Politics thesis and dissertation collection
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Recent Submissions
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Rhetoric, ritual and reality: understanding the relationship between ex-combatants and the TRC in Sierra Leone
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)This thesis explores the relationship between ex-combatants and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Sierra Leone. It fills important empirical and conceptual lacunae in foregrounding the transitional justice ... -
Emergent powers in the field of peacebuilding: modalities, interactions and impact of Indian and Chinese engagement in the peace processes of Nepal and Myanmar
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)The global emergence of countries like India and China has given rise to questions about how these emergent powers will engage with the various manifestations of the West-led liberal world order, including fields of ... -
Rolling changes in Russian foreign policy: divergent reactions to upheavals in the post-Soviet space and national role conceptions
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-11-30)Despite the increased interest in the analysis of Russian foreign policy (RFP), current approaches leave much unexplained. Many existing studies use either macro-theoretical approaches or are very empirical. Furthermore, ... -
Competition, masculinities, and peacekeeping: constructions of Soviet nuclear identity and policy from Stalin to Gorbachev
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-31)This thesis examines the most powerful constructions of Soviet nuclear identity at three stages of nuclear decision-making (acquisition, the arms race, disarmament) throughout the course of the Cold War between the Soviet ... -
Gendering self-reliance: constructing the ideal refugee wo/man within livelihoods support for displaced Syrians in Turkey
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-16)My thesis sets out to explore how self-reliance is gendered within global refugee support. It contributes to scholarship on refugee self-reliance by pointing to gendered components of the concept itself, and analysing it ... -
Deminutio capitis: theories of Western Civilization and World Order, 1919-2019.
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-08-06)During the long nineteenth century 'civilization' was the highest-order concept through which European empire was imagined and justified. It divided the world into a hierarchical space of identity and difference on the ... -
Small-area estimates in local governance: Use of small-area estimates in local governance in the development of service-delivery and resource-allocation mechanisms
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)The existing decision-making processes informing local resource-allocation mechanisms across Scotland tend to utilise historic or most recent data on life outcomes and deprivation without placing sufficient emphasis on ... -
To be or not to be a European Energy Union: drivers of European energy policy from a historical institutionalist perspective
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)Energy is of vital importance to the economy of the European Union (EU), safeguarding stability and prosperity for its Member States and citizens. Cooperation in energy policy was enshrined as a cornerstone in the EU's ... -
Marginalisation, torture, and gender-based violence: representations of conflict-related sexual violence against men in international law and human rights advocacy
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-07-06)This thesis examines how the issue of sexual violence against men during armed conflict is discursively constituted through both international law and the human rights advocacy activities of international non-governmental ... -
Instrumentalism, power maximisation, or legitimation? Understanding the European Commission’s response to the Global Financial Crisis, 2008-10
(The University of Edinburgh, 2020-01-31)In October 2008, as Europe and the world stood in the midst of unpreceded turmoil on global financial markets, the European Commission launched a process that resulted in a proposal to create a European System of Financial ... -
Political party learning in the European Free Alliance: inspiration and information in the (Trans)Nationalist Family
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-11-25)Recent years, and high-profile events such as the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and 2017 Catalan referendum, have shown that stateless nationalist and regionalist political parties remain relevant political forces ... -
Towards a less reductive ethos of reality: judging responsibility-for-complicity
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-11-25)One of the main challenges facing contemporary political theory is how humans should respond to their complicity in systemic injustice and political oppression, so as to facilitate positive social transformation. The ... -
Transnational mobilities during the Syrian war: an ethnography of rural refugees and Evangelical humanitarians in Mafraq, Jordan
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)This thesis explores how conflict and closed borders have reshaped transnational mobilities in the Levant since 2011. It draws on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mafraq, a provincial town in northern Jordan, ... -
Flags and fridges: an experimental approach to the relationship between trust and implicit attachment to the European Union
(The University of Edinburgh, 2019-07-08)This thesis discusses an experimental approach to explore the relationship between the exposure of participants to banal visual triggers and the meaning people associate with the European Union. The study is motivated ... -
European trade policy in agricultural products
(The University of Edinburgh, 1988)Thirty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the number of member States of the European Community has increased from six to twelve. In 1987, the Community is a more heterogeneous group than it was in 1957. The ... -
The politics of the European social dimension: a comparative view of trade union demands in Britain and Germany
(The University of Edinburgh, 2000)This thesis provides an assessment of the factors influencing the politics of the European social dimension. In recent years the debate on European social legislation has often assumed centre stage on the transnational ... -
Secret War in the South: the Covert Center in Algiers and British and American Intelligence in the Western Mediterranean 1941-1944
(The University of Edinburgh, 2005)This study concerns the activities of the British and American intelligence hub that developed in Algiers during the Second World War. From 1941, when the first US intelligence agents arrived in the area, until late 1944, ... -
Post-liberal agency: decolonizing politics and universities in the Canadian Arctic
(The University of Edinburgh, 2015-07-01)In this thesis I theorize possibilities for post-liberal forms of political agency. Actors seeking to resist, refuse or rework liberalisms’ myths and violence are faced with a paradox. How to act against or in-spite-of ... -
Exclusion and authoritarianism in Iraq: explaining the limits of institutional design and ethnic conflict management in a divided society
(The University of Edinburgh, 2016-06-29)This dissertation seeks to explain and ascertain the relationship between state institutions and ethnic conflict in Iraq. The central argument is that institutions matter, and a divided society’s early institutional setup ... -
Politics of intervention: political parties’ national roles conceptions in foreign policy narratives on military intervention in ongoing conflict - France, Germany and Libya 2011
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-11-27)This doctoral thesis asks what ideational factors underlie parties’ national role conceptions in narratives on violent conflict and crises abroad. It explores French and German parties' national role statements in the ...
