I examine the origins of the anti-totalitarian collective memory pervading Central and Eastern Europe by tracking the genesis and development of the region’s ubiquitous and state-sponsored memory institutes. I deploy field analysis, prosopography and in-depth interviews to reveal how these hybrid institutes generate a potent anti-communist symbolic repertoire by overseeing alliances and exchanges across political, historiographic and Eurocratic fields. Memory institutes ensure this hegemony fundamentally via two mechanisms: The scientific validation of their activities by way of scholarly co-optation, and its regional legitimation through incursions into European arenas. I conclude that memory institutes are ultimately a key element of post-communist political competition, responsible for creating a durable symbolic advantage for the right’s conservative identity politics.

What explains the proletarization (the increasing embrace by the blue-collar constituencies) of the radical right vote in the countries of post-Communist Europe? I argue that the centrist shift of the ex-Communist left parties along the economic policy dimension drives the electoral success of radical right parties in the region. I show that the programmatic shift of the ex-Communist left parties (as instrumented by the implementation of austerity reforms) opened up their traditional blue-collar constituencies to the redistributive appeals of the radical right parties. I test my argument using several different approaches. First, I examine the relationship between the support for the radical right parties and the ex-Communist left parties’ policy positions using a quantitative cross-country analysis. Second, I provide an overview of the experiences of the four Visegrád Group countries and trace the blue-collar constituencies’ shift away from the ex-Communist left parties to the populist and radical right parties over time, as the left parties became more economically centrist. I then test my argument using constituency-level and individual-level experimental survey data within Hungary. Both methods help establish that the centrist shift of the ex-Communist left parties along the economic policy dimension boosted support for the radical right party. My argument contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of political systems and the rise of the radical right parties in Europe.

This is a study of the identities and political mobilisation of the Lebanese Shiʿa throughout the modern history of Lebanon. Currently, the dominant paradigms for such studies focus on the question of sectarianism in Lebanon and the corresponding Shiʿi political movements, Amal and Hizbullah. This thesis presents an alternative approach. It argues that secular identities have also been an important component of the Shiʿi community’s political mobilisation. This is explored through an analysis of the relationship between the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) and the communist Shiʿa. Drawing on interviews with senior LCP officials, current and former Shiʿi communists, party documents and additional interview evidence from the documentary film, We Were Communists, this thesis examines the origins, evolution and transformation of the relationship between the LCP and the Shiʿa after Lebanese independence in 1943, until the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990. Utilising the concepts of identity and political mobilisation, this thesis develops a hybridised approach to the study of political identity that combines primordial with constructionist readings of identity. This acknowledges the presence of a repertoire of multiple and varied identities among any individual or group, and their potential for mobilisation. Rather than assuming the domineering influence of primordial sentiments, such as sectarian identity, the hybridised approach requires an analysis of the conditions under which a particular identity becomes the basis for political mobilisation. In the aftermath of Lebanese independence in 1943, the Shiʿi community’s political mobilisation was characterised by a politics of resistance. This was a product of the legacy of the Shiʿi community’s experience of the French Mandate (1920-1943), as well as the newly reformulated confessional political system that was established by the National Pact (1943). The net effect of these processes was the marginalisation of the Shiʿa. The LCP, as a prominent anti-system opposition movement in Lebanon at this time, became the Shiʿi community’s main vehicle for the mobilisation and development of their resistance identity. During the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) the relationship between communism and the Shiʿa transformed as the LCP went into decline and new Shiʿi political actors emerged. The mantle of the Shiʿi community’s resistance identity became subject to the tensions between communism and communalism within the community. In the end, the Shiʿi community’s resistance identity was adopted and repackaged by Hizbullah, under whose auspices it remains today. The Shiʿi-communist relationship constitutes the Shiʿi community’s first engagement with formal, party-based and ideologically driven political mobilisation in Lebanon. The impact and legacy of the LCP’s influence on the Shiʿa in these terms encompasses not just the communist Shiʿa, but every other political actor in the community. Concern over the growing influence of communism led directly to the political mobilisation of the previously quietist Shiʿi religious clerics. This outcome is represented by the arrival of Imam Musa al-Sadr to Lebanon in 1959 and his stated goal of combatting the influence of communism among the Shiʿa. This thesis is an important addendum to the current understanding of the origins of Shiʿi political mobilisation, which erroneously place Musa al-Sadr at the beginning of that process. This study’s emphasis on alternative, non-sectarian forms of political identity is also a reminder of the Shiʿi community’s political diversity at a time when critical voices, resentful of Hizbullah’s and Amal’s monopoly, are currently emerging from within the ShiʿI community.

This thesis offers a critical investigation of the Bitcoin currency and the operation of its technical structure, i.e. blockchain technology. The main objective of the research is to identify and describe the specific power dynamics performed by and through this digital phenomenon. “Power dynamics” are framed in this work largely in terms of authority and sovereignty. To structure an exploration of such dynamics, the narrative is overarched by four different notions of “utopia” —as paradox, ideal, no-place, and imagined governance— that address the following main questions always underpinned by the general inquiry on power: What is the Bitcoin Blockchain? Where is it located? How are power relations performed in it? And how are power relations modified in relation with previous institutional systems? The thesis addresses distinct notions of authority in Bitcoin through the observation of its historical, spatial, and organizational characteristics. It maps the techno-political emergence of the blockchain system, the geographical distribution of Bitcoin’s infrastructural network, and the strategies for governance involved in its development as software. Based on the observation of these settings, this thesis argues that Bitcoin posits a restructuration of power dynamics through the automation of code, in particular, through its process of production. In order to develop this restructuration, the power dynamics of the Bitcoin blockchain are weighted against authority models of the state’s institutions. The thesis builds upon existing political theories of Empire (Hardt and Negri), protocol (Galloway), and the Stack (Bratton) to develop a critical account of Bitcoin’s power dynamics. The work sits in between the disciplines of Media Theory, Software Studies, Political Theory, and Digital Methods, and makes use of qualitative and quantitative methods to empirically support the former argument.

This thesis assesses the extent of social isolation experienced by Dutch and British ‘children of the red flag', i.e. people who grew up in communist families during the Cold War. This study is a comparative research and focuses on the political and non-political aspects of the communist movement. By collating the existing body of biographical research and prosopographical literature with oral testimonies this thesis sets out to build a balanced picture of the British and Dutch communist movement. The study is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the political life of communists within the wider context of the history of British and Dutch communist organizations (i.e. both communist parties and their youth organizations) from 1901-1970. Part II discusses the private and public life of British and Dutch communists in the period 1940-1970. The latter draws upon oral testimonies and questions if non-political aspects of communist life were based on a Soviet model. The experiences of communist children are explored into detail within the context of the following topics; political and cultural upbringing, prescription and aspirations, neighbourhood, school & education, work & employment, money & poverty and friendships & relationships. The interviews are being used as a means of testing the accuracy of two authors in particular; Jolande Withuis and Raphael Samuel, who both published pioneering works on communist mentality. The originality of this project rests in its approach; it is a comparative research inspired by both oral history and memory studies. Instead of emphasizing the idea of a unified and centralized (international) communist movement, this thesis argues that cultural, social and political differences between Britain and the Netherlands fundamentally influenced the nature and form of their respective communist movement and explain the discrepancy between the Dutch and British respondents' experiences. Applying the comparative approach this study challenges the existing definitions of communist identity and as such it contributes to recent comparative studies of the communist movement as well as studies of communist mentality.

Orientador: Marcos Tadeu Del Roio / Banca:Paulo Ribeiro da Cunha / Banca:Eliel Ribeiro da Cunha / Resumo: Desde o início dos anos 80, a crise do chamado "socialismo real" era um fato evidente. A relativa estagnação econômica e os investimentos massivos na indústria bélica, a ampliação da contestação nos países do leste-europeu, dentre outros, eram sintomas da crise de hegemonia da burocracia socialista, que tentou uma última cartada com a Perestroika. A crise iniciada na Europa oriental, que tem como marco simbólico a queda do muro de Berlim, culminou com a desintegração da União Soviética. Visceralmente ligados à URSS, os partidos comunistas de todo o mundo sentiram o impacto dessa crise terminal. O Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB), que assistia à saída de Luis Carlos Prestes do partido, também sentiu a crise e foi diretamente envolvido por ela, sendo que, em 1992, no seu X Congresso, consumou a sua própria derrocada. A ideia deste projeto é analisar como o PCB entra em crise no contexto de suas interpretações ilusórias das relações internacionais, deixando sua legitimidade minada, tendo em vista a queda do sistema socialista adotado na URSS e na Europa Oriental. / Abstract: Since the early 80's, the crisis of the called "real socialism" was an obvious fact. The relative economic stagnation and the massive investments in the war industry, the expansion of contestation in the Eastern European Countries, among others, were crisis symptoms of the socialist bureaucracy hegemony, which tried a last attempt with the Perestroika. The crisis, started in the Eastern Europe, whose symbolic mark is the fall of the Berlin Wall, culminated with the Soviet Union disintegration. Viscerally connected to the USSR, the communist parties around the world felt the impact of that terminal crisis. The Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), that was watching Luis Carlos Prestes leaving the party, also felt the crisis and was directly involved in it, being that, in 1992 during its X Congress, consummated its own collapse. The project idea is to analyze how PCB entered into the crisis in the context of its international relations illusory interpretations, making its legitimacy undermined, in view of the fall of the USSR and Eastern European socialist system . / Mestre

As China was recovering from disease, starvation, and death that resulted from the authoritarian policies of the Great Leap Forward, Chinese officials looked outwards to “heal” Africa. From 1963, a steady trickle of Chinese doctors and nurses arrived in Algeria, providing health care for rural and suburban communities, before expanding their care throughout the continent of Africa. This dissertation explores the experiences of the medical mission workers in Algeria during the first two decades of China’s medical aid program. It documents the rise of a globalizing China in the post-colonial world through the highly significant, yet heretofore overlooked, medical and humanitarian networks between Chinese provincial health institutions and Algerian medical facilities. It shows that the exchange of medical technology, drugs, and practices between China and Algeria crossed not only physical borders, but also boundaries between different systems of medicine and visions of development. Amidst the geopolitics of the Cold War, Chinese medical aid formed an alternative model of postcolonial international health care intervention in Third World countries. Central to this model was what I call “Chinese socialist medicine,” a body of hybrid medical knowledge and socialized health care delivery. Chinese socialist medicine not only challenged medical elitism by devising new, egalitarian approaches and ethical models, but also heavily relied on improvised medical technology and “scientized” acupuncture, which crossed epistemological boundaries between Western and Chinese medicines. Using a combination of Chinese, Arabic, and French textual and video sources, oral interviews, and clinical observations, this study analyzes the mobilization of human resources to Algeria, the application of mixed technologies of biomedicine and Chinese medicine, efforts to build medical supply infrastructure to manage local health problems, and China’s ambitions to transplant Chinese socialist healthcare ethics and ideals to Algerian communities. During this process, China’s socialist medicine emerged as a hybrid and flexible product of Maoist ideals for social welfare and internationalism. It constantly redrew its boundaries in Algeria by competing with medical missions from other socialist countries and recruiting local health actors to its enterprise. The dissertation argues that China’s medical aid in the form of socialist medicine was a channel for the projection of China’s soft power in global health governance. It demonstrates that medicine and internationalism were integral to China’s political history in the Mao period. Mao’s China was hardly “xenophobic” or inwardly focused, but rather tangibly connected with the rest of the world by flows of people, ideas, materials, and technologies. Socialist China during this era was in fact committed to building its global presence through networks of soft power, including humanitarian aid and medicine. Resting at the intersection of Cold War politics, the history of medicine, and global humanitarianism, the dissertation shows that China’s medical missions served as an ideological and methodological alternative in postcolonial health management within the global South.

La thèse porte sur l'étude comparée de trois configurations artistiques situées dans des espaces historiquement gérés par des élus communistes (Saint-Denis, Nanterre, Conseil général de la Seine-Saint-Denis). Dans ces configurations, il s'est agi de mettre au jour les logiques sociales et historiques permettant la reconnaissance de certaines formes artistiques (théâtre, fêtes de ville, cirque, arts de la rue, hip hop, musique principalement). L'approche repose sur une analyse dispositionnelle et relationnelle des individus impliqués dans ces phénomènes de légitimation ou d'illégitimation artistiques. Remonter aux schèmes de perception du monde social et aux contextes de leur actualisation permet d'en comprendre les ressorts. Cette analyse a permis d'identifier l'existence d'individus politisés s'engageant dans les mondes de l'art ou dans le champ politique pour subvertir les rapports sociaux dominants. Outre l'analyse des conséquences de ces engagements sur le paysage artistique, la thèse porte sur l'étude des incidences biographiques, territoriales et politiques croisées. Position sociale, engagement et institutions locales sont dialectiquement liées. Au cours de leur engagement, ces individus atteignent les classes moyennes et en constituent une strate bien spécifique : politisée, autochtone et disposant d'un capital culturel non certifié par des diplômes. L'existence de cette strate, dans les espaces étudiés, a des incidences sur la structuration de la société locale. L'autochtonie et les essais de définition d'une société basée sur un "roman national" post-colonial sont les deux dimensions qui ont été principalement étudiées. / My thesis focuses on the comparative study of three artistic configurations located in spaces historically run by communist elected representatives (Saint-Denis, Nanterre, General Council of Seine-Saint-Denis). In these configurations, I uncover the social and historical logics leading to the recognition of certain art forms (mainly theater, municipal festivals, circus, street arts, hip hop, music). My approach is based on a dispositional and relational analysis of individuals involved in these processes of artistic legitimization (or delegitimization). The study of these processes is conducted by analyzing individuals’ schemes of perception of the social world and the contexts in which these schemes are used. This analysis identified the existence of politicized individuals committed in the worlds of art or in the political field in order to subvert the dominant social relations. In addition to analyzing the impact of these commitments on the artistic landscape, my thesis focuses on the study of their biographical, territorial and political consequences. Social position, commitment and local institutions are dialectically linked. Through their commitment, these individuals reach the middle class and constitute a very specific stratum thereof: politicized, indigenous and possessing cultural capital that is not certified by diplomas. The existence of this social stratum, in the studied areas, has implications for the local social structure. I mainly studied two dimensions of these implications, namely Indigeneity and the definition of a postcolonial national narrative.

The democratic peace theory proposes that democratic states are less likely to go to war with each other, but will go to war with nondemocratic states, and usually win. This is a theory that has generated much controversy. There is no denial that peace exists between democracies, but the controversies arise over why. The twenty-first century has seen a rise in China (an autocratic state) and its struggle to obtain a presence on the world stage and equality with the United States (a democratic state). There has not been a militarized dispute between them and they report billions of dollars in trade each year. Which begs the question, how has the United States-China trade relationship challenged the democratic peace theory? To answer this question a thorough review of the democratic peace theory becomes necessary as an aim to introducing the theory and reviewing the literature advanced by democratic peace theorists. A discussion of the theory's origins, central features, limits and its critics is presented. The opening of China and its economy in relationship with the United States is analyzed to show how trade interdependence has meant closer and increased trade. I argue that the United States-China relationship, which addresses the peaceful constraints of economic interdependence, can reveal important limits of the democratic peace theory. The method chosen to examine the argument is based on a case study of the peaceful relationship between the United States and China. The selected cases provide trade data to assess the magnitude of trade interdependence between them. Concluding that the theory is limited in that it fails to address the influence of trade interdependence as a better explanation for peace, and not democratic processes.

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