Politics thesis and dissertation collection
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Recent Submissions
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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 ... -
Social drivers of international relations in the Gulf: Gramsci on the case of Bahrain and Gulf Alignment 1971−1981
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-11-27)This thesis revisits the relationship between ideology and foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly that between Arab nationalism and state regional policy in the Gulf. It seeks to answer the question: What explains ... -
Interrogating need: on the role of need in matters of justice
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-11-27)Need is a concept that carries intuitive appeal in moral decision-making. As it stands, need is relatively under-theorised, given its currency not just in philosophical argumentation but in news coverage, charitable ... -
Explaining small states’ changing patterns of peacekeeping contributions through role theory: the case of Austria and Belgium
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-11-27)This doctoral project explores the ways in which European small states’ approaches to peacekeeping have been affected by the changing nature of peace missions. The central objective is to explain the choices made by small ... -
Role of the organization of African unity in African conflicts
(The University of Edinburgh, 1973)The chief purpose of this thesis is to describe, analyse and evaluate the role the Organization of African Unity has played in African conflicts. In order to be able to view the OAU in a broad perspective the first chapter ... -
Explaining territorial demands: party competition as a driver of self-government claims in decentralised stateless nations
(The University of Edinburgh, 2016-06-29)The first wave of stateless nationalist mobilisation triggered decentralisation processes in several Western European states. Political autonomy provided European stateless nations with sub-state institutions with ... -
Role of Polish cities in shaping attitudes of urban, educated youth towards European integration
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-11-27)Cities constitute important political, economic and cultural frameworks, playing a potentially crucial role in influencing the residents’ views and opinions about the world. In the context of Central Europe, there has ... -
Challenging the Republic: French Roma policy in an enlarged EU
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-07-30)This thesis explores the relationship between the colour-blind public philosophy of republicanism and the French state’s policies targeting the Roma. It addresses one core research question: how did political actors use ... -
Vetera Novis Augere: nationalism, neo-Thomism and historiography in Quebec and Flanders 1900-1945
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-07-09)This thesis compares and contrasts the historiography of Quebec and Flanders during the first half of the twentieth century. The main argument is that the philosophy of neo-Thomism was influential to the conceptualization ... -
Art of the possible: framing self-government in Scotland and Flanders
(The University of Edinburgh, 2018-07-09)Sub-state nationalist parties mobilised and saw an increase in electoral support in the 1960s and 1970s. A heterogeneous group of parties, they are united by their claims upon the state in favour of self-government. ...
