This thesis considers the impact of Europeanisation upon local government in the West of Scotland through analysing firstly, the response of Strathclyde Regional Council to Europeanising influences and the policies which SRC subsequently pursued to respond to these developments. The impact of European policies as a form of multi-level governance is also evaluated through research into the role of local government within two institutions established in Strathclyde to deal with aspects of European policy :- Strathclyde European Partnership and the Ouverture programme. Lastly, the impact of local government reorganisation upon SRC's successor unitary authorities to engage with European policy is considered. The research findings illustrate that the process of Europeanisation has developed through a number of cyclical stages which has resulted in the development of changing and varying response from SNAs to European policy developments. The initial engagement of SRC with European Institutions occurred at an early stage as the Council attempted to discover new sources of finance. The pro-active stance of the Council resulted in financial benefits for Strathclyde but also an increasing engagement within SRC with European policy as the Council responded to the emerging Single European Market. This engagement also led SRC to attempt to utilise a variety of means to influence European policy. The research suggests that while local government was able to influence the European policy process this tended to occur where European Commission and / or member-state(s) interests overlapped with those of local government. While multi-level governance exists in Western Scotland, the key partners remain the European Commission and the member state.

Sociological accounts of political activism in African Caribbean and Asian communities in Britain have largely overlooked the role of black women as agents and have contributed toward an image of passivity, apathy and exclusion. This thesis examines the black women's organisations which have emerged since the early 1970s. Drawing on unpublished materials from over 30 organisations, participant observation at conferences and meetings and semi-structured interviews with 25 women activists. the thesis provides evidence that black women have been highly politically active despite immense barriers, both internal and external to their communities. This thesis explores the relevance of theoretical insights on identity formation, diversity and difference to black women's organising. I argue that black women's organisations have used a variety of strategies to manage the tension between the desire for a nuanced and differentiated notion of black womanhood and the need for political unity. In so arguing, I explore recent attacks on the term 'black', and identify a number of strengths in its continuing usage as a political and cultural definition. I also explore the extent to which increasing social stratification within black communities has the potential to undermine this unity and to create incompatible personal and organisational goals. Finally, I examine coalition building between black women and black men, white women and the labour movement. I identify a number of barriers to effective partnership but argue that there are a range of recent developments which may open up the possibility of building coalitions for social transformation. In conclusion, I argue that black women have formed independent organisations on the basis of a broad-based and visionary politics of transformation which has a number of unifying elements. These factors form the basis of a strategic unity which they have forged across differences of ethnicity, religion, nationality, class and sexuality.

This thesis examines the citizen-state relationship in the context of the modernisation of public services as effected by New Public Management (NPM). It explores the extent of the impact of one element of NPM - the shift towards representing service users as consumers or customers - within children’s services in Germany and England. Two qualitative case studies, one of a German and one of an English children’s social service, were conducted. The studies examined conceptions of citizenship in relation to parents who were users of these services by analysing national and local policy documents, local organisational procedures and by conducting semi-structured interviews with managers and social workers, partly based on the use of vignettes. These studies found that in children’s services, the impact of NPM is mainly at the organisational level with regard to elements of NPM other than consumerism. As far as consumerism is concerned, the studies demonstrated that this element of NPM is not central to an understanding of contemporary state-citizen relationships in this field and that the consumerist version of citizenship has had little impact. Rather than being a singular concept, citizenship was revealed as being open to a number of interpretations and formulations. In each country five different conceptions of citizenship were identified. These were ideal-type conceptions that served as discursive resources on which politicians, managers and social workers drew in different combinations, depending on the specific situation and wider context. Although there has been research on the impact of NPM on children’s services, there has previously been little consideration of its consumerist agenda, especially with regard to conceptions of citizenship that come into play in relation to parents as service users, as representations of state-citizen relationships in this field. The conceptions of citizenship that have the most impact on parents as service users derive from different understandings of the family and parenthood in the German and English contexts. Parenthood in Germany is a legal status that includes both the responsibility for the safe upbringing of one’s children and the right to receive support from social services. Parents are perceived by social workers as being the holders of these responsibilities and rights. In contrast, parenthood in England is an identity. In their contact with social services, English parents are perceived solely as their children’s carers, to the extent that they are referred to and addressed directly as ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ by social workers. The thesis concludes that the findings demonstrate that policy initiatives, organisational structures and social work practice impacting on state-citizen relationships are shaped by the wider historical and political context from which they emerge. Accordingly, rather than emerging from consumerism as a dominant paradigm, conceptions of citizenship vary; they are complex, competing and contested conceptions and they combine in a variety of different ways.

In recent years the EU’s strategy towards promoting human rights in Russia has been the focus of considerable internal and external attention, much of it critical. Despite longstanding programmes for funding human rights projects in Russia and the launch of biannual EU-Russia human rights consultations in 2005, the subject of human rights remains contentious within EU-Russia relations. One striking aspect of the EU’s policy towards Russia is its focus on issues such as prison reform, freedom of speech and prevention of torture which can broadly be characterized as civil and political rights issues. The purpose of this thesis is to explore an area of human rights theory and practice which tends to receive far less attention, namely economic and social rights issues such as the right to housing, health, access to social security and workers’ rights. Utilising data gathered from interviews with EU and Member State officials and Russian NGOs and a discourse analysis of EU policy documents on human rights, the thesis examines how EU institutions, Member States and Russian civil society actors conceptualise the meaning and significance of economic and social rights in both a general and specifically Russian context. The study situates these understandings of economic and social rights and the State’s role in guaranteeing them in Russia in the historical context of the Soviet legacy of emphasizing such rights over civil and political rights. It also highlights enduring public expectations of what the State should provide and the policy of the various presidential administrations since 2005 of reasserting the State’s role in relation to the apparent realisation of economic and social rights through social service provision. It explores the differing approaches taken by human rights and more socially-oriented NGOs to engagement with various State structures and State-affiliated structures such as the regional human rights ombudsmen, and the privileged position Russian human rights NGOs appear to enjoy in terms of their relationship with the EU. The thesis argues that the EU’s closeness to this very specific type of civil society organisation and its apparent lack of internal and external consensus on the importance of economic and social rights issues hinders its ability to raise issues relating to these rights in its interactions with Russia. At the same time, the fact that economic and social rights continue to enjoy a relatively high degree of visibility and importance in Russia make cooperation on economic and social rights issues an area where more fruitful engagement on human rights could take place between the EU and Russia.

This thesis represents an attempt to make an original contribution to knowledge about transatlantic institutions and transatlantic governance. It investigates attempts in the 1990s to foster a 'new transatlantic dialogue' between the EU and the US, through three bilateral agreements: the Transatlantic Declaration (1990), the New Transatlantic Agenda (1995) and the Transatlantic Economic Partnership (1998). The thesis questions whether and to what extent the relationship has been institutionalised into a structure for transatlantic governance, and how the composition of transatlantic institutions impacts the way the transatlantic actors govern. Consideration is given to both 'who' governs in transatlantic relations and 'how', as evidence is sought to prove or disprove the claim that a decentralisation of decision-making powers has resulted in 'policy setting' and 'policy shaping' by lower level civil servants and non-state actors participating in transgovernmental and transnational institutions. Three policy sectors-the EU-US anti-trafficking in women campaigns, the EU-US Mutual Recognition Agreements and the EU-US banana dispute-serve as case studies for the transatlantic policy process.

The KPD was born out of the rich theoretical traditions of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). As disillusioned Lassalleans, Wilhelm Leibknecht and August Bebel chose Marxism as their theoretical guide to a Socialist outcome. As the political and economic climate in Germany changed the party grew and made parliamentary gains the nature of the SPD changed, much to the frustration of Rosa Luxemburg and the Left of the SPD. The final straw was, of course, the SPD’s voting for war credits in 1914. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how and why the political theory of German Marxism changed as it passed through its various phases, essentially how it progressed from a theory of revolution to becoming synonymous with the dogma and repression of Social Fascism. This thesis will argue that the theoreticians and leaders of the German communist movement were overwhelmed and unable to develop theory that reflected their unique circumstances. It was their own internal weakness and inability to lead that allowed the movement to be overtaken by the Bolsheviks. Lenin’s policy of Uniformity served to weaken the KPD leadership within the part. Each Comitern policy that flowed left the part weaker and further subordinated to the Soviet part. While not a single Comintern policy can be blamed for the KPD’s Social Fascist outcome, each played a role in weakening the German movement.

The thesis examines the response of The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the urbanisation of displacement, focusing on the period 1994 to 2009. It utilises a framework based on international organisations theory, arguing that, contrary to traditional approaches to the study of international organisations, change in policy and practice resulted primarily from pressures within UNHCR. The thesis utilises state-influence and principal-agent theories to understand why UNHCR responded in the ways it did, and explain how change was achieved. It draws on constructivist insight, and the role of leaders, research and evaluation units, and epistemic communities, using the concept of the 'three UNs' as a means of framing the different actors and pressures for change shaping UNHCR's work. The thesis is based on extensive primary documents produced primarily by UNHCR, as well as original interviews, providing new empirical data to further understanding of policymaking within UNHCR, and addressing an empirical gap on the existing literature on urban refugees. By mapping this data to the framework of 'pressure from within', 'pressure from above', and 'pressure from below', the thesis demonstrates the various actors involved in shaping change in policy and practice. It challenges attempts to characterise the 'three UNs' as separate categories, demonstrating their fluidity and frequent overlaps. The empirical analysis contributes to international organisations theory by demonstrating the important role of internal actors in eliciting change in policy and practice, identifying areas of international organisation theory in need of refinement and further exploration. Consideration is given to how positivist and post-positivist understandings can work together, and ways internal actors can shape the direction of their organisations, particularly leaders and research and evaluation units.

Youth participation has gained increased prominence within recent policies and is expected to serve a number of agendas and aims including the empowerment of young people, the creation of future active citizens, the prevention of anti-social behaviour and the integration of youth into society. When young people’s involvement in participatory activities is discussed, it is often done on the basis of its expected outcomes, and more rarely in terms of how young people themselves make sense of and use existing opportunities. This study addresses this issue by focusing on how young people conceptualise participation, how they represent their experience within particular projects and how such experience relates to participatory policies. Drawing from different contexts - Greece and the UK - this thesis presents examples of how engagement with similar processes of participation is mediated through the environments within which young people shape their everyday lives. The particular values and strategies that the participants associated with their involvement allowed for commonalities to emerge across contexts. Such approaches to participation are summarised in three profiles, namely the professionals, visionaries and adventurers. In this study, young people’s perceptions of themselves as participants are often in stark contrast with policy frameworks which construct young participants as active citizens in the making in both countries. Processes within the explored spaces for participation were dominated by policy priorities, while minimal space was allowed for a type of deliberation which enables young people to affect the contexts within which their lives unfold. While young people were expected by policies to populate spaces for participation, there were examples of the participants making efforts to reinterpret/contextualise the meaning of participation according to their lived experience, to maintain a critical distance from funding bodies and to enlarge their repertoires.

This thesis addresses the question of how and why the function of regional organisations varies in different areas of the world. It contributes with insights from the post-Soviet space. A theoretically informed empirical study examines how two former Soviet republics conceptualise the function of two regional organisations: the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Organisation for Democracy and Economic Development – GUAM (GUAM). The literature agrees that the two like other organisations in the post-Soviet space do not produce integration or other forms of regional governance. Nevertheless, the member states continue to actively participate in these organisations. The thesis inquires to which end the states continue their membership. The analytical perspective examines how the member states’ conceptualisations of an organisation’s function depend on the domestic political regimes. The thesis considers two members of the CIS and GUAM. One, Azerbaijan, has a hybrid regime with an authoritarian shape. The other, Ukraine, has a hybrid regime with stronger affinity towards democracy. It is argued that policy-makers conceptualise the function of a regional organisation according to the patterns of rule in their domestic political regimes. The ruling elite’s conceptualisation may diverge from the stated function of the organisation, if the stated function is not compatible with the domestic political regime.

Structure, organisation, an idea of esprit de corps, and hierarchy characterised the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Throughout the history of the Soviet Union only the Soviet Armed Forces had the potential to rival the CPSU in those qualities and were able to be an organised locus for potential opposition. A sense of professionalism was instilled in the Soviet Armed Forces, not only from those ‘Red Commanders’ of the Revolution and Civil War, but also from those junior, noncommissioned officers who were holdovers from the tsarist regime. The primary focus of this study is on the immediate post-Stalinist era while Nikita Khrushchev was First Secretary of the CPSU. Bridled by Stalin’s hold over strategic and armed forces policy, after his death, the Soviet Armed Forces became an institution that illustrated a strong sense of military professionalism, while at the same time serving the Soviet regime. With a focus on five case studies that occurred during the Khrushchev era 1953-1964, this thesis argues that the military attempted to remain apolitical throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Previous studies of Soviet civil-military relations have focused on the levels of cooperation or competition between the CPSU and the Soviet armed forces. This study argues however, that the ebb and flow of that relationship can be explained by the selection of personalities, or agents, by Khrushchev to posts of military command. Officers were promoted based on several factors. However, Khrushchev increasingly promoted officers to positions of command who he deemed were more personally loyal to him and were willing to put that loyalty above their duty to the Soviet armed forces. Khrushchev chose personal loyalty over an officer’s military professionalism and expertise when appointing them to posts at the Ministry of Defence, the Soviet General Staff, and to the command posts in the branches of the Soviet military and key military districts around the Soviet Union.