The foreign policy decisions of small, weak states often go overlooked in the international system. Most understandings of small states emphasize their limited foreign policy choices under the influence of larger, global powers. Yet, there are numerous examples of small states selecting their own foreign policies unencumbered by the international system. This study seeks out those examples and argues that weak states often have the freedom to form their own policies and positions uninfluenced by global powers. To explain the foreign policy decision-making process of small, weak states and explore the relationship between small and large powers, this paper asks when and how do small, weak client states choose to not comply with the demands of large patron states in patron-client relationships? The use of the patron-client framework is a valuable tool for analyzing the foreign policy selection process of small and large states interacting in dyadic relationships. To answer the question, the study examines three separate cases involving patron-client relationships. In each case, the United States serves as the patron state while El Salvador, Pakistan, and Thailand represent the separate client states. The case studies examine moments of client-driven noncompliance to reveal how small states form foreign policy decisions. Ultimately, small states not only wield significant control of their own foreign policy decisions, choosing not to comply with the demands of a stronger patron state, but they also form policy based off diverse considerations—including domestic factors, self-interest, and capacity to comply. Findings suggest that clients in international patron-client relationship have more influence over stronger states than current theories would suggest.

This research identifies the conditions that contribute to the rise of durable state rivals that persist over time and do not attempt to overthrow the state. I use a case study of Hezbollah in Lebanon and find that a weak state, foreign state sponsorship, and local support contribute to the rise of durable state rivals. The same conditions that enable the rise of a durable state rival make it more difficult for a durable state rival to overthrow the state. Durable state rivals exist within state borders, possess a high level of social control over a community within the state, and challenge the authority and legitimacy of the state, but they do not attempt to overthrow the state.

This thesis is an inquiry into the challenges to the role of civic organisations in political reform during and after political transitions. The major question this research addresses is: How do institutions and institutional dynamics constrain political reform during a transition? The thesis examines how demands for reform by non-governmental organisations in Lebanon and Libya were not translated into concrete political decisions taken by regimes during a transition period. The thesis suggests that the combination of weak states and power-sharing agreements marginalizes civic organisations, and poses institutional constraints on the likelihood of reform. The thesis is based on contemporary research on events and reform trajectories in Lebanon and Libya, with a focus on the demands and strategies employed by activists during periods of transition. Lebanon between 2005 and 2010 and Libya between 2011 and 2013 underwent critical political events but subsequently did not adopt political reforms despite demands by civic organisations in two main areas: the electoral system in Lebanon and the constitutional process in Libya. A study of these two reform campaigns reveals deeply entrenched historical patterns and elements of continuity that led to path dependent outcomes during transition. By utilising theory and concepts from the perspective of historical institutionalism, the thesis identifies the factors behind path dependent outcomes in Lebanon and Libya. I argue that the transitions in Lebanon and Libya were a result of only ‘partially' critical junctures. The thesis builds on the approach of path dependence by offering insights as to how historically inherited institutional dynamics from the previous regime can cause junctures to be only ‘partially' critical for the broader political order. The main source of data comes from participant observations, interviews and focus groups with two organisations that tried to advance electoral reform and constitutional development.

The thesis examines the practice of corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the period of its establishment until the death of Arafat. Palestinian elite formation from the late Ottoman period until the establishment of the PA was assessed in order to identify the elites that came into power in the PA and the political cultures they came to espouse. The two primary elite groups’ (Outsider elites and Insider counter-elites) conflicting political cultures were assessed in how they influenced the decision making process, the construction, and exhibited institutional behaviour of the PA. With the signing of the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo Accords) on the 13th of September, 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Government of Israel it established the Palestinian Authority as the government in transition for the Palestinians. The agreements conferred the governing power and leadership role to the PLO Outsider elites (under Arafat). Due to the secret nature and asymmetrical power relation by which the negotiations and agreements were conducted and signed between the PLO Outsider leadership and the Government of Israel, which excluded inputs from Palestinian Insider elites, the culminating PA structure came to exhibit institutional weakness with certain neo-patrimonial behaviour. The political framework by which the Oslo Accords constructed the PA and influenced by international actors warranted institutional-weakness. Moreover, as external actors’ demands for the PA to deal with the declining Peace Process, and address political and security issues increased, PA corruption behaviour became more apparent and proliferated which became indicative of its fundamental problem in that it lacked statehood, lacked authority and legitimacy, and thus resorted to neo-patrimonial and repressive methods to govern. This neo-patrimonial political culture of Arafat and his governing Outsider elites used corruption as a PA political tool for survival thus suppressing a nascent democratic political culture of the Insiders and consequently led to an institutionalisation of corruption in the PA.

This thesis aims to explore selected theoretical approaches investigating the causes of conflicts on the African continent and then try to apply it to the particular case of the Democratic Republic of Congo and its second war, running from 1998-2003, and then assess the impact of each selected causes of this particular Congolese conflict. This Work in the first chapters outlines the chosen theories related to the causes of armed conflicts in Africa, focusing on three selected causes of conflict: natural resources, ethnicity and weak state. These chapters are theoretical basis for the analysis found in the final chapter. It then evaluates the impact of chosen variables on the outbreak of the Congolese war. Based on the analysis the author draws the following conclusions: 1st the main cause of the second war in the DRC, running in the years 1998 - 2003, can be considered as raw materials, or the efforts of rebel groups and neighboring countries to control and subsequent illegal mining of mineral wealth of The Congo; 2nd although ethnic factors are not the main cause of the second Congolese war, their impact on the conflict, especially in the early days of the conflict is obvious; 3rd nature of the State, namely the weakness of the Government of DRC, ranked according to key indicators, turns out to be the most...

Intelligence, having espionage as its roots, is sometimes misunderstood due to its secret nature. It is due to this that intelligence as a vital component in a state, could be misused by the political regime through less democratic practices that infringe on human rights and the rule of law. The quest of this study (which is not classified, to make the research findings available to both practitioners and scholars of intelligence studies), is to attempt to contribute to the theory and understanding of intelligence studies as a sub-field within the political science in describing, explaining and analysing the intelligence regime. The primary aim is to provide a contextualised and systematic overview of the South African intelligence regime within the framework of the democratisation process in South Africa with specific reference to the period from 1994 to 2014. This study analyses the intelligence regime in South Africa by specifically assessing the role, function and purpose of intelligence through history and within the context of the South African political regime. Therefore, the research problem examined in this study is: given the history and development of South Africa as a democracy, what is the role and function of the intelligence regime during the period 1994 to 2014 – specifically to determine whether intelligence practices were more or less democratic. The theoretical framework formed the basis from which the concepts of state, political regime types and form and degree of government, was explored. It furthermore provided for a comparison of democratic and non-democratic intelligence practices. The study locates intelligence as a reflection of the political regime through the simultaneous typology of both the regime and intelligence, thereby to enable the identification of more or less democratic practices. The notion of a hybrid regime, as having elements of both democratic and non-democratic regimes, presented a fundamental shift in the perception of South Africa‘s democratisation process towards an attempt to reach the goal of being a consolidated democracy. This study draw the conclusion that the role, functions and mandate of an intelligence service within a democracy, should firstly focus on providing the policy-maker with intelligence to be able to make policies; secondly on the identification of threats or potential threats to national security of the state and lastly to protect the constitution. This would ultimately enable the intelligence regime in South Africa to employ more democratic practices which could assist in reaching the goal of democratic consolidation. / MA (Political Studies), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Intelligence, having espionage as its roots, is sometimes misunderstood due to its secret nature. It is due to this that intelligence as a vital component in a state, could be misused by the political regime through less democratic practices that infringe on human rights and the rule of law. The quest of this study (which is not classified, to make the research findings available to both practitioners and scholars of intelligence studies), is to attempt to contribute to the theory and understanding of intelligence studies as a sub-field within the political science in describing, explaining and analysing the intelligence regime. The primary aim is to provide a contextualised and systematic overview of the South African intelligence regime within the framework of the democratisation process in South Africa with specific reference to the period from 1994 to 2014. This study analyses the intelligence regime in South Africa by specifically assessing the role, function and purpose of intelligence through history and within the context of the South African political regime. Therefore, the research problem examined in this study is: given the history and development of South Africa as a democracy, what is the role and function of the intelligence regime during the period 1994 to 2014 – specifically to determine whether intelligence practices were more or less democratic. The theoretical framework formed the basis from which the concepts of state, political regime types and form and degree of government, was explored. It furthermore provided for a comparison of democratic and non-democratic intelligence practices. The study locates intelligence as a reflection of the political regime through the simultaneous typology of both the regime and intelligence, thereby to enable the identification of more or less democratic practices. The notion of a hybrid regime, as having elements of both democratic and non-democratic regimes, presented a fundamental shift in the perception of South Africa‘s democratisation process towards an attempt to reach the goal of being a consolidated democracy. This study draw the conclusion that the role, functions and mandate of an intelligence service within a democracy, should firstly focus on providing the policy-maker with intelligence to be able to make policies; secondly on the identification of threats or potential threats to national security of the state and lastly to protect the constitution. This would ultimately enable the intelligence regime in South Africa to employ more democratic practices which could assist in reaching the goal of democratic consolidation. / MA (Political Studies), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This dissertation focuses on a recent but growing movement in Argentina, state-sponsored formal institutions of popular music education. The musics taught in these schools – tango, jazz, and Argentine folk idioms – have historically been excluded from the country’s formal music education systems. Recent moves to standardize and legitimize these musics in this new institutional context raise questions of canon formation, pedagogical praxis, aesthetics and musical meaning that have implications far beyond the classrooms where they are implemented. I examine two of these schools based in and around the capital city of Buenos Aires: the Escuela de Música Popular de Avellaneda, and the Tango and Folklore department of the Conservatorio Superior de Música “Manuel de Falla.” I adopt an ethnographic approach that considers broad structural and policy issues of power distribution, state intervention, and cultural nationalism. I also examine how these structures play out in discourse and practice within and beyond the classroom, shaped by and in turn shaping students’ and teachers’ aesthetics, politics, and subject positions. I then analyze the output of several musical groups composed of current students and recent graduates of these programs, exploring the notion of an emerging institutional aesthetic and the extent to which these institutions act as homogenizing influences or engender creative divergence. Finally, applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a field of cultural production, I question the extent to which this new “música popular” is truly popular, ultimately arguing that it occupies a sort of third space between mass culture and high culture, replicating some avant-garde assumptions about the role of art as anti-commercial, yet simultaneously embracing a symbolic economy that valorizes populist and subaltern identities and ideologies. / text