Politics thesis and dissertation collection
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Recent Submissions
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Politics of budget decision-making in South Africa
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-05-18)This thesis examines the deep structure of South Africa’s legislative budget decision-making process, in an attempt to understand how political and budgeting institutions coexist to shape the behaviour of actors and influence ... -
Typology of statelessness
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-04-20)To this day, legal statelessness is surprisingly undertheorised in political theory. While there has recently been a resurgence of scholarship on the topic, no one has yet offered a formal typology of statelessness. This ... -
Lithium overdose: market practices and symptomatology of lithium trade in Latin America
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-16)This thesis examines lithium supply and trade in the Atacama Desert in Chile from stances of social studies of markets. It focuses on the contracts held between mining companies and the Chilean State that establish terms ... -
Taking a ‘leap of faith’ to migrate: exploring UK approaches to anti-human trafficking
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-22)Human trafficking is an international phenomenon that has been given more attention by governments, law enforcement, and NGOs as the world has continued to globalise. As a result, numerous combative human trafficking ... -
Inclusion de-moderation hypothesis: Egyptian secularists in democratization
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-24)Democratization could lead to de-moderation. This is the proposed argument of this thesis which studies the impact of political openings on secularist forces in Egypt between 1970 and 2013, a timeframe which crosses ... -
Bound to lead? China's role in climate change governance between perception, conception, and behaviour
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-12-20)The puzzle this thesis investigates is the narrative of China as an obstructor to climate change mitigation around 2009, especially at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15), and as a climate leader around the 2015 ... -
Pro Deo et Patria: unfolding the hybrid governance and political participation of religious institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-11-22)The nexus between Religion and Politics has shifted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 2016—a year that marked the end of Joseph Kabila’s constitutional two-term limit. This interdisciplinary thesis unfolds ... -
New adaptation or the same old script? Political elites' national role conceptions and domestic role contestation in the UK and Germany during the European 'migrant crisis'
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-11-17)The European ‘migration crisis’ in 2015-16 highlighted the stark variation in national policy responses to forced migration among European Union (EU) member states and engagement in responsibility-sharing arrangements. ... -
Securitizing isolationism: Nixon and the construction of US history and identity during the Vietnam War
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-10-11)In 1969 Richard Nixon became President of the United States having campaigned on a promise to end the war in Vietnam. Amidst increasing domestic pressure to end US military involvement in Vietnam – which had escalated ... -
Symbolic struggle for the Arab Spring: political fields and foreign policy in the Middle East
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-09-21)In the past decades, the Middle East has attracted the attention of media and researchers all over the world. The balance of power is fluid, state borders are fragile, and national identities are being contested. Thus, ... -
Emancipatory imperative: a critical theory of social transformation
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-08-30)In this thesis, I argue for the importance of an emancipatory imperative in political theory. While early 20th century critical theory offered promising resources for thinking about the liberation from social and economic ... -
Villages, politics and the everyday statemaking of post independent Zimbabwe
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-06-30)In this thesis I retrieve a stubbornly enduring polity, villages, from the margins of society, and propose that the everyday moments of their inhabitants have been at the core of some of the very important post independent ... -
Redefining the great powers: the revisionist model and the emergence of a global regulatory regime for cross-border tax intermediation
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-06-22)The international tax system has been the locus of both international scandals and sweeping regulatory change since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 (GFC). Starting with two highly publicised international tax scandals ... -
Pumping potentiality: studying the socio-material politics of solar irrigation pumps in rural India
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-06-07)Rural electrification and irrigation infrastructure improvements boost agricultural growth, but rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions require a shift in how irrigation pumps should be energised. In this thesis, I study ... -
B/order work: recomposing relations in the seamful carescapes of health and social care integration in Scotland
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-05-13)As people, ageing and living with disabilities, struggle with how care is enacted through their lives, integrated care has gained policy purchase in many places, especially in the United Kingdom. Accordingly, there have ... -
Advocacy coalition framework analysis of local government drilling application
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-03-21)In the early 2010s the development of a shale gas industry was an important and prominent part of the UK government’s energy strategy. Despite this government support, very little progress was made, with minimal drilling ... -
It's not what you know...: Europeanization and informal networks in former Yugoslavia
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-03-17)More than three decades since the dissolution of Yugoslavia the history of integrating the region into the wider European system is, at best, mixed. Of the original six republics, plus Kosovo, only two are current members ... -
Privacy attitudes - behaviour and political culture: a comparative study of millennials in Mexico and Spain
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-03-10)Throughout the era of surveillance capitalism, we see that current economic models attribute high importance to massive data collection from individuals which aim to promote heightened levels of consumption (Bauman & Lyon, ... -
Towards a more just refuge regime: quotas, markets and a fair share
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-02-22)The international refugee regime is beset by two problems: Responsibility for refuge falls disproportionately on a few states and many owed refuge do not get it. In this work, I explore remedies to these problems. One ... -
Within and against the national doxa: on the historical emergence of (pro-)refugee politics in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1980-1993
(The University of Edinburgh, 2021-12-06)The main purpose of this research project is to explore, examine and evaluate the largely forgotten early period of (pro-)Refugee activism between the late 1970s and early 1990s in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). ...
