This thesis explores the imaginary dimensions of economic crisis through a study of the interface between practices of historical representation and processes of social construction. Its core argument is that a sense of history cannot be disentangled from the phenomena that it strives to apprehend. As a result, there can be no fixed and objective relation between the evolution of global capitalism and its long history of crises. Instead, the very intelligibility of both ‘crisis’ and ‘history’ is produced through an iterated telescoping of time, whereby more or less distant events and episodes are grasped together in ways that lend meaning to those of the present. This argument is taken forward via an in-depth and quasi-historical analysis of the 2008 crisis. Focusing on how past crises figure within the pronouncements of international policymaking organisations and the commentary of the global financial press between 2007 and 2009, it develops a typology of different practices of historical representation and the various interpretive functions they are capable of performing. In so doing, it makes a theoretical contribution to the constructivist and cultural political economy literatures on the discursive negotiation of crisis.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, is the world’s most widely and rapidly ratified international convention. Although it was hoped that the Convention would have an enormously positive impact on all children, this has not happened in many parts of the world for a variety of reasons, including its western bias, which has, hitherto, dominated the debate on children’s rights. However, this universality vs. relativity dichotomy does not help us to protect children on the ground. Hence, it is necessary to move beyond the binary debate relating to the universality and relativity of children’s rights and engage with children’s local realities, which illustrate that there is, indeed, a middle ground in which people live their lives that may facilitate dialogue on children’s rights with local communities. In order to identify this middle ground the thesis focused on eliciting the perceptions of adults and children in two local communities in Accra, Ghana, the first country to ratify the Convention in February 1990, on children’s rights, constructing childhood and the socialization of children and their implications for the implementation of the Convention. Special attention is given to Article 12, which has caused controversy in countries around the world.

The thesis consists of three chapters with Chapters 2 and 3 providing experimental evidence on the role of cheap-talk and a third party recommendation in reducing or aggravating conflict. Chapter 1 surveys the theoretical, empirical and experimental literature on the determinants of conflict. Chapter 2 considers an experiment based on Baliga and Sjostrom (BS, 2004) to investigate whether communication reduces the probability of an arms race. We find that communication does indeed reduce the possibility of using strategies that lead to an arms race, even when the unique Bayesian Nash equilibrium without communication has both players playing a strategy that leads to an arms race. Chapter 3 considers a set of experiments based on Baliga and Sjostrom (BS, 2012) to understand if third parties can provoke conflict. We adapt their model to experimentally test if a third party recommendation can trigger conflict. While in some treatments with recommendation, more players do choose an aggressive strategy compared to the treatment without, none of them are statistically significant. We propose a number of explanations for why provocation may not necessarily increase conflict in this environment.

Abortion rights are often used as a litmus test for how well women’s interests are represented by the state. However, feminist accounts of British abortion legislation have been conflicting, either presenting the law as fundamentally anti-feminist, or noting that feminist actors have played an active role in its construction and defence. This thesis makes sense of this tension through coding and a chronological discourse analysis of Parliamentary debates on abortion legislation from the 1967 Abortion Act onwards, supplemented by analysis of interview data and commentary. The thesis finds that the gendered assumptions encoded in the Act have constrained the debate. Due to a desire to protect access to abortion, feminists have been forced to defend a law which constructs women as vulnerable and irrational. While feminists have used the discursive resources available to them in creative ways, they have also perpetuated problematic ideas about gender. Difficulties have also been present for anti-abortion politicians, who oppose an Act widely regarded as protecting the vulnerable. These actors have attempted to borrow elements of a liberal, ‘pro-woman’ discourse on abortion, appropriating feminist language. Nonetheless, alongside this rhetoric are elements of a conservative backlash politics which identifies feminism as the cause of women’s problems.

What rights do children and young people have to participate in the decisions that affect their lives? And what benefit, if any, can be gained from their participation in the democratic process? Through the adoption of an interpretative perspective the research undertakes a case study exploration of these issues working directly with child and young people across a number of public and third sector organisational settings, utilising a Participatory Action Research methodology (in the form of an Interactive Group Work Programme) in order to examine their engagement in decisions that affect their lives. The research examines the factors that both inhibit and promote participation with young citizens and how this is affected by the individual organisation’s context and practice. It explores through the proposition of a new paradigm shift in the ‘adultism’ (Bell, 1995) discourse that identifies an ‘awkwardness’ in the way adults engage with children and young people arising from a lack (and/or loss) of the skills necessary to respect, relate and respond appropriately to them. A shift that the researcher has termed the ‘Three R’s of Awkwardness - Respect, Relate and Respond’. The research identifies a new distinction between forms of communication which are ‘instructive’ and those which are ‘expressive’ in nature and the benefit of participatory dialogue. In so doing, it has demonstrated the aim of the research in seeking to express the importance of the participation agenda and the value that can be gained through it.

This thesis argues that the limited application of postcolonial perspectives in European Union (EU) enlargement studies, and especially in studying power relations, has led to a failure to properly identify and examine the extent to which the EU produces unequal power relations. Current studies of enlargement are largely based on mainstream positivist theories and thus overlook the importance of a post-positivist, critical and interpretivist research framework in understanding the EU and power relations. In contrast, by adopting postcolonialist perspectives and applying them to the case of the Romanian enlargement, the thesis presents a critical discourse analysis of the EU enlargement monitoring reports and interviews with officials of the EU and Romanian negotiating teams in order to demonstrate the extent to which the EU produces unequal power relations through instances of subalternity, orientalism and mimicry that have so far been identified and discussed by postcolonial scholars. Each of these three perspectives has so far been obscured to a large extent from the enlargement literature, as a result of the limited application of postcolonial approaches in EU studies. This thesis aims therefore to address this gap and advance the postcolonial research on the EU and unequal power relations.

This thesis examines how the German print news media negotiate notions of Germanness by narrating the acts of violent crime committed by the right-wing extremist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2000 and 2011. Combining Paul Ricœur’s textual hermeneutics with insights from narrative criminology as well as violence and narrative media studies, I approach the NSU as a narrative puzzle. I thereby investigate how the media narrate a murder series of nine men with a migration background, a nail bomb attack in a Turkish-dominated street and an (attempted) murder of two police officers. I compare the narratives constructed both before and after the identification of the perpetrators in November 2011. Through an extensive narrative analysis of news media discourse, I examine how notions of Germanness are negotiated through the construction of relationships between perpetrators, victims, society and the state. The key argument is that the NSU has not affected dominant perceptions of Germanness, but reinforced existing ones through the creation of a hierarchy of “‘Others’ within”: immigrants, East Germans, and (right-wing) extremists. The findings show that the interpretation of acts of violent crime, especially over extended periods of time, is rooted in everyday practices of story-telling and identity construction.

The thesis set out to investigate the politics of Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs) engaging the Government in Tanzania. The aim of the study is to get an understanding of the context, ways and means in which NGOs in Tanzania engage (with) the government to influence its policies and decisions. The thesis also analyses the implications and role of NGOs in bringing about social change in Tanzania. The thesis shows the relationship of subordination that is constituted through the operation of NGOs within the social, economic and political institutions of Tanzanian civil society. It offers an insight into the neo-liberal views that informs the distribution of aid to developing nations, and the affect this has had on state-civil society relationships within the Tanzanian nation state. Theoretically, the thesis uses Gramsci’s notion of hegemony which applies both at national level and international level. The counter hegemony which Gramsci expounds in terms of war of manoeuvre and war of position has been highlighted in relations to works of NGOs and civil society development. The thesis examines the engagement of Tanzanian NGOs to influence the process of NGO Policy and Act making; and monitoring the poverty strategies through the Campaign Against Poverty-Tanzania (GCAP-T). The thesis posit the future of NGOs on how they could side and work with people to create a society based on people needs, vision and aspiration.

The rise of indirectly elected institutions, such as the West Midlands Regional Assembly, has democratic implications for notions of accountability, legitimacy and representation. The representative function of these bodies must be explicitly fulfilled if they are to be considered democratic. The conceptual focus of this thesis is the representative function of members of the West Midlands Regional Assembly. The analysis applies a representative role framework based on Pitkin’s “Four Views of Representation” to explore the formalistic and substantive elements of representation through an appraisal of focus, style, role and scope. The results show that there are weak accountability structures in place, leading representatives to adopt a trustee conception of their roles. A grounded theory analysis is utilised to explore additional factors not covered in Pitkin’s framework. This surfaced the structural factors and role motivations that affect role choice. The thesis utilises Weick’s concept of sensemaking to explore the interpretation and enactment of different representative roles taking into account the importance of institutions in framing micro sensemaking processes. This new methodology permits an appraisal of the relative influence of institutional context, structure and individual agency and delivers a new model for understanding the logics of representative action in appointed bodies.

Law is often perceived as an instrument that can effect social change. National law in Trinidad and Tobago, prima facie providing for gender equality, does not fully contemplate issues of particular concern to women, such as domestic violence. Gender equality and domestic violence are unwitting partners as women cannot achieve the former without first addressing the latter. Additionally, problems such as male dominance in politico-legal structures and lack of political will create practical obstacles to the realisation of gender equality and/or the full potential of the law. A case study of Trinidad and Tobago shows that the achievement of legal advances for women is particularly difficult where practical measures are not implemented domestically. Honouring international commitments subsequently becomes problematic as they do not guarantee change nationally and they, too, are sidelined. Gender equality and domestic violence are not given priority domestically and laws aimed towards protecting women and women’s rights are ineffective, scant and/or not enforced. The only way to achieve gender equality is through a multilevel approach from above (the UN) and, perhaps, more importantly, from below, as women have the potential to effect real national and international legal and institutional change to ensure gender equality at both levels.