As a mode of global sustainability regulation, private participatory governance first emerged in the forestry sector in the early 1990s and from there spread rapidly and widely in the global economy. The literature on the topic points to a good fit with democratic norms, neoliberal norms, social movement pressure, and the entrepreneurial activities of civil society actors and progressive firms as the main drivers behind this process of institutional diffusion. Today, multi-stakeholder initiatives operate in many industry sectors, ranging from apparel manufacturing and diamond mining to aquaculture production and soybean farming. Drawing on new developments in the philosophy of democracy, some see these arrangements as part of a ‘deliberative turn’ in sustainability politics with the potential to democratise global governance institutions. However, the legitimacy of multi-stakeholder initiatives remains contested, and there is evidence to suggest that the diffusion of private participatory governance in the global economy has introduced variation in a key dimension of institutional design: whereas some schemes involve a wide range of actors in their governance and standard-setting activities, others are significantly less inclusive. In order to explore this puzzle, this dissertation unpacks the process of institutional diffusion. It develops an analytical framework that distinguishes three stages in the diffusion process: source selection, transmission, and adoption. For the different stages, hypotheses are formulated about the factors that “intervene” in the diffusion process, leading to more or less inclusive institutional outcomes. This framework is put to work in three case study chapters, examining the diffusion of private participatory governance in the biofuels, soy, and sugarcane sectors. A major finding of this study is that varying levels of coercive institutional pressures influenced the diffusion outcome in the cases studied. In environments characterised by strong coercive pressures (biofuels and soy), adopting a more inclusive approach served institutional designers as a strategy to gain political authority – that is, legitimate decision-making power – in these arenas. In comparison, in the low conflict environment of the sugarcane sector, no comparable process of ‘institutional fitting’ could be observed. Furthermore, this dissertation shows that ideas about private participatory governance are far from set in stone. While multi-stakeholder institutions diffuse in the global economy, late adopters learn from the experiences of prior adopters. Based on these experiences and the lessons they draw from them, they interpret, innovate, and de- and recontextualise the model, giving rise to institutional variation.

This thesis examines the planter class in Jamaica in the period before the end of slavery in 1834 and considers the relations of the planters with local free society and the metropole. In spite of the large body of scholarly work on Jamaica during the slavery period, we lack a modern study of the planters. Based on archival research conducted in Britain and Jamaica, this research tackles the related issues of how locally resident planters sustained slavery in Jamaica and sought to control local society, how they related to other local groups and to the metropole, and how they identified themselves as British slaveholders in an age in which slavery was coming under increasing criticism in Britain. The study looks at the composition of the planter class and at the relations between the planter elite, non-elite white men, free non-whites and enslaved people. It also examines the way that the planters and their allies responded to criticisms directed against them and their local practices. The main conclusions of the thesis are that, to maintain the creole institution of slavery, the planters depended heavily on the support of other white men, who enjoyed a range of privileges and opportunities. This assuaged class tensions within white society and led to a distinctively local social order based on ideas of racial difference. However, in the period before emancipation, the rising population of free coloureds and free blacks, along with the increased influence of non-conformist missionaries, meant that the planters struggled to sustain local support across free society. Furthermore, their cultural and practical reliance on the metropole weakened their position as anti-slavery came to dominate British public opinion. Therefore, shifting circumstances in both Jamaica and Britain helped to make the planters' continued defence of slavery impractical and contributed to the emancipation of enslaved people in the 1830s.

This thesis contributes to an understanding of the changes in prominence in EU energy policy since the 1990s. It does so by analysing struggles over energy poli-cy developments, as well as focusing on a new way of looking at EU politics, in particular, at the role of the EU Commission in the development of energy policy. Realist and liberal oriented perspectives, and constructivist and discourse ap-proaches, offer competing theoretical frameworks through which to view EU politics, and furnish us with many useful insights. However, they also suffer from some prob-lematic features, such as state-centrism, automatism, determinism, and cultural relativism. Drawing on the neo-Gramscian approach, informed by a historical institution-alist perspective, and certain elements of the post-structuralist account, I provide a more convincing and thorough explanation of several considerable shifts in EU energy policy, beginning with competitiveness in the 1990s, then turning towards energy security as well as climate change in the 2000s, and again competitiveness at the end of the 2000s. In addition, I illuminate the proactive role of the Commission in continuous hegemonic struggles over EU energy policy development. First, using historical institutionalism, I argue that the EU Commission acts as a political entrepreneur, promoting a long-term pro-growth orientation that stems from its organizational DNA, i.e. its historical make-up. Moreover, other state and non-state players often contest the Commission’s forward-looking position. The neo-Gramscian account of hegemony provides a comprehensive and detailed framework that reveals how the Commission, and other players, were actively involved in hegemonic struggles sur-rounding the EU energy policy domain. Furthermore, due to the lack of analytical mechanisms in the neo-Gramscian tradition to explore dynamic struggles and changes at the discursive level, I use the post-structuralist political logics of equivalence and difference, together with various rhetorical instruments that serve as descriptive framing devices.

The thesis comprehends four chapters: the first chapter concerns with the positive correlation between cross-country price level and per-capita income, which is generally regarded as a stylized fact renowned as the Penn-Balassa-Samuelson effect. The chapter provides evidence that the price-income relationship is actually non-linear and that it turns negative in low income countries. The result is robust along both cross-section and panel dimensions. The main contribution of this chapter is to uncover a new empirical regularity such that the price level firstly decreases and then increases along the development process. The second chapter argues that, in order to capture the non-monotonicity of the price-income relationship, we need a modified Balassa-Samuelson framework that accounts for the fact that low-income and high-income countries have very different economic structures and are at different stages of development. Particular emphasis needs to be put on the relevance of the agricultural sector in poor countries and for . The contribution of this chapter is to show that a model linking the price level to the process of structural transformation captures the non-monotonic pattern of the data. The third chapter departs from the Balassa-Samuleson framework and analyses the price-income relationship in a multisector Eaton-Kortum model of trade. The chapter shows that also within this framework a negative-price income relationship emerges. This provides further support to the empirical result shown in the first chapter and additional insights on the determinants of such relationship. The fourth chapter focuses on the relationship between foreign capital flows and income inequality in emerging countries. Developing countries experience a prolonged period of real exchange rate overvaluation after they have opened their capital and current account. This real exchange rate overvaluation is associated with rising income inequality within a country. The chapter provides evidence of a significant positive correlation between net capital flows and the Gini coefficient. The chapter presents also a model connecting the dynamics of the balance of payments with a search and matching model of the labor market. This provides a useful analytical framework to disentangle the mechanisms that can link foreign capital flows to income inequality through the impact of real exchange rate adjustment on the price of labor and quantity of employment.

This thesis examines the process of mass communication from media strategies to audience belief in relation to the conflict in Ireland. It documents the media strategies used by the various actors and participants in the conflict, from the Northern Ireland Office, Royal Ulster Constabulary, Foreign Office and Army to Sinn Fén and the Irish Republican Army, via the Ulster Defence Association, other political parties, Civil liberties and human rights organisations and many others. It reveals the continuing disinformation efforts of the British government, examines how source organisations interact with journalistsw, how journalists and their editors operate and looks at the outcome of their endeavours by analysing international coverage of the Northern Ireland conflict. Finally, the research examines the reception of media information amongst people living in Northern Ireland and Britain. Key questions here included the extent to which `violence' acted as a key organising category in British perceptions of the conflict and the effectiveness of propaganda in structuring public (mis)understandings.

One of the great opportunities afforded to the political scientist since the fall of the Soviet Union has been that of examining politics ‘on the ground’ in non-metropolitan areas. The current study addresses the development of regional and local political party organisations in post-communist Russia. Focusing on the six movements which won representation in the 1999 election to the State Duma, it uses three case study regions in the middle Volga - the Republic of Tatarstan and the provinces of Samara and Ul’yanovsk - to examine party activity at the regional and district levels. Based on extensive fieldwork in Russia, the investigation utilises a broad range of local sources and interviews in its analysis. However, in order to avoid the danger of simply providing an observational study of local politics, wide use is also made of national opinion survey and focus group data. The study begins by examining the context of party activity in Russia, giving a brief history of the party system and its institutional framework. Thereafter, examination is made of the role of parties in regional and local politics, based mainly on official electoral statistics from 1995-2001. This analysis begins by looking at the Russian Federation’s eighty-nine regions in a comparative context, before narrowing the focus to the three case study regions. Parties’ activities, and their interactions with the respective political systems in each region, are examined in detail. Thereafter, the functioning of parties at three levels - federal, regional and district - is examined, using both theoretical and empirical methods. The study goes on to examine the role played by members in Russia’s political parties, most specifically at a regional and local level, utilising survey and focus group material (undertaken specifically for this study) to case new light on the entry patterns, bases of activism, and attitudes of party members in the middle Volga. Furthermore, parties are examined in the context of the 1999-2001 electoral cycle. This analysis concludes that, in the federal elections, particularly that to the State Duma in December 1999, regional nuances dominated over the national campaign; but that party participation was limited in region-specific elections.

Legitimacy is a key but a-changing concept in political science. It has evolved in parallel with the changing political realities throughout history. In the current political environment, legitimacy of a political order depends on its approval by people at the domestic level. However, this domestic approval has to be sustained by an international approval, an attribute underlined especially during the Cold War era. Latin American crises of legitimacy and the more recent East European crises of legitimacy provide concrete examples for this. Hungary, as one of the East European countries which underwent the post-communist systemic transformation faces a renewed crisis of legitimacy. The grounds of legitimation have changed in comparison with the grounds of legitimation of the ancien regime, especially under the Kádárist rule. This thesis analyses the Kádárist attempts at legitimation, and then focuses on the post-communist system in Hungary to compare it with the ancien regime in search of the answer to the question what has changed during the transformation. This study focuses on legitimacy with its domestic and international dynamics, taking into consideration the systemic, institutional and social changes in the post-communist era. It concludes that a combination of political, economic and social improvements will ensure the new system’s legitimate status in both domestic and international arenas.

Despite their explicit intent to speak with a single voice in foreign affairs, EU member states manage to do so only some of the time. Which are the factors that determine whether or not the EU member states successfully coordinate their positions in the international arena? To find out, I propose to examine the voting behaviour of the EU member states inside the United Nations General Assembly; a forum in which, notwithstanding heterogeneous policy preferences, they intend to coordinate their votes and are thus subject to coordination pressures. This means that for divisive resolutions, each member state must try to reconcile its national policy preference with the objective of casting a unified vote. I hypothesise that the balance a member state strikes generally depends on how important it views the issue at hand, how powerful it is, what type of relationship it maintains with the EU and under certain conditions, what type of relationship it maintains with US. I further argue that the balance is expected to tip in favour of EU unity when increasing the collective bargaining power by working together becomes a tangible objective. By adopting a multi-method approach, the thesis shows that the EU member states make a genuine and continuous effort to coordinate their votes inside the General Assembly. Significantly, the thesis illustrates that member states, at times, are able to override their heterogeneous national policy preference in order to stand united. I conclude by connecting the findings with the constructivist/rationalist debate, which juxtaposes foreign policy cooperation according to the logic of appropriateness with the logic of consequence. The results obtained have implications not only for the study of EU voting behaviour in the United Nations, but also for theoretical debate underlying it.

This thesis considers the development of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), from its foundation in 1993 to the Presidential election of 2008. The study begins with a discussion of the context of change for the CPRF in the post-Soviet world from the perspective of political transitions of other communist parties and their development in the post-Soviet world. The final years of the party’s predecessor, and that predecessor’s collapse contribute a sense of perspective to the party’s development and this is followed by a consideration of the need for ideological change in order to transform the party, the electorate’s support for the CPRF in recent parliamentary elections and the political views of members of a branch of the party with particular emphasis on the opinions of younger members: those who may be guiding the party’s development in the future. How does the transformation of the CPRF compare with that of other communist parties in the region? Organisational change, including the inheritance of political control and resources by former communist parties in some countries where they were in power, has greatly aided some parties in their return to government while the lack of such advantages has hindered others. The ban on the party in Russia adversely affected the unification of communists in Russia from 1991 to 1993 while the CPRF’s counterparts in other countries faced no such difficulties. The electoral successes of other communist and former-communist parties serve to highlight the increased problems the CPRF faces after the splits the party has undergone in recent years. Ideological change across the post-communist world has been very varied in terms of moves towards social democracy, towards nationalism or the retention of a more orthodox communism depending on the local circumstances in individual countries. How has the legacy of the CPSU influenced the formation and development of the successor party? The origins of the CPRF can be seen in the divisions that formed in the CPSU in its final years. The scale of ideological change in the final years of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union can be seen in the radical differences between the 1986 Party Programme and 1991 draft Programme. Documents from the era reveal a failure to understand the depth of the reaction against communism in Eastern Europe and what it could mean for the Soviet Union as well as concern about the effects of glasnost’ on support for the regime and the thinking behind attempts to use electoral change to increase the party’s legitimacy. These changes did not have the anticipated effect for the CPSU and resulted in the loss of party control over those elected and over electors with the formation of platforms in the CPSU and parties outside the CPSU leading the way to the demise of the party. When the ideology a party represents appears to have been comprehensively rejected, how does that party reposition itself in the political landscape in order to survive? With the election of a new leader prepared to lead the party in a new direction, the CPRF has recast itself as a nationalist party that sees communism as a Russian tradition. Zyuganov’s repositioning of the party has been characterised by the acceptance of democracy, which has arguably kept the CPRF in the public eye as the party has been represented in every Duma since 1993, and the search for means of uniting various political groups under a broad ‘patriotic’ banner in order to return the party to power at the head of a coalition. Zyuganov’s reworking of communist theory includes a heavy reliance on geopolitics to argue for the re-establishment of the Soviet Union and support for the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian culture as cornerstones of the patriotic cause. Which members of the Russian electorate now define themselves as communist? The party’s relationship with the electorate is examined through the results of public opinion surveys conducted just after the 1999 and 2003 Duma elections to see what views communist voters hold in common and whether it is possible to determine what political opinions can be said to predict a vote for the CPRF. A CPRF supporter could be predicted to be older and with more strongly held political views than the average Russian citizen. As many previous studies have found, age is clearly one of the most significant factors in predicting support for the CPRF but this factor is outweighed in these surveys by party identification and ideological conviction. If a voter identified with a political party and an ideology, there was a greater probability that that voter supported the CPRF than any other political party. Are members of the party able and willing to defend the change in direction of the party leadership? Interviews with members of the St Petersburg branch of the CPRF indicated that members were willing to accept the nationalist stance of the party as a temporary necessity to extend electoral support for the party. In view of the fact that party membership has fallen drastically in recent years, members were asked what was drawing them to join the CPRF or remain in the party when others had left. With an ageing and falling membership, the Komsomol is playing an important role by recruiting young people to the party. Members were asked for their views on the possibility of the party changing course and their attitudes to Zyuganov’s leadership. However, with support for the party from the electorate in decline, party members were divided about what they felt needed to change. This thesis concludes that the party remains popular with a minority of voters who were impoverished by the transition and that the current strategies of democratic participation and a nationalist stance have been accepted by the membership as the achievement of communism is seen as a very distant prospect. The party, however, still believes that communism is inevitable.

This research was born out of a need for me to know, as a London-born Greek Cypriot, why the archaeology and history of my place of origin have no shades of grey. The history I learned at school – British school – was fluid, it was about how different actors felt, why they did things; we learnt role play and empathy. At home, and in Greek school, history was black and white, them vs us, Turks vs Greeks and this was the way it had been throughout history. I wanted to known and understand history, not have it ask me questions. I went to university to study archaeology, hoping that by studying the distant past I would find my answers, but I just found more questions. The central research questions of this thesis are: what effect do political events have on state representations of the archaeological and historical record? How can these be analysed? What effect does politics have on archaeology as practiced in Cyprus? This research has addressed these questions by focusing on state uses of the past in Cyprus from 1878 until the present through the analysis of education, the mass media and tourism. The central premise is that states are involved in the creation and maintenance of national and group identities and that by studying these, one is able to understand the uses to which academic areas of study have been put. My research provides an assessment of how the pasts of Cyprus have been used by the British colonial administration and the government of the Republic of Cyprus in attempts to create particular identities relating to colonialism and nationalism. In my analysis I have focused on the three moments that are repeatedly represented as being central to Greek Cypriot literature about the history of Cyprus: the late Bronze Age Mycenaean ‘colonisation’; the classical period; and the folk image. These have been assessed with reference to three media used by all states in the creation and maintenance of national identities: education, the mass media; and tourism.