This thesis focuses on liberal peace building in the DRC. The thesis takes a critical approach which emphasises local agencies and their engagements with liberal peace building. However, it seeks to bring this critique back to the institutions with which liberal peace building is preoccupied, by focusing on the hidden local that operates within these institutions. This approach seeks to give new meaning to processes of institution building without rendering institutions irrelevant as a top-down approach. Focusing on the first legislature of the Congolese Third Republic (2006-2011) this thesis provides a case study of how local agencies consume liberal democracy within the National Assembly, and make it their own. It discusses current liberal peace building practices as a process of mutual disengagement, in which both the local and liberal intervention seek to disengage from each other. Although this results in a lack of legitimacy of the peace building project both locally as well as with liberal interventions, it also creates hybrid space in which local agencies consume liberal democracy. The thesis conceptualises these local agencies as being convivial, in other words, they are enabled by people's relations. The thesis therefore focuses on MPs relations with their electorate, as well as with the executive and other MPs in their party or ruling coalition. In through these interactions local agencies consume liberal democracy – it is accepted, rejected, diverted, substituted, etc. The thesis concludes that through these practices of consumption local agencies negotiate liberal democracy. The liberal democratic framework is kept intact, but it is not enabled to function as foreseen, because local agencies are responsive to a moral matrix of the father-family. However, the liberal democratic framework itself provides new tools through which local agencies also renegotiate the unwritten rules of the moral matrix of the father-family.

The objective of this thesis is to examine the political modernization experience of the Uzbeks. In order to do that, first, this dissertation critically analyze the modernization theory, and second, the identity- and socio-political transformation of Uzbeks in the pre-modern and modern eras. The political modernization of Uzbeks and its relation with the peculiar social-political structures, as well as the impact of Tsarist and the Soviet rule on those structures are examined. Moreover, the dissertation analyzes the emergence of an Uzbek political identity and its influence on the post-Soviet independent Uzbekistan. The main argument of this dissertation is that the Uzbek experience under the Tsarist and Soviet rule has inevitably transformed the Uzbek society and achieved relative success in changing the traditional forms into ostensibly modern ones. However, despite the successful political modernization during the Soviet era, the specific socio-political organization, clans and kinship structures inherent in the Uzbek society succeeded adapting and even transforming modern institutions and structures externally imposed by the Soviet. These informal traditional structures emerged as strong institutions in the post-independence era. Moreover, the dissertation claims that the transition and modernization approaches to Post-Soviet Uzbekistan failed in understanding the peculiar socio-political structures and their impact on informal politics in independent Uzbekistan.

The proposed thesis deals with informal political associations and organizations (so called informals) in Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with a special focus on Leningrad in the second half of 1980s and at the beginning of 1990s. The thesis is trying to find a place of political informals within the Soviet society and within perestrojka as well as it is trying to portray informals as a pluralist element in the Soviet society, as a beginning of multipartism, as an alternative structure to official state organizations and as a strong politization and radicalization factor for masses of Soviet citizens. First part of the thesis is dedicated to the theoretical part of the problem and so it concentrates on basic characteristics of informals, its variety, ideological and social differences. Also the relations of informals and a disent movement, democratic movement, the attitudes of power structures towards informals and relations between informals themselves are assesed here. Apart from that, the fate of informals after the dissolution of the USSR and the place of informals within perestrojka are discussed. The second part of the thesis deals more specifically with a situation of political informals on the territory of Leningrad, which was a very important city from the point of view of...

This article discusses Parliamentary control over bureaucracies. In the first place, it reviews a number of studies that explain how the American Parliament influences public administration with the intention of guarantying that their intererst and preferences are protected in the decision making process. The American example demonstrates that the model of separation of powers does not take into account that Parliaments should avoid attempts to control the bureaucracy. In the second place, it analyses the Peruvian case and proposes a series of informal mechanisms by which the Parliament exerts influence over the bureaucracy and the public policy cycle. / Este artículo discute el control que los Congresos pueden ejercer sobre los cuerpos burocráticos. En primer lugar, se revisa una serie de estudios que explican cómo el Parlamento en Estados Unidos influye sobre la administración pública con la intención de garantizar que sus intereses y preferencias sean considerados en la toma de decisiones. El ejemplo estadounidense demuestra que el modelo  de separación de poderes  no supone que los  parlamentos deban renunciar a controlar activamente a la burocracia. En segundo lugar, se desarrolla el caso peruano y se expone una serie de mecanismos informales a través de los cuales el Congreso influye sobrela burocracia y el proceso de las políticas.

Ce travail propose une sociologie historique du Parti démocrate turc, qui est fondé en 1946, arrive au pouvoir en 1950, et y reste jusqu’à un coup d’Etat de l’armée, en 1960. La sociologie de ce parti permet d’éclairer la compréhension du passage d’un régime de parti unique à un système de compétition partisane en Turquie. Pour cela, nous avons choisi une séquence chronologique longue, qui va de la fondation du parti en 1946 à sa chute en 1960. En effet, observer la création, puis la structuration du Parti démocrate nous permet de voir le rôle qu’il joue dans l’acculturation à la civilisation électorale, la promotion de nouvelles élites, mais aussi les continuités avec le parti unique, et le verrouillage progressif du champ politique, pour retourner à une situation autoritaire vers la fin des années 1950. Une sociologie fine du parti nous permettra ainsi de comprendre comment il se constitue en parti dominant. Pour ce faire, nous étudions le parti à travers ses implantations locales dans quatre départements de Turquie, Adana, Diyarbakır, Erzurum et Izmir, en portant une attention aux aspects informels de son fonctionnement. A partir de sources variées, archives de la presse locale, mémoires d’hommes politiques locaux, rapports diplomatiques, et divers témoignages, nous montrons que le Parti démocrate s’est imposé comme parti dominant sur la scène politique, en s’appuyant sur divers groupes sociaux, dont les hommes d’affaires et les petits commerçants conservateurs (esnaf). Dans ce processus, la capacité du parti à recruter des hommes politiques locaux, qui pouvaient mobiliser une large clientèle, a joué un rôle essentiel. / The aim of this study is to make a social history of the Turkish Democrat Party from 1946 to 1950. There are many essays about the Turkish Democrat Party in political history. Mainly, these works are based on macro and state-centered sources: state archives, national press, and parliamentary debates. Very few studies attempt to assess the social dynamics that led to the Democrat Party coming to power and holding it for a 10-year period. My claim is that to understand the social dynamics that led to the Democrat Party’s rise, we must look at its grassroots organizations and local recruitment. Therefore, I examine four different areas of Turkey—Izmir, Erzurum, Diyarbakir, and Adana—in order to better understand the Democrat Party’s social base. I use sources like the local press and memoirs of local politicians, as well as diplomatic reports, sociological works, and oral interviews with eyewitnesses from the period. This work aims to paint a comprehensive picture of the Democrat Party’s social base by revealing the important role that rural elite, artisans, and small-town shop-keepers played in shaping the party's conservative character.

The aim of this thesis is to explore how livelihoods are recovering in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka through the lens of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and the social networks approach—methods of inquiry that have gained considerable impetus in livelihoods research. The study is conducted with reference to two tsunami-affected fisher villages in the Hambantota District, Southern Province. It employs a qualitative ethnographic methodology that examines narratives emerging from households, local officials of government and non-government organizations, office bearers of community-based organizations, local politicians, village leaders, and key informants. Focus is on evaluating how particular roles, activities, and behaviour are given importance by these groups in specific post-tsunami contexts and how these aspects relate to broader conceptualizations of social networks, informal politics, social inequality, and ethnographic research in South Asia. The findings support four major contributions to the literature. First, social networks are significant as an object of study and a method of inquiry in understanding livelihoods post-disaster. Second, paying heed to varied forms of informal politics is critical in post-disaster analyses. Third, the concept of intersectionality can extend and improve upon prevailing approaches to social inequality in disaster recovery. Fourth, ethnographic research is valuable for understanding everyday networks, informal politics, and change in South Asia. Collectively, these findings present a human geography of post-tsunami livelihoods in Sri Lanka, where networks, politics, and inequalities, which form an essential part of everyday livelihoods, have been reproduced in disaster recovery. The thesis constitutes a means of offering expertise in the sphere of development practice, highlighting internal differentiation in access to aid as a key issue that needs to be identified and systematically addressed by policymakers and practitioners.