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.

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.

Chapter 1 of the thesis examines a question of how a voting process can be designed to induce rational individuals to display reciprocal and pro-social behaviors. A political procedure, namely, the reciprocity mechanism, is proposed to address this issue. The analysis displays that this new mechanism is a modification of the legislative process encountered in democratic countries. The results indicate that, under natural assumptions on voters' preferences, a stable policy always exists, and it may be unique if preferences are single-peaked. Moreover, any stable policy is Pareto-efficient. It has been argued that the size of the supermajority needed to enact a policy in a decision-making body should depend on the importance of this policy. However, a formal analysis of the relationship between policy importance and the voting rule is still lacking in the literature. Chapter 2 addresses this gap from the perspective of a preference-blind political designer. Given the level of importance of a policy, the goal is to choose the supermajority rule that guarantees the existence of a stable policy regardless of the extent to which individual political opinions are antagonistic, ensures that all stable policies are efficient, and minimizes status quo bias. Chapter 2 solves this problem. A closed-form relationship between supermajority rule and policy importance is derived. The analysis has practical implications for the optimal design and functioning of political institutions. The majority rule is widely used to select policies in political institutions. Chapter 3 proves that this rule is not optimal for sufficiently complex policies. To address this issue, natural preference domains are identified for which the majority rule is optimal under a simple sequential procedure. Under this procedure, the majority rule guarantees the existence of a stable policy, ensures that all stable policies are efficient, and minimizes the status quo bias, no matter the complexity of the policy space. The results imply that this voting rule is not appropriate for certain types of societies, including sufficiently fractionalized societies.

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 financial sector has been identified as playing a crucial role in the advancement of sustainable development, as it provides capital that drives industrial activities and economic growth. In recognition of this role and the need to manage environmental and social risks, ten private, international lending institutions developed and adopted a set of voluntary guidelines in 2003, which became known as the Equator Principles. This study aims to assess the factors that influence the adoption of the Equator Principles by South African Financial Institutions. To achieve this, a qualitative research in the form of semi-structured interviews with industry specialists and representatives of four large banks - was undertaken. South African Financial Institutions cited the following as the main driving factors in deciding to adopt the Equator Principles: improvement in risk management and in chances of partaking in syndication loans with other Equator Principles Finance Institutions; and acquiring funding from Development Finance Institutions. Concerns over potential loss of business, as well as increased scrutiny by civil society were raised as constraining factors to the adoption of the Equator Principles. Further research needs to be undertaken in order to determine the actual costs and benefits of adopting the Equator Principles, since South African Finance Institutions have only recently adopted them. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

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).