The thesis set out to investigate the politics of Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs) engaging the Government in Tanzania. The aim of the study is to get an understanding of the context, ways and means in which NGOs in Tanzania engage (with) the government to influence its policies and decisions. The thesis also analyses the implications and role of NGOs in bringing about social change in Tanzania. The thesis shows the relationship of subordination that is constituted through the operation of NGOs within the social, economic and political institutions of Tanzanian civil society. It offers an insight into the neo-liberal views that informs the distribution of aid to developing nations, and the affect this has had on state-civil society relationships within the Tanzanian nation state. Theoretically, the thesis uses Gramsci’s notion of hegemony which applies both at national level and international level. The counter hegemony which Gramsci expounds in terms of war of manoeuvre and war of position has been highlighted in relations to works of NGOs and civil society development. The thesis examines the engagement of Tanzanian NGOs to influence the process of NGO Policy and Act making; and monitoring the poverty strategies through the Campaign Against Poverty-Tanzania (GCAP-T). The thesis posit the future of NGOs on how they could side and work with people to create a society based on people needs, vision and aspiration.

This thesis examines the rise in bilateral aid disbursements over multilateral aid between 2000 and 2010. It would be simply stated that such a trend would be due donor nations focusing on strategic self-interests. I argue, using a combination of principal-agent theory, foreign policy analysis and the effect of institutions, that new political actors in donor nations found a window of opportunity to alter the level foreign disbursements and in several cases, increase the overall level of foreign aid. Bilateral aid eventually rose due to both the worldviews of these new decision makers as well as how their policies were influenced and shaped by local institutions. In this thesis, I focus on the US, the UK and Japan as donor nations and the World Bank’s International Development Association. In the US case, political and cultural institutions along with the worldviews Bush Administration officials shifted US bilateral aid upwards. In the UK, local institutions along with the perspectives of New Labour officials result in higher British bilateral aid disbursements. Japan’s political actors initially focused on the country’s economy but later actors, with their worldviews and shaped by historical norms, increased Japan’s bilateral aid vis-à-vis its contributions to IOs.

This thesis seeks to develop a conception of the British Political Tradition as an idea of democracy and apply it to explain the constitutional development of the House of Lords. The British Parliament is one of the oldest Parliaments in the world and is characterised both by the stability of its governing institutions and its capacity to absorb change. Academic literature of the British Political Tradition offers a plethora of arguments aimed at explaining which idea(s) have underpinned governing institutions and sustained their longevity in the constitution. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate how the stability of Britain’s governing institutions and its history of strong authoritative government emanate from a dominant though contested idea of democracy founded upon a limited liberal idea of representation and a conservative idea of responsibility. The House of Lords is examined from the 1688 Glorious Revolution through to the modern day House of Lords Reform process (2012). The aim is to demonstrate through empirical practice how the British Political Tradition has been the dominant idea shaping the development the constitution and defining the powers of the Crown and the Houses of Lords and Commons.

Using the various moments of ideological change in the law and development movement as an analytical framework, this thesis examines the indifference to corruption in international development in the period preceding the 1990s, and the attributes, challenges and prospects of the current global anticorruption agenda in sub- Saharan Africa. With Nigeria as a case study, the research finds that the approach to corruption has been overwhelmingly influenced by the respective predominant global development ideology during each moment, whilst ignoring local experiences and efforts to address corruption. Hence, despite the heightened attention to the issue in the last couple of decades, anticorruption reforms have failed to enhance pre-existing efforts to deal with corruption in countries. The thesis concludes that the currently evolving paradigm of a rights-based approach to anticorruption demonstrates a promising response to some of the shortcomings of this approach to corruption over the years. However, the nature of its conception and proposals for its implementation reaffirms the entrenched nature of these shortcomings and their inherence in the overall strategy of law and development reforms in countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

What are the impediments to and stimuluses for transitions from violent civil conflict to peace? This dissertation investigates factors that influence civil conflict resolution. There are four key findings. First, democratisation reforms are likely to prompt peace talks with rebel groups. There are costs associated with recognising internal armed challengers as legitimate bargaining partners that deter governments from initiating peace talks. Democratic reform periods provide a window of opportunity for peace negotiations because factors that make institutional reform more likely also encourage peaceful resolution of conflict. The emergence of democratic institu- tions changes the state preferences by increasing the influence of the median citizen vis-`a-vis the authoritarian elite. Second, fragmented conflicts are harder to resolve because they are likely to be over a multidimensional issue space. Multiparty decision making that involves two or more salient issues are likely to have cyclic collective preferences, which render armed conflict a viable instrument for pursuing political goals. Third, involvement of the United Nations (UN) mitigates the adverse impact of conflict fragmentation over peaceful resolution. UN involvement changes the incentives and opportunities of actors to founder a possible bargain. The UN fa- cilitates a path-dependent peace process and brings institutions that induce an equilibrium by overcoming the problems that arise due to cyclic collective preferences. Finally, the military manpower supply system of a state influences its civil conflict processes. How a state recruits rank-and-file members of the military forces is a central institutional arrangement that influences the incentives and opportunities of relevant actors. Compared to all-volunteer forces (AVFs), conscription is an impediment to conflict termination because the cost some individuals incur by being subject to conscription decreases the opportunity cost of rebellion, increases grievances and insulates influential sections of the population from the cost of conflict. As a result, conflict termination becomes less likely.

Given that autocrats can be challenged by insiders of their ruling coalition and/or by the citizens of the country they govern, what control strategies can they use in order to minimize the potential for conflict and violence? The current literature on authoritarian politics focuses on the use of co-optation and repression to explain how autocrats mitigate the hazardous conditions under which they rule. The former induce compliance and co-operation by providing social and material benefits, while the latter forces with the threat of physical punishment. While both control strategies received significant attention in the literature, they have been mostly examined separately from each other. Against this background, this thesis contributes to the literature on authoritarian politics and state repression by focusing on the connection between co-optation and repression, on how autocrats use these two control strategies to prevent challenges and how the use of one control strategy impacts the use of the other. This dissertation builds on some of the theoretical and empirical tensions in the current literature and brings several theoretical and empirical contributions to our understanding of authoritarian politics. Theoretically, this dissertation contributes to the literature by offering an actor-oriented theoretical explanation of autocratic repression against social campaigns, an alternative theoretical mechanism on the coup reducing effect of institutions and a transnational theoretical account of autocratic repression. The empirical contribution of this dissertation rests in showing that accounting for actors’ characteristics improves models’ predictive power, that we know very little about the factors that explain coups’ success in autocracies and demonstrates there is a transnational interdependence in autocratic repression. The findings of this dissertation have implications for dissidents mobilizing against autocrats, for professionals and policy makers interested in political (in)stability, and for organizations attempting to improve human rights practices worldwide.

When votes are cast in an election and a winner is declared, people can accept the result, they can challenge it or they can turn against democracy. This thesis seeks to understand why in some cases elections are accepted while in others they are challenged and their outcomes rejected. Conventional wisdom holds that when elections are held according to international standards, acceptance will follow. I challenge this notion. As experience shows, sometimes even elections classified as free and fair evoke protests, while less technically perfect elections are sometimes widely accepted. So, when, where and under what conditions are election results accepted? And what can we do to increase their credibility? There are many aspects than can influence this but I focus on three main areas that deserve especial attention. A first research phase relies on Qualitative Comparative Analysis. It shows that holding free and fair elections is necessary but not sufficient for the acceptance of election results. Two other factors are needed: a) political parties need to support electoral institutions and b) election results need to be transparent. A second research phase uses multilevel regression to explore the first of these factors in greater detail. Findings show that including political parties in the appointment of the members of the electoral management body has a positive impact on election credibility. A third research phase consisting of a small N structured comparison focuses on election results. It shows that having visible and inferable results contributes to preventing and mitigating post-election protests. In short, an election not only has to be “free and fair” but also needs the legitimacy and credibility obtained when political parties support the main election institution and when results are clear, widely available and completely beyond doubt.

Using primary material, much of which has been overlooked up to now, this thesis argues that the Iskra newspaper and its organisational appendages were conceived by Lenin and his closest collaborators in a pragmatic attempt to strike a balance between the theoretically authoritative and revolutionary, yet inactive Osvobozhdenie Truda and the more active, but reformist and theoretically unclear Rabochee Delo grouping. As such, Iskra does not appear to have been the product of a detailed plan conceived in Siberian exile, as is often thought. Nor did it represent the extreme left wing of the Russian social-democratic movement of the time, a place occupied by Osvobozhdenie Truda. Iskra and its supporting organisations formed a faction of a broader party, the RSDLP, whose institutions it aimed to rebuild and to which it aimed to give ideological leadership broadly in sympathy with the basic views of Plekhanov, though differing with him in terms of tactics. Starting from a position of weakness both in the emigration and inside Russia, Lenin at first sought an alliance with the 'Economists' of Rabochee Delo rather than a policy of open factional struggle, which was at this stage (1900-01) advocated by Plekhanov. Only when serious vacillations in the Rabochee Delo line started to emerge in the spring of 1901 did Lenin break with this tactic, in despair of any useful co-operation with the politically unstable followers of the economist journal. From the end of 1901an open struggle for the support of the RSDLP local committees inside Russia began, in which the Economists were unable to martial support, whilst Iskra, owing to its network of full-time 'agents' and their assistance, eventually won a dominant position. On this basis, plans were laid for a Second Congress of the RSDLP that reveal a distinctly democratic and pluralist conception of party organisation on the part of Lenin, A conception which does not square with his dictatorial reputation. Accordingly, this thesis argues that the Second Congress was a credible, if not perfect representation of rank and file opinion within the RSDLP at the time and that the split within the Iskra faction that took place at this meeting owes more to pre-existing tensions with the Russian Iskra organisation rather than any unreasonable behaviour on the part of Lenin. Specifically, individual agents showed signs of weariness in relation to Lenin‘s policy of factional struggle prior to the Second Congress. For this reason they sought, but failed to find compromise at the congress with the Bund and the economists, and as such provoked a split with the supporters of Lenin within Iskra. As such, it was actually an inopportune search for compromise which appears to have provoked the split within Iskra, rather than dictatorial or intolerant practices on the part of Lenin. The supporters of Martov assumed that the Bund and the supporters of economism could be appeased, but this was not in fact the case.

This thesis analyses the impact of marginalised groups using coercive mechanisms as a strategy for deliberative inclusion. It engages the literature on deliberative democratic theory that makes a case for using non-communicative mechanisms to gain entry to exclusionary deliberative forums. This research explores its limits by examining an “extreme” case where marginalised political agents employed threats of force – the apparent antithesis of deliberation – in an attempt to secure inclusion. The case is that of a military mutiny in the Philippines in 2003, where a group of junior officers took over the central business district to publicly air their demands for reform to the military. This strategy opened up spaces for junior officers who did not have access to channels for grievance articulation to persuade government officials to launch reform programs that addressed their concerns in exchange for their peaceful return to barracks. The case highlights that the manner of gaining access to deliberative forums has an effect on the dynamic of the deliberative process. It is argued that while coercive mechanisms can be constructive in opening deliberative spaces, they also risk limiting the deliberative process and outcomes that secured through coercion.

The research question that this thesis seeks to address is how contemporary liberal states, that are characterised by cultural diversity, should respond to cultural heritage. The argument of this thesis is that liberal states are fundamentally obliged to ensure that individuals have the greatest freedom possible to engage with their own cultural heritages. Cultural heritage and practices play a crucial role in the construction and maintenance of individual and group identity, and thus a response of non-intervention in cultural heritage provides the best means of respecting this significance. Although a government may not be sympathetic to certain ideas and ways of living, this does not give it a right to destroy or damage any cultural artifacts and objects, unless these objects or practices actively incite violence or harm to others, because doing so would necessarily violate the liberal proviso to abstain for interfering in conceptions of the good. Liberal states do not have an obligation to preserve a national heritage, nor do they have a duty to preserve a diversity of (minority) cultural heritages. However, contemporary nation-states – liberal and otherwise – will necessarily possess certain attributes of cultural heritage, such as a national flag, language, symbols etc., that are likely to reflect the experiences of a dominant, national group. While this acknowledgement entails a diversion from ideal liberal theory and poses problems for the cultural neutrality of the liberal state, I argue that it is in the liberal states’ interest to maintain some objects of cultural heritage as these have instrumental value in fostering an understanding of the shared political community and respect for liberal values. However, liberal governments are obliged to ensure that existing public heritage does not unduly discriminate against minority cultural groups; thus sustaining political neutrality. The liberal response that I have outlined thus attempts to sustain liberal values whilst remaining mindful of contextual issues such as power relations between and within groups, and the necessary constraints of contemporary statehood.