Le Mozambique est un 'donor darling' depuis l'indépendance en 1975, et plus particulièrement depuis les Accords de paix en 1992. En matière de conservation de la nature, des bailleurs de fonds internationaux prennent une part active à l'action publique, depuis la conception de la réglementation jusqu'à la gestion quotidienne de parcs nationaux. L'action publique est de fait transnationale : elle est sous-tendue par des narrations, des financements et des acteurs exogènes. Ce travail étudie ce phénomène au sommet de l'Etat, c'est à dire à l'échelle des élites administratives du ministère du tourisme (en charge des questions de conservation) et de deux parcs nationaux (Gorongosa et Limpopo). Grâce à une lecture sociologique de l'action publique, nous montrons combien les élites mozambicaines se situent dans une zone grise : elles s'attachent à mettre en œuvre les feuilles de route de bailleurs qui les rémunèrent (telle la Banque mondiale), mais elles affichent dans le même temps une loyauté vis à vis du parti-Etat Frelimo, au pouvoir depuis l'indépendance. Ainsi, leur maîtrise voire leur partage des visions du monde des bailleurs en matière de conservation va de pair avec leur inscription nationale : la mise en œuvre d'agendas pour partie exogènes n'est pas incompatible avec l'affirmation d'un périmètre des compétences de l'Etat. En d'autres termes, notre hypothèse consiste à penser l'action de ces élites comme participant certes de la transnationalisation de l'action publique, mais également de l'affirmation de l'Etat qui reste au centre du jeu, malgré ses faibles capacités. De manière a priori contre-intuitive, le processus de domination étatique peut se poursuivre sous un régime d'aide, lequel peut même donner lieu à un (re)déploiement de la souveraineté de l'Etat.

La chute de la dictature duvaliériste, le 7 février 1986, marque un véritable tournant dans l'évolution politique du pays. La situation nouvelle qui en résulte est généralement analysée ou comprise sous l'angle de l'explication découlant du paradigme des transitions. Ce cadre d'analyse s'est révélé en tous points inadapté pour rendre compte des bouleversements enregistrés. Dès lors, la recherche d'une explication alternative vient à se poser. Cette recherche tente d'explorer cette voie. Et elle soulève un questionnement fondamental qui appréhende la crise haïtienne sous l'angle de l'épuisement de l'ordre politique imposé lors de la première occupation américaine pendant la période 1915-1934. Le défi de cette restructuration du champ politique avait sollicité davantage le rôle et l'action de deux nouveaux acteurs qui ont durablement émergé dans la vie politique du pays à partir des années quatre-vingt : les mouvements populaires et les partis politiques. L'interaction qui s'établit entre ces deux acteurs avait acquis à la fois une dimension complexe et problématique. D'une part, ils (les acteurs) n'avaient pas pu développer une claire conscience de leur rôle dans le processus de transformation politique en cours. D'autre part, il s'est établi entre les deux acteurs un radical antagonisme qui a fini par compromettre la possibilité de construction des capacités politiques nationales en vue de favoriser une évolution positive dudit processus. Le retour à la domination directe américaine, avec l'intervention militaire de 1994, consacrera l'impossibilité de trouver une issue à la crise au plan interne. Cette intervention confirmera la réalité de l'épuisement de l'ordre politique de 1934 tout en provoquant des contradictions nouvelles. Elle a notamment contribué à précipiter la suppression de l'armée, tout en procédant de manière quasi-totale à la confiscation de la souveraineté du pays. Pendant la décennie 1986-1996 qui reste charnière dans le processus de changement politique en Haïti, il n'a pas été possible donc d'aboutir à une redéfinition de l'ordre politique agonisant. Mais l'enjeu de son renouvellement reste indispensable. Malgré leurs faiblesses et les controverses à la base de leur relation, les mouvements populaires et les partis politiques demeurent encore les deux principales formes de représentation politique ou d'action collective qui puissent aider d'avancer dans cette direction. La difficulté majeure est d'arriver à définir l'originalité de l'articulation entre ces deux acteurs qui pourrait bien convenir dans le contexte actuel marqué à la fois par le reflux des mouvements et le faible niveau d'enracinement de la forme partisane.

Le 10 janvier 1984, les Etats-Unis et le Saint-Siège annoncent l'établissement de relations diplomatiques. Cette décision s'inscrit dans un contexte de tensions accrues entre les Etats-Unis et l'Union soviétique après la détente qui avait caractérisé les années 1970. L'accord idéologique semble parfait entre Ronald Reagan et Jean-Paul II, tous les deux connus pour leur anticommunisme farouche. Le rapprochement constaté dans les années 1980 a conduit certains à évoquer l'existence d'une alliance entre Rome et Washington ayant visé à précipiter la chute des régimes marxistes. Pourtant, une analyse plus poussée de leurs relations pendant cette période tend à infirmer cette lecture. Le Vatican ne va pas toujours approuver les politiques de déstabilisation des régimes marxistes menées par l'Administration Reagan, contrairement aux attentes de cette dernière. Washington, pris au dépourvu, va consentir des efforts importants pour convaincre Rome du bien fondé de sa politique étrangère. Négociations de désarmement, Initiative de défense stratégique, Amérique centrale et Pologne seront autant de sujets abordés pour essayer d'emporter l'adhésion du Saint-Siège, ou tout du moins pour éviter une condamnation, ne serait-ce qu'implicite, de sa politique. Parfois, le Saint-Siège va agir dans un sens favorable aux intérêts américains, mais quelle que soit l'effet de ses prises de position sur Washington, ces dernières s'expliquent par le fait que le Saint-Siège a agi selon des intérêts qui ne sont pas tous liés à la lutte contre le communisme.

This thesis evaluates the art involved in the process of constructing borders. I review the governmental processes involved with Canadian border policies as they facilitate the welcomed and the rejected. I ask: how do citizenship and immigration policies operate to maintain and reproduce borders, separating Canadian citizens inside the state from ‘foreigners’ outside. This thesis considers borders not only as repressive instruments for exclusion but also in a productive sense as they create citizens, national identities and populations. The thesis focuses on one central assemblage of border technologies: immigrant medical examinations. By reviewing citizenship and immigration policies, laws and practices since confederation, as well as contemporary legislation, policies and interview data, this thesis argues that these examinations are founded on principles of exclusion. While current policy directions suggest using these medical examinations for inclusive practices, I argue that such inclusive practices still reify the exclusive expectations of the state for citizens to be healthy and productive in the present and in the future.

This thesis asks how the Mohajir Quami Mahaz (MQM), transformed itself from an ethnic to a catch-all party. Existing literature heavily emphasizes the MQM’s militancy, while this thesis explores the journey of the party, formed in 1984 to represent Urdu-speakers in Pakistan, through each phase of its development down to its transformation into the Muttahida Qaumi Mahaz (United National Movement) in 1997. The MQM’s process of transformation can be explained theoretically through Kirchheimer’s catch-all party theory. My findings note a shift from an ethno-militant agenda of Mohajir interests to one stressing the need for “national unity” and modernization. It is argued that the party shifted from making choices based on ideology to a strategy-based politics. The MQM, therefore, sought voters outside its traditional constituent base in an effort to gain national appeal. As an urban-based middle-class party, it provides an ideal example of how a party adopts to a changing social environment fractured by military administration, modernity, and political Islam. Therefore, this thesis is the story of the MQM’s journey from mohallah to mainstream.

China’s renewed engagement in Africa is shaped by an ever more coherent and multi-faceted African strategy which is informed by and supportive of Beijing’s emerging foreign policy strategy in general. Through an investigation into economic, political and military dimensions of this relationship, it is apparent that China’s interests in Africa are not confined to the continent nor simply a patch work of ad hoc relations of economic opportunism, but rather Africa is seen as playing a vital role in furthering China’s three foreign policy objectives of 1) access to economic and political resources both on the continent and internationally; 2) assurance of China’s rise as peaceful and beneficial; 3) and acceptance of China’s ascendance and growing influence internationally as legitimate. While economic interests, particularly resource extraction, remain paramount, Africa is becoming an important political ally in supporting Chinese efforts towards creating a more conducive international environment for its domestic development and rise to great power status. Military relations in Africa, though growing, remain limited and play an assisting role to China’s greater economic and political interests. While this developing African strategy has so far been largely successful in securing economic resources and generating backing for Chinese interests internationally, concerns and criticisms stemming both from Western states and increasingly within the continent itself over issues such as development, economic exploitation, human rights and governance, and support for pariah regimes remain central challenges. China’s African strategy, therefore, while informed by a number of strategic interests and practices, remains highly contingent as Beijing attempts to constantly balance interests and relationships on the continent with those internationally, including both of a short and long term nature.

Over the last forty years, the self-determination claims of Indigenous peoples in Canada have increasingly been cast in the language of “recognition”: recognition of Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, recognition of an Indigenous right to land and self-government, recognition of the right to benefit from the development of Indigenous territories and resources, and so on. In addition, the last fifteen years have witnessed a proliferation of scholarship which has sought to flesh-out the ethical, legal and political questions that these claims tend to raise. Subsequently, “recognition” has now come to occupy a central place in our efforts to comprehend what is at stake in contestations over identity and difference in liberal settler-polities more generally. The purpose of this dissertation is twofold. First, I want to challenge the now commonplace assumption that the colonial relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada can be reconciled via such a politics of recognition. Second, I want to explore glimpses of an alternative politics. More specifically, drawing critically from Indigenous and non-Indigenous intellectual and activist traditions, I will explore a politics of self-recognition that is less oriented around attaining an affirmative form of recognition from Indigenous peoples’ master-other (the liberal settler-state and society), and more about critically revaluating, reconstructing and redeploying Indigenous cultural forms in ways that seek to prefigure alternatives to the colonial social relations that continue to facilitate the dispossession of Indigenous lands and self-determining authority.

This thesis examines conflict transformation in public policy in the case of the British Columbia Farm Assessment Review public process in the Capital Regional District from December 2007 to July 2009. The research addresses three questions: 1) Were transformative approaches applied to public policy in the Farm Assessment Review (FAR) case? If so, how were those transformative approaches applied? 2) How did worldview conflicts arise in the FAR case? and 3) What were the effects of the FAR public process in terms of transformative capacity? Data were collected from newspaper articles, press releases, public reports, semi-structured interviews, and personal observations. The data were analyzed through directed content analysis and interpreted through the lens of social constructionism. The study found that the process had few transformative qualities and did not accommodate the worldview differences that were detected and recognized by the parties. Few transformational changes could be found in the data.

As the field of humanitarian aid continues to grow exponentially, the politicization of humanitarian aid is an increasing concern. The European Union's humanitarian aid office (ECHO) is the world's second largest aid donor and widely understood to be unpoliticized due to its multilateral nature, relative institutional isolation, needs-based mandate and use of standardized assessment indicators. Using primary and secondary literature and interview sources, this thesis takes a critical look at the EU's aid program and ECHO's work with operating partners using a framework of four degrees of politicization. These degrees are applied throughout the thesis and in a short case study of the EU's aid programs during the Kosovo crisis of 1999. It finds that while ECHO offers an outstanding example of official policy commitments to unpoliticized aid, in practice, it too is subject to the influences of politicization. The thesis concludes with an assessment of how ECHO might address the politicization of aid to improve future aid programs.

Changes in policy. technology, and organizational structures have led to a truly global economy, resulting in both new challenges and new opportunities for global environmental governance. The private sector has adapted well, reorganizing business activities into dense networks of global supply chains. These same forces have placed new constraints on the ability of states to govern global activities. Civil society is utilizing its network characteristics in an effort to fill these governance gaps. Activists have begun focusing on consumer and capital markets, targeting the retail and financial nodes of global supply chains, in an attempt to force corporations to the negotiating table. This work provides new insights into the complex ways in which the characteristics of an industry shape the prospects for campaign success and the broader implications of market campaigns for the possibilities of environmental governance. To answer these questions. two original theoretical frameworks are developed utilizing existing literature and the experiences of environmental campaigns targeting the forestry sector. These frameworks are then applied to case studies taken from the mining industry, namely, the No Dirty Gold campaign and the Global Finance campaign. Activists have been quite successful in their endeavors. The result has been the establishment of private certification institutions, which commit firms to abide by voluntary environmental codes. Continuing campaign pressure has been resulting in a ratcheting-up of these private initiatives. The wider implications discussed within this study revolve around questions of market campaigns' democratic implications, their effect on the regulatory capacity of the state, and their ability to tackle the core causes of environmental issues. The theoretical frameworks developed in this study render multifaceted results, but the implications drawn from them show market campaigns to be a productive, albeit partial, contributor to global environmental governance.