The role of national parliaments in the European Union (EU) has gained prominence in the last decade among academics and practitioners alike in relation to the alleged democratic deficit of the EU. The existing literature has largely focused on the formal powers of national parliaments. However, the formally strongest parliaments are not necessarily the most active, and vice versa. This thesis argues that this divergence between formal rights and actual activity exists because not formal scrutiny powers, but public Euroscepticism, the presence of parties for which Europe is salient and which care deeply about Europe (‘issue entrepreneurs’) as well as internal party cohesion on the EU are the most important factors influencing activity. Public Euroscepticism leads to more debate and resolutions when issue entrepreneurs are present and when parties have a coherent position on Europe. Recent measures and future plans to further increase the formal powers of national parliaments might not lead to more activity and might thus not help to ameliorate the democratic deficit. Methodologically, this thesis relies on computer-assisted content analysis, multilevel models as well as elite interviews. Each of the three papers focuses on a different aspect of parliamentary activity. The first paper focuses on the ‘communication function’ of parliaments and presents an analysis of parliamentary debates in EU affairs. The second paper quantitatively analyses the determinants of parliamentary activity in the form of resolutions, relating to the government control or ‘scrutiny function’. The third paper investigates parliamentary scrutiny activity in-depth in a case study of the ‘Fiscal Compact’. The thesis argues that national parliaments should mostly concentrate on their communication function in EU affairs, while other functions might best be carried out by the European Parliament. It thus suggests that different parliamentary functions can best be fulfilled by different institutions in the EU multilevel system.

In recent years, a number of democratic theorists have suggested a range of principles that parties and partisans should follow to make a positive contribution to liberal democracy, thus establishing a normative ideal for democratic partisanship. This thesis addresses two questions. First, to what extent does real-world partisanship— understood as the array of practices and discourses that are attached to party leadership, membership or identification—meet these theoretical standards of democratic partisanship? Second, how can we explain variations in the extent to which real-world partisans uphold these standards? I focus on two specific standards for democratic partisanship. Partisans should first demonstrate cohesiveness, defined as the capacity to put forth programs of government grounded in clearly defined normative commitments and distinct from those of their opponents. Second, partisans should display a commitment to political pluralism, demonstrating respect for political opponents and endorsing the in eliminable character of political disagreement. To answer my first research question, I refine these two standards into a series of more specific criteria, and assess the extent to which grass-root partisan discourse in two country case studies, France and Hungary, meet these criteria. I draw on original data from 28 focus groups conducted in 2013 with a total of 118 young party activists from four different parties. The data is analysed using the text-analysis software NVivo, on the basis of a coding scheme derived from my theoretical framework. The analysis of the coded data shows that French partisans fare better than Hungarian partisans on the criteria established. I also find variations in the extent to which partisans within each country uphold the standards. In response to the second research question, I develop some tentative explanations on the reasons for these variations. The qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts reveals that certain types of cultural resources and external events inhibit democratic forms of partisan discourse, while others enable them.

This research examines the parliamentary representation of Jewish and Muslim minorities. It is assessed drawing upon the behaviour of MPs from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds and their engagement with issues of concern for the respective minority in high- and low-cost parliamentary activities. The analysis is conducted on the content of 96 votes, 708,429 Parliamentary Questions for written answers (WPQs), and 5,160 Early Day Motions (EDMs). Voting divisions are examined using methods of descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis, whereas relational, computer-aided, dictionary-based content analysis with time series cross-sectional data analysis is applied to examine the content of EDMs and WPQs. The analysis demonstrates that coming from a religious minority background has a limited impact on the behaviour of MPs and is largely inferior to the institutional predictors of behaviour, such as legislative role and the party-related predictors. This suggests that MPs from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds do not necessarily act for their minority groups driven by their heritage alone. Instead, MPs’ engagement with minority issues depends on their duties, responsibilities and party affiliations, even when the party discipline is loosened. The findings of the research have significant policy implications. They show that the presence of minority politicians in a legislature does not necessarily lead to better substantive representation of these minority groups through minority MPs’ engagement with minority issues. That is because minority parliamentarians are bound by the same constraints as the rest of the House, which reduces their ability to deliver expertise on minority issues.

This thesis explores the role of learning communities in the evolution of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). It engages the academic debate on institutional learning and the "practice turn" in IR to shed light on the factors leading the EU to learn by policy failure, as well as by ten years of practice in crisis management. Specifically, the work investigates the role of the knowledge and practice-based communities that shaped the consensus towards the comprehensive approach, with a strong emphasis on civilian means. Ideational factors, as opposed to material ones, are critical in understanding why the EU has developed a "soft" provider of security, in spite of the St Malo commitment to develop hard security capabilities. In the absence of a direct threat, EU member states’ preferences towards CSDP were driven by a set of new ideas, which in turn resulted from an emerging international agenda advocating the development of non-military crisis management approaches and tools. Through a critical appraisal of the "practice turn" and its application to the study of EU security and defence, the thesis sheds additional light on the overlap between knowledge and practice, which bears relevance for the research agenda on learning communities and norm diffusion. The empirical analysis makes an evidence-based reconstruction of the rise and evolution of civilian crisis management (CCM) and security sector reform (SSR). The comparison between the two case studies assesses the extent to which, at critical junctures, ideational factors influenced security policies. CCM and SSR, in fact, shared a similar learning process, yet the former had a much deeper impact on the shape and activities of the CSDP than the latter. To account for such variation in outcomes, it is argued that the emergence of "learning by doing" shaped CCM evolution. On the contrary, the introduction of SSR by knowledge-based communities failed to produce a common practice. Therefore, when policy innovation is supported by the re-elaboration of practices, the ideas diffused by learning communities are more persuasive and impactful on policy-making.

This thesis examines the development of the internal political situation in Poland from the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation in mid-l944 to the consolidation of communist power at the turn of 1946/47. It concentrates in particular on the way the organisations and political strategies of the Polish Workers' Party and the main non-communist forces: the Polish Peasant Party, the Polish Socialist Party , the Catholic political movement and the anti-communist underground evolved during these years. Chapter .One describes the re-establishment of the Polish communist movement from 1941 and the shaping of its strategy of the national front during the period until the Soviet liberation of eastern Poland in 1944. Chapter Two examines the relationship between the communist-led 'Lublin Committee' and the underground movement loyal to the Government-in-Exile in London. It identifies the hardening of the Polish communists' stance towards the underground from October 1944. Chapter Three looks at the political and economic situation in Poland following the liberation of the country in early 1945. It examines the factors which caused the communists to moderate their line in May 1945. Chapter Four considers the impact of the legal opposition movement which arose around the Polish Peasant Party following the formation of the Provisional Government of National Unity in June 1945. Chapter Five describes the increasing polarisation between the communists and the opposition in the first half of 1946 and examines the unsuccessful efforts of the Polish Socialist Party to restore national unity. The political offensive launched by the Polish Workers' Party and its allies against the opposition at the time of the elections in late 1946 and early 1947, and the consolidation of the communists ' hold on power are described in Chapter Six. The thesis argues that the national front strategy which the communists followed between 1942 and 1948 underwent a series of major modifications. These modifications were in response not only to external pressures, but to a very considerable degree to developments in the internal situation in Poland. Ultimately the communists were able to achieve the objectives of the national front strategy only to a very limited extent. In particular, they were unable to achieve a broad base of popular support for their vision of Poland's future and had instead to rest it on force and the state-Party apparatus.

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Aiming to speak to broader debates about the nature of state power in relation to the economy this thesis concentrates on central bank agency and monetary governability. More specifically, it focuses on a single case: The agency of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the making, unmaking, and re-making of monetary governability in the euro area from 1999 through 2014. This choice is motivated by the euro area representing a unique 'natural experiment' in establishing monetary governability from scratch under conditions of 21st century financialised capitalism. The thesis is divided into two parts. Chapters one and two develop an original analytical and conceptual framework for the study of central bank agency. Starting out from the premise that governability is not a natural feature of the economy but needs to be actively established, I argue that any attempt to answer the question of the ECB’s role in that process has to account for the fundamental hybridity of central bank agency both as a central bureaucratic authority and as a bank, as well as for its multidimensionality as it addresses different governability challenges posed by different audiences. It is on the basis of these inductively won observations that I embrace the theoretical vocabulary of performativity, conceptualising governability as a performative effect of the interactions between the ECB and its audiences. The arrangements that govern these interactions are described, using a Foucauldian concept, as 'apparatuses'. On that basis, the second part of the thesis comprises three empirical chapters on the financial apparatus of monetary policy implementation, the communicative apparatus of expectation management, and the ideological apparatus of monetary trust. The sixth chapter brings the analysis of the three apparatuses up to date by focusing on three key episodes from the recent financial and economic crisis.

The history of the Weimar Republic has most commonly been written from the vantage point of its ultimate failure. Recent trends in historiography have shown that the first German democracy was by no means doomed from the start. Instead, contemporary sources convey a very varied picture of optimistic and pessimistic diagnoses of the times. At the centre of these diagnoses often stood the idea of “crisis” which contained the notion of an open yet problematic future. This thesis aims to investigate the use of sickness metaphors in political and related public discourses. More specifically, it analyses in which contexts these have been used, which semantic forms can be found, to which political points of view they can be attributed, and finally which purpose they served within political and journalistic controversies of the times. The main body of the thesis consists of three parts (ch. 2-4). Following the introduction, Part II is a methodological outline concentrating on the main relevant theoretical approaches: discourse analysis, the history of basic concepts, the Cambridge School of political ideas, and metaphorology. Furthermore it pays special attention to the history and use of the concept of “crisis”, both in its contemporary form and its use within historical writing.

The objective of this thesis is to provide advice on how to establish a reliable system of financial accountability in Serbia, as a condition for EU membership. The creation of a functional financial accountability system in Serbia is important not only for further Serbian development, but also to secure efficient and effective use of the EU/Member States’ monies, which are already being used in Serbia. This thesis analyses financial accountability systems of two EU Member States: UK and France and a supranational EU system, which are then compared with the Serbian system. The legal frameworks of these systems of financial accountability are analysed against their socio-historical backgrounds, focusing on the key challenges they face in both their strategic developments and everyday work. The conclusion is that Serbia has still not met the financial accountability conditions for EU membership outlined in the acquis communitaure. The comparative socio-legal analysis has demonstrated that the application of pure, more advanced Western European models of financial accountability would not be possible in the transitional Serbian environment. However, specific elements of these systems, exemplified in the emerging European system of financial accountability, could be well applied in the Serbian context.

This thesis is composed by three essays and applies econometric methods to analyse different economic research questions. The first essay (chapter 1) studies the effect of Turkish public television on the voting behaviour of people in the early years of television broadcasting in Turkey. The second essay (chapter 2) analyses the intergovernmental grant allocation in Turkey to shed light discussion whether political motivations play role while central government transfers money to municipalities. The third essay (chapter 3) investigates the phenomenon of flypaper effect and its relation to the local tax effort, by using a new panel data set which consists of all province and district municipalities in Turkey. The first essay estimates the effect of television broadcasting on the vote shares of main political parties and voter turnout in 1970s. We particularly focus on main left wing party (Republican Peoples’ Party, RPP) and right wing party (Justice Party, JP) in 1969 and 1977 elections. Our main hypothesis is that television news content was biased in favour of the incumbent party in government due to the law which allows government to appoint general-director of the Turkish State Television Company (TRT). Hence Left ideological director-generals were appointed to the Turkish State Television Company in the first years of broadcasting. As a result of this, a left wing party, RPP, enjoyed this fact by increasing their vote shares in the elections in 1977; however the main right-wing party, JP, witnessed the vote shares to decrease in the same elections. Therefore we find that television reception influences the voting behaviour of the citizens. An estimation result also shows that voter turnout decreases with the introduction of television. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first one which explores this fact and use very detailed election data in Turkey. The second essay (chapter 2) is related to the public finance literature which studies the transfers of intergovernmental grants from central government to municipalities. In Turkey, intergovernmental grants are transferred to the municipalities based on per capita rule only. This chapter explores whether there was a political motivation of revenue sharing system in Turkey using unique and new dataset. We employ Regression-Discontinuity Design to test this argument to get rid of possible endogeneity between grants and vote shares. We find that politically aligned municipalities to the party in central government enjoy about extra 7 Turkish Liras per capita in grants on average. This effect is stronger in municipalities where the elections were more competitive, i.e. the margin between vote shares of two main parties was very low. Moreover, we do find no evidence of alignment effect on municipal revenues and expenditures. In the third chapter, we investigate the phenomenon of flypaper effect by using a panel data set that consist of all province and district municipalities between 1997 and 2005 in Turkey. We benefit from dynamic panel data specific Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) estimator to identify flypaper effect. Estimation results show that the flypaper does exist for the Turkish municipalities. This result is controlled by various econometric specifications where we consider endogeneity between fiscal variables. Coefficient estimates also reveal that Turkish municipalities experience substitution effect of unconditional grants on the revenue collection efforts of localities which means that grants substitute local revenues causing lesser local tax effort.