Part of a new cohort of diplomatic actors, sub-state governments represent a particularly complex challenge for our understanding of international relations. These actors are both territorially constituted and governmental; they look and sound very similar to states. Crucially, however, they are not states at all. When paradiplomatic relations are conducted on the part of sub-state governments with a strong regional identity, in particular ‘stateless nations’, there can sometimes be challenge – implicit or explicit – to the authority of the state to speak for, or represent, its people. This thesis takes three such stateless nations: Wales, Scotland and Bavaria, and analyses their paradiplomatic activities. The unique political context in each of these case studies is used as a frame within which to understand and interpret both the motivations and implications of such activities. Using a conceptual toolkit less familiar to traditional paradiplomatic analysis, including sovereignty games, performativity and mimicry, the study explores the ways in which sub-state governments acquire international agency, and the extent to which this agency is contested by other actors. Despite the range in political ambitions in each of the stateless nations considered, the paradiplomatic activities they conducted were often remarkably similar. What differed, however, was the way that these activities were interpreted, depending on the political context and the tenor of inter-governmental relations within the state. The paradox of paradiplomacy is that in many ways it remains unremarkable in its day-to-day practices. Yet, at other times, sub-state governments use their international relationships to make important claims about their status and position within their state, the currency of exchanges becoming that rarefied concept: sovereignty. Using a marginal site of international relations such as paradiplomacy, this thesis explores the heterogeneity of the field and the variety of relationships that exist and persist within it.

Student mobility policies have become a high priority of the European Union since they are expected to result in private and social returns. However, at the same time these policies risk leading to unwanted geographical consequences, particularly brain drain from lagging to core regions, as formerly mobile students may not return on completion of their studies. Accordingly, this thesis focuses on both the private returns to student mobility and the determinants of return migration. It is important to note that, currently, the literature about the mobility of students is scarce and provides mixed evidence regarding both these issues. We contribute to the current academic debate in this field by doing a case study on the Master and Back programme, which was implemented since 2005 by the Italian lagging region of Sardinia. The programme is co-financed by the European Social Fund and consists of providing talented Sardinian students with generous scholarships to pursue Master's and Doctoral degrees in the world's best universities. Concerning the private returns to migration, we evaluate the impact of this scheme on the odds of employment and net monthly income of the recipients. Moreover, we assess whether the scheme has been able to improve their job matching. To perform this analysis we access unique administrative data on the recipients and a suitable control group, complemented by a purpose-designed web survey. In addition, we enquire into the determinants of return migration and the underlying decision-making process by using a mixed-methods approach, which is particularly well-suited for very complex phenomena like the one at hand.

This thesis contributes to our understanding of the financial crisis as it played itself out in the UK. The onset of the crisis provoked multiple diagnoses and interpretations of the crisis. Pre-dominant economic understandings of the crisis minimised its significance, suggesting that the natural operation of market mechanisms would enable the economic system to self-correct spontaneously and rapidly. As the economic situation worsened, however, other interpretations gained ground. From this perspective, the crisis was an event that exposed the limits of the highly financialised status of our economy, presenting policy makers with the opportunity to roll back the financialisation. The eventual non-realisation of this financial ‘roll-back’ is the starting point of many studies, and my thesis can be said to contribute to this literature in a modest way. Its main focus is the battle of economic ideas in elite policy-making circles in the UK. What is often missing from critical narratives of the crisis period is a detailed account of the dynamic interplay of competing interpretations of the crisis at crucial conjunctural moments by key agencies and figures animating the crisis drama in the UK context. These battles are ‘battles of ideas’ in the sense that they refer to competing characterisations of the unfolding events, as well as competing policy and regulatory proposals designed to manage the crisis, rooted in competing economic doctrines, espoused by different actors occupying hegemonic positions of the UK elite finance and media establishment. Although these battles were often fought with great intensity and urgency, there was an internal complexity to the dynamic of these battles that often gets glossed over in accounts of this period. I suggest that ‘reactivating’ this period in detail and with nuance is helpful in showing not only the manner in which ‘neoliberal finance’ has managed to survive the crisis largely intact despite the general expectation of its end but also in pointing to the challenges faced by those who wish its end. Three key conjunctural moments are chosen as the focus of my empirical analysis: the Great Crunch in the Summer of 2007, the Run on the Rock in the Autumn of 2007, and the Lehman Shock in the Autumn of 2008. I articulate a novel theoretical approach and research strategy, drawing on poststructuralist discourse theories. I deploy this approach in a close and systematic analysis of UK elite narratives on economic management, my corpus comprising the discourse produced by official political and economic institutions and agents, including professional economists, as well as narratives found in the broadsheet press more generally. Qualitative interpretative techniques are used to probe the justifications informing a range of bailout and regulatory policy proposals, in order to characterize in a unique and original manner the discursive battles at each one of the conjunctures. My empirical investigation reveals how the battle of economic ideas played itself out politically and ideologically in such a way as to leave neoliberal finance largely unperturbed. While anti-interventionist and interventionist proposals were frequently thematised and debated, these exchanges did not end up challenging the neoliberal finance character of our economy. Moreover, while my findings reveal a clear shift of emphasis in the centre of gravity of elite policy debates when moving from the Great Crunch to the Rock Run (the focus shifting from bailouts to regulation), the legal reforms announced following the Lehman Shock were understood to be largely temporary measures designed to calm and stabilise the markets rather than challenge neoliberal finance. More radical proposals were not taken seriously in the mainstream policy making community, and I argue that this is in part due to the hegemonic sway of neoliberal finance within this context. In order to contribute to the broader question of why neoliberal finance survived the crisis, it is essential to have a clear picture of how the detail and dynamics of the battle of ideas in the early period of the crisis unfolded, including a clear picture of the main actors, the discursive coalitions within which they operated, and the economic doctrines they appealed to when debating the scale of the crisis and the state management of the crisis. It is at this level that my thesis contributes to an overall account of the ‘non-death’ of neoliberal finance.

Based on 10 months’ qualitative fieldwork and the filming of a documentary conducted on the islands of Lampedusa and Fuerteventura, this thesis examines ground-level Europeanisation, concentrating on two well-established Communitarian policy frames -- the Common Fishery Policy (CFP) and the management of the external border of the Schengen space of free movement of people – and two populations of artisanal fishers who were exposed to them. It analyses how governmental logics operated on the ground through individuals’ engagement with Communitarian policies, and it reconstructs the major transformations that the two islands’ fishing industries underwent in the duree of more than fifty years of European integration. While until less than thirty years ago the economy of the Italian island of Lampedusa was centred on bluefish fishing and canning industries, on the Spanish island of Fuerteventura most islanders lived from agriculture for centuries. Following the European integration of Italy and Spain, both islands turned into major tourist destinations and the centres of frequent European migration crises. By focusing on these two territories, this investigation explores how EU governance contributed to transforming the local sociocultural and economic fabric and the islanders’ everyday life. Following the overview of how both policies were played out on the ground, I analyse the effects that the CFP produced on the two islands, and those that the management of the European external border generated in Lampedusa. Giving centrality to the marine element, I push the study of Europeanisation towards the sea and reveal how European policies had reconfigured the islanders’ relation with the seawaters surrounding them. Concurrently, by exploring the ways in which individuals interacted with EU governmentalities, I also unearth the several unintended consequences of Communitarian governance – as conservation policies aiming at recovering overfished fish stocks actually generated the conditions for increasing and uncontrolled overexploitation, while border policies for the securitisation of the European space de facto de-securitized life in Lampedusa.

Rural tourism is a long-established practice in the industrialised West, but it is a comparatively recent and on-going development in postsocialist contexts. This thesis examines the development of rural tourism in Romania and draws on fieldwork carried out in one of the oldest and most popular destinations of the country, as well as in a newer and less visited location. As homestays are central to rural tourism, my research has an extensive focus on what happens with guesthouses and their owners. Countryside tourism is a practice grounded in a discourse that praises images of unspoilt nature, close-knit communities, material and cultural heritage and natural healthy food. Discourses about rurality also suggest that for city dwellers, village stays in their own countries can provide a way of getting in touch with their national identity, building, at the same time a sense of belonging. In Romania, such discourses are promoted by NGOs, state institutions and tour operators that aim to develop rural tourism. In spite of their efforts, in the destinations that I studied, rural tourism has strayed away from the ideal model. Instead of bucolic cottages inspired by the vernacular architecture of the region, hosts welcome their guests into large, modern villas equipped with state-of-the art amenities. Tourists too show a strong concern with material aspects of their accommodation, they rarely venture in outdoor pursuits and have little interest in notions of ‘heritage’ or ‘traditions’. My findings show that the lived experiences of local entrepreneurs have shaped worldviews that in many respects are at odds with the ideal models and best tourism practices promoted by various institutions. I also show how hosts and guests share similar notions of achievement and success and how this has turned rural tourism into a house-centred event. In explaining why discourses have little grounding in reality, I pay close attention to the economics of tourism, trying to understand guesthouses as businesses interlinked both with the wider forces of the market and with the socio-economic history of rural Romania. I show how the development of pensiuni was influenced by specific material and social constraints, arguing that a long history of living under oppressive regimes actually endowed locals with qualities that made them ready to embark on entrepreneurial pursuits. I also examine how kinship can be both a catalyst for growth and a factor that contributes to the stagnation or decline of businesses. Most notably, however, it was the unstable and burdensome legislative environment that had perhaps the strongest impact over the evolution of guesthouses, determining over half of the owners to stay in the shadow economy. My findings raise questions about the effectiveness and utility of many of the norms currently imposed on tourist entrepreneurs and I conclude by discussing a few ways in which institutions could respond better to the needs of guesthouse owners.

European integration is a curious concept. There is stark disparity between some areas of policy that seemingly glide through the integration process, while others lag behind and despite decades of attempts, never reach the status of a fully-fledged area of European Union competence. Once such area is education. Through integration theories, political scientists have sought to explain how policies develop and are implemented at European level. This interdisciplinary study borrows the opposing theories of neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism with the aim of identifying the influence of the supranational and the strength of the state in the evolution of a European Union education policy. It seeks to pinpoint how education can be placed within the construction of Europe and the process of early European integration to determine the feasibility of these integration theories in explaining the journey of education policy in the European context. Historical methodology is adopted, based on archival research at the Historical Archives of the European Union, using documentary analysis to trace the history of activities and initiatives relating to education between 1945-1976. Collective biography methodology is adopted to give space to the role of states in driving the scope, direction and extent of integration based on domestic interests, while a case study implements methodological triangulation to stress-test the case of education. The study proposes that education is a complex case that does not slot neatly into a theory of integration. Education is multifaceted, a cultural – while at the same time – economic component: it is woven into the fabric of nation-states, it contributes to increasing global competitiveness, it diversifies across borders, and its development is attached to temporality and context. Despite suggestions that the state is diminishing in power, education serves as an example to demonstrate that the state is very much alive and at the centre of certain areas of policy development at European level.

Like consociationalism and territorial pluralism, centripetalism is a multiculturalist way of managing ethno-cultural diversity. Many scholars have examined how a consociational or territorial pluralist formula might help Turkey to resolve its long-running Kurdish problem. To date, no one has paid enough attention to the merits of centripetalism by scrutinising whether they might contribute to the solution of the problem. There is a general neglect of centripetal solution in the academic literature on Turkey's Kurdish question. As an interdisciplinary study, this thesis seeks to fill the centripetal research gap in the literature. The thesis argues that neither consociationalism nor territorial pluralism might be the optimal multiculturalist approach that Turkey should embrace in resolving its Kurdish issue. The thesis comes up with an original centripetal formula for the resolution of the issue. The proposed formula is constructed on the following three cornerstones: 1) a parliamentary system which is built on a 560-member legislature elected via an original version of the Alternative Vote Plus electoral system; 2) asymmetric territorial autonomy for each Kurdish-populated province; and 3) cultural autonomy for individual Kurds residing in the Turkish-dominated provinces. According to the thesis, this centripetal formula might enable Turkey to satisfy or begin to satisfy all main Kurdish demands, the fulfilment of which is regarded by almost all segments of Kurdish society as the basic requirement for the solution of the Kurdish problem. The formula might also create a multiculturalist Turkey less likely to witness some problematic political scenarios that would happen should the Republic establish a consociational or territorial pluralist model for the solution of the problem.

Russian entrepreneurs have long faced considerable difficulties. While much is known about what these difficulties are, less is known about how entrepreneurs respond to them, what it is like to be an entrepreneur under these circumstances and why they bother in the first place. In this thesis I address these questions by conducting a multi-sited ethnography within three small Siberian enterprises, observing the directors as they conduct their everyday business. I find that these entrepreneurs all resent their vulnerable position in the political economy but that they have developed a capacity to survive or thrive in spite of the obstacles and threats they encounter. This capacity, I argue, is less a consequence of their commercial acumen than their understanding of what can be achieved given their particular circumstances, their knowledge that business-state relations take an informal, personalised form, and their preparedness to resist predatory outsiders. This leads me to reconsider the meaning of entrepreneurship in the Russian context. Furthermore, my informants’ agency presents a challenge to the idea in predominant political economic theories that the Russian state dominates the private sector. I therefore reconceptualise business-state relations using Douglass C. North et al’s Limited Access Order theory in combination with my empirical materials. This provides a more accurate theory that accepts the pre-eminent role of the state in the political economy while accommodating the agency displayed by my informants.