On 11 September 1936 a Times editorial made reference to the 'clamourous partisanship' that had been brought about by the civil war in Spain. In literature since the war this polarisation of opinion has been central to representations of British responses to the conflict. Much attention has focused on the divergent British political responses, and particularly on those of the left, responses which became increasingly bitter as Spain became a 'distorting mirror in which Europe[could] see an exaggerated reflection of her own divisions'. Yet, as The Times editorial continued at the time, in spite of all 'incitements the great mass of public opinion (remained) firmly opposed to any taking of sides. This public resistance to the 'clamourous' efforts of supporters of the Republic or advocates of the Nationalists has been noted in subsequent literature but has not been explored in any depth, explanation generally centring around the policy of appeasement. While not ignoring such explanations, this study argues that the imagery and language employed in the various contemporary interpretations of events played a significant part in distancing events. The study, then, aims to add a cultural perspective to the more widely examined political understanding of British responses to Spain during the 1930s. Through an analysis of representations in mass culture, and through an examination of the experiences of the growing numbers of British visitors to the Peninsula, the study first seeks to identify the expectations of Spain and the Spanish people most commonly held in Britain of the 1930s. It then goes on to examine how, during the life of the Republic and especially throughout the Civil War, supporters of both sides, in every form of mass media available, repeatedly referred to this framework of preconceived notions as they endeavoured to interpret issues and events for their British audiences. Particular attention is given to differing portrayals of the Spanish political scene and the Catholic Church, to the representations of the two sides and what they reportedly stood for. Finally, by looking at reactions to events in the Basque provinces, examining responses to humanitarian aid appeals and once again assessing the attitudes found in fictional representations of the war the study offers some measure of the impact of the war on the wider British public.

Embedded consensus has characterised the behaviour of the European Parliament since its foundation in the 1950s. This research tests the path dependence of consensus during the period of 1994 to 2002, in the light of the changing institutional powers of the Parliament. It challenges existing theory and empirical evidence drawn mainly from roll call votes that has concluded that the European Parliament has become more competitive internally in response to increased institutional powers. There are three causal factors that reinforce consensus: the need to reconcile national and ideological divisions within a multinational political system; the pull of external institutional factors such as institutional change or the separation of powers; and internal incentives for collusion between political actors influenced by the need to accommodate the interests of the national elites present at the level of the European Union. Switzerland, a multiple cleavage system of decentralised federalism that includes consociational characteristics and a separation of powers, provides a comparative reference point for institutionalised consensus. The hypotheses of institutionalised consensus are tested empirically in four ways: 1) by roll call votes between 1994 and 2001, focusing on procedure, policy area, and the cut-off point of the 1999 elections; 2) competition and consensus in the distribution of policy-related office in the Parliament; 3) by Parliament’s use of its powers of appointment and censure over other institutions; and 4) by the internal consensus on the preparation of Parliament’s bids for greater powers when the European Union Treaties are reformed. In adapting the theory of path dependence to a multinational legislature, the methodology presented in this thesis can be applied in furthering the understanding of other comparable institutions.

This thesis addresses the question of why, when almost everyone says they wish it would end, suffering such as that in northern Uganda continues. I argue that, contrary to popular presentations, the situation is not primarily one of war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Government of Uganda, but instead a form of mass torture, which I call Social Torture. The principal victims are the population within the ‘war zone’, particularly in ‘protected villages’ for the internally displaced, where tactics and symptoms typical of torture, including violation, dread, disorientation, dependency, debilitation and humiliation, are widespread. The most visible perpetrators are the Government and LRA, but a range of less visible actors are also involved, not least donor governments, multi-lateral organisations, academics, churches and NGOs. In many instances these can be regarded as complicit bystanders; like doctors in a torture situation, they appear to be there to ease the suffering of victims, but in reality they enable the process to be prolonged by keeping the victim alive for further abuse. This serves a number of interlinked economic, political and psychological functions for perpetrators and bystanders alike, and is underpinned by psychological and discursive processes of justification, most importantly the idea that this situation is first and foremost a ‘war’ between the LRA and the Government. In short, in a situation such as northern Uganda, means and ends are inverted: rather than torture being a tactic with which to prosecute war, here war is the guise under which Social Torture is perpetrated. War continues because Social Torture is not addressed. Given that those who in principle have the most power to do so are implicated in Social Torture themselves, the focus has to shift from the intentions of visible perpetrators to the responsibilities of a far wider range of actors.

This thesis advances our understanding of the effects of foreign aid programmes in the Spanish economy during the 1950s. It does so by concentrating on three aspects. First, it considers the contribution to economic growth of aid-financed goods by relieving input bottlenecks. Results from an input-output analysis downplay the alleged importance of aid in increasing Spanish output by providing raw materials and other inputs. Second, it discusses the extent to which foreign donors influenced Spanish economic policy-making. Based on original archival sources from both recipient and donors, it is argued here that the United States was particularly ineffective at imposing its economic policy agenda. Surprisingly, the best way to increase the likelihood of the adoption of economic policy reform was not to exercise outright leverage but to provide further unconditional aid disbursements. The analysis of the involvement of the International Monetary Fund and Organisation for European Economic Co-operation to underwrite the 1959 Spanish Stabilisation Plan suggests that the multilateral organisations were acutely aware of the overriding importance of a true commitment to the reforms by the local policy-makers. Rather than relying on formal conditionality, they ascertained such commitment by monitoring the internal support for the reform programme whilst carefully avoiding any instance that may jeopardise the cohesion of the domestic pro-reform coalition. Third, the dissertation motivates a 'credibility hypothesis' under which the American aid-for-bases programme improved the political credibility of the regime and with it private businesses' expectations. A range of both qualitative and quantitative evidence, of which the use of financial market data is paramount, supports the hypothesis. This result contributes to solving the puzzle of Spanish economic history during a period that sees the resumption of economic growth after a stagnant first decade under Franco's rule despite very limited policy change.

Marxism is largely absent from the historiography of the discipline of International Relations (IR). This is striking because the formative years of the discipline coincide with a vibrant period in Marxist political thought. This was, after all, the era of, among others, Lenin, Kautsky, Bukharin and Luxemburg. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate to what extent and in what ways Marxist writings and precepts informed the so-called idealist stage of the discipline. Building on the work of revisionist scholars, the thesis reconstructs the writings of five benchmark IR thinkers. The cases of John Hobson, Henry Brailsford, Leonard Woolf, Harold Laski and Norman Angell, are analysed in order to explore the influence that Marxism might have played in their thinking, and in the “idealist years” of the discipline more generally. The thesis demonstrates that although Marxist thought has been neglected by mainstream IR disciplinary historians, it played a significant role in the discipline’s early development. As such, this thesis both challenges the exclusion of Marxist thought from the mainstream disciplinary histories of IR and contributes to a deeper understanding of the role it played in early 20th century IR theory.

This thesis explores the pivotal place of the 1885 Labouchère Amendment and the 1967 Sexual Offences Act in the discourse of homosexual regulation presented by 20th century homophile histories. These twin events of ‘criminalisation’ and ‘decriminalisation’ are revisited to explore how and why they occurred and how they came to assume such a central position in both academic and popular understanding. The thesis draws on two streams of evidence. The literature on homosexual regulation is examined to establish the claims that are made about Labouchère Amendment and the Sexual Offences Act and the place that they are accorded, and the relationship that is established between them, within widely accepted homophile histories of the UK. Alongside this, primary sources – in the form of parliamentary debates, government papers, newspaper archives, and biographies – are interrogated to unpick the motivations and intentions of those involved in these pieces of legislation and to position them within a wider historical context. The thesis argues that this literature on homosexual regulation contributed to and institutionalised a homophile discourse geared especially towards establishing a history of what specific events might mean for political imperatives of the time and future prospects of homosexual communities. I will suggest that this led to uncritical acceptance of particular interpretations of the Labouchère Amendment and the Sexual Offences Act, which were reproduced over time and thus established as ‘truths’ within academia, the gay community and the wider public. Whilst some authors have recently subsequently questioned the importance of the Labouchère Amendment in the process of criminalisation (e.g. Cocks, 2003:17) these accounts have by-passed this event altogether, rather than offering an alternative account for its passage. Consequently, they have not supplanted earlier public, academic and political understandings of Labouchère. Specifically they have not explored how earlier understandings informed the debate about decriminalisation which, as this thesis will show, was premised on these historical interpretations. More broadly, the thesis argues that the over-concentration and mistaken interpretation of the Labouchère Amendment, which has misinformed understandings of the SOA (1967), has prevented the development of a more thorough, genealogical analysis of simultaneous sexual regulation more generally. In turn, developing a combined analysis of heterosexual as well as homosexual regulation contributes to the critique of existing interpretations which uncritically present certain events as homophobic rather than part of a more encompassing punitive heteronormativity. Part One critiques homosexual regulation’s historiography, before exploring theoretical and methodological issues raised in my thesis. Part Two then questions the Labouchère Amendment’s status as a fundamental adjustment in homosexual regulation making private homosexual acts short of sodomy illegal for the first time (Weeks, 1977). I provide an alternative history showing all homosexual acts were previously punishable and show that Labouchère’s Amendment was not homophobic but a measure for the protection of male youths from sexual exploitation and as such part in keeping with the wider punitive heteronormativity. I achieve this through analysing the primary sources on Labouchère’s Amendment from that period alongside the genealogical contextualization provided by contemporaneous heterosexual regulation. This establishes the foundations for Part 3 to repeat this methodology in analysing the decriminalisation process, this questions the centrality ascribed to the 1957 Wolfenden Report. I establish that this concentration ignores that decriminalisation was a highly politicised and negotiated process reliant upon the same social and political transformations that also re-ordered heterosexual regulation. This radically changes the interpretation of the how and why decriminalisation occurred and what had been possible.

Valid measurement of voter turnout is crucial to electoral studies. One major problem in obtaining valid turnout measurements is over-reporting, i.e. survey respondents who did not vote report having voted. Aiming to identify effective solutions to turnout over-reporting, this doctoral thesis consists of four separate but interrelated papers , plus introductory and concluding chapters. The introductory chapter reviews the causes and consequences of turnout over-reporting, providing the basis for an in-depth research into solutions. Each of the papers then addresses a question about solutions. Paper 1 critically re-examines an influential study of turnout over-reporting. The examination results highlight the need for better solutions to over-reporting. Addressing the question of "What is out there?", Paper 2 conducts a meta-analysis of studies that have experimented on innovative solutions to turnout over-reporting. Addressing the question of "What works?", Paper 3 experimentally compares two promising solutions – item-count and pipeline techniques – and finds that the former is, overall, better than the latter for preventing turnout over-reporting. Addressing the question of "Can we do better?", Paper 4 improves the design and analysis of the item-count technique, making it an even better solution to turnout over-reporting. From the results of these research papers, the concluding chapter considers the implications for developing effective solutions to turnout over-reporting, and laying the foundations for future advances in the measurement of turnout. Furthermore, the concluding chapter also discusses how the results of this doctoral research can contribute beyond election studies, towards scientific studies on a wide range of topics on which people often misreport.

This thesis takes Marieke de Goede’s intriguing hypothesis on counterterrorism as a starting point. She argues that despite the fact that the general strategic cultures of the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (U.S.) look different on the surface, nevertheless the pre-emptive approach, which is often associated with the U.S., is also deeply rooted in European history. Indeed, most authors agree that there has been considerable convergence behind the scenes on transatlantic counterterrorism. Accordingly, this study attempts to establish whether we can draw similar conclusions regarding EU and U.S. behaviour in the realm of cyber security. The main focus is cyber-crime and this is analysed through the lens of strategic culture. The study examines how far varying attitudes, shaped by strategic culture, hinder the process of cooperation. Moreover, it suggests that an extended version of strategic culture may serve as an alternative tool to aid our understanding of EU and U.S. approaches to fighting cyber-crime, at both strategic and operational levels. Currently, there is no literature on fighting cyber-crime collaboratively employing a strategic culture approach. This thesis rejects the argument that there is a single, overarching strategic cyber culture that characterises both the U.S. and the EU. However, it offers the following propositions: 1. The presence of several strategic cyber cultures, within both the U.S. and the EU, creates fragmentation in collaboration. 2. Fragmentation is a partial product of various state and sub-state entities that often do not have a clear understanding of their roles in cyber security, which creates overlaps and disparities in power, thereby generating individual and diverse approaches and attitudes to counter cyber-crime. 3. Treating the U.S. government as a ‘monolithic’ entity, especially with regard to cyber-crime policy is a misapprehension. It may be that the growing alignment of U.S. and EU policies originates from the fact that agencies, such as the State Department or DHS, take a decidedly less militaristic approach towards cyberspace, which is a view that aligns more closely with the EU. 4. There is clearly much more convergence in collaboration at the operational level, where there are similar attitudes (U.S. agencies trust each other less than their European counterparts). By contrast, attitudes at the strategic level, together with legal incompatibilities, frequently hinder joint inquiries. These findings draw heavily upon semi-structured interviews with cyber security officials, politicians, former officials, law enforcement agents and cyber consultants from the private sector. This provides a unique insight into current EU and U.S. security community approaches to the threat of cyber-crime, including their mind-set, strategic behaviour and decision-making procedures.

The European Parliament (EP) has evolved into a powerful legislative actor over the past 40 years. In order to exercise its hard won legislative competencies in an efficient and effective manner the EP has developed an extensive and influential committee system. The Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) recognised its equal status as co-legislator with the Council of the EU and introduced the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP) as the default EU legislative procedure. Despite the fact that after the introduction of the OLP all EP committees formally operate under the same legal procedure, disparities remain in the levels of influence that each committee commands. This state of affairs demonstrates that if we are to understand what drives committee influence we need to explore the informal sources of influence that committees draw on in addition to the formal rules. This project addresses the lack of understanding of how the committees establish legislative influence by identifying and testing the different resources which committees may be utilising to establish their influence. The thesis puts forward four hypotheses concerning the factors that can account for how committees establish influence. These are developed and tested within three case studies. The case studies comprise the highly influential committees on, firstly, the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, secondly, the Budget Committee and, thirdly, the International Trade Committee. The research project adopts a qualitative approach to complement and create a different perspective from the quantitative studies which dominate the field. It draws on extensive primary material from thirty semi-structured interviews held with MEPs, advisers, EP staff and party officials active in the 7th legislative term (2009-2014). A number of the current conventions concerning the way in which expertise, partisan dynamics, and policy outputs affect how committees establish legislative influence are challenged and new insights regarding their relative importance are offered. Overall, these original findings, contained within this dissertation, have highly significant implications, not only with regard to the committee system of the EP but, also, for the wider field of legislative politics.

This thesis uses cyber security, an important topic in today's world, as a vector for analysis in order to contribute to a better understanding of the European Union (EU)’s policy-making processes. Although EU policy has received extensive scholarly attention, cyber security policy is under-researched, a gap in current literature this thesis addresses. The goal of the thesis is to understand why the Union adopted and maintained a socio-economic approach to cyber security when other actors added military and defence considerations. The thesis employs an historical institutionalist (HI) framework to examine the long-term institutional and ideational influences underpinning policy development in this area between 1985 and 2013. This was achieved using a longitudinal narrative inquiry employing an original, conceptual content analysis technique developed to gather data from both relevant EU acquis communautaire and over 30 interviews. There were three main findings resulting from this analysis, two empirical and one theoretical. The first empirical finding was that the EU’s competences established an institutional framework – a set of rules and procedures – for policy development in this sector. By restricting the EU’s capacity to engage in military or national security-oriented issues, its competences required it to respond to emerging security matters from a socio-economic perspective. The second empirical finding was that there exists a specific discourse underpinning EU cyber security policy. That discourse is predicated upon a set of five ideational elements which influenced policy continuously between 1985 and 2013. These five elements are: maximising the economic benefits of cyberspace; protecting fundamental rights; tackling cyber-crime; promoting trust in digital systems and achieving these goals through facilitating actor co-operation. Throughout the thesis the argument is made that the EU adopted and maintained its socio-economic policy as a result of an interaction between this ideational discourse and the institutional framework provided by competences. This interaction created a linear, but not deterministic path of policy development from which the EU did not deviate. The third, theoretical, finding relates to the HI mechanisms of path dependency and punctuated equilibrium. The EU’s policy discourse was exposed to major stresses after 2007 which, according to punctuated equilibrium, should have caused policy change. Instead, those stresses entrenched the Union’s discourse. This demonstrates an explanatory flexibility not normally associated with punctuated equilibrium. The findings of the thesis have implications for policy practitioners by providing a way to identify underlying ideational dynamics in policy development. Due to a combination of empirical and conceptual findings, the thesis provides a potential basis for future research in EU policy development and HI analyses.