Many scholars have sought to explain the patterns of success and failure among fringe parties which seek to increase their initially limited political influence, but prevailing explanations do not fully consider the parties themselves as institutions that can generate change. Based on historical and discursive institutionalism as well as existing literature on political parties and the growth of regional parties in Europe, this dissertation posits a taxonomy of requirements for internal political party development. The progression is conceptualized as a path dependent feedback loop that starts with (1) the consolidation of ideas, a process which requires consensus about the party’s primary ideological positions and policy. It is followed by (2) a consolidation of methods—or an agreement on how to communicate those ideas while also maintaining party discipline. The party will then seek to (3) increase its exposure both in the media and with voters, before (4) establishing persistence in elections, media coverage, and party membership. Finally, leaders will (5) reallocate resources and reorganize party structure as demands on the party change over time. Under the premise that separatist parties in Europe and Canada face significant barriers to entry in substantive democracies, this dissertation considered 108 Stateless Regional National Parties (SNRPs) to select the most extreme case for testing the party development taxonomy. Once the Scottish National Party (SNP) was selected as the primary case study, then the taxonomy was tested via process tracing using extensive archival records including party manifestos, broadcasts, press releases, and other party documents, as well as secondary sources, elite interviews, and a detailed content analysis of the manifestos from 1992-2017. While the taxonomy holds through much of the SNP’s history, the key elements to entrenched positive growth were exposure breakthroughs (measured via the party’s own increased output or greater volume of coverage in the media) and proactive party reforms prior to an electoral breakthrough or significant institutional change such as the establishment of Scottish Parliament in 1999. Further testing should be conducted against other parties to establish greater external validity and precision regarding the number of cycles required for party development under specific institutional conditions.

The last few years have witnessed a significant increase in the frequency and magnitude of involving third-party application developers in software platforms. While this involvement offers great opportunities in building and sustaining platform innovation, it also exposes platform owners to significant challenges. Typically, platform owners facilitate the involvement of third-party developers by providing resources, referred to in this thesis as boundary resources, that give access to the platform, shift design capability, and facilitate the use of the platform’s core technologies. At the same time, these resources have the potential to be used to maintain platform control. This involves seemingly conflicting goals that creates a challenge for platform owners in finding the right balance. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate and understand the role of boundary resources in platform owners’ efforts to stimulate third-party development. To this end, this thesis proposes a theoretical model of boundary resources. This model centres on various drivers behind boundary resources design and use, and how these drivers interact in third-party development. The thesis also presents a comprehensive view of governance and strategizing practices used by platform owners through boundary resources. This thesis comprises a cover and a collection of five published research papers. The thesis applies a qualitative research method and employs multiple case studies. Boundary resources, innovation networks and platform governance perspectives have been synthesized to build a theoretical  basis to analyze the empirical findings. This thesis complements and extends the literature on software platforms, and the insights derived from the thesis enhance previous research on third-party development. In addition, it provides a focused theoretical account of the interfaces between platform owners and third-party developers that contributes to the body of knowledge developed around using tools for innovation.

Information Technology (IT) evolution in the recent decades has been able to grow the mobility of the end-user. A contributing factor has impacted and improved the smartphone area. This, in turn, has changed end-users’ expectations and experiences in the recent years in terms of available services, which have made mobile applications (apps) to find their place in daily life. In line with the significant growth of smartphones, as the iPhone and Android phones, is also the development of mobile applications exploded. Mobile use has - with this - fundamentally changed and much of what customers used to do on the computer, they do now on their mobile. It makes of course requires that third-parties have a mobile presence and correct utilization, this new arena enormous business opportunities. Hence, as mobile devices become a more visible business tool, it becomes important for organizations to develop applications to meet customer needs and stay competitive. Third-party development is relevantly in the core of software development nowadays. The introduction of smartphones and tablet devices, the associated products, and services in the form of apps has significantly changed software developments practices for developers. The aim of this research formulated to study the development process and practices associated with third-parties and their effects on dealing with various mobile platforms and boundary resources (SKDs and APIs). Qualitative study and exploratory design are extensively conducted for data collection and analysis. Primary data is gathered based on experiences, opinions, and insights from the experts in the subject, and secondary data is gathered from literature, which constantly supports the primary data and ensures the research credibility. The main contribution and results of this study are the factors and development process that third-party developers take into consideration when developing apps for iOS and Android such as ecosystem, programing language, platform, programing model, tools, development process model, supply chain, and submission apps. The success of the digital ecosystems and platform knowledge adopted by Apple and Google has gained a lot of attention from developers in the last years concerning mobile application development. This, in turn, was the key factor of their success at the smartphones market and the portal for developers from all the world.

The Electoral College and Jacksonian Democracy are two subjects that have been studied extensively. Taken together, however, little has been written on how the method of choosing presidential electors during the Age of Jackson changed. Although many historians have written on the development of political parties and the increase in voter participation during this time, none have focused on how politicians sought to use the method of selecting electors to further party development in the country. Between 1824 and 1832 twelve states changed their methods of choosing electors. In almost every case, the reason for changing methods was largely political but was promoted in terms of advancing democracy. A careful study of the movement toward selecting electors on a general ticket shows that political considerations in terms of party and/or state power were much more important than promoting democratic ideals. Despite the presence of a few true reformers who consistently pushed for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that all states used the same method, the conclusion must be that politics and party demanded a change. This study relies heavily on legislative records at both the state and national level and newspapers throughout t the country from the period. Beginning with a brief history of the office of the president and an overview of the presidential elections prior to 1824, the author then carefully analyzes the elections of 1824, 1828, and 1832, as well as the various efforts to amend the constitutional provisions dealing with the Electoral College. Particular emphasis is placed on political factions at the state level, the development of the Democratic and National Republican parties nationally, and how each party used and at time manipulated the electoral process to secure a favorable outcome for their candidates.

This dissertation examines the following research question: Which types of electoral rules chosen in post-conflict states best promote peace? And are those effects conditional upon other factors? I argue that the effects are conditional upon the types of political parties that exist in the post-conflict environment. Although this explanation is contrary to scholars that speak of political parties as products of the electoral system, political parties often predate the choice of electoral system. Especially in post-conflict states, political parties play an important role in the negotiation process and hence in the design of the electoral rules. I argue that the effects of electoral rules on peace duration are mitigated by the degree to which a party system is broad (nonexclusive) or narrow (exclusive). I develop a theoretical model that led to three hypotheses focusing on the independent role that political parties play in mitigating the effects of electoral rules on peace duration. To test these hypotheses, I use the Cox proportional hazard model on 57 post-conflict states from 1990 to 2009 and had competitive elections. The empirical results show support for the main argument of this study. First, the findings show that electoral rules alone do not increase or decrease the risk of civil war outbreak, yet when interacting with the degree to which political parties are broad or narrow, there is a significant effect on the outbreak of civil war. Second, the results show that post-conflict states with party centered electoral systems (closed list PR system) are less likely to have an outbreak of civil war when more seats in the parliament are controlled by broad-based parties. In addition, I conduct a comparative case study analysis of two post-conflict states, Angola (1975-1992) and Mozambique (1975-1994), using the most similar systems (MSS) research design.

Ericssons Business Communication Suite (BCS) är en Unified Communication-lösning, och är avsedd för större företag och teleoperatörer. BCS erbjuder tjänster som snabbmeddelanden, videosamtal, lägga till kontakter i grupper samt grupphantering mm. Syftet med detta projekt var tvåfaldigt; att utveckla och integrera ett program som kan kommunicera med Ericssons BCS, samt att dokumentera denna integration genom de erhållna kunskaperna från utvecklingen. Applikationen utvecklades för Windows Sidebar widget miljön och BCS miljön simulerades med hjälp av flera program och applikationer som tillhandahölls av Ericsson. Det första resultatet är en steg-för-steg integrationsguide, som innehåller installationsintruktioner för BCS-miljön samt riktlinjer för denna integration. Det andra resultatet är en widget som kan söka efter personer på sökmotorn www.eniro.se och utnyttja tjänster som tillhandahålls från BCS, som kontakt-och grupphantering samt videosamtal. Detta projekt visar att en tredjepartsutvecklad applikation kan integreras med BCS, och att tredjepartsutvecklare samt anställda på Ericsson kan använda steg-för-steg integrationsguiden för att sätta upp test- och utvecklingsmiljö för BCS. / Ericsson Business Communication Suite (BCS) is a Unified Communication solution destined for larger companies and telecommunication operators. BCS offers services such as instant messaging, video calls, contact group management and much more. The purpose of this project was twofold; developing and integrating an application that could communicate with Ericsson's Business Communication Suite, but also to document this integration through the knowledge acquired from the development. The application was developed for the Windows Sidebar widget engine and a BCS environment was simulated with the help of several programs and applications provided by Ericsson. The results of the project are a step-by-step integration guide, which contains environment setup as well as integration guidelines, and also a widget application that can search for people on the search engine www.eniro.se and utilize services provided by BCS such as contact and group management and video calls. This project demonstrates that a third party developed application can be integrated with Ericsson BCS, and that third party developers and people at Ericsson can use the step-by-step integration guide to easily setup the necessary BCS test environments.