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.

This thesis has two main themes: (1) values shift versus cultural particularity and (2) values and democracy. The Postmaterialist thesis and related theories of values shift presented by Ronald Inglehart and others assume that, as a consequence of industrialisation and post-industrialisation, people's values transform in such a way as to increase an emphasis on self-esteem, self-expression and other qualities. Individuals become increasingly capable, autonomous and inclined to public demands, which can be conducive to liberal democratic outcomes. In relation to these, the present study suggests that cultural particularity should be taken into consideration as a factor competing with that of values shift in terms of influence on people's attitudinal conditions. For individualism is often quoted as a core element of Western civilisation, which is not necessarily so in other cultural scenarios. With this enquiry, the study mainly concentrates on the analysis of the World Values Survey. Postmaterialist indexes are closely investigated by comparing the USA, Britain, Russia and Japan. The examination further incorporates broader regions: Western, Postcommunist and East Asian regions. The results indicate a certain validity in the cultural effect. This is especially the case with a Postmaterialist values item on 'freedom of speech', which contrasts with other Postmaterialist item: 'giving people more say in important government decisions'. Their implications for democracy are subsequently considered. These non-Western societies appear to exhibit certain weaknesses in the Postmaterialist transformation and its attitudinal efficacy for polyarchy-like democracy. The attention turns to gaps in perceptions of freedom between the USA, Russia and Japan, which could be applied to the trilateral regions. This national difference also seems to be present in the area of protest, notwithstanding the fact that there are some indications of values shift. Culture seems to matter on popular outlooks vis-à-vis the Postmaterialist effects. Multivariate analysis on this aspect endorses the same conclusion. The outcomes imply variation between the citizens of these societies in ways that they relate to government. The nations are compared with respect to the influences of liberal democratic attitudes on moderate protest and views of governance. After all, American (and probably British) individuals seem to be more compatible with public demands and participatory democracy than those in Russia and Japan. Western cultural emphasis on the particular quality of freedom could be favourable to Postmaterialist values as well as individual attitudes that call for responsive and accountable democracy.

From 1992 to 2003 the emergence of the urban resident Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG) system saw a major reconfiguration and expansion of social assistance in the People's Republic of China (PRC). There are currently two gaps in current studies of the MLG which this dissertation will address. First, detailed historical information on the MLG is lacking in the English language. Second, the focus of current studies on the effectiveness of the MLG has led to an implicitly rational explanation for the emergence and development of the policy. Such an explanation does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the MLG. Using Chinese language sources and interview data collected during two field trips to the PRC this dissertation uses four different periods in the MLG's development to argue that that explaining the programme requires a more complex approach. Drawing on insights provided by the China studies and wider political science literature I argue that the development of the MLG system has been a complex process which can be explained by using a synthesis of concepts. These are the role played by policy sponsors, a new concept developed in the dissertation, and policy entrepreneurs. Second, the continued importance of the structure of the Chinese state. Finally, the influence of feedback from previous policy decisions and outcomes. These three concepts are used to examine four significant stages of the MLG programme's development. First, the often overlooked emergence of the first MLG programme in Shanghai between 1992 and 1993 is examined. Second, the MLG's shift from a local innovation to a national policy from 1994 to 1997 is investigated. Third, the factors behind the significant expansion of the MLG between 1999 and 2003 are contrasted with more low key developments in the scope and delivery of social assistance. Finally, the concepts developed and applied to the MLG are taken and used to explain the emergence and spread of the Community Public Service Agencies in Dalian. I conclude that the synthesis of the policy sponsor and neo-institutionalist concepts provide a richer explanation of the MLG than that implicit in the existing literature.

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.

Background: Public health researchers and practitioners have repeatedly called for policy to be informed by academic evidence. The rise of the evidence-based medicine movement has demonstrated the potential benefits of using evidence for clinical decision-making. Recently, politicians and policy documents have echoed these calls for increased use of evidence in policymaking by drawing upon the discourse of evidence-based policy. However, efforts to understand the relationship between evidence and public health policy are underdeveloped and often make limited use of knowledge from other fields, including political science and sociology. This thesis aims to explore the relationship between evidence and public health policy in the UK using two contemporary case studies: the English public health White Paper, ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’; and the development of minimum unit pricing of alcohol in Scotland. Methods: The first case study: ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ case study investigates the extent that three prominent discourses that draw upon academic work are reflected by the policy statements contained within the White Paper. The three areas examined include evidence on ‘what works’, the Nuffield framework on public health ethics and insights from behavioural science (‘nudge’). These discourses were chosen as they are not only rhetorically prominent in the White Paper, but also because they reflect the range of direct use of specific research findings and more conceptual use of research-derived ideas. To examine the extent that evidence on ‘what works’ has been incorporated into ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’, the research evidence for each of 51 specific policy actions described in the White Paper was reviewed. A critical analysis of ‘nudge’ and the Nuffield framework was conducted by contrasting their application with the authors’ original articulation. The second case study explores the development of the high-profile public health policy of minimum unit pricing of alcohol by drawing upon three different sources of data. First, a review of policy documents was conducted. Second, a systematic document analysis of evidence submissions that were received by the Scottish Parliament’s Health and Sport Committee in response to its consultation on minimum unit pricing was performed. This analysis drew specifically on a framework for analysing political argumentation. Third, 36 semi-structured interviews were carried out with a broad range of policy stakeholders. Interviewees were purposively chosen to obtain diversity in supportiveness for minimum unit pricing, as well as by professional position (academic, advocate, civil servant, politician, industry representative). The evidence submissions and interview data were thematically coded and organised using NVivo 9. Results: By systematically assessing the evidence underpinning the English public health White Paper, the study empirically established that public health policy does not meet conventional public health standards for being evidence-based. Similarly, the prominence of ‘nudge’ and the Nuffield framework in the text of ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ do not appear to be matched by the actions suggested. However, this first case study finds that while evidence does have an influence, it does not determine policy. This relationship appears complex, partial and contingent rather than direct and instrumental, therefore necessitating a more detailed and focused case study. The second case study begins by providing a detailed description of the process by which minimum unit pricing developed in Scotland. It then draws on the analysis of evidence submission documents combined with interview data to identify a crucial role of public health advocates, who reframed the alcohol policy debate to bring about policy change. Epidemiological concepts were important in helping to achieve this shift in policy framing. Having investigated more conceptual influences of evidence, econometric modelling carried out by a team at the University of Sheffield is focused on as an example of a specific piece of research evidence that was perceived by interviewees to be influential in the policy debate. The different types of influence that the modelling study had on the policy process are determined and reasons for its influence investigated. The study also finds that interviewees believed econometric modelling could be more widely used to inform future public health policymaking. Lastly, a ‘multiple lenses’ approach builds upon these findings and political science theory to produce a comprehensive explanation of the policy process and describe the roles of evidence on the minimum unit pricing policy process. Discussion: Analysis of the ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People’ White Paper shows that despite the prominent rhetoric for evidence-based policy, this is not reflected by the reality of current public health policy in the UK. The investigation of the development of minimum unit pricing of alcohol in Scotland demonstrates that evidence influences the policy process in a number of ways but these influences are heavily context-dependent. The role of evidence in changing the framing of the policy debate has been identified as of particular importance for this case study. The devolution process and evolving nature of political institutions also raises particular opportunities, but also challenges, for public health professionals. The strengths of the thesis include its use of two case studies to investigate the relationship between evidence and public health policy, the analysis of multiple sources of data in relation to minimum unit pricing policy and the application of political science theories that are typically underused in public health research. Limitations include the caution required when making generalisations from these data, particularly since these case studies have been purposively chosen. Drawing upon the two case studies, a conceptual model for the relationship between evidence and public health policy is articulated. The model suggests that evidence is likely to be used in different ways depending on the extent that the political values underpinning an issue are contested, with the importance of evidence for rhetorical purposes being a legitimate and helpful means of highlighting the health aspects of public policy issues. Lessons for public health researchers and practitioners, as well as directions for future research and theoretical implications, are considered and discussed.

This dissertation examines aspects of John Millar's philosophical history in order to provide grounds for a critical appraisal of the content of his contribution to social and historical science. Using Millar's published books and lectures in civil law as primary sources, it is suggested that Millar applied an empiricist method to the principles of jurisprudence. Millar shared this method with Hume and Smith. Implicit within the method was the abstraction of an ideal observer or spectator. This abstraction was derived from the use of an empiricist method to understand the operations of the minds of particular individual subjects on the pre-determined experience of immediate circumstances. The method assumed that the operations of subjects' minds on the objects of their experience included classification, comparison, generalisation, conjecture, inference, imaginative identification and experiment. Millar's method is therefore characterised as both conjectural and individualistic. Through a critique of Ronald Meek's seminal statements on Millar's materialism, certain issues are investigated for further critical appraisal. These include Millar's political economy, his conception of civil society, and his political theory. It is argued that Millar had a conception of generalised commodity production and exchange; that this conception was derived from the assumption that subjects are self-interest; and that the latter assumption was necessary to explain the origins, emergence and development of civil and political society. Millar assumed that individuals' pursuit of self-interested goals gave rise to ideas of positive law, freely alienable property, different distributions of property, and feelings of liberty. It is suggested that Millar's theorisation of the effect of the latter on forms of government is derived from a combined use of Smith's principles of authority and utility with Hume's commercialised Harringtonianism.