This thesis investigates the European Union’s (EU) conceptualisation of outer space security in the absence of clear borders or boundaries. In doing so, it analyses the means the EU undertakes to secure the space segments of its critical outer space infrastructures and the services they provide. The original contribution to knowledge offered by this thesis is the framing of European outer space security as predicated upon anticipatory mechanisms targeted towards critical outer space infrastructures. The objective of this thesis is to contribute to astropolitical literature through an analysis of the EU’s efforts to secure the space segments of its critical outer space infrastructures, alongside a conceptualisation of outer space security based upon actor-specific threats, critical infrastructures and anticipatory security measures. The EU’s Galileo and Copernicus programmes are identified as future critical outer space infrastructures through their services’ expected contributions to EU-level policy-multiplication and European states and societies, making them examples of regional and global European space power projection. Following the designation of the Galileo and Copernicus programmes as critical outer space infrastructures, the thesis details the dangers and risks, both intentional and environmental, which the EU has publicly acknowledged as being the most threatening. Although the specific risk assessments for the Galileo and Copernicus projects are confidential, the generic dangers and risks for satellites in Lower Earth Orbit and Middle Earth Orbit referred to in EU policy documents are explored, including space debris, space weather phenomena, orbital congestion and the possibility of the future weaponisation of near-Earth space.

Vindicating the Right? Populism and the Origins of the Tea Party Movement analyses the founding process of the Tea Party movement using the framework of populism theory. At the centre of populism theory stands the claim that populist movements frame politics as confrontation between the virtuous ‘people’ and powerful elites. The work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe further argues that populism is used to articulate hegemonic projects. As scholars have found, in contemporary liberal democracies populism articulates hegemonic projects that claim to represent ‘the people’ against unresponsive governments often in response to widespread dissatisfaction with democratic processes. Tea Party populism is no exception. This thesis argues that the foundation of the Tea Party took place in the context of a multi-layered crisis related to the economic downturn, the crisis of contemporary conservatism, rising party polarisation, growing inequality and declining faith in government and democratic institutions. I contend that the initial appeal of the Tea Party was due to the movement’s capacity to respond to this crisis and channelled a deep seated distrust of government into populist anti-elite resentment. With the help of a wide range of sources, including Tea Party literature, blogs, websites, videos and accounts from periodicals this thesis demonstrates how the movement constructed a collective identity of ‘the people’ as defenders of constitutional right, national values and free market capitalism. The Tea Party’s reliance on the themes of conservative Americanism also relates it to the hegemonic project of American conservatism and this thesis demonstrates that the Tea Party movement is as much an outcome as it is a part of the conservative movement’s attempt to use populism to rearticulate its hegemonic claims in the aftermaths of the defeat of the Republican Party in the elections of 2008.

This study analyses politics in Pakistan viewed from the perspective of Bhutto and The Pakistan People's Party in the period 1967-1977. This involves a detailed consideration of the nature and performance of the PPP, in terms of its social composition, organisational development and its role in the political system, and of leadership patterns in Pakistan with special reference to Bhutto. In the process of this inquiry we examine the origin and rise of the PPP, its electoral performance in 1970 and the repercussions of the 1971 crisis on the party. In analysing the Bhutto regime in the period 1971-1977, we look at both the internal dynamics of the PPP in terms of its development as a patrimonial-clientele type party exhibiting some 'mass party' features, and Bhutto's relations with the political opposition, the civil bureaucracy and the military. This study attempts to apply the patrimonial model to Bhutto's political system. As a heuristic tool, this concept enables us to explain and relate a wide range of phenomena such as personalism, factionalism, patronage and corruption. The phenomena of a dominating figure as reflected in Bhutto's patrimonialism is viewed against the background of the country's colonial Viceregal tradition and related to its culture and social structure. Bhutto's patrimonial system is viewed as an adaptation of the Viceregal model. Patrimonial features such as the personalisation and concentration of power, the manipulation of clientele support from rural landed groups, and the primary reliance on bureaucratic, rather than participatory and representative instruments of rule are essentially those identified with the Viceregal pattern of governance. It is argued that Bhutto's patrimonial strategy not only resulted in a failure to develop the PPP into an institutionalised party of the type associated with 'modern' political systems, but served to inhibit political development and reinforce Pakistan's praetorian tradition. The materials used in this thesis include official publications, political party literature, Urdu and English language newspapers and magazines as well as information derived through personal interviews with prominent personalities.

Despite the rise of Islamist parties and movements in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, there is a dearth of studies addressing their political communication strategies and approaches. In consideration of this fact, this doctoral thesis examines the political communication strategies of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, henceforth the AKP), from 2002 to 2017. Drawing on social movement theory and approaches to political communication, it analyses the transformations that have taken place within the AKP and Turkey and how these have been informed by religion, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s charismatic leadership. The thesis describes how the author carried out ethnographic research during the 2014 presidential election; interviewing key personalities from politics, the media, academia and think tanks, and conducting observations at AKP headquarters and campaign rallies. A quantitative content analysis of Erdoğan’s speeches was then performed to triangulate the findings from the qualitative data, ensuring effective coverage of the entire period under consideration, and to provide continuity. The research reveals how the effective communication of a party’s message is fundamental to its political success. Furthermore, in relation to the AKP it clearly identifies two distinct policy periods: 2002 to 2009, when the party promoted a liberal political ideology and pro-Western foreign policy; and 2010 to 2017, when a pro-Muslim agenda emerged. It also highlights the significance of Erdoğan’s dominance of the AKP, and the consequent lack of institutionalisation within the party, before discussing the implications of the study findings for the AKP, Turkey and the wider MENA region. Of particular interest is how the changes in the AKP’s policy appear to have been reinforced by Erdoğan, who has consistently made effective use of a variety of political communication strategies, including Americanisation, and references to pertinent local images and symbols, to create a sense of collective identity amongst the AKP’s supporters.

In this study, departing from a more general concern with understanding how political frontiers are demarcated in Turkish politics, I aim to show how ‘Europe’ contributed to such a process of constructing political frontiers during the 1999-2008 period. Rather than looking at the debates on ‘Europe’ within the Turkish political landscape through a pro- vs. anti- Europe bifurcation, I attempt to see the discourses through the lens of ‘hegemony’. By using the Laclau- Mouffean discourse analysis, starting from 1999, I argue that discourses on ‘Europe’ were able to hegemonise Turkish political debates and thereby demarcate the political frontiers that constituted that debate which started to change when discourses began to be substituted by different antagonisms, political frontiers and therefore modes of sustaining hegemony.

This thesis investigates the reasons for the change in decision-making patterns in abstract judicial review in Germany, Italy and Austria in the last three decades. The literature on constitutional courts suggests that there are six factors influencing the decision-making of a constitutional court judge: personal political attitudes of the judges, direct influence by political institutions, Black Letter of the Law, Precedent, changes in public opinion and the harmonisation of national law with European law. The empirical data shows that throughout the last three decades the conditions in which legislation is formulated has become more complex through the harmonisation of national law with European Law. This causes the courts to react in three distinct ways: 1. The style of decisions is more interpretative 2. More laws are, at least in part, found unconstitutional 3. The pattern of decisions is leaning towards more unconstitutionality rulings so as to clarify the political framework for future legislation. Worry is expressed by the courts that not all the cases reaching them are referred to them in good intention. Politicians are increasingly using the complexity of the political system to refer cases to the courts on which they would prefer not to take a decision.

This thesis addresses the subject of political dissent during the Khrushchev era. It examines the kinds of protest behaviours that individuals and groups engaged in and the way that the Soviet authorities responded to them. The findings show that dissenting activity was more frequent and more diverse during the Khrushchev period than has previously been supposed and that there were a number of significant continuities in the forms of dissent, and the authorities’ responses to these acts, across the eras of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. In the early Khrushchev years a large proportion of the political protest and criticism that took place remained essentially loyal to the regime and Marxist-Leninist in outlook, though this declined in later years as communist utopianism and respect for the ruling authorities seem to have significantly diminished. In place of mass terror, the authorities increasingly moved toward more rationalised and targeted practices of social control, seeking to ‘manage’ dissent rather than to eradicate it either by persuasion or by force. All of this was reflective of the fact that the relationship between state and society was undergoing a vital transitional stage during the Khrushchev years, as both parties began to establish for themselves what had and had not changed since Stalin’s death.

At present, progressive theory‐building in the area of political party organisation is being hampered by the controversy over how much freedom of choice decision‐makers within a party enjoy in relation to their environment. This piece of research will therefore develop an analytical framework that transcends this debate by acknowledging the causal effects of both structures and party leadership. Based on the ideas of historical institutionalism, it will argue that party organisation is the product of strategic decisions made in a strategically selective context. The framework is then applied to political parties in the newer democracies of South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. The selection of cases is motivated by the fact that East Asia has so far been largely ignored by systematic studies of political party organisation. As will be seen, post‐autocratic environments in the region strongly favour political parties that are mere façades for informal patron‐client networks. However, we can also find parties characterised by a higher level of formal organisational strength, including parties that share many similarities with the classical mass party. These parties thus demonstrate that political actors are able to develop alternative organisational responses to the same structural context.

The ranging course of terrorism banishing peace and security prospects of today’s Pakistan is seen as a domestic effluent of its own flawed policies, bad governance, and lack of social justice and rule of law in society and widening gulf of trust between the rulers and the ruled. The study focused on policies and performance of the Musharraf government since assuming the mantle of front ranking ally of the United States in its so called ‘war on terror’. The causes of reversal of pre nine-eleven position on Afghanistan and support of its Taliban’s rulers are examined in the light of the geo-strategic compulsions of that crucial time and the structural weakness of military rule that needed external props for legitimacy. The flaws of the response to the terrorist challenges are traced to its total dependence on the hard option to the total neglect of the human factor from which the thesis develops its argument for a holistic approach to security in which the people occupy a central position. Thesis approach is also shown to hold the solutions for eliminating the causes of extremism on which terrorism feeds and grows. In sum the study deconstructs Musharraf’s regime’s response to terrorism by examining the conceptual mould of the strategic players in the country and postulates a holistic and integrated security framework to deal with terrorism on a pro-active and sustainable basis. An approach such as this would logically entail the redefining of the role of the state vis-à-vis its people as the fulcrum and medium of ensuring traditional and non traditional security of the country.

This project aims at illuminating that agents’ ideas/perceptions on their (social)surrounding affect their deliberative actions to improve their regional security. The engaging/networking agents’ main attempt is to enlarge the scope of traditional security to accommodate more comprehensive aspects by using regional economic concerns as a spearhead before extending to other fields. Familiarity and socialising process through conferences and workshops are both positive outcomes and structure for agents’ ideas/perceptions on engaging/networking activities. Yet, agents’(socially) collective identity has not commonly perceived as expected by a set-up framework. This project is conducted in a circular style which is open for revising a set-up framework employed here for narrating the results in a chronological fashion. The framework is constructed from related concepts and theories. Main concepts are ‘active agents’, ‘intellectuals’, and ‘networks’. Main sources of theories are drawn mainly from constructivism, epistemic community, advocacy coalition framework, and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action (TCA). The TCA provides a useful path to fill in the gap left by the earlier theories whose concerns are grounded on agents’ outward-looking aspects of cooperation. Trust is a presupposition from all theories. Although there is a trend towards it, the research result can not apparently express it.