Government accountability is one of the key issues often raised in debates about governance in young democracies such as South Africa (RSA). Comparing two provincial governments in RSA as case studies, this thesis explores accountability between provincial government and its various stakeholders. There is a wide literature on government accountability however this literature is limited on RSA public sector accountability, either from the perspective of what it means or how it is attained. In recent years provincial government stakeholders have complained about weaknesses and lack of government accountability and efficient performance. The effectiveness of recent mechanisms such as Batho Pele (BP), as a way to consult citizens and therefore to enhance provincial government accountability and performance, has also been questioned by stakeholders and government. In this thesis, the PATIGAHAR accountability analytical framework is developed from the basic building blocks of the principal-agent model and the accountability literature, in particular Ashworth and Skelcher (2005) four dimensional approach. Interviews were held with various stakeholders and published reports on government accountability were also analysed against the criteria of the PATIGAHAR model. Accountability is weakened by lack of specific measures of citizens’ accountability. Poor implementation of BP hampers government efforts to involve citizens for accountability. The role of the legislature in government accountability needs to be improved and made specific for the benefits of all stakeholders.

This thesis explores the historical background of patronage politics in Nigeria by examining its evolution during key periods of the country's political development. It investigates how contemporary relations and structures of power are constructed and maintained by exploring a range of political practices, social identities and economic conditions that evidence a continuity and interconnectedness with Nigeria's precolonial and colonial past. By examining five biographies of contemporary political patrons, this thesis shows how politicians and political entrepreneurs legitimate their actions and goals in the political sphere. This process of legitimating political power takes place through a range of strategies that, first, draw on varied social, cultural and historical repertoires; second, are contingent on social settings, political traditions and cultures; and finally, are designed to construct specific social and political meanings. The central argument presented here is that we cannot fully understand how political patrons and their networks operate unless we understand the varied local contexts and political histories that structure relations of power across Nigeria. This thesis is germane because it investigates how the state penetrates different societal structures as well as how local political networks are integrated into central power.

This thesis sets out to look at the operation of gender ‘beneath the spectacle’ in the British House of Commons. It develops a ‘fleshed-out’ analytical framework combining Judith Butler’s (2011) theory of gender performativity with Feminist Discursive Institutionalism to analyse the operation of gender across three sets of institutional actors. Following Waylen’s (2015) call for a gender audit of the ‘male domination’ of British institutions of democracy, it applies a gender lens to analyse everyday working practices in the British House of Commons. It conceives of ‘male’ domination as performative, inherently tenuous, and incessantly repeated every day. The thesis combines this analytic framework with ethnographic methodology based on four and a half months of field work in the 2010-2015 Parliament and 68 semi-structured interviews, to explore and analyse the complex interaction between institutional rules, gender(ed) norms and gender(ed) identity. It finds that gender(ed) identity is scripted across three ‘discursive institutions’: the career cycle, citizenship and public service, where sex/gender hierarchies are reproduced. It argues that rather than adopting a binary conception of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ interactional styles, different institutional contingencies make different performances of gender more likely, though they are not determining. As such, the thesis presents a rich analysis of gender performance and finds considerable contingency, mosaicism and overlap. Finally, the thesis finds significant obstacles that must be overcome in order to ‘undo’ patterns of (dis)advantage within current institutional arrangements.

Within peacebuilding, there is a growing understanding of the need to develop a more robust understanding of the bottom up view of peacebuilding due to numerous failures to achieve the liberal peace over the years. There is a growing consensus that the liberal peace is insufficient to achieve sustainable peace in post conflict countries, but understandable uncertainty exists about how to achieve peace in post-liberal context. The thesis sets out to expand our understanding of what the experiences of everyday judicial hybridity in South Kivu can contribute to current peacebuilding approaches. By examining 104 different user narratives with various judicial service in South Kivu, DRC conducted between May 2014 and August 2014, this research tries to understand how individuals understand and navigate through the judicial landscape. This study concludes that justice is South Kivu judicial users desires for judicial experiences are not unique, but are contain universal characteristics. While there are opportunities to build upon what is working for users, the long term solutions for sustainable peace remain at the mercy of political solutions.

Goal incongruence, both within organisations and between organisations operating in a network context, has long been acknowledged as an important influence on organisational behaviour. This work presents the findings from an ethnographic study of goal incongruence in a public service network located in the UK. The study develops a conceptual framework for defining and researching the extent and sources of goal incongruence within public service networks. The author defines incongruence as contradiction between goals, draws evidence from organizationally enacted behaviours and recognises distinctions between formal goals and the operative goals of network groups. Empirical evidence is used to evaluate two explanations of goal incongruence: that goal incongruence is produced by the nature of bureaucratic delegation (the hierarchical model) and that it is produced by professional difference (the horizontal model). The findings of the study indicate that bureaucratic delegation is the source of goal incongruence. However, several elements of the hierarchical model are questioned. The evidence does not support the orthodox view that incongruence between formal and operative goals increases as conceptions of desired ends are transmitted downward within hierarchies. The study finds that the operative goals of actors at the apex of the network were most highly incongruent with the formal goals of the network. Professional difference was not a source of goal incongruence. Indeed the study provided evidence that operational staff who exhibited different professional identities co-operated to integrate practice and reduce goal-incongruence. The study concludes that the application of the novel conceptual framework provides a more selective, detailed and convincing account of goal incongruence than those found in the recent literature. The sources of goal incongruence were hierarchical elites putting the resources of the network to their own purposes as social agents and hierarchically imposed systems of organisational obligation and performance control. Finally, the study suggests that evidence for interprofessional integration indicates that the role of peer groups in moderating goal incongruence is under-represented in theoretical and empirical accounts of goal incongruence.

The thesis draws upon the work of Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, and Norman Fairclough to analyse Westminster narration of the neoliberal capitalist crisis from 2010-2015. It is argued that Westminster parties sought to ‘resolve’ the crisis by intensifying the neoliberal conditions that caused it. This served the interests of private capital whilst inflicting harm and injustice on the less powerful and less wealthy. The thesis centres on Westminster definers’ discursive strategies of crisis narration, which sought to rationalise their ‘resolution’ and maintain hegemony. This thesis addresses lacunae in the existing literature of elite narration of the crisis in a British context in a number of ways. It is concerned with the comparatively broad scope of Westminster definers’ narration of ‘causes’, responses and proposed responses to the crisis, and the discursive strategies for countering challenges presented by oppositional movements. It contributes an analysis of Westminster’s narration of challenges that began to emerge over the period. This thesis provides a longitudinal study examining the development of Westminster narratives between 2010 and 2015, contributing a detailed analysis of three ‘intense narration moments’: the General Election 2010, the Scottish Independence Referendum 2014, and the General Election 2015. Utilising Fairclough’s framework of critical discourse analysis, it critically analyses a comprehensive data set of 185 texts disseminated by Westminster definers. Texts include televised election debates, radio interviews, manifestos, budget statements, speeches, and posters. The thesis evidences that false, inaccurate, and misleading representations were central, systematic, and ubiquitous to Westminster’s narration of the crisis. It is argued that Westminster: restricted debate within narrow boundaries that excluded non-neoliberal alternatives and reinforced the ‘necessity’ of neoliberal responses. They identified ideologically advantageous but false ‘causes’ of crisis that had concomitant neoliberal responses and favourably structured Britain’s political agenda and shifted debate onto more neoliberal terrain. They operated to generate misunderstanding of Britain’s fiscal position to justify austerity, and constructed neoliberal responses as moral imperatives. Westminster definers countered challenges by representing parties inaccurately, constructing alternatives as unviable and immoral, and reinforcing an element of a challenge’s narrative but adopting a different framing to redirect Britain towards Westminster’s ‘resolution’.

This research investigates the phenomenon of budgeting practices in the Tanzanian Central Government. It seeks to understand how budgeting systems under the New Public Management (NPM), World Bank- and IMF-exhorted systems were adopted and implemented. There were several motives for this research: the significance of budgeting in financial management, the sparsity of empirical studies on NPM in developing countries, and a call for an understanding of the local contexts of the country and an evaluation of the reforms themselves. Additionally, the complexity of NPM reforms and the mixed results of previous empirical studies, indicated the need for a more appropriate methodology. The study adopts interpretive research and executes a grounded theory strategy. It develops a substantive grounded theory on budgeting practices and a formal grounded theory on accounting changes in organizations (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss, 1987). Fieldwork was undertaken in three Tanzanian Ministries. Struggling for conformance is the central phenomenon of the substantive and the formal grounded theory. The substantive grounded theory explained a process through which the Tanzanian Central Government actors were determined to implement budgetary reforms, despite difficulties. Struggling for conformance was illustrated by the establishment of rhetorically applied (rhetorical) rules and regulations, followed by budgeting attempts and games in their implementation, due to the uncertain environment, complex budgeting systems, the donors‟ influence, and cultural and administrative practices. The process of struggling for conformance had positive and negative impacts on budgeting operations and budgeting allocations. The formal grounded theory proposes that organizations adopt and implement accounting changes in order to achieve legitimacy, efficiency and self-interests. Rhetorical rules on accounting changes are established and implemented through accounting attempts and games, which may reveal the coexistence of instrumental and ceremonial aspects of accounting (Covaleski and Dirsmith, 1991), and even fulfill individual, rather than organizational, interests (strategic deterioration). Struggling for conformance is caused by conflicting and enabling power, complex rules, and a fragmented environment. Its consequences reflect the extent of the acquisition of efficiency and legitimacy. This research contributes to the limited amount of empirical accounting research on NPM in developing countries, to grounded theory and interpretive accounting research, and to the expansion of New Institutional Sociology. It further provides a framework of struggling for conformance, which produces possible explanations for the complexities of budgetary and NPM reforms, the adoption and implementation of accounting changes in organizations, and loose coupling.

While large-scale studies of European anti-austerity movements exist, there is a need for in-depth, ‘thick description’ of anti-austerity activist cultures which explores the sustaining as well as motivating factors for political engagement. Furthermore, it is important to pay attention to differences, including gendered differences, within counterhegemonic movements to highlight the power imbalances that exist. This thesis utilises a cultural and affective approach combined with a gender lens to explore the lived and felt experiences of political participation and the gendered dimension of these. It contributes to developing a cultural and feminist approach to studying movements that takes account of emotion and gender by developing an in-depth understanding of a local anti-austerity activist culture. The research used a combination of qualitative research methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 30 anti-austerity activists in Nottingham. It reveals the central role of emotions in motivating and sustaining activism, uncovering the sustaining processes of solidarity and collective identity, and the importance of reasserting these in the face of an individualistic neoliberal capitalism. It identifies existing gendered barriers and exclusions to activism and ways of overcoming these, revealing that activism’s negative effects are gendered, with women feeling anxiety and guilt for not “doing enough” of the ‘right’ type of activism (direct action). This prioritising of direct action denigrates online activism, which is constructed as its opposition, underlined by the talking versus doing binary construction. Despite its supposedly abstract, universal character, it emerges that the ‘ideal perfect’ activist is the able-bodied male. The implications of this are explored, revealing the ‘dark side’ of activism which is hidden from public view. The thesis also identifies the construction of the ‘authentic’ activist who has the required lived experiences to be a ‘true’ activist, raising issues of representation. It therefore unravels the tensions between participants’ claim that “anyone and everyone can and should do” activism, and the constraints that prevent individuals from becoming politically active, including, problematically, how the ‘activist’ identity is constructed. The thesis highlights the importance of ‘care’ within the context of austerity, demonstrating the ‘retraditionalisation’ of gender roles and norms, with the redrawing of the public/private divide. In response, it explores how activism can be redefined as a form of degendered care, drawing on participants’ emphasis on empathy and universalist discourses. Overall, it contributes to social movement and feminist theory, as well as their overlap, by developing a cultural, affective, and feminist approach to studying social movements which takes account of gendered differences in activist experiences.

This study attempts to answer two main questions. First, how does the composition of public expenditure affect the economic growth rate of macroeconomic variables such as the real output of the non-oil sector, employment, and total imports in Libya? Second, what is the appropriate fiscal and/or monetary policy to be used by the Libyan government to finance public expenditure, especially after the collapse in the oil price in the 1990s? To achieve these ends, a small macro-econometric model of the Libyan economy is constructed for the period 1962-1992 and estimated using the Johansen approach. The model reflects the Libyan institutional environment relevant to the observation period. The model links public finances to the monetary sector, the real sector, the role of foreign trade and the balance of payments, and the labour market. The model is utilised to (1) examine the impact of government expenditure on the growth of the macro-economic variables mentioned above; (2) examine the impact of different ways of funding these expenditures; (3) examine long-run equilibrium relationships estimated through the cointegration approach. The short-run dynamics was modelled via error correction models. Evaluation of the model was through standard single equation diagnostics, model simulation, and forecasting. Policy simulation was used to evaluate macro-economic policy options open to the government of Libya. As a result this study provides considerable knowledge about the structure of the Libyan economy through the period 1962-1992, and about the impact of government expenditure and its finance instrument (fiscal and/or monetary means) on growth.

What happened to Afrikaner nationalism? Did the end of apartheid spell the end of the nationalism with which it had become synonymous? Was the decade that lay between South Africa's first universal suffrage elections of 1994 and the collapse of the Afrikaners' National Party in 2004 the final chapter in the history of Afrikaner nationalism? If so - and that is the question posed in this thesis - how is one to interpret the Afrikaner campaign that gained momentum during that very same decade in defence of Afrikaans - the language that gave the word apartheid to human history? Contra the lay and scholarly consensus, I argue that Afrikaner nationalism has outlived apartheid. What we are witnessing today, if only in certain elite circles, is not the end of Afrikaner nationalism but its revival. To substantiate this claim, chapter 3 of the thesis develops a definitional and theoretical framework from which I argue in chapters 4 and 5, by means of a diachronical comparison, that the latest movement represents a continuation of the Afrikaner nationalist past. First, however, the scene has to be set. Chapters 1 and 2 provide the political and ideological background without which no analysis would be possible of Afrikaner nationalism's consecutive language and cultural movements. It needs to be stressed, though, that while language and cultural activism has the central attention in this study, it also considers the relationship between cultural and political nationalism - both as concepts and as actual movements - and questions the notion of a dichotomy. In seeking a historical explanation for the contemporary Afrikaner movement, I revisit what Kellas regards as the problem that studies of nationalism have classically addressed, namely the relationship between politics, economics and culture "which in any particular case brought about the transition from ethnicity to nationalism"? (1991:35). Focusing on the Afrikaner case, my thesis explores the role of language in these dynamics - something that has not been done in a systematic manner.