This thesis focuses on US-Italian relations and cultural diplomacy in the early Cold War. Particular attention is devoted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization of left-wing anti-Communist intellectuals established in 1950 and financed by the CIA. Instead of looking at this organization from a transnational perspective, this work has as the starting point the local dimension of it. In particular, the Italian branch of the CCF: Associazione Italiana per la Libertà della Cultura and the journal Tempo Presente. Differently from other European contexts, the Italian cultural experiment failed in promoting a transnational anti-Communist culture due to domestic factors such as: the political establishment, non-governmental groups with a socialising function and the political culture of the country. This is a contribution taking further the investigation of the Cold War by emphasizing the importance of going “local” for a thorough understanding of transnational relations.

This thesis argues that the limited application of postcolonial perspectives in European Union (EU) enlargement studies, and especially in studying power relations, has led to a failure to properly identify and examine the extent to which the EU produces unequal power relations. Current studies of enlargement are largely based on mainstream positivist theories and thus overlook the importance of a post-positivist, critical and interpretivist research framework in understanding the EU and power relations. In contrast, by adopting postcolonialist perspectives and applying them to the case of the Romanian enlargement, the thesis presents a critical discourse analysis of the EU enlargement monitoring reports and interviews with officials of the EU and Romanian negotiating teams in order to demonstrate the extent to which the EU produces unequal power relations through instances of subalternity, orientalism and mimicry that have so far been identified and discussed by postcolonial scholars. Each of these three perspectives has so far been obscured to a large extent from the enlargement literature, as a result of the limited application of postcolonial approaches in EU studies. This thesis aims therefore to address this gap and advance the postcolonial research on the EU and unequal power relations.

The thesis examines the influence of external advice on domestic reform in a post-communist state following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As an example of this, the research analyses the role of international assistance in the reform of public administration in Ukraine in the period 2000 to 2012, with particular reference to the relationship between the national and sub-national tiers of government. Two empirical case studies, on fiscal decentralisation and regional policy, are employed to provide an in-depth analysis of reform programmes introduced by the Government of Ukraine and an examination of the contribution of external advice to each. The thesis draws on concepts from Institutional Theory, Comparative Politics and Development Studies to explain the interaction between external donors and the domestic recipients of their advice. It is argued that international assistance to public administrative reform in Ukraine is a form of normative institutional isomorphism involving the deliberate transfer of models of state institutions from donor countries where they are regarded as good practice. The findings of the case studies indicate the narrow circumstances in which this transaction may lead to short-term progress with reform, through the establishment of a policy transfer network linking domestic and external actors. However the case studies also demonstrate that in the longer term both these attempts at reform, and the international advice which contributed to them, failed to achieve a sustained outcome. Employing the political economy analysis of development aid the thesis argues that the international community bears a large share of the responsibility for this owing to the technocratic nature of assistance programmes and their limited engagement with the political realities of reform processes.

This thesis challenges the idea that the EU anti-corruption policies’ main rationale is to root out corruption. The research hypothesis is that EU anti-corruption policies are used not so much to control corruption as to control and diminish the powers of nation states and to redesign the classic power balance in these democratic states. The actors who end up being empowered are supranational, international and non-governmental entities: the EU/ the European Commission, International Organizations and domestic civil society with a pro-EU agenda. The domestic decision-makers are structurally disempowered by the anti-corruption policies. The lessons derived from the specific experience of Romania and Bulgaria have a general value because their model inspired the recent decision of the European Commission to introduce the same anti-corruption policies across the EU.

This dissertation applies corpus linguistics techniques to reveal patterns in the acquisition and use of personal pronouns. Setting out from Brown and Gilman's mould-breaking study of "the pronouns of power and solidarity", it argues that their focus on the metaphorical use of plurality in the second-person cannot account for the numerous ways in which canonical pronoun usage is routinely violated by both children and adults. Nonetheless, the concepts of power and solidarity remain productive ones and can help to account for the patterns revealed here. The first part of the thesis uses data from the CHILDES database to argue that 1st / 2nd person 'reversals' are a common feature of language acquisition which is not unique to children on the autistic spectrum. It also examines pronoun substitutions in the 'caregiver speech' of the mothers and finds a number of differences between the groups studied. The second part uses original purpose-built corpora of English and Dutch party election broadcasts to explore how power and solidarity are constantly re-negotiated in political discourse. The patterns of pronoun use are discussed in their social context, and it is found that amateur as well as professional politicians are adept at exploiting the pragmatic versatility of pronouns.

This case study examines the role of the political party United Russia in the rise of ‘dominant-power politics’, also termed ‘electoral authoritarianism’, that characterises the Putin period (2000-2008). Comparative literature identifies parties as important independent or explanatory variables in a range of regime outcomes, including the successful consolidation of democracy, but also in the establishment and consolidation of authoritarian rule. The impressive rise of United Russia in the Russian political system from late 2001 onwards, together with its co-occurrence with the growing strength of the Putin regime, suggests that the party was a factor in the outcome of the latter. This research first develops a theoretical framework to understand the role of parties in modern political systems and then applies this framework to explore the Russian case. Although a component of power in the Putin period, this research argues that the origins of United Russia in the ‘party of power’ phenomenon limit its value as an explanatory variable. Rather than a principal power in the emerging post-Yeltsin political order, United Russia is an agent of a powerful civilian executive, which remains beyond the control of any party. In this sense, the rise of United Russia in the Putin period is misleading. United Russia is an example of ‘virtual’ party hegemony; a reflection of the intentions and ability of non-party power-holders to project their power onto party-agents. This research contributes to existing literature on party politics in the post-Soviet space and Russian politics in the Putin period. In comparative terms, this study contributes to existing notions of party dominance and emerging literature on divergent regime trajectories in the post-Cold War period.

This study explores the links between women's work, gendered labour markets, and women's institutional political participation in 25 European countries. Although employment is a standard predictor of (women's) political participation, previous research has treated women's work mostly as a characteristic of individual women, disregarding the broader structural inequalities that are behind women's work patterns. Using data from the fifth round of the European Social Survey, in combination with detailed information on work-family policies and labour market structures of the countries included, this study aims to contribute to a more contextual understanding of the effects of employment. My research explores whether the effects of employment status, working hours, and job level are shaped by the context, in which they are embedded. Although labour markets and political systems vary considerably across countries and existing research has provided inconsistent findings, the context-dependency of employment effects has not yet been systematically assessed. Moreover, little research has focussed on direct effects of the labour market; therefore, this study explores the effects of two labour market characteristics that have a particularly gendered meaning: work-family policies and gendered structures in the labour market. The findings indicate that the effects of employment are more complex than often assumed in the literature. Employment can not only affect, for example, mothers and non-mothers differently, but there is also an indication that some employment effects are shaped by the labour market context. Contextual characteristics also affect women's political participation directly by redistributing resources and shaping women's experiences in the work-place. Overall, the findings show that the political effects of work should be understood within the wider context.

The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the implementation of the European Union's Regional Policy (EURP) in Greece and to clarify and explain the contextual factors that resulted in the ineffective deployment of the policy. It adopts a comparative political economy approach and employs largely qualitative methods in order to collect empirical material. It develops a conceptual framework based on the theories of state and administrative capacity on the one hand and Europeanisation and implementation on the other. Empirically, the aim is to substantiate the difficulties that the country faced in the implementation of the EURP. Moreover, the aim is to explain these difficulties with reference to the patterns of interaction developed within the institutional network that was created as part of the EURP as well as the domestic authorities that supported the implementation of the policy. The Greek state has suffered from a series of weaknesses that impacted upon its internal administrative as well as its interactive capacities in the field of developmental policy. The recent Europeanisation of the country's polity has partially addressed these issues. Nonetheless, the fieldwork research on the implementation of the EURP reveals that these difficulties persisted and impacted upon the patterns of the implementation of the policy. Significant delays, implementation difficulties and reorganisations of the programmes were the main characteristics of all the programming periods. Furthermore, the introduction of the institutional network that would manage and monitor the implementation of the programmes has become embedded in the previously existing patterns of state-society interaction. The thesis has two main original contributions. The first consists of the empirical findings and particularly the detailed analysis of the patterns of implementation of the third Community Support Framework (CSF). Moreover, it offers the first detailed study of the separate administrative network that was established in the third CSF and attempts to depict its impact upon the patterns of institutional interactions that were established in previous programming periods. Secondly, the conceptual framework that it develops in order to account for the patterns of implementation of the EURP in Greece has not been employed for similar purposes. It postulates that it is important to account for the mediating influence that domestic political and administrative institutional arrangements play in the implementation of the EURP.

This thesis mainly analyses the change in the enlargement strategy of the European Union (EU) especially in the case of Turkey. Although the Union has always sought ways to enlarge, it has been rather reluctant as far as accepting Turkey as a full member into the EU is concerned. In 2004, the EU enlarged so as to include the Central and East European countries (CEECs), but Romania and Bulgaria were left behind since they did not fulfill the membership criteria at the time. However, these two countries became members on January 1, 2007 and Turkey is still waiting in the line to become a member. Therefore, the writer has chosen Turkey and Bulgaria in order to analyze the change in the enlargement strategy of the Union. The medium to arrive at conclusions as regards the strategy is mainly the environmental aid as the two countries display noticeable differences. Furthermore, the enlargement strategy papers prepared by the European Commission have also been analyzed in order to see the changing attitude of the EU especially by re-introducing the concept of absorption capacity. Even though the Union states it keeps its open door to new members, the new enlargement strategy proves that it will be rather difficult for the candidate states and especially Turkey to enter into the EU.

The perceived socio-economic significance of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has dramatically expanded the domains in which this cluster of technologies is being discussed and acted upon. Action to promote the 'information society' has made its way into governmental policy. National technology policy and action cannot however be adequately understood solely as the calculation of needs according to the development aspirations of the country concerned. Instead it needs to be placed in the intersection of simultaneous efforts by national and international organisations to shape technological developments. This research examines the nature of efforts made to promote ICT innovation through national policies and programmes in the midst of international and regional influences. The thesis involves the historical analysis of the policies for ICT diffusion in Greece within the context of the European efforts to promote the information society. It examines how the Greek state undertook to implement a large-scale ICT programme, in the backdrop of hesitant attempts at modernisation and technological innovation. The research traces the emergence of the ICT programme and the European visions which framed it, and explores the discourses and practices through which it came to materialise. The research is theoretically infomred by Foucault's ideas on governmentality, focusing on the government and self-government of conduct. The study explores the discourses sustained through the European and Greek policies on the information society. Practices of funding, monitoring and reporting are also scrutinised to understand the forms of discipline and contestation they gave rise to. Through this theoretical analysis, the research engages in a context-sensitive examination of the taken-for-granted relationship between policies and their implementation. The main contribution of the thesis lies in illuminating the often neglected role of international and regional organisations in shaping technological agendas, and the material practices which allow them to operate effectively across distances.