This dissertation reevaluates the collapse of the USSR and the reform project of “perestroika” that preceded it from the perspective of Tajikistan. As one of the most peripheral republics in the Soviet Union, Tajikistan found its economy and society shaken to the core by the economic and political reforms passed between 1985 and 1991. Tracking the development of Soviet reform legislation in Moscow and its implementation in Tajikistan, this dissertation shows how perestroika was intimately linked to the breakdown of economic order and social ties that occurred during the final years of the USSR. Rejecting narratives focused on rising nationalism and long-suppressed regional frustrations, this dissertation outlines how Moscow-designed marketizing reforms were the main driver of strife in the Tajik SSR. As the economy disintegrated, so did the fabric of society: by February 1990 Tajikistan’s capital was subsumed by riot, and by May 1992 the entire country was aflame with civil war. By reorienting the history of the Soviet collapse to a peripheral republic that was engulfed by economic disorder and sectarian war, moreover, this dissertation problematizes the established historical discourse about the end of the USSR. Rather than the wave of democratization and free speech seen from the perspective of Moscow and Eastern Europe, for many millions of Soviet citizens the collapse of the USSR was a deeply frightening and violent event. Crime rates rose across the former USSR; local conflicts sprung up; wars flared in more than one republic. Much more than an outlier, Tajikistan was simply one extreme along this spectrum, and its experience of economic collapse leading to civil war complicates simple arguments about how glasnost led to the peaceful end of the USSR. This dissertation demonstrates that economics remained at the heart of the Soviet collapse and the violence that followed.

This thesis examines the emergence of praetorianism in Pakistan and its relationship with militant Islamism from the establishment of Pakistan since independence in 1947. It analyses the evolution of civil-military relations in Pakistan, paying particular attention to the processes of state construction, inherent weaknesses of the country’s political and economic institutions, impact of significant regional events such as the Soviet-Afghan war, and chronic hostility with India. It focuses specifically on how these aspects of Pakistan’s historical experience impacted firstly, the phenomenon of military interventionism and, secondly, its evolving relationship with militant Islamism. This thesis also seeks to demystify the controversial relationship between the Pakistani military and Islamist militancy through a historically and conceptually grounded analysis. It does so by exploring the interface between praetorianism and militant Islamism in Pakistan through the lens of path dependency within a conceptual framework derived from historical institutionalism. Here it looks at the persistence of patterns in the course of the country’s institutional development as a reflection of the role of key players, their interests and strategies and the distribution of power amongst them. It factors in ideas of critical junctures, historical causation and increasing returns, to help to foment a deeper understanding of praetorianism and its evolving association with Islamism over time. Finally, it examines the constraints placed by Islamists, a combination of religiopolitical parties and militant groups, on the military’s expanding practical and political influence within the state. By bringing to light the historical role accorded to religious ideology within the Pakistani polity, it analyses the codification of a pervasive Islamist discourse within domestic and foreign policy. It reveals how powerful military regimes adopted and intensified the recourse to Islamism to augment their strategic and institutional ambitions, but in doing so were handicapped by this very dependence. Taken together the insights gleaned from this approach sets the thesis apart from the bulk of scholarship on civil-military relations in Pakistan, which has to date focused upon the overarching idea of military as a colossus or hegemon with few limitations on its power. This thesis advances two key arguments. First, it argues that the rise and entrenchment of praetorianism in Pakistan was based essentially upon the pathdependent trajectory of civil-military relations, incorporating Islamism as a selfreinforcing feature, to meet political, administrative and strategic needs. Second, it posits that this dependence in the long run served to limit the military’s power and influence over the state. By essentially re-contextualising the understanding of civil-military relations in Pakistan and situating the issue of Islamist militancy within this framework therefore, this thesis provides fresh insights on the contentious relationship between the Pakistani military and Islamist militancy.

Public administrative reform in Indonesia accelerated after the country experienced economic and political turbulence in 1999. As part of the reform policy, the central government introduced performance management systems in order to improve the capacity of public institutions, particularly local governments. The thesis uses semi-structured interviews to answer, how effective is the performance management system in Indonesian local government? How do rational/technocratic and political frameworks affect the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of performance management system? The evidence suggests the performance management system in the Indonesian public sector is ineffective. This is indicated by gaps between performance indicators and actual performance, by the non-use of performance information and by the behaviour of those who are supposed to be influenced. The ineffectiveness may be explained by both rational/technocratic factors, and political/cultural factors. Based on our findings, those elements affect effectiveness of the performance management system. However, respondents emphasised that political/cultural elements were more fundamental to successful use of performance information, but present more difficult and challenging issues to reform. Indonesian government agencies compete with each other to maintain a role in the context of decentralisation, each seeking to prevent too much accumulation of power by any other agency. Therefore, although the government agencies may favour a technocratic approach, they will resist any comprehensive technocratic scheme of system integration, particularly in the performance management system. The Indonesian public sector may thus represent a case of ‘political technocracy’ in which rationality is limited by political interests.

The thesis investigates the role of governance networks in advancing sustainable energy transitions in the cities of Europe. By doing so, it aims to provide insights about the practical applicability of the Transition Management framework in different urban settings. Exploring this issue is timely as well as important due to parallel processes of the rising profile of cities in transition governance; and the perceived need in city authorities to develop new governance mechanisms to support low-carbon transitions on the urban scale. The main contribution to knowledge is the empirical evidence provided for the context-dependency of the connections between technological change required for urban low-carbon energy transitions and organisational change in local governance arrangements. The findings' consequence for theory is that the implicit assumptions built into Transition Management about the functioning of collaborative governance networks limit its applicability in different cities. The evidence collected through the study also highlights problems with scaling down the Multi-Level Perspective to the urban scale. The findings are derived from a comparative study of three cities from across Europe with diverse characteristics in terms of historical sustainability agenda development, locally relevant rationales for transitions, and patterns of organisational fragmentation and power-distribution in local governance arrangements.

The thesis investigates the development of women's employment policy in Italy in the decade 1996-2006 with specific focus on the European Structural Fund Programme (ESF) 2000-2006. The Italian case is considered in a comparative perspective. Therefore, albeit the research is centred on a single-country study, Italy is identified as a welfare state that belongs to the Mediterranean type, according to the relevant literature. The case study focuses on the different experiences of Basilicata and Apulia in creating public policy promoting female employment, as revealed by the evaluation of their different experiences in the 2000-2006 (ESF) programme and the subsequent 2007-2008 twinning project which resulted from this. The case study examines a specific policy activity in Italy, the 2005 Voucher Grant Scheme of the Basilicata Region, in comparison with the experience of the Apulia Region. In fact, the Basilicata Scheme won the "EU Best Practice Model" award. The thesis investigates whether, using the concept of 'policy' as defined by Colebatch, policy was developed in the Basilicata Voucher Grant Scheme whereas policy was not developed in Apulia's similarly intended scheme. Colebatch argues that for policy to be constituted as policy in practice, rather than as the mere idea of it, it must have three "attributes" and "distinctive elements". These attributes are: a) authority, b) expertise and c) order. Their respective distinctive elements are: a) hierarchy, b) instrumentality and c) coherence. When these criteria are met, then a chosen government course of action can be framed as a process generating policy. The thesis demonstrates that these criteria were met in the Basilicata Region, but not in Apulia. The thesis thereby also probes and confirms the value of Colebatch's constructivist theory of public policy.

Since the end of the Cold War, the political development and democratisation of the post-communist countries to the east of the EU has drawn considerable attention from academic scholars. Initially, this was characterised by optimism, with scholars praising the EU for exporting institutional democracy through its mechanism of conditionality. This research, however, has given little attention to the micro-level foundations of the process. Yet the recent increase in Euroscepticism and anti-democratic, extremist tendencies have pointed to the importance of individual attitudes, even leading academics to argue that a democratic backsliding is taking place in Central and Eastern Europe. This thesis intends to re-examine the case of the EU's transformative power, focusing specifically on its micro-level impact on the political attitudes of citizens and elites. The research question thus asks: to what extent does the EU have a transformative power on political attitudes? The thesis consists of three research papers that use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine EU influence on two types of actors, the general population and bureaucratic elites, focusing on two types of attitudes: support for democracy and support for the EU. The overall findings show that the Union does have a micro-level impact on attitudes both at the elite and citizen levels, though this is contingent on the nature of the relationship with the EU, as well as individuals' support for the Union. In the first paper, the thesis demonstrates that the EU can affect attitudes towards democracy among the post-communist population, although this is contingent on the state's association with the Union: when this is simply economic or political, the effect is positive; however, when the association involves integration as a candidate or member state, a rise in Euroscepticism among the population can in fact lead to lower levels of democratic support. This finding shows that Euroscepticism has an important role in altering the EU's transformative influence on individuals in states integrated within the EU. Indeed, the consequences of this could be highly significant, especially when it comes to political and bureaucratic elites whose daily job affects the politics and policy of their countries. As a result, the second paper examines the EU's effect on the attitudes of civil servants working in the national bureaucracies of the new member states. Using international socialisation theory, the paper shows that civil servants generally tend to support the EU, and this is higher among officials whose daily work brings them into contact with it. In addition, the analysis further explores the scope conditions that facilitate socialisation, revealing that both the quantity and quality of contact with EU-related issues - in terms of prolonged exposure as well as interpersonal contact - matter in explaining the sources of variation in levels of support. Lastly, to examine more closely how bureaucrats see the EU, the third paper uses a more in-depth qualitative study to explore the perceptions of Brussels-based diplomats on the economic, political and security dimensions of the Union. Through a comparative analysis, the paper once again shows that the state-level relationship with the EU can affect the perspectives formed by elites. Using original interview data, the research develops a typology of four types of "perspectives of the EU", based on two dimensions: expectations from the EU and evaluation of the EU. The paper's main argument is that the state-level relationship between the Union and the home country can greatly affect how elites representing those states perceive the Union. The main contributions of the thesis relate to a deeper understanding of the EU's individual-level transformative power, through a discussion of its objects (citizens and elites), its mechanisms (direct and indirect), its scope (internal and external) and its outcomes (attitudes towards democracy and the EU). First, it demonstrates that the EU has a real and measurable effect in changing the perceptions of both citizens and elites in post-communist states. Second, it highlights that its impact works both through indirect mechanisms of a state-level political association, as well as direct mechanisms of international socialisation. In addition, it also reveals that Euroscepticism can act as a moderator, turning the EU's positive democratising effect into a negative one, thus bringing together the literature on the transformative power of Europe with research on attitudes towards the EU and Euroscepticism. Third, it demonstrates that the EU has a transformative power both internally and externally, including non-accession third states. Lastly, it shows that the EU's transformative power can influence attitudes towards democracy and the EU. Ultimately, the overall findings show that the Union has an impact on the attitudes of both elites and citizens, though this is contingent on the nature of the relationship with the EU, as well as individuals' support for the Union.

This thesis is a collection of ethnographic studies of ways in which governments and other public authorities amongst the western Dinka and Nuer (South Sudan) have directly or indirectly remade the moral boundaries of lethal violence during times of war and peace. The thesis goes beyond discussing the causes of specific national episodes of armed conflict in South Sudan but instead pays attention to the normative regimes of lethal violence that span across times of war and peace. I echo those who have challenged the assumption of a rupture between times of war and peace, and additionally assert that normative and legal regimes made during times of ‘peace’ can shape modes and patterns of war. The thesis argues that governments, chiefs and Nuer prophets have all tried to build their own authority through their governance of the moral, legal and spiritual consequences of lethal violence. Different public authorities have contested and coopted each other’s regimes. Governments, chiefs and Nuer prophets have played powerful but contrasting roles in interpreting and remaking the moral and legal limits of lethal violence. The thesis specifically looks at the examples of the remaking of landscapes and laws as ways in which moral boundaries have been reshaped and materially embedded. The doctorate focuses on the tumultuous 2005 – 2015 period, but also draws on histories dating back to the 19th Century.

The thesis discusses the trajectory of the Belgian socialist thinker and activist Hendrik de Man (1885-1953) between 1914 and 1936 ca, with particular attention to his endeavours to renew Western European social democracy after the Great War. The first half of the thesis deals with de Man’s theoretical evolution. Having become convinced of the inadequacy of orthodox Marxism as a conceptual framework for the Left while serving as soldier and diplomat during WWI, de Man sought to overcome the split between reformism and revolutionary socialism by developing an ethical conception of socialism outlined in the book Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus (1926) and, subsequently, by elaborating planism, a democratic socialist ideology supposedly more in tune with the socio-economic conditions of the 1930s. The second half of the thesis focuses on efforts to put de Man’s ideas into practice. Due to his mounting desire to have impact on the social democratic movement, de Man became increasingly involved in politics and, in late 1933, launched the Belgian Labour Plan with the aim of bolstering the Belgian Labour Party and containing the spread of fascism. Planism won support from many young socialists all across Europe but was also met with suspicion and outright hostility by wide segments of the social democratic establishment, including prominent leaders such as Emile Vandervelde and Léon Blum. Eventually, de Man accepted to compromise on the full implementation of the Labour Plan and sought to accomplish the same goals by serving as Minister, without success. By examining his failure as well as the difficulties experienced by his followers in France and Britain, the thesis highlights the limits that Western European social democratic parties set to their own ideological renewal during the interwar period.

Being a politician has become a profession for many. With the development of the European Parliament (EP) into an influential institution at the European level, building a career in the EP has become an interesting option for politicians. This thesis studies the different career paths of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and explores how these career paths and MEPs’ ambitions have an impact on their participation in the legislative process and thereby the way they represent citizens. This thesis is based on three empirical research papers. The first paper identifies two career paths that MEPs might follow, in addition to the three others which are generally used, and links these to the activities of MEPs in parliament. I find that an MEP’s career path and ambitions are relevant in explaining certain legislative behaviour across member states and party groups. The second paper looks at the career ambitions of MEPs and finds that MEPs’ career paths are also the result of expressed ambitions by politicians themselves, despite their dependence on party leadership and the second-order nature of EP elections. MEPs looking to pursue a career in the EP are more actively involved in the parliament’s activities. This higher level of participation and acquired policy influence is rewarded when MEPs stand for re-election. The third paper looks at the group of MEPs who become lobbyists after their time in parliament. Building on what is known from Washington, this paper finds that being on a powerful committee, from a smaller political group and having a longer tenure make it more likely that an MEP becomes a lobbyist. The findings across the three papers support the idea that the career paths and ambitions of politicians provide an important explanation when trying to understand an MEP’s willingness to invest resources in the EP’s legislative process.

Social networking sites (SNSs) are an emerging channel of political mediation in Thailand for political figures to establish and develop their relationships with Thai citizens. Through focusing on the online political public relations work by candidates (and their teams) in the 2013 Bangkok gubernatorial election campaign, this thesis contributes a Thai perspective and experience to the growing literature on the use of SNSs globally in election campaigning. This research utilises multimodal textual analysis and interviews with Thai politicians, candidates and public relations personnel to explore the management of candidates’ images on Facebook via photographs, text and interactions, the management relationship between candidates and public relations personnel and citizens, the dynamics of what can be understood as ‘digital vote-canvassing networks’, and the various associated possibilities and challenges of using SNSs to contest for political power in the Thai context. This thesis finds that the political public relations work carried out via Facebook during the 2013 election campaign constituted a new and complex process of managing content and of managing human resources and relationships. The construction of candidates’ political images integrated existing Thai archetypes and connotations with more global images and strategies. The publication of campaign content on Facebook over the entire election campaign was managed to facilitate followers’ interpretations of the candidates’ campaigns. Election campaigns on Facebook developed digital vote-canvassing networks as candidates and their teams used different tactics to engage, interact with and manage citizens, as well as attempt to maximise the ‘spreadability’ of their content and thus extend their reach. As candidates campaigned on Facebook under election campaign rules not defined particularly for Facebook, the decentralisation of interaction among Facebook users was a major concern in controlling their election campaign on Facebook.