The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that the EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights is a promising way to improve the legitimacy of the supranational regime, provided that accession is organised in a well-considered and effective manner. My work tries to find, at least partial, resolution to the problem of the erosion of the EU authority, and is based on the underlying presumption that human rights substantially contribute to the successful functioning of the European polity. Understanding of the human rights environment in the EU is therefore crucial to find remedies to the lack of credibility in its exercise of power. For this reason the EU Human Rights Policy, in its internal realm, in particular the normative-judicial, monitoring, enforcement, and promotion components of the Policy, are examined in great detail. The identified flaws and insufficiencies, regarding both the design and implementation of the Policy in question, lend weight to the view that only a serious, comprehensive, and feasible plan for the reform of the Policy on human rights can provide an answer to the legitimacy problem at the supranational level of governance. But how is this objective best achieved? In this context, the proposal for the EU accession to the ECHR should be understood as a plausible means to rectify the shortcomings of the EU Human Rights Policy, and thus improve its image of the Union as a credible and powerful actor in European affairs. The proposal put forward in this work outlines principles which should govern the human rights reform of the EU and how they should be translated into practical terms. My research is therefore an invitation to a discussion about the role of the European Union, its orientation towards human rights, and its aspirations for the future.

This thesis looks at the critical issue of electoral system reform relating to elections to the European Parliament. Directly elected since 1979, elections to the European Parliament operate on the basis of highly diverging national systems in the 27 member states, despite a mandate for electoral reform which should lead to a uniform system since the 1950s. The analysis of this thesis centres around the matters of legitimacy and the perceived democratic deficit, as surprisingly, there has been little or no discussion to date on the way the electoral system of elections to the European Parliament promotes or hinders the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. The European Union is conceptualised by the means of three different models, the EU as an international organisation, a supranational technocratic regime, and as a federal order. This thesis addresses the democratic deficit point by constructing an ideal type electoral system where it is currently lacking - in relation to a federal order. This research makes an interdisciplinary contribution by combining a value free positive political science on the one side and a normative legal approach on the other. Whereas a good deal of legal analysis is either explicitly based on a federal model of the European Union or implicitly premised on such an approach, detailed analysis of the implications of federalism for EU level democracy is much less common. Next to historic developments in the field of electoral reform in the European Parliament, the recent Duff Reports as well as the debates around them are analysed. The thesis concludes that an electoral system needs to generate competition between European parties on European matters and presents core elements of a draft European Elections Act, a new uniform voting system for elections to the European Parliament.

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Emissions trading programmes have grown in number and scope over the last forty years, and in the last decade they have become a centrepiece of global climate change policy. Emissions trading can in principle offer policy makers a flexible mechanism to reduce harmful emissions - polluters can choose their own emissions abatement strategy, and the trading mechanism can reduce overall abatement cost by flexibly redistributing emissions permits to those polluters that find abatement costliest. In the context of climate policy, though, it is the potential to stimulate innovation and technological change that is most alluring. Without transforming production, the quantity of emissions abatement will be insufficient; without technological change, the cost will be prohibitive. Emissions trading programmes are clearly not the only policy that affect technological change, but the extent to which these programmes encourage low-carbon technological change is perhaps still the most important criterion on which to judge their success or failure. Advances in monitoring, greater data availability, and improvements in statistical and computational techniques have only recently made it possible to systematically study the impacts of emissions trading on a large scale. In recent years, researchers have studied the impact of emissions trading programmes on company profitability, on employment, and on capital investment. This thesis aims to advance this research programme by contributing a systematic analysis of how emissions trading affects technological change. This thesis comprises four essays. The first essay examines past emissions trading programmes and the extent to which these experiences provide guidance on the ability of emissions trading programmes to affect low-carbon technological change in the future. The second essay investigates the degree to which economic theory can help constrain the range of expected impacts in a world of at east moderate complexity. The third and fourth essays present the first comprehensive empirical assessment of how the world's largest emissions trading programme, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, has affected technological change, measured in terms of carbon dioxide intensity output, research and development, and patenting.

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The thesis considers ethno-territorial conflicts in which there are two conflict groups with corresponding ‘reference states’. ‘Reference states’ are internationally recognised states with co-nationals in the aforementioned disputed territory. The literature on ethno-national conflict regulation largely neglects the potential constructive role of ‘reference states’. In particular, Arend Lijphart’s work on consociational democracy focuses on elite accommodation within the conflict zone, but views other agents as ‘external’ to the dispute. Unlike most of the current ethnic conflict literature, the thesis will use a theoretical approach to derive the features of a settlement, not distil traits from purely empirical research. An informal model is employed assuming that that a military option is not open to reference states and that disengagement from the co-nationals is costly. The actions of the reference state are simplified to four options: remaining at the same level of conflict, escalating the dispute, attempting cooperation, or disengaging from the dispute. The features derived for the resulting transnational consociation settlement are: durable reference state/conational links, bipartisanship within reference states, intergovernmentalism between reference states, and consociational democracy internal to the disputed territory. The thesis then focuses on the post-conflict power-sharing settlements in Bosnia- Hercegovina and in Northern Ireland to investigate the features of transnational consociation in these two cases. The settlement after the Belfast Agreement exhibits the traits of transnational consociation, with a strong intergovernmental Dublin- London axis acting as reliable long-term guarantors of the settlement. By contrast, there is little intergovernmentalism between Zagreb and Belgrade regarding the settlement in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The post-conflict institutions are held together by international agencies that do not have as durable a link to the conflict zone as the ‘reference states’. Therefore, a durable transnational consociation with the ‘reference states’ as guarantors is more likely in Northern Ireland than in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

After the defeat of France in 1940, the surviving service personnel of several occupied European nations were evacuated to Britain where they reconstituted air and army units under the military control of the Allied High Command. Politically, however, they were the responsibility of their own national governments which were also exiled as Germany consolidated its gains in Europe, and this diversity of interests often produced sharp conflict. This study examines the political, military and social experiences of one such unit. The central thesis is that the Czechoslovak Air Force in Britain was first and last a political tool to be used by the governments of both nations; first by the British as a means of international propaganda; then by the Czechoslovaks as a means of gaining prestige and influence while in exile; and last by the British again as a foil to the Soviets. To test the thesis, the study is divided into three parts, each of which is sub-divided into a series of themes through which the emigre experience can be explored. Part One examines the escape of the air personnel from France; the serious effect their arrival had upon the political relationship between the British Government and the Czechoslovak National Committee headed by Edvard Benes; the complex development of a military agreement between the two parties; the formation of the first two fighter squadrons; and the internal dissent and rebellion within the air contingent itself. Part Two examines the social and practical aspects of emigre life, concentrating on the provisions made by the Air Ministry and the British Council for the training and welfare of the men. Also examined are the two primary problems which faced the Czechoslovak Air Force throughout the war: the lack of recruitment and the quest for fully independent status. Part Three is concerned with the Czechoslovaks' attempts to break free from British control and return to their homeland; first as combatants in the Slovak Uprising of 1944, and second as heroes returning to liberated Czechoslovakia in 1945. On both occasions, the British raised obstacles, and the section concludes with an examination of the British efforts to use the air contingent to gain a political foothold in the post-war Soviet sphere of influence. Overall, the study demonstrates that the British political and military establishments maintained an attitude of distrust and sometimes contempt for the Czechoslovaks. Political friction often affected the military context, and examples of hypocrisy and blatant deceit illustrate that the public and private views of this small Allied force were sharply at variance. The study also demonstrates that the existing interpretations of the recognition of the Provisional Czechoslovak Government in 1940 are flawed in that they do not sufficiently take into account the military pressures of the time.

This work is a study of the Catalan nationalist experience under the Franco regime, (1939-1975). Its aim is to account for the transformed status of Catalan nationalism at the dictatorship's end and explain the emergence of Convergencia i Unio (Convergence and Union), which since 1980 has become the political embodiment of Catalanism. Prior to 1939, with the achievement of the Catalan autonomy statute, Catalan nationalism had seemed to be embarked on a programme of the Catalanisation of society. In 1939, with Francoist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), it appeared certain that the Catalan nationalist movement would be crushed. Yet, this did not happen and it emerged in 1975 with more widespread social acceptance than ever before. This study is principally concerned with the relations between Catholicism and Catalanism. The Catalan Church had been involved in the Catalanist movement in the late nineteenth century but it became marginalised by the time of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-39). In 1936 the Catalan Church underwent a ferocious assault that included the execution of over 2,000 priests and members of religious orders. The victory of Spanish Nationalism in 1939 not only restored the Church, but gave it unprecedented power and influence over Catalan society. This new position in Catalan society gave the Church an opportunity to re-create Catalanism. This study argues that, for most of the Franco regime, Catalanism underwent a Catholicisation. Until the mid-1960s the only legally permitted Catalan-language publications were religious. Furthermore, Catholicism was greatly influential in civil society and in the re-formulation of Catalan culture. The origins of Convergencia i Unio are also to be found in the activities of the Catalan-nationalist business class. As will be seen, this sector was also transformed by the Franco dictatorship. No study in English or Catalan has examined Catalonia 1939-75 that has explained the emergence of the Catholic-influenced Convergencia i Unio or the changes that have taken place in Catalan culture and Catalanist ideology during this period.

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No description available.