Studies of transnational advocacy mainly explore separate processes – e.g. the use of persuasion, socialization, leverage, incentives and penalties – through which specific actors influence policy and law at national and transnational levels. These processes can be seen as strings pulled by the actors involved in order to promote their aims. However, the existing literature stops short of explaining the dynamics of advocacy across time, the number of strings necessary for inducing change and the failure of advocacy. In order to address these shortcomings this thesis analyses the interactions between various processes that constitute transnational advocacy and proposes a conceptual model – labelled the integrated strings model of advocacy – to facilitate the understanding of the dynamics of advocacy. This model suggests that transnational advocacy is constituted by the following interlinked processes, labelled stages and strings in order to emphasize their dynamics: - The stages are: the making of pilot or past solutions-in-practice, problematization, the development of a common frame for possible solutions, the creation of solutions-on-paper and the making of solutions-in-practice; - These stages are constituted by six strings: the creation of social enterprises, the use of expertise, regulations, technology, the formation of alliances and the marketization of ideas and services. This model provides a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of advocacy than the existing literature and explains why some advocacy processes were successful while other failed. The model is illustrated through three case studies of advocacy focused on: (a) heritage conservation and sustainable development in Romania; (b) children's rights in Romania; and (c) access to the UK' labour market for Romanian migrants in Britain. The integrated model was developed through empirical multi-sited research conducted in Romania and the UK. My methodology was influenced by multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1998), grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1990) and actor-network theory (Callon 1986; Latour 2005).

This thesis re-evaluates the emergence of the neoconservative critique of American post-war liberalism from 1945 to 1980. Its original contribution to the scholarship on neoconservatism lies in the claim that a particular understanding of Jewishness fundamentally shaped the neoconservatives' right turn, as well as neoconservative ideology. Few scholars have recognised the primacy of Jewish identity politics in the evolutionary history of neoconservatism. Those who have, have done so inadequately and unmethodically. Therefore, my thesis systematically analyses the Jewish dimension of early neoconservatism by placing particular focus on its two principal mouthpieces, Commentary and The Public Interest, while drawing on autobiographical writings, personal papers and oral interviews. Reconsidering neoconservatism from this angle also contributes to a reevaluation of modern Jewish political history by debunking the myth that the American Jewish community is governed by consensus based on political identification with liberalism. My thesis shows that neoconservatism not only contributed to the rise of conservatism and the fall of liberalism on a national level, but also played an important role in post-1945 Jewish intra-communal contentions about which political affiliation best expresses modern Jewish American identity. Accordingly, it demonstrates that Jewish political culture is more diverse than is usually appreciated and that neoconservatives draw on a tradition of Jewish conservatism, which has so far received little attention from scholars of modern Jewish history.

This thesis asks why some centre-right formations have been more successful than others in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. It does so by examining a single centre-right formation – the Romanian Democratic Convention. It adds to an existing body of literature that covers the development of political parties in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe and to the small number of studies focusing on centre-right parties in the region. Specifically it adds to the literature on party success and failure and to that on Romanian party and electoral politics. The Romanian Democratic Convention is chosen to add new insights: it is unusual because it is a study of organisational failure and because there is a geographical imbalance in the published studies of the politics of the region towards the Visegrad states. The thesis acknowledges existing academic debate about the competing influences of historical legacies, agency and structural factors in relation to post-Communist democratisation. It aims to identify what led the Convention to first establish itself but then fail to consolidate and eventually to collapse. It draws on a range of sources: semi-structured interviews; contemporaneous newspaper reports; published diaries and autobiographies and a number of secondary sources. The thesis is structured thematically, examining the role of legacies and critical events in shaping long term behaviour by politicians (chapters three and four); organisational factors and the influence of operational objectives (chapter five); the search for a broad and integrative ideology (chapter six). The conclusions in chapter seven suggest that successfully crafting a new, broad political formation requires a degree of pragmatism, directive leadership and political entrepreneurship that was missing from the Democratic Convention because it was shaped by Romania's transition from Communism, by its organisational structure and by differences within its leadership elite so that competing operational objectives could not be reconciled when the formation entered government.

Using primary material, much of which has been overlooked up to now, this thesis argues that the Iskra newspaper and its organisational appendages were conceived by Lenin and his closest collaborators in a pragmatic attempt to strike a balance between the theoretically authoritative and revolutionary, yet inactive Osvobozhdenie Truda and the more active, but reformist and theoretically unclear Rabochee Delo grouping. As such, Iskra does not appear to have been the product of a detailed plan conceived in Siberian exile, as is often thought. Nor did it represent the extreme left wing of the Russian social-democratic movement of the time, a place occupied by Osvobozhdenie Truda. Iskra and its supporting organisations formed a faction of a broader party, the RSDLP, whose institutions it aimed to rebuild and to which it aimed to give ideological leadership broadly in sympathy with the basic views of Plekhanov, though differing with him in terms of tactics. Starting from a position of weakness both in the emigration and inside Russia, Lenin at first sought an alliance with the 'Economists' of Rabochee Delo rather than a policy of open factional struggle, which was at this stage (1900-01) advocated by Plekhanov. Only when serious vacillations in the Rabochee Delo line started to emerge in the spring of 1901 did Lenin break with this tactic, in despair of any useful co-operation with the politically unstable followers of the economist journal. From the end of 1901an open struggle for the support of the RSDLP local committees inside Russia began, in which the Economists were unable to martial support, whilst Iskra, owing to its network of full-time 'agents' and their assistance, eventually won a dominant position. On this basis, plans were laid for a Second Congress of the RSDLP that reveal a distinctly democratic and pluralist conception of party organisation on the part of Lenin, A conception which does not square with his dictatorial reputation. Accordingly, this thesis argues that the Second Congress was a credible, if not perfect representation of rank and file opinion within the RSDLP at the time and that the split within the Iskra faction that took place at this meeting owes more to pre-existing tensions with the Russian Iskra organisation rather than any unreasonable behaviour on the part of Lenin. Specifically, individual agents showed signs of weariness in relation to Lenin‘s policy of factional struggle prior to the Second Congress. For this reason they sought, but failed to find compromise at the congress with the Bund and the economists, and as such provoked a split with the supporters of Lenin within Iskra. As such, it was actually an inopportune search for compromise which appears to have provoked the split within Iskra, rather than dictatorial or intolerant practices on the part of Lenin. The supporters of Martov assumed that the Bund and the supporters of economism could be appeased, but this was not in fact the case.

This thesis begins by complicating classical understandings of the public sphere and focusing on the ways in which loosely aligned protest groups communicate agonistically across difference. It argues that the organisational systems and structures of coalition movements enable activists to accommodate very differently orientated protest positions and explores the ways in which coalition activists attempt to preserve political solidarity across difference. It then goes on to examine the ways in which coalition movements attract and then maintain the attention of wider publics. It suggests that coalition protest movements unsettle and renegotiate the boundaries which have traditionally constituted the public sphere and considers the political potential inherent in the fractured and fractious spaces which exist between the political margins and the mainstream. These intertwined arguments are organised around an examination of the protest strategies of various grass roots movements. These include groups which have retrospectively been characterised as coalitions such as the women's peace movement and the anti-Criminal Justice Bill movement as well as those which are currently defined as coalitions such as the anti-globalisation movement and the anti-war movement. This research utilises a wide range of research methods including participant observation, content analysis, semi structured interviews and textual analysis. In this way these chapters construct a textured account of the ways in which protest coalition movements articulate dissent from the margins to the mainstream. Protest coalition movements have become increasingly active players in the formation of public opinion. These developments require academics to address the issues raised by the communicative strategies of protest coalition movements. This thesis endeavours to contribute to these debates by reflecting upon the ways in which the articulation of polyvocal dissent alters the on going relationship between activists and the wider public.

This thesis explores the role of South African business as non-state actors (NSAs) in South Africa’s post-apartheid economic diplomacy. The work is an empirical contribution to the debate within diplomacy studies asserting the importance of NSAs in diplomacy studies and that the inclusion of economic considerations in diplomacy studies is crucial. Whilst a broader agenda in diplomacy studies is increasingly being recognised by diplomacy scholars, there is limited case-based evidence of the increasingly active role being played by NSAs in diplomacy generally and economic diplomacy more specifically. The research uses a multistakeholder diplomacy framework to analyse the extent to and ways in which corporate actors engage in South Africa’s post-apartheid economic diplomacy. This study explores specific business activities around economic diplomacy, expounds why South African business adopts different strategies at different times and crucially examines how corporate actors do this. The thesis identifies three distinct modes of corporate diplomacy: consultative, supplementary, and entrepreneurial. The thesis concludes that corporate diplomacy warrants far more scholarly attention than has hitherto been the case, both in developed and emerging economies, on the basis that corporate actors in South Africa play a crucial role in economic diplomacy, both as consumers and producers of diplomatic outcomes.

By using a poststructuralist feminist perspective, this thesis argues that representations of female agency in political violence are told as stories of heroines, monsters and victims through a Myth of Motherhood. I conceptualise the myth as a meta-discourse constituted by different discourses within each type of story. In all stories, a tension between identities of life-giving and life-taking is present which means that motherhood is ‘everywhere’ albeit not necessarily visible. Thus, these stories are versions, perversions and inversions of motherhood. In heroine stories, this takes place as the subject’s heroism is communicated through motherhood/lack of motherhood. In monster stories, the myth is communicated as ‘natural’ femininity is emphasised and defined as that which the monster is not. In victim stories, female subjects are denied agency which means that a life-taking identity is removed whereas a life-giving identity is promoted communicating the Myth of Motherhood. I argue that motherhood is not simply a discourse denying women agency in political violence, but also instrumental as to how agency in political violence is enabled. As such motherhood is ‘everywhere’ in representations of female agency in political violence and fundamental in order to understand how representations of female agency in political violence are gendered.

This thesis analyses the impact of marginalised groups using coercive mechanisms as a strategy for deliberative inclusion. It engages the literature on deliberative democratic theory that makes a case for using non-communicative mechanisms to gain entry to exclusionary deliberative forums. This research explores its limits by examining an “extreme” case where marginalised political agents employed threats of force – the apparent antithesis of deliberation – in an attempt to secure inclusion. The case is that of a military mutiny in the Philippines in 2003, where a group of junior officers took over the central business district to publicly air their demands for reform to the military. This strategy opened up spaces for junior officers who did not have access to channels for grievance articulation to persuade government officials to launch reform programs that addressed their concerns in exchange for their peaceful return to barracks. The case highlights that the manner of gaining access to deliberative forums has an effect on the dynamic of the deliberative process. It is argued that while coercive mechanisms can be constructive in opening deliberative spaces, they also risk limiting the deliberative process and outcomes that secured through coercion.

This thesis draws on the 'critical case' of Sweden and focuses on the provision of pensions to assess the extent to which the post-war social democratic regime and adherent meanings and practices in daily life have been transformed in a neoliberal direction. The Swedish economy of the late 1990s, still distinctly social democratic, although retrenched and increasingly 'financialised', was not stable. The 1999 pension reform has further privatised financial risk and hence potentially advanced neoliberalism. By subjecting the ability to consume, in working-life as well as m retirement, to financial market performance, the rate of growth of inequity 1s accelerated. The systemic infrastructure and the knowledge-formation required for this pension system to function as intended as well as be accepted as legitimate seem however to be lacking. The system engineers, following neoliberal ideas, sought to fulfil the objective of institutionalising a mass investment culture in the everyday by promoting the notion of risk as potentially profitable if managed well. Yet, as argued in the thesis, due to their politico-ideological preferences, they underestimated the resilience of existing demographic and geographical cleavages formed by the traumas and desires provoked by economic restructuring and financialisation in the post-war period. By analysing subject-formation in the everyday, the thesis shows that for a finance-led accumulation regime to be stable in Sweden, these cleavages and inadequacies have to be regulated. The new pension system in Sweden thus points to the tendential microfoundational limits of the projects of neoliberalism and financialisation.

This thesis aims to problematize the assumptions behind the glorification of civil society as a new and progressive actor in politics along with their political and ideological implications. It is argued that the assumptions behind the glorification of civil society are conceptually misleading and politically disabling. The portrayal of &ldquo / civil society&rdquo / or &ldquo / global civil society&rdquo / as a homogenous as well as inherently democratic and peaceful sphere that is opposed to an equally homogenous power-seeking state has emerged as a necessity for attributing emancipatory meanings to the concept. One of the most important implications of this conceptualization has been the taming of politics since the state, which is conventionally understood as the main site for political struggle, has apparently been devalued as a respectable political target to be fought over. Interestingly, the taming of politics through a glorified civil society has become a popular discourse shared and reproduced by both the New Right and certain sections of the Left. The thesis sheds light to the development of such a discourse at the global level as well as in Turkey within the context of the rise and spread of neoliberal globalization.