This dissertation explores the economic origins of party-system structure and the role of economic institutions in determining political outcomes and electoral partici- pation. Chapter 2 studies the impact of unemployment on electoral fragmentation. Employing a four-party model of redistributive politics with two dimensions of choice (economic policy and ideology), we uncover a non-monotonic relationship between unemployment and fragmentation. In equilibrium, big parties woo the unemployed voters who are relatively more willing to switch their votes in response to generous redistribution. When the tax-base is large enough, allowing for more redistribution, an initial rise in unemployment favors the big parties by increasing the amount of the target constituency that is up for grabs. We identify two necessary conditions for opportunistic parties to be able to capitalize on this relationship: (i) the exis- tence of an e¤ective public redistribution mechanism and (ii) the lack of institutional checks and balances. Using data from OECD economies, we confirm empirically the relationship between economic and political outcomes. We find that variation in unemployment alone can account for two-thirds of the variation in party-system fragmentation. Using data from Greek local elections, to exploit the information shock, we test the role of institutional constraints in limiting opportunistic redis- tribution and increasing fragmentation. Overall, Chapter 2 lays a theoretical and empirical framework that relates economic outcomes with party-system structure. It also provides a special interest politics justification for redistribution. Finally, it highlights the importance of institutional constraints and economic institutions in guaranteeing political pluralism and power-sharing. Chapter 3, using again data from Greek elections explores empirically the link between economic adversity, trust and voter turnout. It identifies two links: one normative, declining trust in the party-system, and one rationalistic, the weakening of party-group linkages. We find that the fiscal shock caused a collapse in voter turn-out. Moreover, the decline was larger in regions with relatively larger public sector. Using suitable instruments from the institutional set-up of Ottoman Greece, we document a negative relationship between economic adversity and voter turn-out operating through both links (trust and party-group linkages). We also show that the size of the public sector acts as a catalyst in exacerbating the e¤ects of economic shocks on turn-out. The policy implications are clear: financial or institutional measures that reduce the size of public sector and aim at increasing transparency, trust and voter participation might have a second-order negative effect on turnout by reducing party-voter linkages. For Greece, the latter effect dominates, raising questions for the future of political participation.

This thesis consists of three self-contained chapters. The first chapter is titled ‘A Theory of Divide-and-Rule: Kleptocracy and Its Breakdown’. The second chapter is tilted ‘Kleptocracy and the Benevolent Opposition Organizations’. The last chapter is titled ‘Democratization, Revolution and International Interventions’. In the first chapter, I develop a theory of divide-and-rule, explaining how kleptocracies can be sustained in equilibrium by implementing a strategy of divide-and-rule. This chapter shows how this strategy is successfully implemented by a kleptocratic ruler, who is able to play one group of citizens against another. I explore the extent to which this is robust to a society with any number of citizen groups. When there are large numbers of citizen groups, a small number of them may benefit from the discriminatory redistribution policies implemented by the kleptocrat, while the vast majority will become the victims of the kleptocracy. Consequently, sharp economic and political inequality between the citizen groups may arise because of the discriminatory policies resulting from the divide-and-rule strategy. Furthermore, this chapter examines two cases in which this strategy may fail and the kleptocracy will break down. Several results are obtained in this chapter, and they are applied to some real world cases. In the second chapter, I introduce a theoretical framework, based on the model developed in the first chapter, examining how the benevolent opposition organizations, such as trade unions and religious organizations, may constrain the strategy of divide-and-rule. This chapter shows that by punishing those citizen groups supporting the kleptocratic rulers, they may help strengthen the cooperation between them, thus improving the welfare of the civilians and even removing the kleptocratic ruler. However, compared to punishing the citizen group supporting the ruler, the benevolent opposition organizations could more effectively constrain the kleptocracy through rewarding the citizen group who challenges the ruler or supports another citizen group in challenging the ruler. In the last chapter, I develop a model for military interventions and economic sanctions respectively, examining their impacts on the process of democratization. In a dictatorial society or a weakly institutionalized society, the ruler and the opposition vie for social surplus, while the international community decide whether or not to carry out military interventions, or to impose economic sanctions in this society. The theoretical frameworks developed in this chapter formalize the interaction between the international community, the opposition and the ruler. This chapter shows that both military interventions and economic sanctions may help promote the democratization process in a state, while they may also induce the opposition to resort to a revolution to overthrow the regime, thus increasing the likelihood of a civil war and raising the uncertainty in the democratization process. Several analytical results in this chapter may shed light on the questions about the efficacy and impacts of international interventions on the democratization process in a state. Furthermore, this chapter introduces the military interventions in 2011 Libya and the economic sanctions against Burma as case studies.

Rising levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the environment have spurred governments around the world to engage in cooperative action on a global scale to control those chemicals that pose significant threats to human health and the environment. Political efforts to mitigate the risks posed by these chemicals are impeded by the technical complexity associated with POPs pollution, and are thus predicated on the scientific assessments of experts in fields such as chemistry and toxicology. Policymakers’ reliance on scientific expertise for guidance on risk assessment and management has reduced their control over policy and has given scientists authority to determine socially acceptable levels of risk, thus blurring the boundaries between science and politics. Conversely, the implications of science-based decision-making have increased the interest and involvement of political actors in a phase of evaluation that is often seen as objective, fact-based, and free of political interest. This thesis analyzes the ways in which various actors with scientific expertise – representatives of governments, industry, and environmental/public health NGOs – working under the auspices of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants have used strategic issue framing tactics to promote predetermined policy agendas during the scientific review of chemicals proposed for regulation. This research breaks new ground by analyzing the ways elite decision-makers strategically frame issues in order to influence the policy preferences of other elites, and by evaluating the role of issue framing in the context of live policy negotiations. Key findings include the following: 1) the formation of epistemic communities of technical experts is precluded by political pressure on scientists to represent government/organizational interests, and 2) scientists strategically frame issues in ways that support the social, economic or political interests of the governments or organizations with which they are affiliated, thus contributing to the politicization of science-based decision-making.

Adopting a Foucauldian critical methodology, this thesis reflects upon the inherent ambiguities of cosmopolitan government in/of EU(rope), which, it is suggested, are borne out in the ambiguous relationship between the particular liberal subjects – a ‘subject of interest’ and ‘subject of right’ - that such government seeks to identify, produce and foster. Developing Foucault’s own recently published genealogy of liberal government, it is argued that cosmopolitan government can be conceived as the promotion of (neo)liberal deregulatory market agendas within and beyond EU(rope): a EU(rope) of free competitive ‘subjects of interest’, increasingly conceived as entrepreneurs. This, it is argued, is the constitutive basis of contemporary post-national government in EU(rope) (Part I). Taking seriously the nuances in Foucault’s analysis, cosmopolitan government can, however, also be understood in terms of the evocation of EU(rope) as socially just nation-state rooted in constitution and social-contract: a EU(rope) of ‘subjects of right’ or citizens. Such a conceptualisation is often evident in scholarly and practical opposition to the perceived extremes of a ‘market’ Europe, as illustrated via an analysis of Habermas’s scholarship and French discourses on EU(rope) (Part II). Finally, taking the deliberative impulse in Habermas much further than he does in his own work on EU(rope), a range of scholarly interventions and associated institutional innovations have thought/ practiced cosmopolitan government as a multi-levelled, multi-scalar, open-ended deliberative endeavour ostensibly respectful of Europe’s extant plurality in theory and practice, but this is not without its own foundational ontology of the autonomous, rational, reasonable European subject. Indeed, via an analysis of deliberative forms of governance in contemporary EU(rope), it is argued that such a conception of rationality or reason is - in both theory and practice - closely associated with the aforementioned (neo)liberal rationality of cosmopolitan government to the extent that such rationalities are EU(rope)’s very condition of possibility (Part III). The thesis demonstrates, then, that the ambiguous relationship between a ‘subject of interest’ and ‘subject of right’ is not overcome in either the theory or practice of cosmopolitan government. It concludes by postulating that there may be good ethico-political reasons for giving up the attempt to overcome such ambiguity.

This work aims to provide an alternative analysis of the regional economic integration and development projects of two peripheral capitalist spaces – Mexico and Turkey – within the specific spatiotemporal conditions in which their modern peripheral capitalist spatiality has been conditioned and re-structured. Both Mexico and Turkey undertook very similar regional integration projects that emerged almost simultaneously and, more significantly, in conjunction with the neoliberal restructuring processes that unfurled during the early 1980s. In the Central American region, Mexico initiated the ‘Plan Puebla-Panamá’ which subsequently evolved to the ‘Proyecto Mesoamérica’, now including Colombia, aiming to ‘create’ an integrated region with a high level of economic development on the basis of procuring sustainable and orderly functioning free market economies. With strikingly similar objectives, Turkey planned and materialised regional integration projects such as the organisation of the ‘Black Sea Economic Cooperation’ in the Black Sea and Trans-Caucasus region and other sub-regional projects such as the ‘Levant Project’ in the East Mediterranean. This work argues that these regional integration projects have to be defined and analysed within the multiscalar neoliberal restructuring processes, in which the global capitalist spatiality has been re-territorialised – and resisted – on different socio-spatial scales. The uneven geographical development and its constant reproduction is recognised as the determinant factor of these regional integration projects, in which the Mexican and Turkish peripheral capitalist spatiality was first reconfigured and integrated into the centre through their incorporation into the NAFTA and European Customs Union. Subsequently, conditioned by the current neoliberal rescaling of the peripheral capitalist spatiality, the peripheral capitalism extended towards the ‘marginal’ spaces in their immediate geographies in the form of sub-regional integration and development projects. Therefore, this work presents the examination of the specific spatiotemporal processes as the only meaningful theoretical framework to analyse these regional integration projects, in which the uneven development of the peripheral capitalist social relations in Mexico and Turkey have been formed, reconfigured and extended.

This thesis examines the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) as a political party and an organisation through the examination of two party federations: Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines. This is undertaken via a study of the groups within the UMP, as well as by developing a perspective on the history of conflict within the Centre-Right in the French Fifth Republic, retracing the formation of the UMP and conducting questionnaires and interviews with party activists in Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines. The empirical fieldwork is examined within the broad framework of the party system literature. The UMP is a party that has formed out of a variety of political currents and traditions creating an internally diverse party, and this is examined through a look at the political families in the party and the party federations of Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines to get a view of the party at the point of time of the fieldwork. The thesis examines the party in these two federations through the eyes of the party activists in order to understand the party at the base. This seeks to study what the party is on the ground in these federations: what groups exist within the party (both in terms of the former parties and political currents), what sort of organisation the UMP is, how the activists relate to the organisation, as well as the relationship between the lower levels of the party and the national party. This thesis seeks to answer the question: What sort of party is the UMP as an organisation in these federations, in regards to institutions and what the party sees as its main goals, and what role does internal diversity have within the party?

One of the key questions facing governments around the world is that of how to increase and maintain the engagement of citizens in democratic processes. Recent thought, both within academia and government itself, has turned to the use of modern computational technology to provide citizens with access to democratic processes. Access to computer and Internet technology by the general public has vastly increased over the past decade, and this wide access is one of a number of motivations behind research into the provision of democratic tasks and processes online. The particular democratic process that forms the focus of this thesis is that of online opinion gathering in order to aid government decision making. The provision of mechanisms to gather and analyse public opinion is important to any government which claims to promote a fair and equal democracy, as decisions should be made in consideration of the views and opinions of the citizens of such a democracy. The work that comprises this thesis is motivated by existing research into harvesting opinion through a variety of online methods. The software tools available largely fall into one of two categories: Those which are not based on formal structure, and those which are based on an underlying formal model of argument. The work presented in this thesis aims to overcome the shortfalls inherent to both of these categories of tool in order to realise a software suite to support both the process of opinion gathering, and analysis of the resulting data. This is achieved through the implementation of computational models of argument from the research area of argumentation, with special consideration as to how these models can be used in implemented systems in a manner that allows laypersons to interact with them effectively. A particular model of argument which supports the process of practical reasoning is implemented in a web-based computer system, thus allowing for the collection of structured arguments which are later analysed according to formal models of argument visualisation and evaluation. The theories underlying the system are extended in order to allow for added expressivity, thus providing a mechanism for more life-like argument within a system which supports comprehensive computational analysis. Ultimately, the contributions of this thesis are a functional system to support an important part of the democratic process, and an investigation into how the underlying theories can be built upon and extended in order to promote expressive argumentation.

A Model United Nations School Conference is a brief role-play simulation, during which senior high school students take on the roles of delegates in various UN Committees. This thesis presents the findings from a qualitative longitudinal research study which followed 26 MUN senior high school delegates, in Athens, Greece, during their preparation and actual participation in three consecutive MUN conferences, from December 20 I 1 to March 2013. The research explored and exposed the MUN participants' perspectives on global citizenship in terms of knowledge, values , attitudes and skills the students saw themselves as developing, in light of their prolonged engagement in MUN. A range of data collection techniques were used, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews where the photo-elicitation technique was employed. The research in this thesis suggests that the senior high school students who participated in MUN were able to identify global citizenship as a potential citizen status, which entailed the acquisition of global knowledge, development of a sense of moral concern about and responsibility for addressing global issues, and a commitment to take collective action for a sustainable future. It also demonstrated that students had varying conceptions of global citizenship , mostly depending on the length of their engagement in MUN. The students who participated in all three MUN conferences related their experience to their development as global citizens, in terms of preparation for active citizenship in the future and a stimulus' for changing their own attitudes and perspectives in this regard. Preparation for and participation in this role play simulation seemed to have provided an ideal opportunity for the students to develop independent research and critical thinking skills, as well as public speaking, team working and problem-solving in an engaging, active learning, out-of-school environment.

The cultural policies of New Labour, devised by the first British government department of "culture", the DCMS, have been noted for their conceptual inconsistencies and unsupportable claims, yet the rationales behind them have never been adequately explained. This thesis argues that, when seen from an historical perspective, the intentions of the Secretary of State, Chris Smith, and the DCMS in fact followed a consistent logic by which cultural policy was re-conceptualised to take DCMS into the heart of government where social and economic concerns dominated. Building on the principle of cross-government policy and the "pillars" of excellence, access, education, and the creative economy, DCSM claimed a foundational role for culture in propagating the roots of economic growth formed around theories of social capital. In doing so, it shifted the traditional balance between the public and private realms, compromised traditions of laissez-faire, instituted new mechanisms of governance, and marginalised the arts. The thesis concludes that Chris Smith and the DCMS sought power by arguing a role for culture in social and economic policy initiatives; an ambition that could not be achieved with policies for culture in its traditional meaning. The conceptual incoherence that resulted was ignored as insignificant to its purposes.

This thesis explores the relationship between state funding and the organisational characteristics of third sector organisations (TSOs). It presents a cross-sectional exploratory data analysis conducted using data from charities’ accounts and annual returns. The thesis contributes to a longstanding debate about the impact of state funding on TSOs’ independence and the role of the third sector within the welfare mix. The findings make an original contribution to this debate by opening up a new stream of quantitative evidence, to supplement the largely qualitative evidence base that already exists. This makes it possible to explore how changes at the organisational level have played out across the sector as a whole. In particular, it explores the links between state funding and TSOs' voluntary characteristics, financial health, and administrative spending. The findings suggest a mixed picture. Various associations were found in the data, though there were also numerous negative results where no link was found. Those associations that were uncovered were generally quite small. As such there is little evidence overall to suggest that state income is acting as a major driving force for organisational change within the third sector.