This thesis examines the relationship between civil society, social movements and the state in ethnically-divided countries, using the case study of Malaysia. The argument begins with the observation that the respective literatures on civil society and social movements occupy a broadly congruent paradigm, but the relationship between the two is poorly theorised. Through a critical discussion of existing approaches, a synthesis of civil society and social movements theory is produced, which argues for a dualistic interpretation that emphasises both institutional linkages and cultural and discursive relationships. It is further argued that this latter aspect is of particular importance in ethnically-divided countries, as cultural differences between groups may hamper the effective mobilisation of movements. Thus may exist a form of ‘slippage’ between civil society and movement mobilisation, unidentified in much of the literature that tends to view the two as dynamically homogenous. The empirical section of the thesis utilises this model to examine the trajectories of civil society and social movements in Malaysia, focussing on the two decades from 1981 to 2001. It is argued that the first half of the 1980s saw the expansion of a broadly middle class-led, multiethnic civil society but that successful movement mobilisation nonetheless remained rooted in ethnic concerns. Nonetheless, the decade saw in increasing challenge to the regime's hegemonic position. As internal relations within the government coalition fractured during the middle years of the decade, parties and factions within the regime lurched to more ethnicist positions, contributing to an increasing spiral of ethnic `outbidding' and social mobilisation. In October 1987, this was brought to an end by a widespread crackdown that brought social mobilisation to an abrupt halt. Combined with the continuing elite fracture, this effectively re-channelled the increased protest of the period into the political sphere, where a broad opposition coalition was formed to contest the 1990 elections. With the democratic system long since undermined, however, the government won and even maintained its two-third majority. In the late 1990s, the dynamics of state, civil society and social movement were again clearly visible following the dismissal of Anwar Ibrahim as deputy prime minister and the mass protest ‘reformasi’ movement it unleashed. The ‘reformasi’ movement attempted to cultivate new modes of mobilisation, such as the Internet, appropriate to its multiethnic aspirations, but also relied heavily on the existing mobilisational networks of the Islamic movement. This mobilisational bias was reflected in the degree of electoral support for the movement's political manifestation in the 1999 general elections and contributed to the quick demise of the electoral coalition it provoked. The slippage between a multiethnic civil society and the ethnic bases of movement mobilisation in Malaysia has thus hampered the emergence of effective opposition to the regime.

In many democracies election campaign advertising is an important form of communication between parties and candidates and voters. There is however an uncomfortable tension between what campaigns should achieve (according to democratic theories) and what they are like in reality. In Taiwan, political scientists have voiced concerns about the excessively negative tone of party and candidate advertising. Descriptive single-election accounts also suggest that campaign ads in Taiwan regularly fail to provide voters with the substantive information they need to make reasoned choices. These observations are cited as reason to conceive campaign advertising as deleterious to Taiwan’s new democracy. However, recent work in the US, suggests that negative advertising may in fact be a source of useful information to voters. By extension, the authors of these studies claim that negative ads make an important contribution to democratic political competition. The central objective of the thesis is to explore these claims in the Taiwan context. Are the theoretical arguments used to explain the content of negative advertising in the US supported by empirical evidence in the highly dissimilar Taiwanese context? Do negative ads in Taiwan, in spite of prior scholarly observations to the contrary, make a useful contribution to the information environment available to voters? In addressing these questions, the thesis aims to contribute a non-western case study to general research on campaign advertising. It also aims to provide the Taiwan studies field with a more systematic account of campaign communications than is currently available. To this end, the study analyzes more than 500 TV and newspaper ads from all four Presidential elections held to date.

This thesis focuses on the impact of EU conditionality on democratisation in Turkey. Built on the assumption that Turkey's democratisation process cannot be fully understood without taking the EU's Impact into account, this thesis argues that even if external actors (e.g., the EU) can create opportunities for domestic political change In target states (e.g., Turkey), these actors cannot impose democracy externally; instead, they can provide support, or encourage power holders towards a more open and democratic system. Ultimately, however, these efforts cannot produce democratisation unless there are sufficient pro-democracy pressures at the domestic level. Empirically, the study examines institutional transformation and policy (re)formation in Turkey in the course of Its EUaccession process by conducting cross-sectoral and cross-temporal analysis. The analysis involves four policy areas and three time periods. These areas include minority rights, freedom of expression, the military and the judiciary; the domestic changes in these policy areas are traced across three time periods: 1999-2002, 2002-2004, and 2005-2008. The study is motivated by an academic interest in the intricacy of Turkey's long-term association with the EU and seeks to explore the external and internal dynamics of Turkey's candidacy process by employing theoretical tools offered by Europeanisation research. Following a Europeanisation theoretical framework, as devised out of new institutionalist theories, the thesis traces and analyses the democratisation process of Turkey and examines Turkey's pre-accession process at two levels. It first looks Into EU-Ievel factors to explore how the EU influences domestic change In Turkey with respect to its conditionality strategy and influence mechanisms; and secondly, it examines the domestic factors that pertain to each policy area to assess how EU conditionality is translated into domestic policy responses. Drawing upon data derived from primary and secondary sources, the thesis has three main findings. First, the recent reforms in Turkey represent a substantively significant effort to consolidate Turkish democracy. Second, as the cross-sectoral analysis illustrates, Turkey's strong desire to accede to the EU played a triggering role in the institutional transformation and policy (re)formation of Turkey. Third, although EU conditionality greatly influenced the domestic political debate surrounding the recent political reforms, ultimately the internal political dynamics determined and shaped the policy outcomes in Turkey. The research also reveals that to fully understand the impact of EU conditionality on domestic change in Turkey, we need to draw on both the external incentives and the social learning models, since they explain different aspects of domestic change based on diverging international and domestic level factors. As a wider outlook, the thesis reflects on the role of international organisations in democracy promotion, relating it to wider academic debates on democratisation and Europeanisation and their implications for domestic transformations in target countries.

This thesis explains how policing has changed in Turkey between the late 1960s and 2012 and explores ways to explain the changes by looking at the enforcement anti-drug trafficking measures. Using a process tracing method, it argues that Turkey's formerly lax approach to drug control was gradually replaced by stronger enforcement, to the point that nowadays Turkey seems to see itself as a champion of international police cooperation. The thesis then demonstrates that this change can only be partially explained by theories focusing on external change drivers, such as the Americanization of global law enforcement or the Europeanization of Turkey in its bid for EU membership. It argues that change is best explained by analysing micro-processes of socialization within the Turkish National Police (TNP), which reveal the role of domestic factors unexplainable otherwise, such as the importance of protecting the reputation of Turkey and of the TNP among international partners, and the importance of personal career-oriented behaviour by officers of the TNP.

The health policy change in China between 2003 and 2009 was profound. In 2003, the Chinese government changed its response to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak from initial passivity to proactivity. Following the SARS outbreak, in 2005 the Chinese government started major healthcare reforms. During this process, the health policy direction then changed from marketisation towards being more government-led. Previous research has explained health policy change mainly from bureaucratic perspectives that considered the government playing the main role. This thesis explains how and why health policy changed by focusing on three actors outside the political system. I argue that, after the SARS outbreak, experts, the media, and international organisations influenced the health policies as a ‘Policy Entrepreneurial Coalition’ (PEC), the result of which was a combination of normal and paradigmatic policy changes between 2003 and 2009. This is a qualitative study. I conducted fieldwork in China involving semi-structured interviews of policy insiders and outsiders. The policy insiders are government officials in the Ministry of Health. The policy outsiders are: domestic Chinese experts in social science, health economics, and health; external (foreign) experts who were involved in China’s health policymaking; journalists in national media and other commercialised traditional media; and representatives of international organisations in China. I also did content analysis of both policy documents and media reports. I identified three cases: the health policy change during the SARS outbreak, the initiation of the healthcare reform, and the health policy change during the healthcare reform policymaking. This thesis makes three major contributions. First, it documents the health policy change between 2003 and 2009. Second, previous studies focused on bureaucratic bargaining during policymaking in China, but I examine roles of policy outsiders, who have conventionally been neglected in China’s policy process. Third, to explain the influence of the outsiders, I examine the policymaking process within the central government and how the policy outsiders interacted with the policy insiders. In doing so, this thesis contributes to the understanding of China’s politics and policy processes.

This thesis concerns the current ruling party, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi - Justice and Development Party) in Turkey. Its aim is to examine the emergence and consolidation of the AKP, as well as to determine whether or not this has shaped the evolution of the party system in Turkey. This research draws on a qualitative research approach, through interviews with 36 key informants from political parties, NGOs, grassroots organizations and through gathering data in the literature produced by parties and other statutory and voluntary agencies, as well as through the collection of descriptive statististics related to socio-economic structures, migration, occupational categories, macroeconomic indicators and collections of election surveys. The finding reveal that the AKP did not emerge as an Islamist party, but because of its promises of economic stability and growth, and of further integration into the EU and USA-led global order. The thesis shows that more so than its religious discourse, the AKP’s electoral success was based on the party’s adapting a hybrid, progressive and pro-EU position during its first tenure in government. Second, this research demonstrates how the political conjuncture up to 2002 and long-term economic factors provided favourable circumstances for the AKP’s emergence. The study’s findings also reveal that the consolidation of the AKP is mainly attributable to its economic and social agenda, and the utilization of the public purse and other state resources (e.g. social and health care benefits) as a means of catering for its target constituencies. In addition, they demonstrate that once AKP’s consolidation was completed (2010) the party’s discourse gradually became more conservative and nationalist, giving way to more authoritarian policies. Nonetheless, as long as economic performance and conditions remain unchanged, the AKP continues to appeal to its social base. Consequently, this thesis demonstrates that the gradual drift in Turkish society towards moderate Islamic and traditional values was not the main factor in the AKP’s rise to power. Rather, this shift can be viewed as the feedback effect of the consolidation of the AKP process into societal structures and norms. Hence, this work highlights the AKP’s impact on the structure of the party-system and the role of its policies in transforming Turkish society. Lastly, this study contributes to the foundation upon which further research on Turkish politics and the party system can continue, by exploring the dual effect of the AKP’s ruling tenure: factors leading to the AKP’s emergence and its feedback into Turkish society and politics.

This thesis looks into the relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since the PRC regained its IMF membership in 1980. It initially analyzes the China-IMF relationship with socialization theoretical framework, attempting to explore how the IMF has socialized China into accepting neoliberal international economic norms. The research borrows Alastair Johnston’s ‘microprocesses’ of socialization to assess the processes of IMF socialization via financial assistance, technical assistance, and surveillance and policy advice for China. The research shows socialization has taken place to a moderate degree, as IMF programs have had some impacts on China’s domestic economic and financial liberalization. Yet no evidence shows the IMF has convinced China to fully redefine its economic principles and norms. Socialization turns out to be an inadequate analytical approach to analyzing the China-IMF relationship in the long run. The research continues with a supplementary theoretical framework: principal-agent theory. Principal-agent theory overcomes some of the technical deficiencies in socialization theory, and helps us understand more thoroughly China’s role in the IMF and the governance of international financial economy in general in the long run. China is regarded as the principal, and the IMF as China’s international organization agent. Driven by its objective of acquiring a larger influence in the governance of international financial economy, China delegates several tasks to the IMF so that the Fund can accomplish these tasks more efficiently than if China took other cooperative or unilateral approaches. China-IMF interactions are assessed following a four-stage analytical approach based upon the key concepts of principal-agent theory. China’s and the IMF’s institutional features and functions are examined as important factors of the China-IMF relationship. They include China’s preferences regarding IMF operation, China’s role in IMF governance, and China’s impact among IMF staff. Based on this examination, the consequences of China’s delegation of tasks to the IMF are assessed. This dissertation indicates that the IMF plays a limited role in assisting China to access larger influence in the governance of international financial economy, because of the IMF’s westerndominated staffing rules, unbalanced governance structure, preference deviation from China, inadequate resources, and China’s incapability to facilitate strict controls on the IMF. The thesis contributes to the so far thin literature on the China-IMF relationship with selected case studies such as IMF Article IV Consultation for China, China’s role in IMF quota and voting share reforms, IMF staff with Chinese nationality, and so on. The research provides a model for analyzing the relationship between China and international organizations with a combination of socialization and principal-agent theoretical frameworks. Last but not least, it extends the research subject of principal-agent theory in international organization Studies to include an emerging market economy state as the principal, which correctly implies the increasing influence of emerging market economies in the governance of international political economy.

This thesis studies the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s capacity to rule in contemporary China by examining (a) its quest for popular legitimacy and (b) its search for party cohesion. In explaining the CCP’s ruling basis, a plethora of political science and economics literature has pointed to China’s economic growth. Conventional wisdom considers ideology to be obsolete and the political reform to be too limited to take any substantive effect in China. This thesis argues that ideological adaptation and the institutionalization of power succession play crucial roles in maintaining the CCP’s popular legitimacy and party cohesion. China’s economic success is certainly important, however, it also creates a fundamental dilemma of the CCP’s rule. If a communist party is not to deliver communism and class victory, why is it there at all? There is a potential contradiction between generating economic success by utilizing quasi capitalist economic policies on the one hand, and the fact that this is a communist party that supposedly justifies its rule by being the vehicle to deliver a communist society on the other. This thesis shows how the CCP has been constantly revising its ideological basis for justifying – if not legitimizing – its rule. By studying the CCP’s ideological discourses, the mechanism of ideological promotion, and their effectiveness, this thesis makes a valuable contribution to the relevant literature. In addition to ideology, the institutionalization of power succession is also crucial to the CCP’s rule. During Mao Zedong’s rule, an un-institutionalized power system had caused endless fierce power struggles within the party, which indirectly led to economic stagnation and social unrest. Thirty years of institutionalization has made leadership transitions in China more stable, transparent, predictable, and smoother now than ever before. By offering a large amount of first- and second-hand data on China’s leadership transition, this thesis shows how the institutionalization of power succession helps to maintain regime stability and legitimacy.

This thesis is an historical study of biopolitical relations between racism and biometric identification in Japan since the late nineteenth century to the present day. Adopting Foucault’s historical method, it challenges progressive accounts of the history of racism and that of biometrics. During the nineteenth century, practices of biometric identification emerged as constitutive of the knowledge of race wherein imperial power relations between superior and inferior races were enabled. Progressive accounts proclaim that colonial practices of biometrics were not scientific but politically intervened, which has since been discredited and replaced by a ‘true’ science of biometrics as individualisation. Contra progressivist claims on postraciality, the thesis concretely historicises the ways in which subjectification and control of race is conducted through the interplay between the epistemic construction of race and the technology of identification in each historical and geographical context. It analyses three modalities of racial government through biometrics in Japan: biometrics as a biological technology of inscribing race during Japanese colonialism; biometrics as a forensic technology of policing former colonial subjects in post-WWII Japan; and contemporary biometrics as an informatic technology of controlling a newly racialised immigrant population. The thesis concludes that despite a series of de-racialising reforms in the twentieth century, biometrics persist as a biopolitical technology of race. Neither racism nor biometrics as a technology of race is receding but they are continuously transforming in a way that a new mechanism of racial government is made possible. Race evolves, it is argued, not in the sense of social Darwinism but because the concept of race itself changes across time and space wherein a new model of racism is empowered. The thesis contributes to existing literature on the biopolitics of security and biometrics by extending the scope of analysis to a non-Western context, explicating historical relations between racism and biometrics, and problematising biometric rationality at the level of racialised mechanism of knowing and controlling (in)security. It also makes contributions to Foucaultian studies by advancing the analysis of biopolitical racism beyond Foucault’s original formulation and by offering a critique of rationality in the field of biometrics.

Public administrators are the people who not only administer public services, but who are also expected to carry out reform and to embed 'new ways of doing things' in the machinery and mentality of public sector organisations. Yet, research has shown that, in pursuing change initiatives, due attention is rarely paid to how public administrators feel, think and make meaning. As a direct consequence, public administrative reforms frequently disappoint by failing to generate the promised positive results. Hence, this thesis explores the nebulous phenomenon of subjective meaning-making in the context of Abu Dhabi Government's customercentric reform. This is accomplished in two practical steps: Firstly, the study employs Q Methodology to identify five viewpoints that different groups of public administrators share: (1) The benefactor's epic fail, (2) Managerialism in modern Arabiya, (3) Triumph of the cherished patriarch, (4) The traditional ways of the Bedouins, and (5) The reign of formulas over culture. In the second step, a Cultural Reference Group drills down into each shared viewpoint to reveal group-specific knowledge structures, or collective schemata. The study discovers that content schemata and context schemata interact with situational influencers in producing shared viewpoints, and a socio-cognitive model is proposed to illuminate these processes. The findings contribute to an understanding of the subjective constructions that public administrators share at group-level, and how these impact ou the opportunities for meaningful reform.