Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Equality – Great Britain – 21st century'
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Khan, Jawed Aslam. "Measuring sustainability : UK wealth accounts for 25 years." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/24481.
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What is sustainability and how do we measure it? Sustainability could be achieved through sustainable development and much of the literature on sustainable development has taken human well-being to be the object to be sustained. By constructing a very large and extensive National Accounts consistent database, this study develops an original set of UK wealth accounts for 25 years – 1988 to 2012 – to measure UK sustainability. While doing so, this research calculates the monetary value of UK natural capital and human capital which is then added into produced capital to develop a first comprehensive wealth account for the UK. This thesis argues that both wealth accounting approaches - "top-down" and "bottom-up" - are conceptually the same. They only differ empirically because of the methodologies employed to calculate natural capital, human capital and total wealth. This thesis shows how these both approaches can be combined together to measure UK sustainability. This study concludes that since 2007 UK is not on a sustainable path. Despite a positive genuine savings, since 2007 UK wealth has a negative growth rate and wealth per capita is in decline. A positive genuine savings with a fall in wealth per capita shows that UK savings has not been sufficient to compensate for a fall in wealth and population growth. In order to reverse the trend, either UK has to reduce its population growth or it needs to reinvest in its capital asset bases. This thesis argues that an increase in population does not always decrease per capita wealth because an increase in population driven by a skilled work force increases the value of human capital and thus total wealth. This increase in wealth could offset an increase in population keeping per capita wealth intact. Furthermore, for UK, which is not a resource rich country, investment in human capital is needed to increase the rate of wealth growth.
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McGee, Heather L. "US power dominance in the 21st century : a rationale for continued hegemony /." Maxwell AFB, Ala. : School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 2008. https://www.afresearch.org/skins/rims/display.aspx?moduleid=be0e99f3-fc56-4ccb-8dfe-670c0822a153&mode=user&action=downloadpaper&objectid=ab1e9dd8-8613-4ac1-ab0b-a1ab5af7a463&rs=PublishedSearch.
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Gutkowski, Stacey Elizabeth. "Religious violence, secularism and the British security imaginary, 2001-2009." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608941.
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Peri-Rotem, Nitzan. "The role of religion in shaping women's family and employment patterns in Britian and France." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e0cedea1-973c-4395-9916-d47416672802.
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The current study examines the influence of religious affiliation and practice on family patterns and labour market activity for women in Western Europe, focusing on Britain and France. While both countries have experienced a sharp decline in institutionalized forms of religion over the past decades, differences in family and fertility behaviour on the basis of religiosity seem to persist. Although previous studies documented a positive correlation between religion and both intended and actual family size, there is still uncertainty about the different routes through which religion affects fertility, how structural factors are involved in this relationship and whether and how this relationship has changed along with the process of religious decline. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the interrelationships between religion, educational attainment, female labour force participation, union formation and fertility levels. The data come from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which contains 18 waves from 1991 to 2008, and the French survey of the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), which was initially conducted in 2005. By following trends in fertility differences by religious affiliation and practice across birth cohorts of women, it is found that religious differences in fertility are not only persistent across birth cohorts, there is also a growing divide between non-affiliated and religiously practicing women who maintain higher fertility levels. Religious differences in family formation patterns and completed fertility are also explored, taking into account the interaction between education and religiosity. It appears that the effect of education on fertility differs by level of religiosity, as higher education is less likely to lead to childlessness or to a smaller family size among more religious women. The findings on the relationships between family and work trajectories by level of religiosity also point to a reduced conflict between paid employment and childbearing among actively religious women, although these patterns vary by religious denomination and by country.
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Fox, Timothy William. "Euros, pounds and Albion at arms: European monetary policy and British defense in the 21st century." Thesis, Monterey, Calif. : Springfield, Va. : Naval Postgraduate School ; Available from National Technical Information Service, 2004. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/04Sep%5FFox.pdf.
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Gill, Josephine Ceri. "Race, genetics and British fiction since the Human Genome Project." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610822.
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O'Hare, Sian E. M. "Essays on poverty and wellbeing." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/21806.
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Although economic growth has brought significant improvements in the standard of living in the UK over recent decades, there are still individuals living in poverty. Furthermore poverty in the UK is expected to rise. Although monetary poverty has wide ranging impacts such as poor health, low educational attainment and employability and reduced life expectancy, it does not (in the form of a poverty line at 60% of the median equivalised household income) appear to have an impact on wellbeing when the threshold was tested. Instead, multidimensional poverty – that purported by the Capabilities Approach – is a more individually relevant measure of poverty. Using a list, developed by Nussbaum, of core capabilities seen as essential for human life, capability measures were taken from the British Household Panel Survey. In analysis, some are found to be significant determinants of wellbeing, individually and in sum. Furthermore, individuals within the dataset experience loss aversion to capabilities. This thesis concludes that poverty measurement should be meaningful at the individual level, and to that aim, the Capabilities Approach provides a richer and more relevant evaluation of what poverty really means.
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Elliot-Cooper, Adam. "The struggle that has no name : race, space and policing in post-Duggan Britain." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7efad2ea-75e2-4a54-a479-b3b2b265e827.
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State violence, and policing in particular, continue to shape the black British experience, racialising geographical areas associated with African and African-Caribbean communities. The history of black struggles in the UK has often centred on spaces of racial violence and resistance to it. But black-led social movements of previous decades have, for the most part, seen a decline in both political mobilisations, and the militant anti-racist slogans and discourses that accompanied them. Neoliberalism, through securitisation, resource reallocation, privatisation of space and the de-racialising of language, has made radical black activism an increasingly difficult endeavour. But this does not mean that black struggle against policing has disappeared. What it does mean, however, is that there have been significant changes in how anti-racist activism against policing is articulated and carried out. Three high-profile black deaths at the hands of police in 2011 led to widespread protest and civil unrest. These movements of resistance were strengthened when the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States mobilised hundreds of young people in solidarity actions in England. In this thesis, I argue that, over time, racist metonyms used to describe places racialised as black (Handsworth, Brixton etc.) and people racialised as black (Stephen Lawrence, Mark Duggan etc.), have led to the rise of metonymic anti-racism. While metonymic anti-racism was used alongside more overt anti-racist language in the period between the 1950s and early 1990s, I argue that such overt anti-racist language is becoming rarer in the post-2011 period, particularly in radical black grassroots organisations that address policing. Intersecting with metonymic anti-racism are gender dynamics brought to the surface by female-led campaigns against police violence, and forms of resistance which target spaces of post-industrial consumer capitalism. Understanding how police racism, and resistance to it, are being reconceptualised through language, and reconfigured through different forms of activism, provides a fresh understanding of grassroots black struggle in Britain.
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Tanrikulu, Osman Goktug. "A Dissatisfied Partner: A Conflict - Integration Analysis of Britain's Membership in the European Union." PDXScholar, 2013. http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1064.
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Since 2009, the European Union has faced the worst economic crisis of its history. Due to the devastating impact of the Eurozone crisis on their economies, European countries realized the need to deepen the integration. Without a fiscal union, the Monetary Union would always be prone to economic crises. However, the efforts to reinforce the Union’s economy have been hampered by the UK due to its obsession with national sovereignty and lack of European ideals. In opposing further integration, the UK officials have started to speak out about the probability of leaving the EU.
The purpose of this paper is to present benefits and challenges of Britain’s EU membership and to assess the consequences of leaving the Union both for the UK and for the EU. This study utilizes Power Transition theory to analyze British impact on European integration. With the perspective of this theory, the UK is defined as a dissatisfied partner. By applying the conflict– cooperation model of Brian Efird, Jacek Kugler and Gaspare Genna, the effect of the UK’s dissatisfaction is empirically portrayed.
The empirical findings of the conflict– integration model clearly show that Britain’s dissatisfaction has a negative impact on European integration and jeopardizes the future of the Union. Power Transitions analysis indicates that the UK would become an insignificant actor in the international system and lose the opportunity for the Union’s leadership if it leaves the EU. On the other hand, although Britain’s departure would be a significant loss in terms of capability, economic coherence is more important for the EU. Without enough commitment for the Union, increasing the level of integration with the UK would raise the probability of conflict with the integration process in the future.
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Humphris, Rachel Grace. "New migrants' home encounters : an ethnography of 'Romanian Roma' and the local state in Luton." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3af69cfa-2cd7-4972-afb2-14d92238d25a.
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This ethnographic study explores how 'Romanian Roma' migrants in the UK, without previous relationships to their place of arrival, negotiate their identity to make place in a diverse urban area. The thesis argues that state forms are (re)produced through embedded social relations. The restructuring of the UK welfare state, coupled with processes of labelling, means that the notion of public and private space is changing. Migrants' encounters with state actors in the home are increasingly important. I lived with three families between January 2013 and March 2014, during a period of shifting labour market regulations and the end of European Union transitional controls in January 2014. Through mapping families' relationships and connections, I identify encounters in the home with state actors regarding children as a defining feature of place-making. The thesis introduces the term 'home encounter' to trace the interplay of discourses and performances between state actors and those they identified as 'Romanian Roma'. Due to the restructuring of UK welfare, various roles assume different 'faces of the state'. These include education officers, health visitors, sub-contracted NGO workers, charismatic pastors and volunteers. The home encounter is presented as a public 'state act' (Bourdieu 2012) where negotiations of values take place in private space determining access to membership and welfare resources. In addition, blurring boundaries between welfare regulations and immigration control mean that these actors' seemingly small decisions have far-reaching consequences. The analysis raises questions of how to understand practices of government in diverse urban areas; the affect of labelling, place and performance on material power inequalities; and processes of discrimination and othering.
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Ashraf, Mujeeba. "Experiences of young adult Muslim second generation immigrants in Britain : beyond acculturation." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/8099.
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This research is an attempt to understand the living experiences of young adult Muslim SGIs, in Britain. This research advocates to understand their living experiences from the perspective of social identity approach which discusses multiple dimensions of identity, unlike acculturation theory which focuses on a mono dimension of identity. This research introduced a multiple social identity model for Muslim SGIs. Contrary to the previous literature, the first study, the interview study, revealed that they explained their conflicts with their non-Muslim British peers and with their parents on the basis of non-shared identity. With their non-Muslim British peers they shared cultural (national) identity, therefore, they explained their conflicts in terms of different religious values (practices); with their parents they shared religious identity, therefore they explained their conflicts in terms of different cultural (ethnic) values and practices. They argued that their parents practise various cultural practices in the name of Islam, and Muslim SGIs distinguished Islam from their parents' culture, and identified with the former, not the latter, and attributed their conflicts to their parents' cultural values. In addition, they explained that their religious identity enables them to deal with conflicts with peers and parents. The second study, the focus group, successfully validated the findings of the first study, and it broadened the understanding of the fact that SGIs and their parents both explained their religion in their own cultural context. Their religious (Muslim) identity also promotes their relationships with their non-Muslim British peers and parents, which contributes positively towards their British identity, and more specifically they define themselves as British Muslims. In the third study, the survey study, the hypotheses were developed on the bases of the qualitative studies. It was expected and found that British and Muslim identities were positively correlated; they had non-significant identity differences with the Muslim identity and significant identity difference with British and ethnic identities from their parents. Ethnic identity difference from their parents was the only found predictor of their attribution of their conflicts to their parents' cultural values.
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Shimazu, Naoko. "The racial equality proposal at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference : Japanese motivations and Anglo-American responses." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1995. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8fd0f80b-a0be-42df-a1a0-7441fb27616b.
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This thesis is a study of the racial equality proposal at the Paris Peace Conference. It explores Japanese motivations for submitting the proposal, and the responses of the British and American governments which eventually defeated it. The thesis uses an analytical framework based on five categories of possible explanations for the proposal: immigration, universal principle, great power status, peace conference politics and bargaining, and domestic politics. The thrust of the analysis contained in the thesis is as follows. For Japan, the proposal meant three things: a means of reaffirming its great power status by securing racial equality with the western great powers in the League of Nations; a justification for Prime Minister Hara whose pro- League position was maintained by a fragile domestic consensus against sceptics in the government and the wider public; and a means of resolving Japanese immigration problems in the United States and British Dominions. But for Japan the proposal was not originally intended as a demand for universal racial equality. For Britain, the proposal was unacceptable because it meant "free immigration" of non-white immigrants into the Dominions. In particular, Australia adamantly opposed it also because of its political significance for Australian public opinion. For the United States, Wilson's determination to create the League of Nations at almost any cost led him to impose a unanimity ruling at the crucial vote on llth April 1919. Other explanations worked in the background. The proposal highlighted the importance of the link between race and great power status for Japan, Japan's insecurity concerning the League of Nations and the West, and Japan's different approach to international relations. Moreover, the failure of the proposal revealed the limits of Wilsonian idealism in that neither Britain nor the United States at that time seriously considered the possibility of universal racial equality.
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Koch, Insa Lee. "Personalising the state : law, social welfare and politics on an English council estate." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4335c11c-c0a5-44dc-bd15-5bbbfe2fee6c.
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This dissertation offers a study of everyday relations between residents and the state on a post-industrial council estate in England. Drawing upon historical and ethnographic data, it analyses how, often under conditions of sustained exclusion, residents rely upon the state in their daily struggles for security and survival. My central ethnographic finding is that residents personalise the state alongside informal networks of support and care into a local sociality of reciprocity. This finding can be broken into three interconnected points. First, I argue that the reciprocal contract between citizens and the state emerged in the post-war years when the residents on the newly built estates negotiated their dependence upon the state by integrating it into their on-going social relations. A climate of relative material affluence, selective housing policies, and a paternalistic regime of housing management all created conditions which were conducive for this temporary union between residents and the state. Second, however, I argue that with the decline of industry and shifts towards neoliberal policies, residents increasingly struggle to hold the state accountable to its reciprocal obligations towards local people. This becomes manifest today both in the material neglect of council estates as well as in state officials' reluctance to become implicated in social relations with and between residents. Third, I argue that this failure on the part of the state to attend to residents' demands often has onerous effects on people's lives. It not only exacerbates residents' exposure to insecurity and threat, but is also experienced as a moral affront which generates larger narratives of abandonment and betrayal. Theoretically, this dissertation critically discusses and challenges contrasting portrayals of the state, and of state-citizen relations, in two bodies of literature. On the one hand, in much of the sociological and anthropological literature on working class communities, authors have adopted a community-centred approach which has depicted working class communities as self-contained entities against which the state emerges as a distant or hostile entity. I argue that such a portrayal is premised upon a romanticised view of working class communities which neglects the intimate presence of the state in everyday life. On the other hand, the theoretical literature on the British state has adopted a state-centred perspective which has seen the state as a renewed source of order and authority in disintegrating communities today. My suggestion is that this portrayal rests upon a pathologising view of social decline which fails to account for the persistence of informal social relations and the challenges that these pose to the state's authority from below. Finally, moving beyond the community-centred and state-centred perspectives, I argue for the need to adopt a middle ground which combines an understanding of the nature and workings of informal relations with an acknowledgement of the ubiquity of the state. Such an approach allows us to recognise that, far from being a hostile entity or, alternatively, an uncontested source of order, the state occupies shifting positions within an overarching sociality of reciprocity and its associated demands for alliances and divisions. I refer to such an approach as the personalisation of the state.
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Rydzewska, Joanna. "East meets West meets Auteur : transnational encounters with imagined identities in British and Polish cinema." Thesis, Swansea University, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.678569.
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Dekavalla, Marina. "General elections in the post-devolution period : press accounts of the 2001 and 2005 campaigns in Scotland and England." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/2301.
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This thesis examines and compares newspaper coverage of the first two general elections after Scottish devolution, looking at both the Scottish and English/UK press. By considering the coverage of a major political event which affects both countries, it contributes to debates regarding the performance of the Scottish press within an arguably distinct Scottish public sphere as well as that of the press in England within a post-devolution context. The research is based on a content analysis of all the coverage of the 2001 and 2005 elections in seven Scottish and five English and UK daily morning newspapers, a critical discourse analysis of a sample of the coverage of the most mentioned issues in each campaign and a small set of interviews with Scottish political editors. As a framework for its analysis, this thesis focuses on theories of national identity and deliberative democracy in the media. It finds that the coverage of elections in the two countries has a similar issue agenda, however Scottish newspapers appear less interested in the UK aspect of the elections and include debates on Scottish affairs which are discussed in isolation, within an exclusively Scottish mediated space. These issues are constructed as particularly relevant to a Scottish readership through references to the nation, inclusive modes of address to the reader and the inclusion of exclusively Scottish sources, which contrast with the Scottish coverage of “UK” issues. This distinction between “Scottish” and “UK” topics emerges as the key differentiating factor in the discursive construction of election issues in the Scottish press, rather than that between devolved and reserved issues. Newspapers in England on the other hand, report on the two campaigns without taking into consideration the post-devolution political reality. These core questions are contextualized within the thesis by reference to relevant dimensions of Scottish culture and politics, and interpreted in the light of events since 2005.
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Lightowler, Claire. "Policy divergence and devolution : the impact of actors and institutions." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/16785.
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The creation of the National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament in 1999 was accompanied with an aspiration that these new institutions would allow Scotland and Wales to develop their own policies, better suited to local needs than those designed in Westminster or Whitehall. This thesis explores policy-making in the first terms of the devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales, focusing on where the policies developed by these institutions diverged from those pursued at Westminster. Policy divergence is examined by studying the development of the financing long-term care for the elderly policies. The aim of this thesis is to identify why policy divergence occurred in the long-term care case, considering the impact of actors (or agents) and the institutional setting in which they operate, as suggested by Scharpf's model of actor-centred institutionalism. As actor-centred institutionalism suggested, both actors and institutions played a major role in shaping policy responses. In the Scottish case a range of actors cooperated and lobbied together for the introduction of free personal care, spurred on by the First Minister, who created an opportunity for those in favour of free personal care to pressurise his government to introduce the policy. In contrast, in Wales, actors were divided and never built up the same momentum to ensure the introduction of a more generous long-term care package. The institutional setting in which these actors operated was a major factor in shaping their policy preferences and the strategies they adopted to achieve them. This thesis considers the impact on policy-making of the devolved institution's electoral system, financial and legislative powers, design of the institutions, and the place of these institutions in a UK setting. The different institutional structures in Scotland and Wales provided different incentives and resources for actors, encouraged different styles of policy-making from Westminster and affected the way in which issues were framed. Examining the roles of actors and institutions in the formation of distinctive policies highlighted that in the real world these two elements are mutually dependent and cannot be separated. As a result it is impossible, and pointless, to determine whether actors or institutions were most influential on the development of distinctive policies. Instead this thesis explores how the difference between the configurations of actors and institutions in Scotland and Wales contributed to the creation of policies which were distinctive both from each other and the UK Government.
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Eiser, David. "Regional economics and constitutional change in the UK." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/26053.
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The UK, traditionally one of the more fiscally centralised of OECD countries, is currently in the midst of an extensive programme of tax decentralisation. This is most evident in Scotland. Ten years ago the Scottish Government was almost wholly reliant on a block grant from the UK Government to fund its spending, and debate was focussed on how the determination of this grant should be reformed. Today the Scottish Government has far greater fiscal autonomy. Income tax was almost fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament in April 2017, and around half of VAT revenues will be assigned to Scotland by 2020. As a result, the devolved Scottish budget will in future be linked much more closely to Scotland’s economy, and Scottish politicians will be able to deviate from UK policy on the setting of income tax and various smaller taxes. The objective of this PhD is to examine the economic and political motivations for and implications of greater fiscal decentralisation, with a particular focus on the Scottish case. Its key over-arching questions include: • Which fiscal powers are more and less suitable for decentralisation, and what might constraints might a devolved government face in exercising devolved tax powers? • To what extent are the objectives of fiscal decentralisation compatible with the goal of inter-regional equity in public good provision? • To what extent is fiscal decentralisation likely to enhance the incentives faced by politicians in a devolved parliament to pursue particular types of policy? And to what extent does the answer to this question depend upon the way in which supporting fiscal institutions, notably including the design of block grant arrangements, influence this? • What factors determine regional economic performance, and to what extent can devolved governments be held accountable for (or face the budgetary consequences of) those trends? • To what extent might fiscal decentralisation assuage or accentuate demands for Scottish independence? This PhD consists of four academic papers covering aspects of regional economics and constitutional change in the UK, with a particular focus on Scotland. Each of the four papers is preceded by an abstract. An introductory chapter provides theoretical and policy context within which the four papers are situated. A concluding section to the PhD is provided in Chapter 6. The four papers cover the following topics: • Paper 1 (Chapter 2) was published in the immediate aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, and considers the issues and constraints involved in devolving further fiscal powers to the Scottish Parliament. • Paper 2 (Chapter 3) considers the scope for replacing the Barnett Formula (used to allocate funding to the Scottish Government) with a form of spending-needs assessment, based on a comparative analysis of formulae used within England and Scotland to allocate health funding to territorial health boards. • Paper 3 (Chapter 4) examines how regional labour markets in the UK responded to the 2008/9 recession and its aftermath, and considers which factors may have influenced regional resilience to the recession. • Paper 4 (Chapter 5) examines the factors that determine differential growth in regional income tax revenues, and considers the extent to which it is reasonable to hold devolved governments wholly to account for differential economic performance. • Chapter 6 concludes.
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Escher, Tobias. "Does the use of the Internet further democratic participation? : a comparison of citizens' interactions with political representatives in the UK and Germany." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669872.
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This thesis explores the implications of the Internet for democracy, re-evaluating the various claims and counter-claims that have been made for the Internet's democratic potential. Based on a framework to measure democracy that emphasises popular control and political equality, it assesses whether the Internet gives a greater and more representative share of the population the opportunity to participate in the political process by focusing on use of the Internet to contact political representatives. The analysis combines secondary analysis of population surveys with original data collected in two online surveys from more than 14,000 users of successful contact facilitation platforms in the UK (WriteToThem.com) and Germany (Abgeordnetenwatch.de) that enable sending messages to representatives. The results show that in both countries the Internet in general has only marginally increased the number of people engaged in contacting. At the same time, contact facilitation platforms as specific online applications have attracted large numbers of people who have never before contacted a representative. While all online means of contacting primarily amplify traditional participatory biases, such as for gender and education, they can at least selectively engage traditionally under-represented parts of the population, for example young people or low-income groups. The processes that shape these patterns are identified by developing a basic theory of contacting and using the similarities and differences between the findings for the two countries. It demonstrates not only that participation continues to be dominated by traditional determinants that cannot be completely overcome by technology, but also that Internet applications can shape participation patterns – if designed to appropriately adapt to the context in which they operate, which is rarely the case. This highlights the need to think carefully about how online platforms can be used, building on the – albeit limited – gains identified here, to strengthen them as a means of ensuring democratic participation.
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Murphy, Anna. "The people's princess : Grayson Perry and English cultural identity." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d53f1307-9cce-489c-ad27-0354d3f99b03.
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This thesis will consider the art and persona of Grayson Perry in relation to ideas of national identity. In particular, it will argue that Perry has been occupied with ideas of class and national identity throughout his career, but that these underlying concerns have often been subsumed, or obfuscated, by the foregrounding of other more obvious aspects of his work, such as his transvestism. At the centre of this thesis is the argument that Perry's vision of England, and the purportedly ambivalent way in which he presents it, functions as a way of negotiating - and repatriating - English national identity at a time of crisis. I want to further argue, however, that this has been complicated by Perry's self-positioning, and I propose that he has cultivated an air of subversion and transgression that has tempered the more affirmative aspects of his work. This half-subversive, half-affirmative stance allows him and his work to resonate with both those critical of the usual institutions of contemporary art - including many sections of the public and certain newspapers, tabloid and broadsheet alike - as well as the institutions themselves. This stance has implications not only for Perry's engagement with contemporary art but for his considerations of national identity as well, enabling an enquiry into, and ultimately a restitution of, 'Englishness' (and, to a lesser extent, 'Britishness'), by framing it within a rhetoric of ambivalence and diminishment rather than overt nationalism, the latter of which would have more problematic associations. Similarly, I want to suggest that it is this stance and its mediatory properties, coupled with his earlier self-positioning and his subtle but consistent foregrounding of domestic and demotic issues of national identity throughout his career, that has made Perry such a popular candidate to take on the task of reinvigorating this identity now.
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Welstead, Adam. "Dystopia and the divided kingdom : twenty-first century British dystopian fiction and the politics of dissensus." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/17104.
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This doctoral thesis examines the ways in which contemporary writers have adopted the critical dystopian mode in order to radically deconstruct the socio-political conditions that preclude equality, inclusion and collective political appearance in twenty-first century Britain. The thesis performs theoretically-informed close readings of contemporary novels from authors J.G. Ballard, Maggie Gee, Sarah Hall and Rupert Thomson in its analysis, and argues that the speculative visions of Kingdom Come (2006), The Flood (2004), The Carhullan Army (2007) and Divided Kingdom (2005) are engaged with a wave of contemporary dystopian writing in which the destructive and divisive forms of consensus that are to be found within Britain's contemporary socio-political moment are identified and challenged. The thesis proposes that, in their politically-engaged extrapolations, contemporary British writers are engaged with specifically dystopian expressions of dissensus. Reflecting key theoretical and political nuances found in Jacques Rancière's concept of 'dissensus', I argue that the novels illustrate dissensual interventions within the imagined political space of British societies in which inequalities, oppressions and exclusions are endemic - often proceeding to present modest, 'minor' utopian arguments for more equal, heterogeneous and democratic possibilities in the process. Contributing new, theoretically-inflected analysis of key speculative fictions from twenty-first century British writers, and locating their critiques within the literary, socio-political and theoretical contexts they are meaningfully engaged with, the thesis ultimately argues that in interrogating and reimagining the socio-political spaces of twenty-first century Britain, contemporary writers of dystopian fiction demonstrate literature working in its most dissensual, political and transformative mode.
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Hauswedell, Tessa C. "The formation of a European identity through a transnational public sphere? : the case of three Western European cultural journals, 1989-2006." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/789.
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This thesis analyses processes of discursive European identity formation in three cultural journals: Esprit, from France, the British New Left Review and the German Merkur during the time periods 1989-92, and, a decade later, during 2003-06. The theoretical framework which the thesis brings to bear on this analysis is that of the European Public Sphere. This model builds on Jürgen Habermas’s original model of a “public sphere”, and alleges that a sphere of common debate about issues of European concern can lead to a more defined and integrated sense of a European identity which is widely perceived as vague and inchoate. The relevancy of the public sphere model and its connection to the larger debate about European identity, especially since 1989, are discussed in the first part of the thesis. The second part provides a comparative analysis of the main European debates in the journals during the respective time periods. It outlines the mechanisms by which identity is expressed and assesses when, and to what extent, shared notions of European identity emerge. The analysis finds that identity formation does not occur through a developmental, gradual convergence of views as the European public sphere model envisages. Rather, it is brought about in much more haphazard back-and-forth movements. Moreover, shared notions of European identity between all the journals only arise in moments of perceived crises. Such crises are identified as the most salient factor which galvanizes expressions of a common, shared sense of European identity across national boundaries and ideological cleavages. The thesis concludes that the model of the EPS is too dependent on a partial view of how identity formation occurs and should thus adopt a more nuanced understanding about the complex factors that are at play in these processes. For the principled attempt to circumscribe identity formation as the outcome of communicative processes alone is likely to be thwarted by external events.
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MCMULLIN, Patricia. "Onwards or upwards? : pathways and persistent inequality in the United Kingdom's comprehensive education system." Doctoral thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/41507.
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Defence date: 23 May 2016Examining Board: Professor Hans-Peter Blossfeld, European University Institute; Professor Fabrizio Bernardi, European University Institute; Professor Angela M. O'Rand, Duke University; Professor Cristina Iannelli, The University of Edinburgh
The UK's comparatively open and flexible education system provides more options for individuals from less advantaged backgrounds to participate, and has a high uptake of tertiary and adult education. However, individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds remain proportionately under-represented at the highest levels of post-compulsory education. The complex relationship between expansion, the diversification of educational systems and freedom of choice in modern liberal societies means that the background from which students are drawn remains highly relevant to their progression. Multiple options and qualitative differences between courses and institutions puts the onus on students and parents to make correct career decisions - if students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are found more often in less prestigious educational pathways, then prestigious higher level institutions are likely to remain exclusive. The major contribution of my dissertation is the development of an overview of UK educational and labour market pathway formation and its influence on individuals' educational trajectories and social positions. More specifically, I expand on Kerckhoff's (1993) work on "Diverging Pathways: Social Structure and Career Deflections", taking into account changes since the introduction of the comprehensive system, gender differences and adult education. I further the distinction between a pathway and a trajectory in life-course research and elaborate on the debated question of "persistent inequality", taking the theoretical perspective of "effectively maintained inequality" (Lucas 2001) into account. Finally, I consider the role of interactions between different types of inequality (cumulatingdimensions). This thesis finds that students from more educated backgrounds are more likely to choose academic subjects and pathways early, which influences their performance and further progression opportunities. It also finds that men and women differ regarding educational pathways, that vertical gender inequalities and horizontal gender differences at first labour market entry have remained relatively stable over the latter half of the 20th century. And finally, that adult education and learning is subject to a "Matthew effect" (Merton 1968).