attached to specific ‘lesbian’ settings; it also highlights the role of ‘lesbian/queer’ space in validating and performatively producing shared notions of non-heteronormative sexual identities.

The ongoing process of economic integration in Europe and beyond has already led to profound changes that are likely to manifest themselves further. Within Europe, formerly centrally planned economies have joined the European Union (EU) with the intention to ultimately introduce the common currency. On a more global scale, marginalised farmers in developing countries seek to become integrated in the world trading system to lift themselves out of poverty. However, issues surrounding economic inequalities are no longer exclusively confined to emerging economies. Indeed, awareness of income inequalities and their impact on the domestic economy is increasing among industrialised nations. This dissertation seeks to contribute to these topical debates in the form of three self-contained essays. The first essay is concerned with monetary integration in Europe. More specifically, we consider the EU member countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that seek to adopt the euro in the foreseeable future. Our analysis is based on a global VAR (GVAR) model to investigate to what extent central banks in CEE follow the European Central Bank’s lead. We look in another core chapter at the economic implications of the Fair Trade (FT) movement. This is a fairly novel topic to the economics profession and we thus aim to provide intuitive insights. One of the key elements of our trade model is that FT generates and hinges upon economic inequalities. We combine these two aspects in the third core chapter. In particular, we analyse how monetary policy operates in an environment which is characterised by wage inequalities using a New Keynesian model that features heterogeneous labour. The third essay is motivated by the case of the United States, where, similar to many European countries, there is strong empirical evidence for rising internal economic divergence. Overall, the thesis not only combines and investigates topical issues, it moreover does so employing various techniques with the intention to also make contributions on the methodological level. We conclude the monograph by highlighting policy implications and by providing directions for future research.

Despite increasing academic and media attention paid to dark tourism – the act of travel to sites of death, disaster and the seemingly macabre – understanding of the concept remains limited, particularly from a consumption perspective. That is, the literature focuses primarily on the supply of dark tourism. Less attention, however, has been paid to the consumption of ‘dark’ touristic experiences and the mediation of such experiences in relation to modern-day mortality. This thesis seeks to address this gap in the literature. Drawing upon thanatological discourse – that is, the analysis of society’s perceptions of and reactions to death and dying – the research objective is to explore the potential of dark tourism as a means of contemplating mortality in (Western) societies. In so doing, the thesis appraises dark tourism consumption within society, especially within a context of contemporary perspectives of death and, consequently, offers an integrated theoretical and empirical critical analysis and interpretation of death-related travel. The study adopts a phenomenological approach and a multiple case studies design with integrative and complementary methods of covert participation observation, semi-structure interviews (n = 64) and survey research (n = 419), as well as a focus group and a diarist account. As a result, the thesis explores the fundamental interrelationships between visitors and sites that offer a representation of death. In particular, the research examines these relationships at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum & Memorial (Oświęcim, Poland), WTC Tribute Visitor Centre at Ground Zero (New York), Body Worlds exhibition at the O2 Arena (London), and the Dungeon visitor attractions (York and London). The research finds that in a contemporary secular age where ordinary and normal death is sequestered behind medical and professional façades, yet abnormal and extraordinary death is recreated for popular consumption, dark tourism plays a mediating role between life and death. Ultimately, therefore, the thesis argues that dark tourism is a (new) mediating institution within secularised death sequestered societies, which not only provides a physical place to link the living with the dead, but also allows the Self to construct contemporary meanings of mortality, and to reflect and contemplate both life and death through consuming the Significant Other Dead.

This thesis investigates gendered power relations, including violence, control and coercion, within teenage heterosexual relationships, and broader relationship cultures. It focusses on upper-middle class 14-16 year olds, whose sexualities – unlike those of working-class teenagers – are seldom seen as a social problem. It explores the interactions of romantic and sexual experiences with classed identities and social contexts, based on data generated within a large, high-performing state comprehensive in an affluent, ethnically homogenous (white) area of south-east England. The research, conducted in and outside school, used a mixed-methods approach, incorporating in-depth individual and paired interviews, and self-completion questionnaires. It draws on insights from feminist post-structural approaches to gender and sexualities, and is situated in relation to work that explores the negotiation of gender in “post-feminist” neoliberal societies. Despite (in some ways, because of) their privileged class positioning, these young people faced conflicting regulatory discourses. Heteronormative discourses, and gendered double standards, still shaped their (sexual) subjectivities. Sexuality was very public and visible, forming a claustrophobic regulatory framework restricting movements and choices, particularly girls’. But inequalities and violences were often obscured by powerful classed discourses of compulsory individuality, with young people compelled to perform an autonomous self even as they negotiated inescapably social networks of sexuality. These discourses could exacerbate inequalities, as participants denigrated others for vulnerability. A significant proportion of participants reported controlling, coercive or violent relationship experiences, but girls especially downplayed their importance. Girls shouldered the burden of emotion work, taking on responsibility for both their own and partners’ emotions. Sexual harassment and violence from peers were often regarded with resignation, and sometimes led to further victimisation from partners or peers. Policing of sexuality was bound up with classed prejudices and assumptions; participants’ performances of identity often rested on dissociation from the working class. Young middle-class people’s heterosexual subjectivities sat uneasily with educationally successful, future-oriented subjectivities; sexuality was an ever-lurking threat to becoming an educational and therefore classed success.

This thesis aims to extend the understanding of the maintenance of the institutional arrangements especially in the process of resistance to institutional changes, which were caused by a regulatory and a technological discontinuity. By doing that, this thesis addresses research gaps in new instiutional theory. In order to flesh out the resistance to institional change, the Japanese publishing field was considered to be an appropriate reserarch site. This is because the Japanese publishing field has been referred to as one of the "least changeable" industries. Furthermore, in the Japanese publishing industry, different types of environmental discontinuities were brought about. The incumbents resisted those actors leveraging these environmental discontinuites and skeeing to change the institutional arrangements.

This thesis examines the impact of children and young people’s participation on policy making in four settings, a youth forum and school council in Wales, UK and two examples of established participation structures in the international development context. The drive to include children as ‘policy actors’, as a legitimate group in the policy making process, has led in Wales, and in much of the UK, to the burgeoning of youth forums and school councils. But evidence of the impact of children’s public participation remains difficult to capture and little previous work has been done to evaluate the influence of children’s forums on the design, delivery and evaluation of public services. This thesis draws on theories of governance and power as well as the social construction of childhood to examine the policy influence that each of the forums had from the perspectives of the key stakeholders involved. The research makes a contribution to understanding the factors that enable or inhibit children’s ‘voice’ being turned into policy ‘influence’. Children’s forums are more likely to affect changes in public services where there is clarity about objectives; where efforts are focused on well-understood policy or practice opportunities; and where there is close integration between child participation structures and similar structures targeting other civil society groups at a local level. The importance of policy networks and the linking of the children’s resources with other influencing factors emphasises the important role of supporting adults in reflexively navigating the tensions in children’s public participation. The thesis calls into question whether anyone is really listening to children’s views and opinions in the new governance spaces of a devolved Wales and argues that more needs to be done to insist on change and support children’s claims to express their views and to have those views taken into account, in line with Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The financial burden arising from expenditure on housing is associated with the income and housing problems of low-income households. This research examines the effectiveness of housing allowance in solving these problems and thus achieving social and housing policy objectives, i.e. improving income maintenance, enhancing housing affordability and providing work incentives. It also explains how the various institutional features of housing allowance systems make changes in achieving different policy objectives. Taking into account the fact that housing allowance programmes operate alongside other institutions of the welfare state that vary among countries, this research compares the effectiveness of housing allowances in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden and South Korea using five indicators−Residual income after rent payment, Poverty rate, Rent to Income Ratio, Income Replacement Ratio and Effective Marginal Tax Rate. The findings show that housing allowance is an effective policy instrument across countries in the following ways. First, it contributes to the improvement in residual income after housing costs and the decrease in poverty rates among low-income tenants. Second, the housing allowance reduces the financial burden arising from expenditure on rent. Third, in contrast to the positive effects of housing allowances in improving income and housing problems, their provision as part of in-work benefit relates to the increase in work disincentives indicating the higher possibility of working-poor tenants being trapped in unemployment and poverty. Fourth, despite variations in the features of the welfare and housing regime, the design of the benefit arrangement explains many of the differences in the effectiveness of housing allowance in the four countries. Fifth, subsidising a great share of housing costs is an important factor related to the improvement in income maintenance and housing affordability. Sixth, basing the provision of housing allowance on actual rent is also essential in solving the income and housing problems of low-income tenants. Findings relating to the institutional feature of housing allowance are the basis for the recommendation that the Korean housing allowance system should be reformed to reflect a household’s actual need.

The aim of this research was to provide a detailed description of emotional expression in infants, with and without disabilities. 30 typically-developing infants (aged four to five-and-a-half months)were video-recorded in four situations: immunisation, oral polio vaccination, social play and response to a surprise toy. These were designed to elicit a range of emotional behaviours. 20 infants with congenital, developmental disabilities of varying aetiologies were matched on developmental age and filmed in the same situations. Facial expressions were coded using the Maximally Discriminative Facial Movement Coding System (Max) (Izard, 1983) and emotional behaviour during interaction with Monadic Phases (Tronick, Krafchuk, Ricks, Cohn & Winn, 1980). Infants with disabilities showed fewer expressions of pain involving the whole face, and more expressions resembling blends of pain with fear, than typically-developing infants. This was due to several of these infants drawing back the mouth into a horizontal-stretch, rather than opening it fully. There was no group difference in time to respond to needle penetration with a pain expression, although median response time was higher for infants with disabilities. Both groups of infants had negative correlations between reaction time to pain and intensity of pain expression and time to recovery, indicating that infant emotion systems are integrated and coordinated with other behavioural systems. Expressions of infants with disabilities were also more fleeting and they showed reduced muscle movement in the upper-face and unconventional movements in the mid-face. They also showed fewer joy and interest expressions using the whole face, and more uncodeable expressions. Carers and female students were shown pictures of the infants' facial expressions and asked to describe the emotions they showed. There was no difference between carers and students, in accuracy of discriminating expressions of typically-developing infants, supporting claims of innate recognition of facial expressions. Expressions of sadness, fear, joy and surprise of infants with disabilities were discriminated less accurately than those of typically-developing infants. All expressions of infants with disabilities were perceived as giving significantly less intense signals than those of typically-developing infants. There were some systematic errors in judgement, with anger and pain, fear and sadness and interest and surprise expressions being mistaken for each other. This was explained in terms of morphological similarities between these expressions. Carers of infants with disabilities were more accurate at judging their own infant, but otherwise no more accurate than other judges. Coding of interactive behaviour revealed that infants with disabilities showed significantly more social attend and avert, and less social play, object attend and object play, than typicallydeveloping infants. These differences were attributed to delayed changes in functional use of eye contact and greater need to use aversion as a mechanism for regulating arousal in infants with disabilities. Carers of infants with disabilities showed less social play than those of typicallydeveloping infants. In these dyads, there was some evidence of lower frequency of agreement between infant and carer behaviours. This study provides a more comprehensive description of emotional behaviour, and involves a smaller range of developmental ages and a wider range of emotion-eliciting situations, than previous studies. The findings are useful for informing interventions for infants with disabilities and their carers.