This thesis is a study of Conservative Party views on education during the period 1944-1966, and, in particular, it considers the extent to which a ‘conservative ideology’ is implicit in Conservative attitudes and policies. Chapter one examines some of the ways in which the term 'ideology' has been used. It suggests that it may be used to describe a body of ideas and values which, though not necessarily set down as a comprehensive system of ideas, may be seen to be implicit in the policies and statements of members of a political group. Such an ideology may then be described by theorists, not as a guide to action, but more as a reflection upon past and present actions and attitudes. As such, some ideas associated with conservatism are examined. Chapter two considers the extent to which a conservative ideology was implicit in the structure of education in England and Wales before World War Two and suggests that Conservative acceptance of the 1944 Education Act, was in part, the result of a shift in attitudes to society and policies within the country. Chapter three considers Conservative acceptance of the implementation of the 1944 Act, mainly by the Attlee Government. Chapters four to seven examine attitudes to education during the period of Conservative Government 1951-64 and trace the emergence of the case for comprehensive education and the development of the Conservative case, which, basically opposed a fully comprehensive system. Chapter eight summarises the Conservative position in the mid 1960's. Chapter nine summarises Conservative attitudes to education 1944-1966 and considers the extent to which a conservative ideology may be seen to be implicit in these attitudes and policies.

The growing internationalisation of governance in the modern era means that states are increasingly interconnected. In this process, democratic governance has often taken second place to the demands of a neoliberal system that emphasises market-based solutions to social organisation and deregulation of structures based in the democratic realm of states. This dissertation is an exploration of the role democracy plays in regional governance bodies, focusing specifically on the European Parliament and its role in the European Union as an example of this. The dissertation argues that there is a role for democracy in global governance, and that the European Parliament represents a positive step towards introducing the wishes of citizens into political structures above the level of the state. It uses a three-stage immanent criticism developed from the early work of Max Horkheimer to explore the parliament in its historical, present, and potential functions. Built on a critical philosophy that understands the social world as a product of historically materialist action, this dissertation seeks not just to describe the functions of the Parliament, but also to suggest ways in which they might develop past their current limitations. Following a methodological discussion on the application of immanent criticism, the dissertation engages in a theoretical analysis of the complex concepts of democracy and governance as a prelude to the exploration of the Parliament. The dissertation then utilises a range of interviews and documentary evidence to present a thesis that has two main claims. Firstly, it argues that the European Parliament represents a new form of democratic regional structure that represents both states and citizens, and introduces an element of democratic accountability to governance above the level of nation states. Secondly, the thesis contends that the Parliament, as part of the wider Union, possesses the potential for greater democratic function. In making this argument, the dissertation suggests a range of practical ways to improve democracy and governance in the Parliament, and by extension in other similar regional political bodies. These include the introduction of greater democratic influence on decision making, increased transparency, dedicated European political parties, and a stronger role for civil society bodies. The dissertation concludes that democratic governance has the potential to present an alternative to the dominant neoliberal structures that currently shape much of the international political, economic, and social environment.

This thesis investigates the European Union’s (EU) conceptualisation of outer space security in the absence of clear borders or boundaries. In doing so, it analyses the means the EU undertakes to secure the space segments of its critical outer space infrastructures and the services they provide. The original contribution to knowledge offered by this thesis is the framing of European outer space security as predicated upon anticipatory mechanisms targeted towards critical outer space infrastructures. The objective of this thesis is to contribute to astropolitical literature through an analysis of the EU’s efforts to secure the space segments of its critical outer space infrastructures, alongside a conceptualisation of outer space security based upon actor-specific threats, critical infrastructures and anticipatory security measures. The EU’s Galileo and Copernicus programmes are identified as future critical outer space infrastructures through their services’ expected contributions to EU-level policy-multiplication and European states and societies, making them examples of regional and global European space power projection. Following the designation of the Galileo and Copernicus programmes as critical outer space infrastructures, the thesis details the dangers and risks, both intentional and environmental, which the EU has publicly acknowledged as being the most threatening. Although the specific risk assessments for the Galileo and Copernicus projects are confidential, the generic dangers and risks for satellites in Lower Earth Orbit and Middle Earth Orbit referred to in EU policy documents are explored, including space debris, space weather phenomena, orbital congestion and the possibility of the future weaponisation of near-Earth space.

In this study, departing from a more general concern with understanding how political frontiers are demarcated in Turkish politics, I aim to show how ‘Europe’ contributed to such a process of constructing political frontiers during the 1999-2008 period. Rather than looking at the debates on ‘Europe’ within the Turkish political landscape through a pro- vs. anti- Europe bifurcation, I attempt to see the discourses through the lens of ‘hegemony’. By using the Laclau- Mouffean discourse analysis, starting from 1999, I argue that discourses on ‘Europe’ were able to hegemonise Turkish political debates and thereby demarcate the political frontiers that constituted that debate which started to change when discourses began to be substituted by different antagonisms, political frontiers and therefore modes of sustaining hegemony.

This thesis investigates the reasons for the change in decision-making patterns in abstract judicial review in Germany, Italy and Austria in the last three decades. The literature on constitutional courts suggests that there are six factors influencing the decision-making of a constitutional court judge: personal political attitudes of the judges, direct influence by political institutions, Black Letter of the Law, Precedent, changes in public opinion and the harmonisation of national law with European law. The empirical data shows that throughout the last three decades the conditions in which legislation is formulated has become more complex through the harmonisation of national law with European Law. This causes the courts to react in three distinct ways: 1. The style of decisions is more interpretative 2. More laws are, at least in part, found unconstitutional 3. The pattern of decisions is leaning towards more unconstitutionality rulings so as to clarify the political framework for future legislation. Worry is expressed by the courts that not all the cases reaching them are referred to them in good intention. Politicians are increasingly using the complexity of the political system to refer cases to the courts on which they would prefer not to take a decision.

This thesis addresses the subject of political dissent during the Khrushchev era. It examines the kinds of protest behaviours that individuals and groups engaged in and the way that the Soviet authorities responded to them. The findings show that dissenting activity was more frequent and more diverse during the Khrushchev period than has previously been supposed and that there were a number of significant continuities in the forms of dissent, and the authorities’ responses to these acts, across the eras of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. In the early Khrushchev years a large proportion of the political protest and criticism that took place remained essentially loyal to the regime and Marxist-Leninist in outlook, though this declined in later years as communist utopianism and respect for the ruling authorities seem to have significantly diminished. In place of mass terror, the authorities increasingly moved toward more rationalised and targeted practices of social control, seeking to ‘manage’ dissent rather than to eradicate it either by persuasion or by force. All of this was reflective of the fact that the relationship between state and society was undergoing a vital transitional stage during the Khrushchev years, as both parties began to establish for themselves what had and had not changed since Stalin’s death.

Although the new architecture of experimentalist governance has been influential in academic scholarship as well as in policy debates over the last two decades, its actual impact on policymaking is still largely unclear. Specifically, questions about whether, under what conditions and how it influences policymaking processes remain largely unsolved. Without an adequate analysis of experimentalist policymaking, the current scholarship confines our understanding to the diffusion of experimentalist architectures, ultimately resulting in a poor understanding of their effects on policymaking processes. Thus, this thesis seeks to contribute to closing the knowledge gap by identifying conditions in which the Commission engages in experimentalist policymaking. To this end, it makes a number of inductive claims by further developing arguments found in experimentalist and shadow of hierarchy theories and using empirical analysis to follow them through. It studies the case of European Union energy regulation from the beginning of its liberalization and re-regulation in the late 1990s to the present day. The central argument of the thesis is that, when the Commission finds itself in conditions of greater uncertainty, even though the shadow of hierarchy is weaker or the distribution of power is less polyarchic, it engages in experimentalist policymaking by granting discretion to Member States and/or regulated companies to pursue common goals through distinct means, stimulating the comparison of their approaches and providing a basis for agreements on reforms to be developed with high stakeholder participation. Besides extending empirical research on EU energy regulation and contributing to the literature on modes of regulation, this thesis contributes to advancing the study of experimentalist governance in a number of respects. First, it clearly distinguishes experimentalist and hierarchical institutional architectures from policymaking processes by developing a set of indicators which are widely applicable. Second, by identifying patterns of policymaking that are not based on polyarchy, shadow of hierarchy, time or sector, but rather, are consistent with uncertainty, it suggests that uncertainty is an individually sufficient condition for experimentalist policymaking. More broadly, by identifying patterns of policymaking that are not based on specific institutional architectures, it shows that the type of policymaking can vary even if institutional architectures do not change, and hence warns scholars of the need to look beyond institutional design to the ways in which decision-making actually occurs.

The EU has widened and deepened the single market over time according to a transactionalist discourse of common-interests in integration. This rationale holds that as amounts of cross-border movement increase, Member State populations should perceive the single market as beneficial, thus leading to the creation of an affective European identity. Instead, as consequences of integration have become more visible, resistance to the EU has become more pronounced, especially with relation to the Union's right of free movement of persons. This thesis argues that interest-based theories of integration ignore prospects for resilient national identities to influence the accordance of solidarity ties, so as to color interest perceptions within national public spheres. Combining the literature on European identity, moral panic and communication studies on news framing, it maintains that the popular news media provide a conduit through which these interest perceptions can be taken up through the tendency of news outlets to report events that deviantly threaten underlying identity conceptions. Through content analysis of 'popular' press in the UK, Spain and Poland, it seeks to show how the inane tendency of news to report events in terms of an identity-based narrative can serve to foment moral panic within national publics. Contrary to interest based theories of integration, the EU's discourse clashes with national identity. Disintegration may be posited as the 'proper stance' to be supported on the part of the public in news narrative, if threatening deviance caused by EU migration is to be resolved.

After the extension of the European Parliament's (EP) decision-making powers introduced by the Treaties of Amsterdam and Lisbon, it was assumed that the EP would increase the democratic credentials of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) and, given the EP's traditional promotion of civil liberties and human rights, that it would also tip the balance towards a more rights-based approach. Six years on, these expectations have not been fulfilled. The objective of this study is to evaluate why the EP, now a co-legislator, has been unable (or unwilling) to maintain its past policy preferences. In order to understand this gap between expectations and actions, the study looks at three case studies (the ‘Data retention' directive, the ‘Returns' directive and the SWIFT Agreement) and compares the impact that the introduction of more powers for the EP has had on these different episodes. In order to maximise the number of possible explanations, the study uses rational-choice and constructivist institutionalist approaches to identify the reasons behind the change in the policy preferences of the EP. In this sense, it aims to uncover the levels and direction of change as well as the main conditions and drivers that led to the abandonment of its previous policy positions.

The past decades have witnessed a surge in the scholarly use of the concept „populism‟, especially where the European context is concerned. Populism is a problematic concept, however, as it is often ill-defined and haphazardly applied. The surge of populism is, nevertheless, important as it is considered to be an indicator for the state of representative democracy. This study has two main aims. The first is to relate the concept populism to political parties and to identify the populist parties that have recently managed to enter parliament in 31 European countries. In the European context, populism has predominantly been associated with extreme or radical right parties. This study broadens the scope by also considering populist parties that are not typical examples of this type of party. This dissertation further contributes to the scholarly literature by moving beyond Western Europe and studying populist parties across the whole of Europe. An important lesson of this dissertation is that scholars should be very careful when applying the concept populism to political parties to prevent further concept-stretching. The second aim of the study is to explain the electoral performance of populist parties in Europe. A relatively novel technique, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), is applied. This method is particularly geared at demonstrating causal complexity. The results of this analysis are triangulated with three in-depth qualitative case studies of populist parties in three countries: The Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. The study explicitly focuses on the agency of political parties and the credibility of populist parties in particular. In addition to the presence of a conducive environment, this turns out to be a crucial factor in explaining the electoral performance of populist parties. Further comparative research should, therefore, not refrain from taking the agency of populist parties themselves into account.