This study explores the reasons for gender inequality in the lower chambers of the British and Polish Parliaments. The barriers to women’s political advance are investigated through elite interviews with women MPs with the aim of identifying and exploring the socio-cultural, socio-economic and structural factors which account for gender imbalance in national parliaments. The research examines these factors from the perspectives of those most involved: the women MPs. Through qualitative, semi-structured interviews, I examine the similarities and differences in the views of women politicians from countries with different electoral systems, contrasting models of equality guarantees and different historical and democratic cultures. The findings from the study illustrate the impact of cultural stereotypes on women who seek to join the political arena, the influence that media bias in the representation of women’s political activity has on female politicians and the extent of the restrictions associated with a male dominated environment. This research also addresses structural difficulties such as electoral systems and different types of equality provisions introduced in each country to help women parliamentary candidates. In addition, this study provides some indication of the way forward for the achievement of gender parity. The results provide clear support for the argument that gender balance cannot be achieved without challenging stereotypes and, most of all, without introducing measures to educate young girls on political careers. Within the same context, the biases of the media in promoting gender stereotypes and the untouchable power of social media have been identified. The findings also suggest a need to re-think the use of gender quotas, supporting these as a short-term solution but resisting the involvement of governments in gender equality issues, indicating that this should be dealt with by the political parties. The thesis also offers insights into the importance of behavioural patterns that men and women in power have learned though their socialisation, an issue largely missed in the existing literature.

This thesis studies three channels through which elections and, ultimately, public policy may be interrelated: new media, electoral systems and vote motivation. The media has the fundamental role of providing political information to voters. New media such as the Internet brought about an enormous shift in the availability of political information during elections. Exploiting the timing and geographic variation in the introduction of Internet in Brazil, in the first chapter, I show that municipalities with higher Internet penetration voted more often in candidates who faced legal restrictions for advertising in traditional media. Electoral systems, in turn, have specific features that, in theory, may allow voters to select better politicians by providing more information about candidates and other voters' preferences. In the second chapter, using the discontinuous allocation of single- and dual-ballot electoral rules across mayoral elections in Brazil, I compare the quality of politicians fielded and elected in these systems. In general, dual-ballot candidates from major parties are more politically experienced. This experience may be translated into unobserved political skills that are required to deal with the more competitive electoral process, that, by itself, punishes female candidates, to the extent to which women's participation in politics has been historically low. No differences in performance are observed, except in the attraction of discretionary resources by dual-ballot mayors eligible for reelection, but only in election years. Finally, in the third chapter, I use a quasi-naturally generated group of voters with differential political information and voting motivations to show that politicians extract more rents in municipalities where they know a number of voters is not directly interested in public goods and do not have readily access to local sources of information.

This thesis explores the factors influencing governmental policy preferences on the uncertain issue of shale gas development. I argue that there is no convincing expected utility of shale gas development, and that, in light of conflicting evidence, governmental decision-makers cannot believe it to be so. The notion of a ‘rational actor’ government deciding on shale gas based on its utility offers limited explanatory value. I am telling a more comprehensive story of shale gas and by using different clues taken from political economy and behavioural economics theory, develop several narratives about respective dimensions of the decision-making process: a rational expected utility analysis, a perspective on the influence of private interest groups, and a narrative on capture through ideational repertoire and cognitive biases. To this end classical literature of decision-making under risk and uncertainty is reviewed and political economy theory is brought in to widen the debate. The key arguments of this study are that policy decisions on shale gas are irrational from a classical political science perspective; that economic claims made about policy decisions are defying economic logic; that strong interest groups are distorting a market-based energy policy; and that pre-existing ideas about the energy system unduly influence the decision process regardless of their actual applicability. I suggest that fracking is simply so compatible with the current repertoire of ideas, practices and tools around energy policy, that engaging in it becomes a logical conclusion, whereas not to engage in it would require a paradigmatic change. These arguments are taken forward by an in-depth analysis of the decision-making around shale gas made by the United States government and the United Kingdom government since the commercial development of shale gas became possible through technological innovation in the 21st century. The thesis serves to shine light on the story of shale gas policy, but also to explore separate dimensions of policy-making under uncertainty in which cognitive and parochial factors prove more influential than so-called rational calculations.

This thesis is an investigation into participation and non-participation by young people in British political parties. Falling turnout in British elections has lead to concern about the level of popular participation in the political system, especially amongst the young. Those between 18 and 25 are less likely to involve themselves in political activity than any other age group. This thesis argues that political parties and their grassroots members are still vital to British democracy and that the failure of both parties to recruit young members is leading to increasingly aged and inactive parties. Even measuring the extent of youth membership of the main parties is problematic due to a lack of accurate membership figures. The figures available show that whilst neither the Labour nor the Conservative Party has enjoyed unqualified success in recruiting young members, Labour has enjoyed comparative success in increasing its youth membership in the period 1970-2001 both absolutely and as proportion of the total membership. I have argued that whilst there is research on participation and non-participation there is little specific on the particular area of young people and political parties. I have suggested and evaluated competing explanations of this problem and I have been able to develop and test a youth-specific model of participation and non-participation. This model builds on the general incentive model developed by Seyd and Whiteley but provides a more comprehensive, and youth specific, model of both participation and non-participation. This new model builds considerably on our understanding of why young people choose to join, or not join, a political party. However, a static sample only takes me so far. A study of the Labour and Conservative youth organisations also shows that they have contributed to their relative success or failure through popular perceptions of their image and through the relationship with their parent parties. My improved model of participation and non-participation is complemented by a consideration that the mobilisation model contributes to understanding trends in membership. Those youth organisations that are able to recruit actively with support from the parent party are more likely to succeed than those who are not. I have provided a detailed and critical study of the Labour and Conservative youth organisations, the first such study since 1970. From this study I have helped explain the comparative success of the Labour Party and the comparative failure of the Conservative Party in recruiting young members. Both party’s youth organisations suffered from poor perceptions of extremism, infighting and unfashionability at certain times in the period under study which helped deter potential members. These problems were often compounded by a poor relationship between the youth organisation and the parent party. However, whilst, eventually, the Labour Party was able to solve these problems to a certain extent, the Conservative Party has yet to find a solution to its recruitment problems amongst young people.

This thesis composes of four empirical studies with an attempt to assess the role of institutions as key determinant of cross-country development. We have unbundled the different facets of institutions, including the security of property rights, democracy, regulation and stability of monetary policy. In Chapter 2, we investigate the direct impact of institutions on economic growth using dynamic panel data estimations. Employing this estimator aims at alleviating the technical problems embedded in the existing literature. Our results suggest that the security of property rights and stability of monetary policy have direct impact on economic growth, whereas democracy and regulation are not directly growth-enhancing. In Chapter 3, we further explore the role of democracy and regulation in the development process. We empirically test whether economic reform is more likely to take place in democratic economies. The answer seems affirmative. More specifically, our empirical results show that democracy causes reforms in redistributive policies, trade liberalisation and credit market deregulation. In the next Chapter, we consider the institutional barriers as compared to natural barrier and at-the-board barriers as determinants of bilateral FDI. The augmented gravity model provides empirical evidences to support that geography, regional integration and domestic regulatory environment of the destination economies all have significant impacts on FDI inflows. In particular, credit market regulation is amongst the most important, which echoes the view that financial development is essential to economic development. In the final empirical work, we hypothesise that institutions matter to cross-country economic performances as economies with better institutions are technically more efficient. We estimate a global stochastic production frontier, where countries lie below the frontier are less efficient. Our empirical results suggest that countries with better security of property rights and fewer regulations allocate their production inputs more efficiently. The effects of democratic regime and stability of monetary policy are also positive to improve inefficiency, if a threshold level of human capital is reached. Other possible factors like openness and human capital, in turn, seem not to play direct role. Our research provides empirical basis to understand how particular aspects of institutions could affect development outcomes.

This thesis examines the political ideas of the Labour Party between 1983 and 1992. It adopts two detailed case studies: Labour’s economic policy and Labour’s social policy. Part I provides an historical context of Labour’s political ideas and Part II analyses the political ideas content of Labour’s social and economic policy between 1983 and 1992. This includes the work of ‘Labour intellectuals’, ‘thinker-politicians’ and official party documents, notably the Policy Review. The thesis shows the need for an historical context based on three factors. First, the history of Labour’s political ideas, discussed in Part I, illustrates the extent to which former debates re-emerge; to a large extent, Labour continued in the 1980s to be pre-occupied with traditional arguments. Second, Labour’s economic and social policy thinking was, at least in part, a reflection on its own ‘record’ in government. An historical context inevitably includes an analysis of Labour’s own post-war economic and social policy thinking. Third, the immediate political context between 1983 and 1992 is also central to an understanding of Labour’s ideas over this period. This includes the impact of Thatcherism, its policy and ideas, as well as the effect of fundamental economic and social change. However, it is the first which is most important. The history of Labour’s ideas is noticeably neglected in the literature on the period. This thesis constitutes an attempt to redress the balance.

During the years from 2006-2009 and 2009-2013, both Iraq and then Afghanistan were under extreme duress, succumbing to the pressures from violent armed non-state groups. This occurred while both cases were already under US occupation. In order to resolve the growing instabilities posed by these non-state groups, the US escalated its initial military efforts first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. The escalation of military efforts was conceived as a “Surge” strategy. The Iraq Surge was implemented first, starting in 2006. By 2009, the situation in Iraq dramatically changed because there was a significant reduction in the direct violence experienced by Iraqis. Furthermore, the new Iraq government gained political momentum and for a short period, it was able to centralize the states political authority and gain more legitimacy amongst the Iraqi people. Much of the conventional wisdom amongst policy experts and some academics is that the Iraq Surge worked, and the premise for this is the reduction of violence and the growing strength of the Iraqi government from 2006-2009. In light of the success in the Iraq Surge, another Surge was employed in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Surge started in late 2009 and carried on through 2012. The Afghanistan Surge was conceived using the same political plan, and the same military manuals and tactics deployed during the Iraq Surge. However, Afghanistan did not experience the same radical decline in direct violence that was seen in Iraq.

The objective of this research was to resolve an academic challenge to extend the predictive capabilities of the transaction cost economics (TCE) model to address the theoretical issues of governing high value, complex industrial projects executed across international borders. This extension of TCE has been achieved by political governance and indirect vertical integration to complement governance mechanisms for international transactions. The propositions for an extension of the TCE model and its applicability were explored by field investigation using three case studies complemented by interviews of industry professionals. The comparative institutional analysis of the three case studies examined the outcome of transactions which were subject to varying levels of political hazards and property rights safeguards. The empirical evidence demonstrated that the relative hazards created by the behaviour of the host country government and institutional regimes will have an overriding impact on transactions for major international projects. In this case, compelling political requirements may require firms to select governance mechanisms in a non-transaction costs economising way. The contribution made to knowledge by this research is to demonstrate support for the potential of an extension to the basic TCE model developed for predicting optimum governance mechanisms for transactions of major international projects.

Economic reform - the introduction of elements of the market into a planned economy - has been the central political problem for socialist states for at least three decades. This thesis seeks to elucidate the nature of the problem through a reconsideration of the general theoretical issues, and through a comparative analysis of the practice of economic reform in two countries - Czechoslovakia and Hungary. In Part One, the arguments in favour of the use of the market in socialism are recapitulated, and the implications of various socialist economic models for political freedom, democracy, and the realisation of some concept of the 'social interest 1 are discussed. The case studies presented in Part Two address the practical political problem of introducing market-type reform into communist systems. In Czechoslovakia, the issue of economic reform contributed to a profound political crisis culminating in 1968. But it is argued, economic reform was not the only, or even the most important source of the crisis. In the different political conditions in Hungary, economic reform was embraced by the regime as a means of securing political stability and popular legitimacy. Political crisis was avoided, but at the costof compromise in the economic reform. The conclusion is that while full-scale democratisation of the political system may not be an inevitable concomitant of economic reform, profound changes in the style and instruments of communist rule are required.

In recent years, the position of (post-)millennial girls and young women within the digital landscape of social media has proven to be a topic of much interest to a number of feminists, journalists and cultural commentators. On the one hand, girls’ (social) media practices are presented as a key site of concern, wherein new digital technologies are said to have produced an intensification of individualized, neoliberal and post-feminist identities. At the same time, others have championed access to social media for young people as a revolutionary political tool, wherein previously marginalised political subjects (such as girls) can access and participate within new and exciting political cultures. This thesis offers an original contribution to these debates by locating itself at the intersection of these two approaches and examining the role of social media in the production of girls’ cultural and political identities. I present my findings from focus groups carried out with girls (aged 12-18) in three urban locations in England. This data is organised around the three overriding themes of space, surveillance and visibility. Ultimately, the thesis argues that social media should be conceptualised as an important terrain upon which neoliberal and postfeminist subjectivities can be both reproduced and subverted.