The Columbian Exposition of 1893 held in Chicago, Illinois has been the most influential World’s Fair held within the United States. It social, cultural, and architectural impact advanced America on a worldwide scale. There are only four buildings that still remain from this Exposition today: the Palace of Fine Arts, Dutch House, Norway Building, and Maine State Building. This thesis focuses on the Norway and Maine State Buildings since these are the only two that still remain with a majority of the original building materials still intact. An expanded history of both these buildings are explained, including their design, construction, impact at the Chicago World’s Fair, relocation(s), changes in ownership, what has happened to the buildings since the Fair, and what they are used for today. Further analysis includes why these buildings were saved and the importance of their historical inclusion in the 1893 Columbian Exposition / The Norway Building -- The Maine State Building -- Analysis & conclusion. / Department of Architecture

Les transactions foncières avec des entreprises étrangères, plus communément qualifiées d’« accaparement des terres », sont considérées comme un enjeu de développement central dans de nombreux pays du continent africain. Ce problème rythme, depuis la fin des années 2000, les débats médiatiques et politiques et donne lieu à une production scientifique prolifique. Cette thèse se veut une contribution aux résultats pluridisciplinaires existants en construisant les transactions foncières, c’est-à-dire les processus d’échange de ressources, de sens et de pouvoir, comme un objet de recherche heuristique en science politique qui permet d’engager une discussion théorique stimulante sur les liens entre l’Etat, le pouvoir et le territoire. Alors que la littérature tend à négliger les expressions plurielles de l’Etat dans la marchandisation des terres, cette recherche démontre, à travers le cas tanzanien, que l’analyse des transactions foncières et de la formation de l’Etat sont indissociables. L’étude des politiques de promotion de l’investissement en Tanzanie, discutée à travers les résultats de trois cas de transaction foncière, prouve que les enjeux de la mise en marché des terres ne peuvent être lus qu’au regard de la construction historique de l’Etat. D’une part, les politiques de transactions foncières ne cessent d’être régulées, négociées et (re)orientées par les acteurs étatiques. D’autre part, ces politiques publiques participent à la (trans)formation continue de l’Etat tanzanien. L’enjeu de cette thèse est ainsi de renouveler les recherches sur le foncier, sur la construction de l’Etat et sur l’analyse de l’action publique. / Recent land deals with foreign companies, often referred to as “land grabs”, are considered to be a central development issue in many African countries. Since the late 2000s, the mediagenic question of “land grabbing” has stimulated political debates and has led to a prolific and pluridisciplinary literature. This thesis aims to contribute to the existing research by approaching land deals as a heuristic research object in political science. More precisely, we argue that land investment projects challenge the relationship between state, power and territory. Much of the literature on “land grabbing” tends to overlook the multiple expressions of the state in the different processes of land commodification. However, by using Tanzania as a case study, we demonstrate that land deals and state-building processes are mutually dependent. Our empirical analysis of the Tanzanian land investment policies and of three specific transactions with foreign companies, proves that the commodification of land rights is strictly linked to historical state formation. On the one hand, policies of land deals are constantly regulated, negotiated and (re)oriented by state actors. On the other hand, public policies shape the continuous formation of the Tanzanian state. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to renew the research on land, state-building and public policy analysis.

Following state-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK has increasingly eschewed large-scale intervention in favour of local proxy forces. Whilst this strategy might appeal to the war-weary and cash strapped interventionist, frequent use of military capacity building as a tool of foreign policy inevitably raises questions about the accountability of those local forces being trained. This thesis examines the exportation of Western concepts of civil-military relations into the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), carried out by the British-led International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) during intervention and post-conflict stabilisation in Sierra Leone. It argues that external interventionists can reshape local military culture, to promote both democratic civil-military norms and professional military effectiveness, but only through extensive institutional change. In Sierra Leone, IMATT attempted to change the organisational culture of the RSLAF by reforming its institutional mechanisms for socialisation, training, education and promotion. By inculcating a new normative ethos in a cohort of junior RSLAF officers, IMATT sought to promulgate cultural change throughout the military via a structured process of intra-service competition and generational replacement. This novel blend of internal and external processes of military change challenges existing scholarship on military innovation and adaptation, advancing our understanding of the relationship between military culture, military change, and external intervention. However, this process of institutional redevelopment and cultural change in the RSLAF proved to be both heavily contested and deeply political, ultimately leading to partial results. Consequently, IMATT’s experience of RSLAF reform holds important implications for the study of civil-military relations and security sector reform, and with it, the conduct of contemporary military capacity building and liberal intervention.

Les réformes des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur semblent, au Nord comme au Sud, présenter des trajectoires similaires. Alors que la littérature appréhende généralement ces transformations sous l’angle de l’imposition des prescriptions des organisations internationales et des transferts performants de politiques publiques, a fortiori dans des Etats sous régime d’aide, cette thèse en propose une lecture originale. A partir d’une étude de cas de quatre universités publiques d’Afrique de l’Est, les observations empiriques démontrent que, malgré l’existence d’une matrice commune de bonnes pratiques à adopter, les réformes dans les établissements disposent de configurations singulières, ne serait-ce que dans le processus de prise de décision ou dans la mise en œuvre de la politique dite de partage des coûts. Ce travail défend la thèse que ces résultats s’expliquent par l’indissociabilité des politiques publiques et de la trajectoire historique de la formation de l’Etat. Que ce soit la transnationalisation des politiques publiques, leurs configurations ou les mutations sociologiques dans les transferts, l’ensemble ne peut se lire qu’au regard d’une articulation entre la sociologie de l’action publique et la sociologie historique de l’Etat. / Higher education reforms in northern and southern countries seem to be characterised by similar policy processes. The transformations of higher education institutions are usually presented as an outcome of the increasing pressure of international organisations and the success of global policy transfers, especially in countries depending on foreign aid. However this dissertation aims to critically analyse these reform processes through an original and comparative framework. Basing on the case study of four public universities in East Africa, our empirical evidence demonstrates that these higher education institutions are constantly shaped by singular policy configurations, for instance in the decision-making process or during the implementation of the cost-sharing policy. We argue that this original result can be explained by a two-way relationship between public policy analysis and the state-building framework. Therefore we argue that policy processes like the success and failure of global policy transfers or the network of involved stakeholders can only be studied through the theoretical articulation of public policy analysis and the historical sociology of state formation.

The thesis examines the practice of corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the period of its establishment until the death of Arafat. Palestinian elite formation from the late Ottoman period until the establishment of the PA was assessed in order to identify the elites that came into power in the PA and the political cultures they came to espouse. The two primary elite groups’ (Outsider elites and Insider counter-elites) conflicting political cultures were assessed in how they influenced the decision making process, the construction, and exhibited institutional behaviour of the PA. With the signing of the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo Accords) on the 13th of September, 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Government of Israel it established the Palestinian Authority as the government in transition for the Palestinians. The agreements conferred the governing power and leadership role to the PLO Outsider elites (under Arafat). Due to the secret nature and asymmetrical power relation by which the negotiations and agreements were conducted and signed between the PLO Outsider leadership and the Government of Israel, which excluded inputs from Palestinian Insider elites, the culminating PA structure came to exhibit institutional weakness with certain neo-patrimonial behaviour. The political framework by which the Oslo Accords constructed the PA and influenced by international actors warranted institutional-weakness. Moreover, as external actors’ demands for the PA to deal with the declining Peace Process, and address political and security issues increased, PA corruption behaviour became more apparent and proliferated which became indicative of its fundamental problem in that it lacked statehood, lacked authority and legitimacy, and thus resorted to neo-patrimonial and repressive methods to govern. This neo-patrimonial political culture of Arafat and his governing Outsider elites used corruption as a PA political tool for survival thus suppressing a nascent democratic political culture of the Insiders and consequently led to an institutionalisation of corruption in the PA.

This essay will try to explain and compare the different development steps which Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have taken after the war. How could countries with such similar backgrounds develop in such different ways? By analyzing and comparing the two countries the purpose was to examine how these countries which had so much in common could develop in so different ways.  My two questions are:  What similarities and differences are there between the development which Bosnia and Croatia have taken after the war?  Why have Croatia succeeded and not Bosnia? My analysis showed that the main reason to the difference between these countries was that Bosnia is divided; all ethnic groups in Bosnia only consider what's best for their own ethnic group and not what's best for the country. Croatia however has expelled the Serbs which made it easier for them to have a succesfull democratic development.

This diploma thesis analyzes the approach of the Soviet Union and that of the US-led coalition to state-building in Afghanistan, which today, as in the past, takes place against the backdrop of counterinsurgency warfare. The analysis in the field of politics, economy and security shows that in both cases the intervening powers have focused on building a strongly centralized system of government, in spite of the fact that the Afghan countryside's relationship to the Kabul-based government had traditionally been characterized by broad autonomy. The intervening powers' efforts have futhermore been associated with the export of exogenous political structures and for this reason attention is also drawn to the question to what extent the intervening powers' approach to the modernization of Afghan society has contributed to the escalation of unrelenting conflict.

This diploma thesis elaborates on state-building in the form of a case study of East Timor. East Timor has hosted an international state-building intervention as a result of the lack of governance capacity. East Timor is not the first case of a failed state with implied international state-building, but applied transitional administration in this format is unique. The United Nations established UNTAET with a finite time period which has been prolonged twice since May 2002. This thesis examines international state-building and its linkage with local participation and ownership. The goal of the thesis is to determine whether the peace-building in East Timor was successful. It continues with the second research question regarding the main aspects of state-building which helped to enhance performance in governance and public administration areas. Using Fukuyama's theoretical background, this thesis builds a hypothesis on the notion, that aspects which helped enhance performance are those connected with local participation and ownership. The method of the research is process tracing between autumn 1999 to May 2002, when the independent state of Timor-Leste was established. Although UNTAET was successful in creating institutional and process bases in areas of governance and public administration, local...

Most studies on Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan have focused on foreign perspectives thus giving little attention to the perspective of local Afghans to understand its aftermath and consequences. Based on empirical work and information drawn from semi-structured interviews with experts who have worked with military and civilian development agencies as well as government liaison officers, this study explores the intended and unintended outcomes of PRTs across the country. The findings were interpreted with the help of a theoretical framework based on PRT objectives such as security implementation, reconstruction, and development as well as extending the authority of central government and building local institutions. The findings show that there were various factors ignored which impacted the success of the Afghan state-building operation. The lack of local knowledge regarding political, cultural, and religious aspects, relying on warlords, putting the local institutions in wrong hands, lack of local consent, inadequate and unprofessional disbursement of development aid, putting the military in charge of everything, undermining the human development aspects as well as the long-term presence of foreign militaries in the country were some of the major factors which lead the PRTs to have unsuccessful and counterproductive outcomes. In addition, the aid disbursed by the military has not only diverted the military from its main task but also led to a high level of corruption, high expenditure, lowest possible quality, risking the safety of civilians, NGOs as well as development in the country. Furthermore, the discussion and analysis of the findings show that the use of the military might have played a much greater role in the failure of the overall state-building campaign as the role of diplomatic and development agencies was undermined.

The main aim of the master thesis titled "Nation-Building in Iraq after 2003" is to evaluate the success of nation-building processes in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. The analytical approach of the German political scientist Jochen Hippler serves as a theoretical and terminological starting point. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter deals with the general and conceptional problems and of the terms "nation" and "nation-building". This is followed by a brief overview of Iraqi history. The next part is devoted to Hippler's three central elements of successful nation-building applied to the Iraqi context (i.e. integrating ideology, national integration and state-building). The third chapter explores whether ethnosectarian identities are subordinate to Iraqi national identity. The forth chapter is focused on Kurdish- Iraq relations and its potential implications for territorial (and economic) cohesion of Iraq and the following chapter deals with capabilities of the state apparatus concerning governance, providing security and delivering basic services. In conclusion, the level of success is summarized in the three dimensions respectively as well as with regad to overall nation- building process in Iraq.