This is a study of Daniel Defoe's political rhetoric and polemical strategies between the years 1697 and 1717. It explores and analyses a representative selection of what may be termed Defoe's `public voices'. In its broadest definition, these public voices are understood to be the opinions expressed and the rhetorical stances taken by Defoe in those pieces of his writing which directly or indirectly relate to the sphere of official, governmental and national discourse and activity. In the most basic sense, this thesis attempts to highlight and explain the way in which the language, imagery and concerns of Defoe's publications were shaped by the events and attitudes of the historical moment at which they were produced. In the process, this study re-situates, and thus necessarily re-evaluates, the voices and apparent meanings of some of Defoe's better known texts, while offering extensive investigations of the rhetorical strategies of publications which have previously been neglected by Defoe scholars. In the context of the above, an attempt is made to demonstrate that the poem The True-Born Englishman (1701) was not only a response to xenophobic sentiments prevalent in English society at the turn of the century but did, in fact, represent Defoe's final, summative contribution to the standing army controversy of the late 1690s. On a similar note, this thesis aims to show that the verse satire Jure Divino (1706) was the culmination of Defoe's involvement in the occasional conformity controversy of the early 1700s and constituted on important element of his campaign in favour of religious toleration. In addition, I argue that volume one of The Family Instructor (1715) was Defoe's response to the Jacobite-inspired unrest of the years 1714-15 and, as such, represented an important political act. Finally, this study offers an extensive investigation of one of Defoe's most problematic publications, An Argument Proving that the Design of Employing and Tnobling Foreigners, Is a Treasonable Conspiracy (1717). The pamphlet, I suggest, represented a highly ironic attack on one of Defoe's old adversaries, John Toland, and only develops its full rhetorical force if read in the context of the standing army controversy.

Citizen orientations towards their political leaders, institutions and political systems sits at the heart of political science and political behaviour, yet despite the potential challenges distrusting citizenries pose for the operation and stability of democratic systems, there has been no consensus on what political distrust really is, what it means for the citizens that express it, what its implications are for political systems and how to best capture it across established democracies. The dissonance between empirical observations of citizen distrusting attitudes and the analytical concepts used to study political orientations, which have mainly focused on trust, make this the right time to ask “What is political distrust?” and to investigate how this attitude area can help social scientists better understand current phenomena of political behaviour across democratic systems. This thesis postulates that we cannot conclusively interpret the significance of plummeting trust indicators nor apprehend their consequences for democratic politics without a clear understanding of citizens’ political distrust, defined in its own right and separated from competing notions, such as cynicism or the lack of trust. The thesis follows a mixed methodological approach to the study of political distrust from the perspective of citizens. It develops a conceptual model for distrusting political attitudes based on theoretical work and novel empirical evidence from three European democracies – Italy, the UK and Greece. Our model conceptualises political distrust as a dynamic, relational and evaluative attitude that follows technical, ethical and interest-based assessments to judge the untrustworthiness of political agents. Further, the thesis puts this conceptual model to the test, creating a novel survey indicator and providing new quantitative evidence regarding the structure and operation of political distrust. It finds support for our conceptualisation of distrusting attitudes as retrospective and prospective evaluative judgments and highlights the prominence of perceptions of unethical political conduct in shaping political distrust. Using a multiple-item indicator tapping into evaluations of national parliament and a citizen’s preferred political party we explore the dimensionality and hierarchy of each evaluation and unravel a double operation of distrusting attitudes, both as specific assessments of political agents along these three dimensions and as a cognitive evaluative shortcut acting in a cyclical reinforcing manner. We also investigate how the newly identified aspects of political distrust relate to citizens’ behavioural intentions for participating in politics and find differences in the motivating and demotivating influence of distrusting attitudes targeted at different parts of the political system.

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The idea that each of us owns our physical selves is one that has largely failed to achieve prominence in contemporary political theory, despite its sound philosophical basis, largely due to its association with a strong formulation of right-wing libertarianism best expressed in the work of Robert Nozick. In this thesis I argue that the idea as expressed in Nozick's most infamous work, Anarchy, State and Utopia, is not taken to its full conclusion and that there is in fact a way of unpacking self-ownership, necessary under proper consideration of its underlying premises, that would imply far less of a connection with right-libertarianism. Fundamentally, Nozick considered self-ownership as a base value in itself, informing all of his subsequent political and ethical values. Through analysis of various important contemporary attempts to improve on and undermine self-ownership, points made respectively by libertarians who wish to modify it and non-libertarians who wish to do away with it, I argue that self-ownership must in fact be a structure which is itself derivative of a more basic and fundamental value. Conceding the argument held in common by all of the major theorists proposing modifications to self-ownership, that self-ownership is a self-defeating theory when we consider the operability and usefulness of the rights it bestows upon those who have no original resources to trade, I seek to enquire exactly what it is about rights-holders that self-ownership rights were designed to protect and promote, using evidence gleaned from the work of Nozick. I conclude from this that the basic value of agency must underlie the Nozickian supposition of self-ownership. Making agency the primary value subsequently means that self-ownership needs a further derivative principle, something approximating a redistributive system which enables all agents to have self-ownership rights which are of comparably equal usefulness to them.

Cosmopolitanism has become highly influential in political theory, philosophy, sociology and other disciplines over the past several decades. In political theory, cosmopolitans have given strong emphasis to universal moral principles and relatively strong duties which cross national boundaries. Thus, many cosmopolitan prescriptions would require some significant changes in attitude and actions from the status quo. Because of this, one of the persistent challenges to the practical application of cosmopolitan principles has been in identifying ways to motivate support for them. This thesis develops a possible answer to the problem of cosmopolitan motivation, in the form of a rooted cosmopolitanism which gives emphasis to the roles that ‘cosmopolitan ambassadors’ could play. The Ambassadorial Cosmopolitan approach presented here emphasizes ways in which support for domestic policy consistent with cosmopolitanism could be generated through (a) highlighting and reinforcing the cosmopolitan strains within existing national traditions and (b) by demonstrating how the ideas of revered national figures connect in significant ways with cosmopolitan principles. The theory is applied in the context of policy action to combat harmful climate change. The exemplar state is India, and the exemplar ambassador is Mahatma Gandhi. The thesis establishes important connections between cosmopolitan theory and Gandhi’s highly influential thought on social change and ethical life practices. It shows how such connections could be used in the Indian context. The final chapter indicates some other contexts where Ambassadorial Cosmopolitanism could also be applied.

Many convicted offenders around the world do not vote in elections because they have been disenfranchised, which is the legal deprivation of their voting rights as a consequence of their convictions. Addressing this practice from the perspective of legal and constitutional theory, this dissertation deals with the question of how modern democracies should understand the connection between the right to vote and the commission of a criminal offence. After careful analysis of issues related to the democratic importance of the right to vote, the civic virtue of offenders and the requirements of a democratic punishment, the dissertation argues that disenfranchisement is a practice that constitutes an unjustified exception to the general principle of universal suffrage. However, it may also critically express and shape some of our general ideas about democracy and citizenship. In particular, it is argued that the exclusionary and degrading aspects of disenfranchisement can illuminate inclusionary aspects associated to the right to vote. In making this argument, it is suggested that the right to vote not only works as a right of participation but also embodies a mechanism of democratic recognition. Addressing the current common law jurisprudential trends on disenfranchisement, it formulates a case for a strong judicial review of legislation in cases in which voting eligibility is at stake.

Multiculturalism has become a hot topic in political philosophy. This thesis investigates the philosophical foundations of multicultural theories through examining the key concepts commonly relied upon. A careful examination of each concept and the way in which they are interconnected, reveals an interesting strategy that the multiculturalist employs. It is my contention that the multiculturalist relies on a complex web of nebulous concepts which fools the reader into thinking that their theory rests on strong foundations. However, when we clear away the fog of confusion, we can see that the multiculturalist has presented us with an illusion, and none of the concepts remain strong enough to hold any of the normative weight they need them to. Multiculturalism relies on grandiloquent rhetoric and muddled thinking, and will ultimately fail to achieve the liberal goals it purports to.

This thesis contends that Oakeshott’s political philosophy contributes to constructivism in International Relations by identifying the moral foundations of international society and law. The epistemological basis of this contribution is a methodological holism that is defended through arguments developed within British Absolute idealism. The opposition between concrete and abstract concepts grounds a theory in which knowledge is conditional because it is constructed on certain assumptions or postulates. Philosophy identifies and interrogates the postulates, exposes their limited value and maintains the logical autonomy of the various forms of knowledge, from a universal point of view. The concepts of tradition and moral practice are central in Oakeshott’s political philosophy, and indicate a theory of normativity in which moral reasoning and political activity are a form of argumentative discourse constructed by starting from the assumptions shared within a certain community. In this light, Oakeshott is compared to the exponents of the English School and to constructivism because of his definition of an interpretative approach, in which world politics is a normative engagement and the role of theory is to consider its presuppositions as well as its universal meaning. Moreover, it is shown that he offers a comprehensive theory of the evolution of international society and of the role of war that is consistent with his broader political philosophy. The theory of ‘civil association’ is the ground for an understanding of international society as an association between states constituted by the recognition of moral constraints on the actions of states. These constraints are institutionalised in customary international law, which is understood as a moral practice. Therefore, international society is grounded on an evolving morality resulting from the historical conduct of states. As such, Oakeshott’s political philosophy provides an understanding of international relations that is distinct from both Realism and Universalism.

This thesis considers the ways in which advanced nationalist identity was communicated to the broader Irish populace in Dublin from 1890 to 1917. It contends that the performance and communication of advanced nationalist identity is best understood within the context of fin-de-siècle Dublin. During this period the streets formed spaces in which identities, both political and otherwise, were performed and through reciprocal spectatorship were also negotiated and mediated. The public funerals of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in 1915 and Thomas Ashe in 1917 are the subject of close scrutiny. Through analysing the performance of these funerals, this thesis shows how the relationship between the physical space of the city and the body was integral to the performance of advanced nationalist identity. The Easter Rising is presented as a moment of rupture between these two funerals, during which the rebels failed to communicate effectively with their audience. This thesis further argues that in the immediate aftermath of the Rising, material culture in the form of relics and massLproduced ephemera played a vital role in shaping and communicating a narrative of the Rising to make it intelligible to the Irish populace. The successful construction of an interpretive framework meant that, by the time the rebels returned from their various places of internment, public understanding of and identification with both the Rising and advanced nationalist identity more broadly, had dramatically increased.

The concern of this research is the nature of the Hindu nationalist ideology in the western Indian state of Gujarat from 1880 to 1950 since this period is crucial in forging a relationship between Hindu and Muslim communities based on mutual suspicion. The attempt is to shed light on the way a fundamentalist ideology is configured in increasingly exclusivist terms whereby minorities in the subcontinent were gradually granted a marginal citizenship subordinated to a Hindu cultural mainstream. The deconstruction of the nationalistic discourses of some representative individual figures and groups -the Arya Samaj, the Hindu Mahasabha, K.M. Munshi and Vallabhbhai Patel- allowed unravelling a trajectory of this ideology identifying its major fluctuations. The focus on Gujarati nationalism of Hindu tradition as opposed to a rather exceptional Gandhian nationalism and its commitment to non-violence made possible to explain the current political culture in India nowadays that inherited the legacy of the agitational politics of those years. Along with the historiographical analysis of these discourses, the research explores the mobilizational strategies accompanying the ideological dimension. The political campaigns of these actors were fundamental in spreading a communal consciousness that enabled a history of perennial confrontation between Hindus and Muslims, an aspect whose origin can be traced in the colonial historiography on India. In this sense, the research aims not only at being a contribution to the academic debate on the formation of a national consciousness in Gujarat, but also attempts to elucidate the motivations behind communal violence grounded on the circulation of stereotypes and their exploitation. The study contributes to the understanding of contemporary violence as a result of a gradual communalization of politics and daily life that imbibes from the distortion of the historical paradigms that by the end of the nineteenth century still coped with multiculturalism.