During the transition era, economic resurgence in post-Soviet petro-states, such as Russia and Kazakhstan, was decisively fuelled by an abundance of oil and gas resources during a time of high and long-sustained demand for hydrocarbons in the world market. Thus, these states' energy sectors acted as the cornerstone of their post-Soviet economic and political development. However, in regard to foreign investment in their energy sectors, the governments of the different former Soviet states took strikingly different approaches: Russia for instance imposed restrictions on foreign economic groups, while Kazakhstan was more receptive to foreign investment in the sector. Given their shared economic and political background in the Soviet era discovering what accounts for this policy trend helps understand the divergence in the transition experience and more deeply rooted differences. This policy-oriented study examines perceptions, chiefly by interviews, and foreign investment strategies in the energy sector. It assesses institutional, economic and social background factors shaping perception and, to the degree that it can be determined, policy-making in post-Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan.

The ‡Khomani San people received lands in 1999 under the ‘restitution’ arm of South Africa’s land reform programme. Restitution laws, contained in the Restitution of Land Rights Act and the Communal Property Associations (‘CPA’) Act, seek not only to return lands to peoples dispossessed after 1913, but also to inculcate the ideals of South Africa’s dominant agro-pastoral-based society into defined, cohesive land-recipient ‘communities’. These ideals include centralised, hierarchical, representative, democratic leadership and decision-making structures that the West takes for granted. However, these concepts of control are not typically found among foraging or post-foraging peoples, who tend to base their societies on decentralised, small-group, egalitarian social structures that strongly oppose hierarchies, representation, or accumulation. Such social organisation remains intact even after these groups become settled or adopt non-hunting-and-gathering livelihoods, and today’s ‡Khomani self-identify as San, ‘Bushmen’, hunters, and indigenous people, despite their settlement and their adoption of varied livelihood strategies, including stock-farming. Among such groups, externally imposed governance structures tend to be viewed as illegitimate, and instead of the cohesion and order these centrally legislated structures seek to create, they instead engender dissent, conflict, and non-compliance. The ‡Khomani, as both a formerly scattered group of apartheid-era labourers and a cultural group of San people, have struggled with little success to plan and implement ‘development’, infrastructure, and livelihood projects on their lands and have ‘failed’ to operate the Restitution and CPA Acts’ required ‘community’ land-ownership and decision-making structures successfully. Thus, restitution has failed to bring the socio-economic improvements that the new ‡Khomani lands seemed to promise. Since 2008, however, the government has temporarily taken governance and approval authority from the ‡Khomani, which has led to the creation of smaller, behind-the-scenes governing bodies, as the ‡Khomani have begun taking the reins of power in their own ways. Such bodies, including the ‡Khomani Farmers’ Association and the Bushman Raad, have begun achieving some successes on the ‡Khomani farms in part, it is argued, because they allow the ‡Khomani to reproduce the focused, non-hierarchical, small-group structures that are more suitable to them as a non-cohesive group and more culturally appropriate to them as San people. The South African government, with appropriate protections for abuse of power, should provide the space within land reform laws to allow land-recipient groups to make decisions, govern themselves, and manage their lands according to their own community realities and their own conceptions of leadership and social organisation.

This thesis examines the reception, generation, and use of economic ideas in the British Liberal Party during the period between its decline in the inter-war years and its revival under Jo Grimond. It uses archival sources, party publications, and the political press to reconstruct the Liberal Party’s internal discourse about economic policy from the 1920s to the 1960s, and sets this discourse in the context of wider economic and political developments: the ‘Keynesian revolution’ in economic theory and British public policy, recurrent political interest in economic planning, and growing concern about relative economic decline. The strength of the two-party system which developed after the First World War meant that the Liberal Party spent most of this period in opposition, and even in the coalition governments of 1931-2 and 1940-5 Liberals had limited input into economic policy-making. As historians have frequently noted, however, the party played an important role in introducing Keynesian ideas to British politics through Lloyd George’s 1929 pledge to ‘conquer unemployment’, and seemed to anticipate the post-war managed economy in important respects. At the same time, the party maintained a close relationship with the economics profession, and vocally championed free trade and competitive markets. This thesis highlights the eclecticism of the Liberal Party’s economic heritage, and its continuing ambivalence towards state intervention. Although Liberals were early and sincere supporters of Keynesian demand-management policies, and took a close interest in economic planning proposals in the 1920s, 1940s and 1960s, their interventionism was frequently constrained by their internationalism and their support for free markets. Most Liberals, then, were neither unreconstructed Gladstonians nor unequivocal supporters of Britain’s post-war settlement. Rather, successive party leaders sought to integrate new economic knowledge with traditional Liberal commitments, in order to make both a credible contribution to policy debates and a distinctive appeal to the electorate.

This thesis explores the hitherto undocumented disestablishment and reconstruction of the Anglican Church of Ireland, c.1868-1870, and argues that this experience was formative in the emergence of Home Rule. Structurally, the Church’s General Synod served as a model for an autonomous Irish parliament. Moreover, disestablishment and reconstruction conditioned the political trajectories of the Protestants initially involved in the first group to campaign for a federal Irish parliament, the Home Government Association (HGA). More broadly, both the HGA and the governance of the independent Church—the General Synod—grew from the bedrock of the same associational culture. The HGA was more aligned with the public associations of Protestant-dominated Dublin intellectual life and the lay associational culture of the Church. Although the political vision advocated was different from the normal conservatism of many of its Protestant members, culturally it was entirely grounded in the recent Anglican experience.

This thesis analyses the constructions of the market in the thought of Adam Smith and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and their relevance for contemporary political philosophy. Combining the history of ideas with systematic analysis, it contrasts Smith’s view of the market as a benevolently designed ‘contrivance of nature’ with Hegel’s view of the market as a ‘relic of the state of nature.’ In two interpretative chapters these two constructions of the market are discussed within the contexts of Smith’s and Hegel’s thought. In three systematic chapters, the relevance of these different constructions for the problems of identity and community, social justice, and different notions and dimensions of freedom is discussed. The first of these chapters argues that the conceptualization of the labour market as a market place for human capital or as a locus for the development of a professional ethos has a deep impact on how one thinks about the relation between individual and community, cutting across the debate between liberals and communitarians. The second systematic chapter shows that the market can be seen either as an instrument for addressing issues of social justice or as an institution against which social justice needs to be realized: for Smith, who thinks that free markets reward virtue and equalize income, it is the former, whereas for Hegel, who holds that free markets lead to unpredictable results and exacerbate social differences, it is the latter. The third systematic chapter addresses the relation between different aspects of liberty and the market. It shows that the market offers both chances and risks for liberty in the sense of individual autonomy, and analyses the relations of the market to positive liberty in a political sense. The concluding chapter draws some broader methodological lessons, arguing for a closer integration of economic and political theory at a ‘less-ideal’ level.

The central aim of the thesis is to investigate the myriad ideological 'thought-practices' of Cameronism by placing the composition and content of Cameronism in the context of the problem of Thatcherism's legacy. This problem is namely a problem of the gap between intentions and outcomes. The thesis identifies three discreet, but also overlapping, ideological developments that take root in the late 1980s/early 1990s: (1) the steadfast commitment to reducing the size and scope of the central state; (2) the recognition that neo-liberal economics is a necessary but insufficient precondition for the delivery of wider Conservative outcomes; and (3) the rediscovery and commitment to the renewal of civil society as an alternative to state intervention in response to the perceived failures of neo-liberalism. The thesis examines the application of these ideological developments in Cameronism, both in theory and practice. Furthermore, it examines the political-thought practices of Cameronism in the context of the Coalition Government. Finally, the thesis analyses a serious Conservative ideological threat to Cameronite Conservatism, concluding that Cameronism is a distinct, decodable and distinctive Conservatism, which has been quickly eclipsed by other Conservatisms, namely the Conservatism of the New New Right, which is much closer to the Thatcherism that Cameronism was resolutely trying to adjust. British Conservatism has thus come full circle: the market society vision of Thatcherism, which Cameronism was trying to ideologically supplement, has been restored as the best and surest way to achieve the Conservative aim of a limited conception of politics.

The global water crisis has often been presented as a crisis of governance and attributed to various factors, including the slowness of institutional adjustments to rapid structural challenges such as demographic growth, resource degradation and economic difficulties (UNU-INWEH, 2012). Despite the rapid growth of cities around the world and a fast increase in the use of desalination for freshwater supply (WHO, 2011), the dynamics of institutional change in desalinated urban water governance have never been researched. This thesis investigates the drivers, barriers and counter-forces to a major institutional change - privatisation - in the desalinated water governance of the coastal cities of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Through the cases of public private partnerships (PPPs) in Abu Dhabi and Doha and the failed attempt to implement similar PPPs in Kuwait City, this research investigates the diverse forces that have led to the implementation of this new institutional arrangement in order to question - both empirically and theoretically - the literature’s general assumption that privatisation reforms in urban water services in the South arise from structural issues, e.g. a water crisis, an economic crisis and/or a governance crisis. The three main schools of comparative studies are used systematically to test hypotheses about causal relationships between selected variables. The structural approach is applied to examine the influences of the redistributive rentier state, oil price fluctuations and regional energy integration over the privatisation process. Adopting a Post-colonial perspective, the political culture approach is used to examine critically the contemporary influences of traditional cultural features, key local institutions and foreign cultural influences over the fluctuating roles of both the State and the markets in the local urban water supply since the late 19^th century. Finally, the rational agency theory is used to examine the role in the recent privatisation process of key political figures from the ruling families. This research demonstrates that the privatisation process of desalination units in Abu Dhabi and Doha was not driven by structural factors during the 2000s, a period of high oil prices, but was initiated in the 1990s and driven the following decade by the agency of a reforming elite wanting to privatize the water sector as part of a broader dynamic of construction of a neoliberal post-rentier economy – i.e. an intermediary political economic paradigm that aims to mediate the transition from rentierism to a fully liberalized economy. The political culture approach shows that these privatisations were facilitated by a gradual shift from pure rentierism towards a post-rentier form of neoliberalism in the political philosophy of liberal water technocrats on the one hand, and towards a regional trend of ‘pious neoliberalism’ (Atia, 2011) among practicing Sunni Muslims. Nevertheless, the enduring rentier mentality has constituted a strong counter-force to privatisation dynamics. The PPPs were implemented in Abu Dhabi and Doha because the local ruling elites situated the political bargaining within the tribal institutional milieus that they mastered completely through the control of the rent and related benefits. In Kuwait however, negotiations between the ruling elites and the leading political forces, the tribes and the opposition, were situated in a parliamentary institutional milieu that the ruling elite could not control and where the opposition and tribal MPs have opposed all reforms of the rentier ruling bargain. These findings illustrate that institutional changes in desalinated water governance are not neutrally driven by uncontrollable structural forces, but are the product of political bargaining between and among various rational political actors and their coalitions. This thesis also shows that in non-democratic or semi-democratic settings, the choice of a specific institutional milieu by the authorities is critical to the successful bargaining of institutional reforms, since it determines whether some key actors - along with structural factors (e.g. rent) and cultural factors (e.g. tribal influence) - will support the process or will be able to act against it.

The record of American foreign policy in the Middle East between 2001 and 2006 is marked mostly by failures of the Bush Administration to achieve its stated objectives, including reducing terrorism, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and spreading liberal democracy. Still, there are also notable bright spots, including the case of Libya’s diplomatic rehabilitation. What is it, then, that accounts for this success in the face of so many other failures where the policy goals were markedly similar? I argue that a partial explanation of this discrepancy can be found in the nature of infighting between ideological realists and neoconservatives within the foreign policy bureaucracy. In doing so, process tracing is used to examine policy development toward four country cases: Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and Libya, with Libya acting as the control. The object of these case studies is to demonstrate existence of a previously undescribed model of bureaucratic infighting, based on competing ideological differences regarding the fundamental direction and conduct of US foreign policy. I call this the Ideological Infighting, or I2, Model. Whereas previous works of US foreign policy analysis have focused only on the roles of individuals’ ideology or on bureaucratic interests, this study unites both. In doing so, it describes the policy effects that result from ideological disagreements within the executive agencies, rather than viewing a presidential administration as an ideologically coherent entity. It also refines understandings of the relationship between the President and his advisors. Finally, although this work deals specifically with the Middle East, the model is generalizable to all areas of US foreign policy.

This thesis examines the relationship between political movements and people during the civil war between Angola’s MPLA government and the UNITA rebels in the Central Highlands region. It shows how conflicting ideas about political legitimacy originating in anticolonial struggle informed leaders’ decisions and formed the basis of their efforts to politicise people. Much existing literature sees civil conflict in terms of rebellion against a state, motivated by grievance or by the desire for loot. I argue against such an approach in the Angolan case, since the MPLA and UNITA originated from different strands of nationalism, and neither achieved complete control over Angola’s territory and people. Instead, I draw on constructivist approaches to statehood in analysing the war as a contest in which both sides invoked ideas of the state in asserting their legitimacy. The MPLA state controlled the cities while UNITA established rural bases and a bush capital, Jamba. Violence, often involving the capture of people, occurred at the margins of the areas of influence. Within each zone, each movement controlled public discourse to make its control hegemonic. Each presented itself as the authentic representative of the Angolan nation and condemned the other movement as the agent of foreign interests. These nationalist claims were given substance by processes of state building, more fully realised by the MPLA than by UNITA. Each movement’s claim to statehood served to legitimise its own violence while criminalising the violence of the other side. Public dissent was prohibited in either zone, but people’s responses to politicisation ranged from genuine support, to co-operating only as necessary to avoid punishment, depending largely on their degree of involvement in the state building process. War itself was central to constituting perceptions of common interest, and political actors’ capacity to manipulate perceptions depended largely on military control.

This thesis examines political engagement amongst young urban Chinese Protestants. Based on 100 interviews in Beijing and Shenzhen, 50 with Protestants, and 50 with non-Protestants, it focuses on three areas: national narratives (what individuals think about China, its current situation and its future direction), political opinions, and social and political activity. I firstly argue that Protestants generally adhere to a relatively ‘critical’ national narrative, one that is more divergent from the Party-state’s nationalist discourse than that of their demographic peers. I then argue that in causal terms, it is primarily individuals who hold these critical values who are most drawn to Christianity, rather than developing the values as a result of their faith. Secondly, Protestants do not just hold more negative opinions of China's political regime, but that the criteria by which they judge it are different. In contrast to their demographic peers, Protestants do not base their judgements of the regime on its performance at delivering on everyday political issues. Thirdly, Protestantism catalyses the development of a sense of agency in its adherents: a sense of moral responsibility towards China and a desire to bring change through transformative activism. However, factors in China's cultural, historical, social and political context serve to steer Protestants' activism away from engagement with secular society and inward towards the church community. I conclude by arguing that Protestantism poses two challenges to China's Party-state: Firstly, it is symptomatic of an underlying sense of social and political malaise, of scepticism towards the primacy of economic enrichment and towards the Party-state’s attempt to legitimise its rule based upon this. Secondly, Protestantism catalyses the emergence of a critical, morally agentic individualism that anchors its worldview in a discourse outside the control of the Party-state. Adapting to these social shifts presents a major future challenge for the CCP.