The fundamental research topic of this thesis is: to determine the extent to which the emergence and evolution of factional groups and their politics have been conditioned by their conception of 'the role of people' in the political arena. It will also explore their perceptions of societal demands and expectations in a different period of the IRI's short history. In other words, it aims to trace and explain the evolution of popularisation of factional politics in the IRI. To answer this question, I also elaborate another related question: the extent to which the emergence and evolution of certain factional groups have been conditioned by the character of personal relationships between key, leading actors in each group. These two interrelated issues represent the most important omissions in the academic literature on factional politics in the IRI. Therefore, by definition, I will show how, with the death of Khomeini in 1989 and the consequent decentralisation of ideological production in the IRI, forcing factional groups to reach out of the institutional context and seek popular electoral support in order to successfully compete in factional struggles within the institutions of the IRI. As a result, societal demands and/or the elite's perception of these demands became an important element in the dynamics of factional politics in the post-Khomeini era. Various factions articulated their conceptions of 'the role of people' in the IRI's politics-rooted in and justified by their respective interpretations of Khomeinism. Theses competing conceptions of the 'role of people' in the IRI engendered the emergence of series of discourses and slogans within the framework of Khomeinism aimed to justify the factions' claims of being the representatives of popular demands and Khomeinism. Furthermore, the members of the elite of the IRI, both those who participated in the revolution and their offspring, have a long personal history with each other. Positive and negative feelings that emerged from any of these experiences, I intend to show, at some key points have played roles of various degrees of importance in the emergence and evolution of certain factional groups and their actions in vital political events, such as the controversial 2009 elections and its aftermath. The thesis will draw its theoretical base and methodology from the literature on hybrid regimes, faction in democratic and party-based systems, and faction in absolutist systems, in addition to the existing literature on factional politics in the IRI dealing with the institutional context.

‘Entirely oblivious to the events unfolding on the “other shore,” Europe tolerated that the Mediterranean, her sea, would turn into a graveyard,’ (Cacciari 2016: viii) These words from the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari’s 2016 study on Europe and Empire indicate to us how Europe today still suffers from a “historical emphysema.” This thesis addresses the question of how these pulmonary difficulties of Europe are related to the process of a history in which the name of Europe comes to be related to and even identified with what is called “spirit.” As is well known, Europe has been conceived as ‘no more than a geographical accident, the peninsula that Asia shoves into the Atlantic’ (Sartre 1988: 292). However, the thesis argues that another definition of Europe, even if intimately bound up with its geography, comes to the fore as the spirit of Europe. In order to bring to light the “spiritual geography” of Europe, I focus primarily on two strands of the twentieth century philosophical inquiry into the notion of “Europe;” one by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the other by the French poet and thinker Paul Valéry. The argument is that what these two thinkers achieve in their thought testifies to the history of an ambiguous relation between Europe and spirit. For both thinkers Europe appears as such only as it is shaped and reshaped by this spiritual relation, one which Europe today retains in its absence, that is, in its spiritlessness.

Europe’s greatest challenges emanating from the Mediterranean Sea are irregular migration and maritime terrorism. These challenges have received great attention from the European Union (EU), North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and beyond. In light of this, the EU and NATO as traditional and regional actors have adopted various approaches, initiatives and maritime operations to cope with these challenges. These operations include, among others, Operation Sophia for counter-migration and Operation Active Endeavour (OAE) for counter-terrorism. This thesis explores the current development of maritime security operations to combat terrorism and the migration crisis, and analyses how these initiatives play a role in security community-building process in the Mediterranean Sea. In particular, the thesis examines the application of the security community framework in maritime security through the enactment of maritime practices. The thesis provides a detailed analysis of the activities, actors and forms of cooperation constituting the EU and NATO’s practices to address maritime challenges in the Mediterranean Sea. This thesis adopts qualitative research methods to examine the expansion of the security community in the Mediterranean Sea by analysing the case studies of NATO and EU’s counter-terrorism and counter-migration initiatives. It examines the maritime policies, initiatives, and operations implemented by NATO and EU since 9/11 to combat these threats. Based on the repertoire of practices, the case studies examine the extent to which the security community is evidenced within the maritime activities. Findings from the case studies evidence the process of security community building, including through the practice of cooperative security and partnerships. In the conclusion chapter, the future research agenda for maritime studies and security community research is also explored. Ultimately, this thesis offers nuanced insights into the dynamics of security community research, contributing to the development of the framework into maritime security studies.

Israeli foreign policy towards Iran in the period 1948-1979 has been generally explained through the Realist perspective, claiming that Israeli relations with Iran were established and developed due to converging strategic interests and common threats. This thesis argues that the existing literature does not fully appreciate the role that individuals, especially with their perceptions and misperceptions and human agency played in the formation and implementation of Israeli foreign policy. By not fully appreciating the role of human agency, the existing literature on Israeli relations with Iran has not fully explored the methods that made Israel’s foreign policy with Iran a success. For instance, the existing accounts do not examine how the actions of specific Israeli diplomats in Tehran such as Ambassador Meir Ezri prevented attempts from groups in Iran such as the Iranian Foreign Ministry and certain religious clerics to stop Israeli-Iranian relations. For three decades, the relationship between Israel and Iran, though discreet and often kept secret, flourished within the context of the Cold War and the rise of Pan Arabism. Many covert joint operations yielded widespread collaboration in the areas of trade, civilian technology, oil, agriculture, and extensive military intelligence collaboration on areas such as Yemen, Iraq and the Kurds. That changed with a shift in Israeli personnel in 1973, and ended completely after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. If Israeli-Iranian relations did solely stem from converging strategic interests, relations would have been more likely to survive the 1979 Revolution. Rather, the Israelis’ change in personnel in Tehran, their relationships with the Iranians, and their perceptions of world events greatly influenced the 1973 and 1979 shifts. This thesis concludes that any analysis of Israeli foreign policy formation and implementation towards Iran must include the multidimensional role of decision-makers, diplomats, and other foreign policy actors in order to complete the analysis presented by the existing Realist-leaning accounts. The thesis bases its argument on extensive International Relations-based examination of Israeli diplomatic history. Analysis of the role of prime ministers and diplomats such as David Ben Gurion, Tzvi Doriel and Meir Ezri; including their perceptions and misperceptions and human agency—forges a new understanding of Israeli foreign policy towards Iran from 1948 to 1979. Through the use of personal interviews, memoirs in Hebrew, English and Farsi, recently de-classified documents from the Israel State Archives, and unseen documents from private family collections, this thesis presents an argument that addresses the gaps in the existing literature.

The present thesis makes a twofold contribution to the existing literature. Firstly, it shows that clientelism complements cartelization, providing parties with stability in condition of weak mass mobilization. Secondly, it traces the specific mechanisms through which cartel parties channel public resources, within the institutional setting of the post-communist Europe. It provides an important extension to the cartel party literature in the context of new democracies. The main finding of this project is that cartel parties can survive and achieve stability through clientelistic distribution of benefits, both within, and outside their organisations. Furthermore, I find that cartelization generates a new model of clientelism, as public resources (e.g. procurement contracts) are also used to finance the party organisations, not only the clients. Through the in-depth case study of Romania, we can see that when political parties have little time to develop territorial networks and mobilization capacity, clientelism becomes an effective tool for establishing roots in society. The context of post-communist countries presents distinctive conditions for clientelistic linkages and the cartelization process. Multi-party systems in these countries have reappeared simultaneously with the institutions of the democratic state. Consequently, party-state interpenetration has been more profound, building upon previous legacies, as well as the permissive transitional circumstances. The present thesis analyses the following sequences of clientelistic exchanges: (1) internal party selection – patrons within the party organisations, (2) party patronage – political interference in public institutions, (3) politicization—political appointments in key positions of the Central Government (i.e. Senior Civil Servants), and finally (4) preferential resource allocation—public funding channelled through party networks. In addition to the chapters devoted to each of these clientelistic mechanisms, the thesis also contains a comparative chapter overseeing the challenges and opportunities for clientelism and cartelization in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

This thesis examines the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) as a political party and an organisation through the examination of two party federations: Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines. This is undertaken via a study of the groups within the UMP, as well as by developing a perspective on the history of conflict within the Centre-Right in the French Fifth Republic, retracing the formation of the UMP and conducting questionnaires and interviews with party activists in Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines. The empirical fieldwork is examined within the broad framework of the party system literature. The UMP is a party that has formed out of a variety of political currents and traditions creating an internally diverse party, and this is examined through a look at the political families in the party and the party federations of Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines to get a view of the party at the point of time of the fieldwork. The thesis examines the party in these two federations through the eyes of the party activists in order to understand the party at the base. This seeks to study what the party is on the ground in these federations: what groups exist within the party (both in terms of the former parties and political currents), what sort of organisation the UMP is, how the activists relate to the organisation, as well as the relationship between the lower levels of the party and the national party. This thesis seeks to answer the question: What sort of party is the UMP as an organisation in these federations, in regards to institutions and what the party sees as its main goals, and what role does internal diversity have within the party?

This thesis explores the shifts and continuities in the construction of security in the post-communist period. The thesis provides an insight into the reasons and the ways in which the dominant discourse of security and foreign policy of the Albanian state shifted in 1997 from a an emphasis on the ‘nation’ and ‘national sovereignty’ into a liberal discourse which emphasized the ‘economy’ and the ‘region’. The overarching question of the thesis is why did the Euro-Atlantic orientation become the hegemonic discourse of Albanian foreign and security policy in the post-1997 period? In order to find the answer for this question I will concentrate on the meanings that the Albanian political elites—and more specifically the two main governing parties, the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party— have attached to the notions of ‘national question’ and ‘Euro-Atlantic orientation’. The argument of the thesis is that the different articulations of ‘Euro-Atlantic orientation’ and of the ‘national interest’ have relied upon the elites’ different conceptions of self, that is, what constituted Albanianism. In turn, the political actors translate the basic identity narratives of the nation through their ideological/interpretative repertoires. The thesis builds on Discourse Theory and particularly the approach developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) By incorporating notions of ‘identification strategies’, ‘interpretative repertoires’ and ‘myth’ into the framework of Lene Hansen and Ole Waever (2001), the thesis reveals the intricate interplay between the construction of state identity and of political identities in post-communist Albania.

This research uses a transactions costs approach to examine recent developments in the public sector organisational arrangements. It explores the extent to which transactions costs or other factors drive the institutional choices that legislators make about policy implementation. The area of application is the adoption of 'new public management' (NPM) reforms in Catalonia for the governance of the public health care sector in the period from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. The methodology used combines qualitative and quantitative approaches in the analysis of data from both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources used here include thirty-eight in-depth and semi-structured interviews with key informants, non-published internal reports from major organisations and an annual survey of all health providers carried out by the Department of Health and Social Security of the Catalan government. The secondary sources include official publications and relevant academic journals and books on the subject. The study analyses both the policy formulation process leading up to a particular institutional design and the nature of the further implementation process in the Catalan health sector. First, policy precedents are identified and the resources and interests of the policy elites analysed as a basis for understanding the output of the reform formulation in 1990. Second, the analysis shows how transactions costs considerations shaped the stances taken by legislators and influenced the final institutional design. Third, a number of subsequent implementation short-falls are traced to some efforts at minimising transactions costs which turned out to be incompatible with NPM postulates. The analysis shows that the impact of politics, that is, the repeated interactions among policy elites controlling complementary resources, shape the way in which transactions costs and other considerations are approached in both policy formulation and implementation processes. A central theoretical lesson drawn from this research is that although transactions costs are difficult to measure, they are useful heuristic tools for analysing the rationale driving decision-making processes on institutional design. However, both the theoretical definition of transactions costs and their actual impact on decision making are mediated by power relations, that is, by politics.

The Introduction – together with the conclusion – provides a framework for the three substantial contributions of this PhD project. It begins with sketching a puzzle that motivates research on the political economy of structural reforms in Europe, namely the inconsistency between the commitment of governments to reform and the actual reform track record across the countries. It discusses the nature and findings of the relevant multidisciplinary political economy literature. Paper One addresses the puzzle why the first major post-war overhaul of the German political economy – the ‘Agenda 2010’ reforms – was undertaken in 2003 by a social-democratic government and not by any of the conservative governments that preceded it. It finds that the lack of government cohesion, the federal legislative system and corporatist structures remain important determinants for institutional stability and change in Germany. Paper Two develops a theoretical argument as to why corporatist European economies may live through extended periods of economic underperformance without significant reform. Building on this argument, it presents a formal model, from which it derives a set of determinants for structural reforms, and finally illustrates these by exploring the causes for reform in Germany and Sweden. Paper Three uses a new database on labour market reform to show that corporatist structures have an intermediating effect on the determinants of structural reform policies. It finds evidence that the interests of employer organisations and trade unions matter for the labour market reform trajectories in countries with corporatist features. Political partisanship and economic crises matter more in pluralist countries. Finally, the Conclusion summarises the findings of the three papers. Subsequently, it outlines the limitations and draws up some wider implications for the theories of institutional change and for public policymaking.

This thesis offers an alternative narrative why the Juba Peace Talks between the Government of Uganda and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and its political wing, the Lord’s Resistance Movement (LRM), did not produce a Final Peace Agreement. Widely considered the most promising peace effort in the history of a violent conflict that began in 1986, talks were mediated by the Government of Southern Sudan from 2006 to 2008. During this time, the parties signed five separate agreements on a range of issues, yet in 2008 the LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony, failed to endorse them through a final signature. An aerial attack on the LRA by the Ugandan army spelled the end of the Juba Talks. It is commonly argued that as the first peace talks conducted with people wanted by the International Criminal Court, the Juba Talks collapsed because the arrest warrants made a negotiated agreement impossible. Another widely accepted reason is that the LRA/M were not committed to peace. This thesis, however, argues that how the LRA/M experienced the muddled and convoluted peace talks was the crucial factor because the dynamics of the process confirmed existing power dynamics. Internally, the LRA/M’s dynamics were profoundly influenced by their perception of being trapped in an established hostile system, causing a struggle to transform their own dynamics constructively. Offering an analytical chronology of the Juba Talks with an empirical emphasis on the perspective of the LRA/M and an analysis of LRA/M structures and behavioural patterns that emerged in the process, this thesis further outlines that judging success or failure of a peace process on whether agreements have been signed is misplaced. Despite not producing a final agreement, the Juba Talks contributed to peace and change in Uganda.