This study examines intra-party power in the Liberal Democrats, looking at the formal role and remit of the various sectors that make up the party bureaucracy, and evaluating the exercise of power with regard to policy, campaigning and the use of resources. It is interested in two overarching questions: has the party professionalised, and has power moved toward the top? If so could this have had an impact on its electoral success? The theoretical context for this study is a well-established tradition of scholarship on party organisation going back to Moise Ostrogorski (1902) and Robert Michels (1911). The hierarchical nature of party organisations has been a constant refrain in this literature, especially in respect of major parties that are serious contenders for governmental office (McKenzie 1963; Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco 1988; Katz & Mair 1995). This thesis offers a test of these theories by applying them to a smaller party that gradually evolved from a party of opposition to a party of government. While the incentives for intra-party centralisation are clear in office-seeking parties (the leadership requires maximum autonomy in order to devise and adapt a competitive strategy), this research explores whether it is a necessary precursor to electoral success. It will test whether the party has become more professional, or top-down, by looking at the policy making process, at the way the party campaigns, and at its distribution of resources. Finally the thesis examines the role of intra-party politics in achieving and maintaining the coalition with the Conservatives negotiated in May 2010. The research spans the lifetime of the party from 1988 to present day, and relies on an extensive series of semi-structured interviews with 70 individuals connected to the party including prominent politicians, senior staff and ordinary members. It argues that the party has become significantly more professional during this time, and that this was a contributory factor in delivering office.

This thesis examines the extent of turnout decline at general elections since 1992. Its first contribution is to reveal that turnout decline amongst the youngest age groups was significantly more pronounced in the period 1992-2001 than for other age groups. The central argument is that there are sufficient grounds for suspecting that life-cycle factors cannot alone account for the unprecedented decline in turnout between 1992 and 2001, and that generational factors may be at work. The second contribution of the thesis is to test a variety of explanatory models of political participation on these youngest groups to ascertain if the results provide any insights of the dynamics of a suspected generational change. The thesis argues that a weakening of the psychological anchors to social and political life have left recent generations exposed and more susceptible than their older counterparts to factors that have been shown to decrease the likelihood of voting such as weakness of electoral competition; little perceived difference between political parties and an environment of negative images of politics and politicians.

The following thesis examines the impact of social and legacy media on young people’s political engagement as well as on their attitudes to, feelings towards and beliefs about politics. This was accomplished using a three-tiered design which integrated both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The aim of this design was to ensure that young people were afforded a voice in the ongoing debate around youth apathy. To this end, a direct comparison of social and legacy media coverage of various case studies was undertaken. This initial comparison was accompanied by a series of interviews using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009). The interviews focused on individual engagement with politics and social and legacy media, in order to get a sense of each individuals understanding of their role in British politics as well as the feelings and attitudes towards media and politics more widely. The three-tiered design concluded with a quantitative questionnaire assessing governmental trust, political efficacy, self-efficacy, and self-esteem by way of a series of standardised measures. From this mixed-methods approach, two main findings arise. Firstly, that social media such as Twitter hold the potential to facilitate political engagement in young people, beyond what is currently achieved by the British legacy media. The second finding suggests that there has been fundamental paradigmatic shift of youth conceptions of politics from what could be considered traditional political behaviours (such as voting and party membership; Strømsnes, 2009) to lifestyle orientated choices (such as boy/buycotts; Copeland, 2014; Gil de Zúñiga, Copeland & Bimber, 2014), mediated by social media. Overall the results of the thesis foster a dualistic understanding of British young people who are simultaneously engaged with and apathetic toward “politics” dependant on how the term is defined.

In September 2011, over 2000 people set up a protest camp in Zuccotti Park, New York, to contest the increasing inequality and social injustices, they argued to have been brought about by the few, at the expense of the many. This camp along with thousands of other camps worldwide, that would emerge thereafter, would come to be known as the Occupy movement. This thesis offers an examination of the Occupy movement by way of considering this phenomenon through a neo-Marxist framework, concerning, in particular the matter of class struggle. The research contained within, offers a series of elucidations regarding key theoretical and conceptual concerns, pertaining to matters of state power, in the context of the war of position in the advanced capitalist state and the neoliberal conjuncture. Presented within this specific depiction of the convoluted process that is class struggle, there is also a consideration of potential strategies for alliance. These strategies for alliance are by way of seeking to realise the making of a social class force of 'the people', on the terms of the exploited classes, that would bring with it, a material change within the state, and to that end, greater forms of equality and social justice.

This study explores the role of boundary-spanning individuals in the development of Strategic Service Partnerships (SSPs). SSPs are the latest manifestation of Public- Private Partnerships (PPPs). However, these partnerships are remarkably underresearched. Furthermore, the role of key boundary-spanning individuals in developing and maintaining PPPs and other partnership forms is poorly understood. This study closes these gaps in the literature by examining the development of SSPs and showing how the role and contribution of boundary-spanning individuals can be understood. Boundary-spanners are shown to exist as dynamic, structurally contextualised agents whose actions are shaped by a combination of organisational and contingency pressures and their own individual psychology. To understand the development of an SSP and the role of boundary-spanners, the study develops and tests a conceptual framework. This framework combines a sequential account of emergent interorganisational relationships with a policy process model. The thesis presents case study evidence from an in depth qualitative investigation of an emergent SSP in an English Local Authority to show that interaction between public and private sector organisations is critical to development of an SSP. It is also shown that boundaryspanning individuals are of critical importance in managing and shaping these interactions. This study represents an advance in understanding both PPPs and boundary-spanning individuals.

Freedom is undoubtedly a central concept employed by Hannah Arendt in her political thought, yet I believe that it remains open to further interpretation. This thesis attempts to outline what Arendt means by the term and the implications of it for her thought more broadly. Advancing a nuanced methodology which seeks to understand the relationship between Arendt’s primary concepts, this thesis examines how a large body of terms come together to form her unique and heavily politicised theory of freedom. These ideas are often related to Arendt’s philosophy of speech, which draws heavily upon ancient Greek political understanding. The thesis proceeds with reference to her critique of totalitarian language and the problems that she associates with it, which is then compared specifically with the Greek account of rhetoric. From here the thesis proceeds toward Arendt’s ideal of political discourse which it is suggested also is heavily grounded in the German hermeneutic tradition. Combining the Greek and German influences, I conclude that Arendt’s account of freedom should be labelled freedom as rhetoric. Building upon this observation it is then claimed that Arendt is best understood as advancing a form of hermeneutic republicanism.

Zugl.: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 2005

This thesis analyzes the official propaganda campaign carried out under the rule of President Saparmurat (Niyazov) Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan. Following a brief overview of the historical evolution of the state, society and culture in Turkmenistan to provide a better understanding of the social and historical context in which propaganda was pursued / the main objectives and themes of the propaganda campaign are discussed. Besides other means of propaganda, Rukhnama, the spirit-book of Turkmen written by Turkmenbashi, and women are examined in greater detail as case studies of basic means of propaganda. The thesis finally discusses the outcomes of the propaganda campaign together with a glance at the changes and continuities displayed in policies of Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the successor of Turkmenbashi.

This study seeks to analyse the impact of the perceived, projected and self-images of a state on its foreign and domestic policies. It approaches this problem by exploring the evolution of international images of the Russian Federation in the ‘West’ in the years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency (2000-2008) and by examining attempts by the Russian authorities to improve them with the help of foreign propaganda. Russian political elites have always been very sensitive to perceptions of Russia in Western Europe and later in the United States of America. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s images in Western countries underwent significant transformation. Although relatively positive in the early 1990s, they became more negative towards the end of Boris Yel’tsin’s presidency before reaching their negative ‘peak’ during Putin’s second presidential term. The energetic efforts of the Russian authorities in the years of Putin’s presidency to promote a more favourable image of the country provide extremely rich material for analysis, which has largely not yet been utilised in the academic literature. To facilitate the analysis of Russia’s perceived images and the effectiveness of foreign propaganda, the thesis includes two case studies that examine the issues at question in greater detail in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Federal Republic of Germany. Based on extensive primary research (elite interviewing and discourse analysis), the study seeks to make a three-fold contribution to the academic literature. Firstly, it is the first systematic examination of Russian foreign propaganda in the post-Soviet period. By analysing Russia’s attempts to improve its image in the international arena, the thesis contributes to the literature in the field of International Political Communication that has already examined public diplomacy campaigns conducted by other, mainly Western, countries. Secondly, it aims to provide a deeper insight into the role of subjective, non-material factors in Russian foreign policy. Finally, it seeks to make a contribution to the social constructivist IR literature by presenting a theoretical analysis of the role of national images in international relations.

No description available.