This dissertation consists of three chapters, which aim at exploring respectively: i) how parties’ advertisements and voters’ strategic communication affect the political outcome; ii) whether and under which conditions a “market for votes” is preferable to the “one person, one vote” mechanism; and iii) whether subsidies to private donations may be used as strategical device by policy makers to secure re-election. The first chapter analyses how voters’ interactions affect the parties’ advertisement strategies and shape the political outcome of the election. We develop a two level game that embeds: (i) a model of political competition, where parties compete in campaign advertising, (ii) a model of personal influence, where voters can strategically communicate with each other in order to affect the policy outcome. We show that, first, homophily rises endogenously and individuals value only the information received from like-minded voters, regardless of the distance between the voters’ biases. Second, when the richness of the network or the degree of homophily within the network, or both, are low, then parties are likely to tailor their advertising to voters ideological biased toward their opponent - rather than targeting the closer ideological group of voters. The second chapter of this dissertation is joint work with Herakles Polemarchakis. In this chapter, we construct a simple centralized model of spatial voting where voters can sell/buy political influence by trading their votes for a consumption good. We model the voting game as a representative election game in order to concavify total voters’ payoff. By mimicking a majority rule in the election game we are able to focus on the effect of the distributional and ideological conflicts in the society and how these conflicts affect, in turn, the total welfare under two voting allocation mechanisms: the market and the “one person one vote” principle. We show that a market for votes is desirable with respect the “one-person one vote” principle if the degree of conflict in both income and political preferences is extreme, otherwise the simple “one-person one vote” performs better than the market mechanism, as it maximizes the sum of utilities of voters. The third chapter of the thesis is joint work with Carlo Perroni, Kimberly Scharf and Al Slivinski. In this chapter we study how tax relief on private donations towards the private provision of collective goods can protect minorities from majority-driven outcomes where high taxes are exclusively used to finance publicly provided goods that these minorities do not value. We show that an elected policymaker can use the same instruments as a strategic commitment device aimed at creating and supporting political alliances that would not otherwise be able to coalesce, thus securing majority support for re-election.

In contrast to the Great Game narrative, this thesis demonstrates the extent and limitations of Kazakhstan in generating autonomy. It provides a detailed account of the tactical and strategic choices that the state has made, particularly through its energy industry, to improve its position relative to Russia, China and the West. Using the innovative marginality literature, this thesis reimagines the Central Asian state as more powerful regional actor than has previously envisioned. Moreover, it explores how Kazakhstan is able to effect change in Russian and Chinese foreign policy, and exemplifies a marginal state affecting the centres of power. To demonstrate this, the thesis examines the strategic choices of the Kazak state, its governance structure and the changing identity politics. As geopolitics becomes increasingly antagonistic in Europe, it is vitally important that we understand how these large states are ‘playing’ overseas. It is suggested that Kazakhstan is not a “small” or a “weak” state and from its position on the periphery has exercised remarkable leverage: it is a prism thought which we can see the truly multi-polar nature of world politics in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The emergence of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) — large state owned investment funds – is attracting increasing attention from academics and policy makers. However, this research begins by pointing out that SWFs can differ considerably. The research question is: What accounts for the establishment of different types of SWFs across and within countries? This research analyses the role of domestic state-society structures in policy-making processes and their effects on policy choices regarding SWFs. It empirically investigates whether and how policy networks affect decisions regarding the types and choices of SWFs. Particular emphasis is placed on SWFs with savings mandates, and SWFs with development mandates. Using process tracing on qualitative data, the research identifies key actors and interests involved in policy processes, and offers causal mechanisms that connect policy networks to decisions about the creation of different types of SWFs. Acknowledging the particular regional and historical contexts helps to account for the effects of networks within countries and across domains, and within domains across countries. Using a case study on the ‘types and choices of SWFs in Hong Kong and Singapore between the late 1960s and 1980s’, this research examines whether domestic policy networks affect national decisions about SWF creation. These are hard cases for theories that emphasise the importance of domestic state-society structures. After all, over this period Hong Kong and Singapore were extremely exposed to international diffusion and economic pressures, and existing research emphasises a set of important factors (e.g. macro-economic characteristics, international economic pressures, diffusion). The present research draws attention to four key findings between the 1960s–1980s: there were external pressures to which Hong Kong and Singapore had to respond and different policy choices were available and discussed; policy networks included and excluded actors that were making these decisions; there were systematic linkages between the type of policy networks and the type of SWFs; these had important implications for actors and created winners and losers. Thereby this research adds to the ongoing debate on whether policy networks matter in explaining policy choices. It is doing that in four ways. To date, policy network approaches provide rather crude hypotheses on the effects of policy networks on a broad set of state strategies and forms of adjustment. These are difficult to verify because they are very broad. The present study offers a critique of policy network literature and develops policy network analysis with regard to causal mechanisms and hypotheses.

Situated as the cornerstone of the Common European Asylum System, the EU’s Dublin system functions as the legal mechanism for determining Member State responsibility for the processing of asylum claims. Controversial from inception, it has been subject to extensive criticism that speaks not only to the distributional inequalities that it produces among the Member States, but also to its potentially detrimental impact on the human rights of asylum seekers. Despite these problems, however, the core features of the system as originally agreed in the 1990 Dublin Convention have remained remarkably resilient over the course of two reforms – one in 2003, and one in 2013. At the same time, the EU’s governance landscape as it pertains to asylum policy-making has undergone a marked transformation. While Dublin I was the product of intergovernmentalism, both Dublin II and Dublin III were negotiated as part of the EU acquis communitaire, the former following the partial communitarisation of asylum policy-making and the latter following its full communitarisation. Though the specific changes to the institutional features of policymaking that this transition has entailed have been both theoretically expected and empirically proven to have a positive effect on EU policy output, the overall stability of the Dublin system in the face of these changes leaves it unclear as to what extent the ‘promise of communitarisation’ has been delivered in this particular case. How then do we explain the perseverance of a system that has not only failed to provide adequate standards of protection to those seeking it within EU borders, but which has also continually disadvantaged some of the very Member States party to its terms? And what impact, if any, has the communitarisation of asylum policy-making had on the attempts at its reform? This research traces the evolution of the Dublin system from its initial formation through to its current state, by analysing the negotiations that produced each of the three Dublin agreements in order to explain both the system’s emergence and its on-going stability. Using a rational choice institutionalist framework, it finds that the Dublin system’s endurance can ultimately be credited to the deliberate choices that have been made by both the Member States and the EU’s supranational institutions in pursuit of their preferences (bolstered or weakened by their relative strength of position) in the context of the (either empowering or constraining) institutional settings within which the reform negotiations took place.

This thesis consists of the three papers that present new formal models of functions and organisations of political parties. The models begin with a particular function or organisational feature of political parties and integrate it with the related issues that the formal literature in political science has either discussed separately or has not paid sufficient attention to. The first paper analyses the strategic interactions between parties and their candidates in elections. It answers the question of why parties provide greater campaign support toward open-seat races than reelection races; to what extent campaign support of parties influences and incentivises valence investment of individual candidates. It also identifies and distinguishes party and personal attributes to an incumbency advantage and discovers a ‘multiplying’ effect that the sequential nature of reelection race has on the advantage. The second paper discusses intraparty competition between factions. It identifies a trade-off between collective and individual benefits in faction members’ choice between intraparty factions and provides a theoretical explanation for factional splits and merges observed in politics. It differentiates itself from the small literature of factions, which is often found to be insufficient to analyse the dynamics of intraparty factions, by incorporating a hierarchical structure of party organisations. The third paper integrates different types of organisational hierarchies, in power, as the second paper does, and in decision procedures and connects them to the longevity of political power. It analyses endogenous allocation of power that gives rise to a specific pattern of power hierarchy that best serves the two objectives of political power, the absolute size and longevity of power. It also shows that the optimal power hierarchy differs across the types of decision hierarchies, indicating the decision-making procedures adopted by a parties. It offers a theoretical explanation to why some parties have undergone more frequent leadership turnover.

This thesis is an enquiry into political ordering under its four core attributes: the state, sovereignty, law, and politics. It advocates analysing ordering as a process, rather than ‘order’ as a static given, and introduces an interactive model of ordering, which takes into account both the creative and the limiting thrusts in political communities. This thesis is informed by the theories of Benedict Spinoza and Carl Schmitt. The first chapter is dedicated to assessing the current debate around the four core concepts: the state, sovereignty, law, and politics. Although it is not aimed at providing a full and definitive account of the scholarly debate, some major trends in current political and legal thinking are overviewed. This exposition subsequently serves as both the context and the impetus for the dynamic model of ordering, constructed in the final chapter. The following two chapters are dedicated to the theories of Spinoza and Schmitt. In Spinoza’s case, some metaphysical preconditions have to be explored beforehand: immanent causality, striving to persevere in existence, and the right as power doctrine. The thesis then moves to the role of the state, sovereignty, law, and politics as tools for ensuring communal cohesion despite a general lack of reason and for joint progression towards reason. As for Schmitt, the thesis first delves into his emphasis on the fallen nature of humans, based on his religious convictions. The state, sovereignty, law, and politics are then analysed as parts of an effort to establish order where actually there can be none (since human existence is groundless), necessitating order-qua-theology. Thus, Spinoza and Schmitt both oppose and complement each other. Lastly, the final chapter proposes an interactive model of ordering as perpetual process by revisiting the four core elements from a Spinozist-Schmittian perspective. This model postulates ordering as animated by constant tension between and reciprocal reproduction of the constitutive and the constituted thrusts, both of them being creative and limiting in different respects. In this model, groundlessness is seen as the basic condition which is, nevertheless, constantly counterbalanced by a need for quasi-religious belief in a quasi-objective given, e.g. Spinoza’s reason. Communal life is, therefore, constantly caught in-between these two poles. Consequently, ordering-as-process is claimed to be the only way in which anything common can be posited.

Divergent forms of female embodiment have prompted contemporary feminist theorists to depart from gender essentialism and draw attention to the heterogeneity of gender performances in the (re)conceptualisation of 'women'. I argue feminist politics may become ossified and repressive if the public arena fails to reflect the plurality of women and their diverse political claims. Exploring the theorisation of 'women' in the context of the politics of difference, this thesis analyses the reciprocal relationship between the construction of 'women' and the pluralisation of feminist politics, by articulating a 'feminist politics of discursive embodiment'. The thesis is divided into two parts. I begin with Iris M. Young's conception of 'gender seriality' that categorises 'women' as a social series constructed through a practico-inert reality of gender and characterised by a passive member relationship, rather than as a social group with common objectives and essential attributes. I then draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological concept of 'the lived body', to deepen this account and to sketch out how the female body is the material locus of gender imperatives and, hence, the primary site of politicisation. The second part of the thesis articulates a feminist politics of discursive embodiment concentrating on how the politicisation of different experiences of female embodiment pluralises feminist politics. I argue that the combination of a reworked understanding of female authority and an agonistic ethos as a political practice can facilitate democratic deliberation and can inaugurate a progressive feminist politics. The Milan Women's Bookstore Collective's depiction of 'the symbolic mother' is specifically used to demonstrate how politicising womanhood can recuperate the historically absent female relationship against patriarchy. I conclude with an exploration of agonist ethos that recognises the constitutive tension between different political claims and encourages openness and the (re)signification of each asserted 'womanhood', so ensuring the responsiveness of a democratic feminist politics.

In its recent history, Iran has exhibited the highest rates of brain drain in the world and simultaneously has been recognized as one of the world's largest refugee havens. Consequently, Iranians inside and outside this country have come to closer contact to a wider range of cultures than ever before. Recognizing the importance of fostering intercultural sensitivity, there is a growing need to introduce intercultural learning into the Iranian educational curricula. The first step in this involves understanding current levels of awareness of children in Iran and the potential for creating opportunities for intercultural learning. Therefore, this research aims to explore how children educated at primary level in Iran make sense of/understand concepts such as intercultural interaction and adjustment. The conceptual framework for this research draws on Anderson’s Obstacle Model to cultural adaptation. In this study, the child-participants were asked to either reflect on their real intercultural experiences or imagine what it would be like to move to and live in another country. This study is also an attempt to explore the boundaries of child-focussed research methodologies. Hence, it consisted of three phases: designing the child-friendly research instruments, data collection, and sharing the data with the child-participants. The data collection was via the administration of 294 ‘child-friendly’ questionnaires and conducting five group interviews in five primary schools in Tehran with children of age 10 to 12. The findings of this study revealed children’s ambivalent feelings about experiencing intercultural encounters. Schooling, friendship, and language were found to be the key influential elements in children’s understanding of intercultural interaction and adjustment. These three elements are related to one another. These findings contribute towards developing a model which incorporates children’s views about cross-cultural adjustment in a more comprehensive way. The findings also have far-reaching implications for EL teachers in Iran.

This dissertation explores how social power relations affect poor, vulnerable people’s access to clean and sustainable water in El Salvador. It does so using an in-depth case study of people living in seven socially deprived rural communities of San José Villanueva, province of La Libertad, southern El Salvador. Drawing on several strands of social and political theory, the research conceptualises ‘power’ along three axes: on local/global, material/ideational and structure/agency lines. Using El Salvador’s neoliberal transition as its sociohistorical backdrop, the research explores the power dynamics shown by water actor groups in positions of hegemony, counter-hegemony and social exclusion. The study shows how these water actors use strategies, tactics and actions along the three power axes. The thesis assembles empirical evidence from academic research; policy documents, media outlets and civil society sources; interviews with policy makers; and poor people’s narratives. The research argues that the current state of unequal power relations in water governance constitutes the main factor shaping poor people’s water access outcomes today. Five key knowledge contributions emerge from this enquiry. First, the thesis handles the concept of ‘power’ as a tool to enrich the traditionally depoliticised approaches regarding water access today in El Salvador. Second, the research builds an innovative conceptual synthesis on power, an ‘axes of power approach’. Third, the thesis provides new empirical evidence using an in-depth case study. Fourth, the study fills an existing gap in country-specific water politics knowledge. Finally, the research offers relevant knowledge in a key water governance period for El Salvador as policy-makers negotiate the country’s first General Water Law in its history.

Much academic debate in the tradition of economic geography has focused on how to design successful strategies to trigger local and regional development. How a more effective economic policy to tackle regional imbalances and inequalities should be developed remains hotly discussed. Too frequently, however, the effective delivery and implementation of policies across all cities and regions fail not simply because of wrong policy tools. Often, one of the challenges is, also, to sort out the institutional process so that incentives to achieve effectiveness arise among politicians and bureaucrats. This thesis specifically focuses on pork-barrelling and distributive politics, that is, how politicians selectively target cities and regions with more or less governmental goods to reinforce their electoral advantage. While a significant number of contributions have been made to this field of enquiry, numerous gaps remain in understanding the implications of distributive politics on regional economic development policymaking and performance. The dissertation critically examines four different aspects and effects of distributive politics, drawing from the case of post-2002 Turkey. In spite of a significant burgeoning of this line of research across the world, questions about the extent to which ‘tactical allocative games’ prevail over technical policymaking criteria are frequently left unanswered. The first theme concerns the extent to which electoral factors prevail over technical considerations in the allocation of public investment by the central state to Turkey’s provinces. The evidence suggests that, while the government has allocated spending to reward its core constituencies, socioeconomic factors nonetheless remain the most relevant predictors of investment. Relatedly, almost no research has so far explored whether pork-barrelling has any economic consequences on regional economies. The second theme explores whether votes for the incumbent party can ‘buy’ preferential policy treatment and regional economic growth. The results show how, after addressing potential endogeneity, economic performance is almost entirely explained by ‘standard’ drivers, primarily human capital endowment. Third, the literature on distributive politics has frequently been legislature centric, in the sense that it has not paid adequate attention to the role played by bureaucratic agencies. The third paper explores whether the institutional characteristics of the agency in charge of the project cycle condition the attainment of publicly-oriented goals. Results point towards the argument that, to enhance policy effectiveness, bureaucracies must be not only capable an autonomous, but also accountable. Finally, the literature still provides unclear evidence on whether shifts from highly competitive electoral environments towards electoral one-party hegemony may lead to higher – or to lower – levels of pork-barrelling. The fourth theme therefore explores whether the constant surge of power enjoyed by Turkey’s AK Party has determined any change in the way public investment is allocated for tactical redistribution. Findings unexpectedly uncover decreasing levels of ‘punishment’ against opponents’ strongholds. Such reduction, however, is accompanied by increasing populist spending throughout the country. Overall, by providing novel evidence on the links between elections, public investment, and regional economic growth in post-2002 Turkey, the thesis contributes to advancing the understaning of the political economy of local and regional development.