This thesis engages with a debate in the literature on the political economy of China’s industrial reforms about the determinants of major policy trajectories in that country’s strategic industries. A common approach understands central-level policy processes and their structural outcomes in strategic sectors to be subject to active and effective central government guidance, often applied via control over state-owned industry. A less common perspective, on the other hand, has argued that policy formulation and implementation in a number of strategic industries are often dominated by large central state-owned enterprises (SOEs) capable of imposing their own preferences on sectoral policy. Addressing these partially opposing perspectives, this thesis analyses political processes underlying major policy developments in China’s electricity supply industry since 2002, finding that neither approach sufficiently accounts for the complexity of interactions between government and SOEs during the formulation and implementation of sectoral policy. ‘Government-centred’ accounts were found to have exaggerated the effectiveness of central government’s policy guidance while underappreciating SOEs’ considerable sectoral policy impact. ‘SOE-centred’ accounts, on the other hand, have similarly overstated their claims while furthermore giving a distorted perspective of the mechanisms through which SOEs’ policy influence occurs. Building on findings from the case of electricity supply, this thesis establishes an alternative account of the political interplay between both sides and its relevance for sectoral policy-making in China’s strategic industries. It illustrates that central SOEs autonomously pursue their own industrial reform agendas which often deviate from government’s sectoral preferences and from existing sectoral policy. However, it contends that these firms are only able to realise contentious sectoral objectives by tactically ‘synchronising’ them with cross-sectoral policy agendas pursued by central government. When sectoral reform goals diverge and ‘synchronisation’ is absent, policy gridlock often ensues. Overall, this thesis finds that central government’s sectoral guidance over strategic industries is subject to substantial interference by central SOEs, but that this interference largely takes place within the confines of government-sanctioned cross-sectoral policy.

This thesis examines qiaowu [Overseas Chinese affairs] policies during the PRC’s first decade, and it argues that the CCP-controlled party-state’s approach to the governance of the huaqiao [Overseas Chinese] and their affairs was fundamentally a political economy. This was at base, a function of perceived huaqiao economic utility, especially for what their remittances offered to China’s foreign reserves, and hence the party-state’s qiaowu approach was a political practice to secure that economic utility. Through the early-to-mid-1950s, the perceived economic utility of the huaqiao and their remittancesled to policies that systematically privileged the huaqiao (especially in China) and their interests, all in the name of securing, incentivising and increasing remittances back to China. This was even done at the expense of other CCP ideological impetuses, especially in terms of socialist transformation, as the party-state permitted contradictions between these youdai [favourable treatment] policies for the huaqiao, and its own vision for socialist transformation. Yet, by 1959, and after a series of crises brought the contradictions between qiaowu and socialist transformation to the fore, the CCP’s radical shift to the left led by Mao Zedong forced qiaowu to now conform with Mao’s demand to place ‘politics in command’. Thus qiaowu abandoned its prioritisation of economic utility and its past policies, for alignment with Mao’s revolutionary ideals, and in service to the Great Leap Forward. This thesis represents an original contribution to historiography on the PRC, the huaqiao, and qiaowu, both in terms of the new evidence from a wide range of Chinese archives that it utilises, but also because it revises existing narratives—and especially the pro-CCP conventionalisms—that gloss over the huaqiao experience of New China. Furthermore, this thesis also addresses the lacunae in the historiography on the PRC in the 1950s, and its silence on where qiaowu fits into the story of China’s socialist transformation.

This thesis draws on the debates in nationalism studies to address the question of how Hizbullah’s identity is produced, and investigates the further questions of how modern is this identity, what are its main pillars, and who produces it and to what end. By analysing the findings of fieldwork observations and interviews, and applying discourse analysis to a range of official and unofficial party publications, and internal notes or memos, the thesis argues that Hizbullah, employing its transnational links, has constructed a revised identity among the Lebanese Shiʿa and overhauled traditional forms of Shiʿi practice through the various institutions it has established and expanded over the past two decades. The thesis examines how Hizbullah manages its identity dissemination through these numerous institutions by tailoring the Shiʿi identity it embodies to suit different audiences, while simultaneously keeping a tightly centralised control over their work through its Central Cultural Unit. The thesis further argues that Hizbullah’s re-creation of Shiʿi identity entails reconstructing the community’s history. The organisation’s historical narratives are based on twentieth-century Shiʿi histories – accounts that are mostly attributed to uncorroborated oral sources, but which nevertheless created novel notions of a historical ‘ʿAmili people’ and ‘ʿAmili resistance’. Such concepts are central to Hizbullah’s re-creation of Lebanese Shiʿi identity. The organisation’s main historical accounts, while partially based on these earlier histories, have also constructed new narratives, attributing these to fresh oral accounts, and suggesting continuity with Shiʿi history. This approach bears similarities to the efforts of nationalist intellectuals, who reconstruct historical accounts focused on establishing the historical origin and continuity of their nation. Hizbullah-affiliated publications incorporate advantageous supernatural accounts of its contemporary battles against Israeli occupation. These supernatural narratives build upon a Safavid tradition in Shiʿi theology, reintroduced by the Islamic Republic in Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon. The last chapter in the thesis looks at the interplay between the organisation’s transnational ideological links and its national politics, and argues that it uses these relations to support its political identity project for the Shiʿi community in Lebanon.

This thesis analyses the influence and role of Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) on anti-corruption reform in Indonesia. A mixed methods approach based on quantitative and qualitative methods was used for the research. Statistical regression analysis of NGO demands made in the media versus degree of policy alignment helped answer the question of the extent of NGO influence on anti-corruption reform and supporting factors (and actors) in this process. The qualitative methods helped to understand why and how NGO influence (or lack thereof) was achieved. A conceptual framework drawing from several relevant bodies of literature was used as basis for the analysis. The statistical analysis showed that of all demands made by NGOs in the media over a period of four years, 17 percent were perceived to have resulted in policy influence. However, quite a significant proportion of NGO demands (38 percent) were not reflected in policy decisions and therefore likely represented demands that NGOs failed to achieve policy influence on. In the statistical regression analysis, a number of factors proved (positively) statistically significant for explaining NGO influence. The factors that were associated with perceptions of NGO influence were: a favourable public opinion to the NGO demand; high media coverage of issues linked to demands; demands related to protecting the authority of the KPK; and the support of allies with decision-making authority. Conversely, NGO demands that were not supported by these factors were more likely to fail to be translated into policy. The qualitative case study analysis also showed that demands that were focused on more technical policy issues and legislative content, as well as demands that required policy decisions implying fundamental reform of institutions such as the police or the Attorney General's Office (AGO) were less likely to be taken into account in policy decisions. The case studies and qualitative thematic analysis also helped explain the 'why' and 'how' of the statistical results by providing insights into the dynamics of NGO influence (or lack thereof) on Indonesian anti-corruption policy reform.

This thesis offers a historical account of the emergence and evolution of new Islamic educational institutions in Saudi Arabia in the twentieth century which came to sit at the heart of migratory circuits of students and scholars from across the globe. It pays special attention to the Islamic University of Medina (IUM), which was launched by the Saudi state in 1961 to offer fully-funded religious instruction to mostly non-Saudi students. Exploring the history of this missionary project provides a point of departure for interrogating the commonplace claim that Saudi actors have taken advantage of wealth derived from oil rents in recent decades to fund the export of Wahhabism. In order to understand the far-reaching cultural, social and political dynamics that have emerged from this nexus between migration, education, material investment and religious mission, this study develops a historiography grounded in a novel conception of transnational religious economies. These are understood to consist in flows – both within and across national borders – of material capital, spiritual capital, religious migrants and social technologies. While Saudi state spending has been crucial for the operation of institutions like the IUM, its missionary project has also drawn on a far wider range of resources within the terms of these economies, including migrant labour, sources of symbolic legitimation and modes of pedagogy appropriated from beyond the Peninsula. The IUM’s syllabuses, whilst firmly rooted in core Wahhabi concerns, have also been shaped by processes of hegemonic engagement with migrant students. Finally, students bearing spiritual capital accumulated on its campus have themselves made divergent uses of these resources in locations around the world. The notion of transnational religious economies developed here shines light on the multiple resources, border crossings, historical contingencies, interests and forms of agency bound up in the articulation of a power-laden, state-led project of “religious expansion”.

This thesis explores how different understandings, interpretations, and claims of diverse social actors from a growingly liberalizing society interact with China’s authoritarian state and various agents in the market in shaping contemporary Chinese nationalism. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that sees the force and impact of nationalism primarily through its homogenizing effect on the people, this thesis argues instead that the success of nationalism, as a mobilizing force, depends on the existence of differences that various social actors inject into the discourse of state nationalism. Therefore, the key to understanding contemporary Chinese nationalism is to study the meanings and causes of such differences, which are wrapped up in the discourse of nationalism and reflect new dynamics of Chinese politics. This phenomenon, as observed in China, represents a typical case in societies where the willingness and capabilities of people have increased in lodging nationalist claims towards other peoples. By explaining how and why nationalism has become a useful mobilizing force in China, where people do not take for granted what is propagandized by the government, this thesis also tries to make a theoretical push in the literature of nations and nationalism. It investigates the dialectical relations between tensions and disparities embedded in nationalism, on the one hand, and the homogenizing effect of nationalism at the national and symbolic levels, on the other hand. In so doing, it sheds new light on one of the most inviting puzzles in the field of nations and nationalism – why nationalism (like all ideologies) can incite widespread passion and appeal on the ground. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 examine the phenomenon of contemporary Chinese nationalism, the conventional wisdom under which it has been studied, theoretical assumptions and their major critiques, and the theoretical propositions to be advanced in this thesis. Chapter 1 explores the puzzle of why nationalism can incite popular passion and appeal in the general field of nations and nationalism. In particular, it asks where the mobilizing power of nationalism comes from - whether it lies in the capacity to regularize diversity and construct homogeneity among the population, or it is in the other way around. Thus this chapter demonstrates what the study of contemporary Chinese nationalism can borrow from and lend to the field. Chapter 1 lays out major propositions of the thesis, introduces the research methods employed, and offers an overview of the rest chapters. Chapter 2 has two parts. The first part reviews and challenges three basic assumptions in the study of contemporary Chinese nationalism, which have to be reconsidered for the field to advance. The first assumption sees the rise of Chinese nationalism as a post- 1989 phenomenon. The second assumes state-centrism, lacking systematic investigation of the dynamics between state and society in reproducing nationalism. The third takes it for granted that Chinese nationalism must be a subversive force for international security, either because it is manipulated by the Chinese government or because it is incited by populists from below. The second part offers an introduction to the changing relationship between state and society in contemporary China, deciphering the sociopolitical context in which the following empirical chapters are developed. For the purpose of understanding the rise of diverse social actors, and their understandings, interpretations and claims of Chinese nationalism, this part disaggregates Chinese society so that relevant processes of social differentiation and contention during the reform period can be analytically presented. For the purpose of understanding the mechanisms through which these social actors are able to make their nationalist claims under the banner of Chinese nationalism sponsored by the state, it also disaggregates the (party-) state so that the relationships between its component parts and with society, and the relations between the central and local authorities in contemporary China are clarified. Except for the introductory and conclusion chapters, this thesis is composed of four empirical chapters. Chapter 3 deals with different understandings, interpretations, and claims of Chinese nationalism through the problem of victimhood in Sino-Japanese relations. It shows how competing claims for suffering in the 2nd Sino-Japanese War have been expressed, transformed and nationalized, which grows from the bottom of society and incites anti-Japanese nationalism at the national level. Chapter 4 studies visual representation of disparities and tensions between subpopulations and the party-state in making claims and interpretations of Chinese nationalism, through the changing images of anti-Japanese resistance in films, television series and Internet programs. It finds that joint endeavors and differing motivations of local governments, profit-seeking producers, artists and intellectuals, and minority groups have transformed popular images of anti-Japanese resistance in the Maoist years to new stylized images in the time of mass entertainment. Chapter 5 looks at the Baodiao (Protecting the Diaoyu Islands) Movement and its evolution in three political contexts (Taiwan, Hong Kong and China). It shows that, in all of the three contexts, Baodiao is a spontaneous social movement unfolding in the contestation between the regime and competing claimants for nationalism. Yet it is under the most authoritarian and unstable regime that civilian contestation embedded in Baodiao, as advocated by the middle class and professionals, has been stifled, and the movement has fallen prey of street violence. Chapter 6 focuses on one special group of the Chinese elites – the outspoken military officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It shows how their views in the mass media, which encourage anti-American nationalism, reflect more of their own personal viewpoints and sectoral interests than the Party’s line. Taken together, Chapters 3, 5 and 6 shed light on the general argument of the thesis by providing case studies of different social strata in contemporary China. Chapter 7 is the conclusion chapter. This chapter offers a summary and five policy caveats for international security and diplomacy, which are derived from the study of this thesis. It suggests that the evolution of socio-political conditions and state-society dynamics, rather than the substances and contents of state nationalism or popular nationalism, that will determine what kind of impact nationalism is likely to have on China’s domestic politics and international behavior. Therefore we should be careful not to draw too much, either pessimistically or optimistically, from the rise of contemporary Chinese nationalism.

This thesis is devoted to a studly of the communist movement in Palestine during the British Mandate with special emphasis on its growth within the Arab section of the population. Chapter one traces the development of the Palestine Communist Party as an outgrowth of the Zionist labour movement and its progress during the first ten years of its existence as a predominantly Jewish organisation. Chapters two and three examine the Comintern's preoccupation with the necessity of Arabising the Party and traces the Party's early attempts to penetrate into the Arab community, its reactions, to the Comintern's directives and the actual process of Arabisation and the policies pursued therein. Chapter four looks at the Party's policies and role vis-a-vis the Arab Rebellion of 1936-39, and the development of a Jewish opposition culminating in the first major split of the Party. Chapter five is devoted to an examination. of the Party's position during Second World War and its faithful adherence to the twists and turns of Soviet foreign policy. It also traces the Party's increasing involvement within the Arab community as evinced by its activity in the labour movement. Chapter six deals with the split of the Party in 1943, its origins and the consequent establishment of separate Arab and Jewish communist organisations, 9 and the development of the Jewish communists up to 1948. Chapter seven examines the establishment of an Arab national communist movement; and looks in detail at communist activity within the Arab working class and the intelligentsia. It closes with an analysis of the communist response to partition and the attempts made to justify it. The primary sources upon which this study is based include the following: the the publications of the Palestine Communist Party and National Liberation League, intelligence reports of the British Colonial Office and the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, the official publications of the Comintern, and personal interviews with old party members.

This thesis examines the dynamics in the process of cultural policy concerning the museum and gallery sector in Taiwan and Scotland of the United Kingdom. By applying a cross-national comparative methodology, it explores the factors influencing policy development for museums in relation to individual national contexts. The historical outline of the development of museums in relation to the political, economic, social and cultural settings of Taiwan and Scotland respectively informs the various ways in which museums have been perceived and reflects historical outcomes in contemporary policy issues. The study of the structural context of each political system brings to light institutional issues underlying the policy process. Focusing on the governance of publicly funded museums, the thesis investigates the positions of museums within public sector structures, the relationship between museums and relevant bodies at national and local level, and the role of a governing body or representative agency. Also, it looks into approaches to museum governance and resource allocation in relation to the governance models. In order to specify causes and consequences of a museum’s internal operations in response to external forces in the policy process, the thesis investigates six case studies: three cases of Taiwan are the National Palace Museum, the National Taiwan Museum and the Taipei Story House, and three cases of Scotland are the National Galleries of Scotland, Glasgow Museums and the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery. Different features, diverse operational approaches and challenges facing individual museums with regard to their roots, funding sources and contents are indicated, whereby their relevant contexts are also examined. The research explores the diversity of the museum sector and demonstrates the links between museums’ operation, functions and engagement in policy. To conclude the study, it specifically discusses a number of main points arising from the previous contextual and empirical examination and identifies national differences and limited similarities between Taiwan and Scotland, which ultimately contributes to the knowledge of the complex relations between governments, museums and changing environments in the policy process.

This thesis undertakes an explanatory case study of the Korean cultural industries policy shift recently instituted under the Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyun governments (1998-2008). This shift can be well positioned within the broader context of the creative turn in national cultural policy around the world, which was initiated by the British New Labour governments (1997-2010). Indeed, the trend ‘has had a remarkable take-up across many parts of the world’, elevating the British discourse on creativity into a policy ‘doctrine’ or ‘credo’ not only in the UK, but also across the globe. Despite the similarities in the driving discourses and policy methods, this thesis argues that the Korean policy shift was significantly different from its British counterpart as a result of the differing pace and trajectories of industrialization in the two countries. Starting from the concept of the East Asian developmental state as an entry point, this thesis explores three major questions: How and why did Korea go through a cultural industries policy shift in the period following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis? Has the shift produced a policy framework which is different from that of the previous developmental state, and if so, what is its form? What results have the policy shift and framework brought about in the Korean cultural industries sector, and how were they achieved? By addressing the process, product and performance of the policy shift in this way, this thesis presents a distinctive description and analysis of the way the cultural and creative industries (CI) have been nurtured in the era of ‘post-organized capitalism’. As a former representative developmental state and as a neo-developmental state currently known for having made a clear break with the past, the Korean case can provide a unique opportunity to re-think the recently fashionable creative turn among various nations. Given its position in the global economic hierarchy as either a high-end developing country or a low-end developed country, the story of Korea’s fundamental CI policy shift can furnish something of interest and academic value to both these groups.

This thesis engages in a sympathetic critique of the critical (dialogical) dimension of cosmopolitan democracy and its idealisation of a specific form of global civil society (GCS) to contest the exclusionary practices of contemporary global governance. Drawing upon the work of Jürgen Habermas, the critical approach assumes civil society as a communicative (local) vehicle that draws from the lifeworld, to steer the systemic neoliberal modes of global governance. The thesis in contrast, describes a scenario resulting in the reversal of this logic; global neoliberal modes of rationality can actually colonise the communicative spaces of (local) civil society. To highlight this claim, a specific neoliberal global democratic project is examined to reveal two new roles for global civil society; professional service providers, and democratic watchdogs. These roles re-inscribe a new identity for civil society akin to the neoliberal form of systemic rationality. An empirical case study of these roles within Cambodian civil society is then undertaken to demonstrate how endogenous communicative spaces can be marginalised through exogenous neoliberal interventions. The thesis suggests that the critical cosmopolitan democratic project must reject its de-contextualised communicative assumptions of global civil society in order to retain its inclusionary ideal.