Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Municipal ownership – Great Britain'

Since the early 1990s, regulators in the UK and in many other countries have faced increasing pressure from media industry participants to liberalise media and cross-media ownership restrictions. Many countries, including the UK, have responded to this pressure by amending their domestic legislative frameworks in such ways as to remove at least some restrictions which had previously been established in order to protect pluralism. The main aim for this study has been to assess the 'economic' case in favour of de-regulating media and cross-media ownership in the UK. The principal method of investigation has been to analyse the relationship between, on the one hand, the size and vertical or diagonal structure of a selection of UK media firms and, on the other, their recent economic performance. Findings suggest that, although factors other than size will affect performance, there is generally a strong and positive correlation between the market share and the operating profitability of firms who are involved in either television or radio broadcasting, or national newspaper publishing. This correlation reflects efficiency gains through economies of scale and scope and, also, revenue advantages arising from increased market power. On the other hand, there is little evidence that previous monomedia ownership restrictions represented a threat to the economic viability of the industry or that developments in the late 1990s have introduced significant 'new' gains for enlarged monomedia enterprises. Nor is there evidence that de-regulation of monomedia restrictions would have any positive impact on the exports performance of traditional UK media firms. With regard to diagonal expansion, there is no evidence that cross-ownership between radio and television or between television and national newspapers yields important economic benefits. This thesis would argue that, taken as a whole, the de-regulation of UK media ownership in 1996 has delivered relatively few enhancements to the economic efficiency or prospects of the UK media industry while, at the same time, has engendered a considerable welfare loss through lower safeguards for pluralism. This outcome reflects serious systemic problems at the national UK level in the policymaking mechanism which is supposed to curb the political influence of media owners. This study finds that the scope - via a shift in responsibility for policy-formulation to the transnational European level - for overcoming such problems will be limited, not least because the protection of pluralism remains outside the official competence of the European Commission.

This thesis investigates the political management of state schooling under New Labour from 1997-2010. The thesis considers and rejects two mainstream approaches to the analysis of New Labour‟s education strategy which characterise the New Labour education project as either a process of marketisation or as a symptom of a shift to a new governance through networks of diffused power. Instead, the thesis argues that the best general characterisation of New Labour‟s education strategy is as a centralising project which has increased the power and discretion of the core of the core executive over the education sector at the expense of alternative centres of power. The thesis proposes that the trajectory of education policy under New Labour is congruent with a broader strategy for the modification of the British state which sought to enhance administrative efficiency and governing competence. Changes to education strategies can then be explained as the result of changing social and economic contexts filtered through the governing projects of strategic political actors. The thesis argues that New Labour‟s education strategy was largely successful in terms of securing governing competence and altering power relations and behaviour in the sector despite continuing controversy over the programmatic and political performance of its education policies.

The search for enhanced rationality in the governance and management of UK public services is an enduring theme of reform programmes. Three modes of rationality had a significant impact during the period 1977-1997: the rationality of disengagement, which suggests that there are benefits to be derived from the governance of public services by boards of appointed individuals operating at arm's-length to the democratic process; the rationality of integration, which concerns the advantages to be gained from the development of interrelationships between agencies around particular public policy objectives; and the rationality of congruence, which stresses the need for local authorities' policies and service delivery processes to reflect the views and preferences of their communities. The origins and characteristics of these three themes are examined and their effect on public services assessed. Together, they have produced a significant transformation of the management and governance of UK public services. The analysis suggests that, at a macro level, the underlying problems of governance and management each rationality seeks to address recycles over a period of time. Reform strategies materialise through a 'garbage-can' model in which current problems are attached to the prevailing fashionable solutions. However, there is also a developmental process in operation. The intersection of the three rationalities offers an agenda for future research.

The background for this thesis is the dramatic growth in travel demand that has taken place in developed countries in the last decades, and is gathering speed at the global level. This goes in hand in hand with a dramatic increase in motorisation and car use. This phenomenon is the object of Chapter 1.Increasing mobility and motorisation has raised two kinds of concerns, corresponding to two research fields. Concerns for the environmental consequences of transport are behind the concept of environmentally sustainable transport. Transport contributes to both climate change emissions and oil depletion, arguably two of the most important environmental challenges of the 21st century. However, as mobility grows, society (and urban structure) adapts itself: the result is that being able to cover great distances at sufficient speed has become paramount. In other words, mobility and accessibility have become key factors for social inclusion, resulting in new forms of social inequality and/or reinforcing existing ones. In the theoretical part of this thesis (Part I), these two fields of research are reviewed. Chapter 1 discusses the environmental consequences of increasing motorisation, as well as policies for environmentally sustainable transport. Also, different approaches to the study of increasing motorisation (car ownership modelling, the ‘travel and the built environment’ debate and the concept of car dependence) are reviewed. Chapter 2 introduces the field of transport and social exclusion research, and reviews policies to tackle transport disadvantage. Interestingly, these two fields of research have remained quite separate until very recently. Arguably, this is a problem, for at least three reasons: firstly both concerns arise from a common problem, i.e. the increasing demand for (car) travel; secondly, the leading policy concept of ‘sustainable transport’ includes both environmental and social goals (as well as economic ones); finally, literature in both fields provides numerous examples of instances where there is a trade-off or a latent tension between environmental and social goals (as discussed in Chapter 2). This in turn is arguably a strong barrier to the implementation of sustainable transport policies. At the theoretical level, the goal of this thesis is to put forward an integrated framework to conceptualise the social and environmental consequences of increasing motorisation, and their interrelationships. To do this, I use the concept of car dependence. Since it has mostly been used in studies concerned with the environmental consequences of increasing motorisation, the notion is introduced in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I put forward a typology of forms of car-related transport disadvantage, and illustrate how they arise from the process of increasing car dependence. In Chapter 3, I put forward an original working definition of car dependence, aimed at reconciling the two concerns and highlighting the role that the different forms of car-related transport disadvantage play in the self-reinforcing cycle of increasing motorisation. All throughout the theoretical chapters, the emphasis is on the spatial dimension of car dependence: urban structure and the built environment adapt to increasing motorisation, and this results in further motorisation, thus creating a self-reinforcing cycle with both environmental and social consequences. The research object of this thesis is households without cars. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, it is located at the intersection of the two research fields. From an environmental perspective, carless households have been studied as examples of environmentally sustainable behaviour. Notably, existing research has sought to identify households who choose to live without cars, exploring their motivations and trying to understand how to encourage carfree living. By contrast, in transport and social exclusion research, lack of car access has been considered as the most important form of transport disadvantage in developed societies. Accordingly, studies have focused on the exclusionary consequences of living without cars. Overall, studies on environmentally sustainable transport focus on a type of carless that is quite different from that considered by research into transport and social exclusion: an inadvertent outcome of this situation is that the overall view of the sheer variety of situations that cause people to live without cars is lost. By contrast, I argue in this thesis that there is a need to focus on the composition of the carless group as a whole, and on how it varies over time and space. The empirical work illustrated in Part III of this thesis is organized around two research questions, and both deal with the composition of the carless households group. Notably, the research questions are derived from the ‘car dependence’ theoretical framework, as illustrated in Chapter 3. In a nutshell, the idea behind both research questions is that there is a relationship between the degree of car dependence of a given (local) society and the composition of the carless households group. The two research questions adopt different approaches to explore the relationship between car dependence and the composition of the carless households group. Question 1 adopts a synchronic perspective, by comparing types of area with different levels of car dependence at the same moment in time. Differences in the composition of the carless group across different types of area are explored, with reference to the following four areas: socio-demographics, reasons for not owning cars, travel behaviour and accessibility to services and opportunities. Based on the results of previous research, the different types of area are assumed to correspond to different degrees of car dependence. Question 2 adopts a diachronic perspective by comparing the composition of the carless households group at different moments in time. The assumption is that, given the continuing process of increasing motorisation, car dependence is higher at a later moment in time. In this case, only the socio-demographic composition of the carless household group has been explored. In accordance with the tradition of the Doctoral Programme in Urban and Local European Studies at the University of Milan-Bicocca, the empirical work has focused on two case studies: Germany and Great Britain. Information about the countries (with reference to transport and spatial planning policies and previous research on car ownership trends and households without cars) is provided in Part II (chapters 4 and 5). Both research questions have been explored for both case studies, and the empirical results are illustrated in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7. The research strategy adopted is quantitative secondary analysis of national travel surveys (Mobilität in Deutschland and National Travel Survey). For the synchronic analysis, I used data from the 2008 wave of MiD and a pooled sample (2002-2010) for NTS. For the diachronic analysis, I compared data from the 2002 and 2008 waves of MiD, and single waves of the continuous NTS survey over the period 2002-2010. The data analysis techniques employed include, beside descriptive analysis, (multinomial) logistic regression, cluster analysis and latent class analysis. All techniques are described in detail in Appendix A in Part V. Appendix B and C report the details of the data analysis for both case studies, as well as technical details for both national travel surveys. Part IV consists of a single concluding chapter, including two sections. Firstly, the empirical evidence for the two case studies is brought together and discussed in light of the research questions and hypotheses. Secondly, the empirical results are discussed in light of the theoretical and policy debates outlined in Part I and II. In the following, I outline the main empirical results of this thesis. - firstly, the carless households group is considerably more concentrated among marginal social groups in low density and peripheral (‘car dependent’) types of area. To put it simply, this means that the composition of the carless group is a good indicator for the level of car dependence of a local area. More formally stated, this means that the strength of the association between non-car ownership and its socio-demographic determinants increases as the degree of urbanity decreases. This is a novel conclusion, and sits alongside the results of previous research suggesting that the car is more of a necessity in low density areas - secondly, the ‘mobility gap’ and the ‘accessibility gap’ of carless households (as compared to car-owning households) increase as the degree of urbanity decreases. Also, results for the British case study suggest that carless individuals are more likely to rely on car lifts, taxis and other motorised transport modes in the most car dependent areas. However, in-depth analysis shows that all of these results are also the by-product of the varying socio-demographic composition of the carless group across different types of area - thirdly, carless households in low density areas are more likely to mention age and health-related constraints as reasons for not owning a car. Conversely, they are less likely to mention choice and lack of need. However, perhaps counterintuitively, it is carless households in compact cities who are the most likely to be carless for economic reasons These empirical results contribute to theoretical and methodological debates in both fields of research (environmentally sustainable transport and transport and social exclusion research). Notably: - by showing the variety of conditions associated with non-car ownership, I counter the assumption that lack of car access per se leads to serious transport disadvantage. While the goal of this thesis was not to identify those carless households who are transport disadvantaged, distinguishing them from those who are not, the empirical results suggest that not owning cars might result in very different forms of disadvantage, ranging from virtual immobility to reliance on others for car lifts to time poverty (as a result of lengthy commutes with alternative modes). This thesis shows that these different forms of non-car ownership are not distributed randomly, but follow a spatial pattern: therefore, it might serve as a blueprint for future studies based on ad-hoc surveys or adopting a qualitative approach - the empirical chapters bring to light the peculiar features and the complex structure of the carless households group. Indeed, this population is: concentrated among marginal social groups; concentrated in large cities and in the most densely populated areas; more concentrated among marginal social groups in suburban and rural areas and where population density is low (a novel conclusion). Arguably, this increases the risk of drawing wrong or misleading conclusions when comparing means between the car-owing and the carless population. In other words, the complex structure of the carless households group has methodological implications for future research - the empirical results about the reasons for not owning cars suggest that the emphasis of existing research on questions of choice is misplaced. The data do not show a continuum between the poles of choice and constraint, but rather the existence of ‘absolute’ constraints to car ownership (such as those related to old age and health-related mobility difficulties), on one hand, and the complex interweaving of ‘weaker’ economic constraints with choice and lack of need, on the other. Notably, one possible interpretation of the results is that low-income households have to choose between ‘two evils’: lack of car access (with possible implications in terms of reduced accessibility) and the economic stress arising from owning and running a car. Depending on the structural constraints brought about by the built environment, they end up choosing one or the other. In other words, there might be a complementary relationship between two forms of car-related transport disadvantage: car deprivation and car-related economic stress. While this hypothesis is not tested in this thesis, it is put forward for future research To sum up, with this thesis I hope to demonstrate two things. First, it is possible to conceptualize the environmental and the social consequences of transport within a single framework, and to conduct empirical studies that take into account both sides. The key link between the two concerns is the need to own and drive cars. Second, focusing on those who do not own cars is a powerful way to understand better what makes people so reluctant to give up theirs.

Water-resource managers are facing unprecedented challenges in accommodating the large uncertainties associated with climate change in their planning decisions. Integration of climate risk information is a pre-requisite for water resources planning under a changing climate, yet this information is often presented outside the decision-making context and in a way which is not relevant for the decision at hand. Furthermore, there is a lack of approaches that explicitly evaluate the impact of nonstationary climate change on decision-relevant metrics and variables. This thesis describes novel methods for incorporating uncertain information on climate change in water resources decision-making and estimating climate change-related risks in water resources systems. The main hypotheses of this thesis are that: (1) shifting away from planning approaches based on abstract supply-demand balance metrics towards risk-based approaches that quantify the frequency and severity of observable outcomes of concern to water users, such as water shortages, can help decision-makers establish preferences among actions and identify cost and climate risk reduction trade-offs (2) adopting risk-based planning methods allows water managers to characterize and account for different sources of uncertainty in the water planning process and to understand their impact on outcomes of value and decisions. To test these hypotheses, this thesis presents an analytic approach for (1) incorporating nonstationary climate change projections and other uncertain factors related to demand changes into water resources decision-making, (2) understanding trade-offs between benefits of climate risk-reduction and cost of climate change adaptation, and (3) characterizing water supply vulnerability to unprecedented drought conditions. The approach is applied to London's urban water supply system located in the Thames river basin, south-east of England. Results from this thesis demonstrate how a systematic characterization of uncertainties related to future hydro-climatic conditions can help decision-makers compare and choose between a range of possible water management options and decide upon the scale and timing of implementation that meet decision-makers' risk tolerability. Additionally, results show the benefits of combining climate information with vulnerability analysis to test decisions' robustness to unprecedented drought conditions. The application of the proposed methods to the London urban water supply system suggests that the risks of exceeding reliability targets in the future will increase if no further supply or demand side actions were to be taken. Results from the case study also show that changes in demand due to population growth could have greater impacts on water security than climate change and that small reductions in climate-related risk may come at significantly higher costs. It should be stressed that the results from the case study are based on a simplified representation of London's water supply system and that they should be further tested with the full system model employed by the water utility which implements more complex operational rules.

This thesis is the first to examine the lives and careers of professional women who were working within the thriving Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It utilises previously unresearched primary and secondary sources in art galleries, the Birmingham School of Art and local studies collections to present a series of case studies of professional women working in the fields of jewellery and metalware, stained glass, painting, book illustration, textiles and illumination. This thesis demonstrates that women made an important, although currently unacknowledged, professional contribution to the Arts and Crafts Movement in the region. It argues that the Executed Design training that the women received at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art (BMSA) was crucial to their success in obtaining highly-skilled paid employment or setting up and running their own business enterprises. The thesis makes an important new contribution to the historiography of The Arts and Crafts Movement; women's work in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the history of education and the industrial and artistic history of Birmingham.

The central focus of the thesis is Alice Arnold (1881-1955), women's organiser for the Workers' Union in Coventry between 1917 and 1931 and Labour councillor on Coventry City Council from 1919. The adoption of a local, biographical approach highlights the need to move beyond generalisations about 'Labour women' and encourages examination of the diverse political experiences of women who worked within trade unionism and municipal labour politics in interwar Britain. Within the context of Coventry's early twentieth century industrial and political development, Arnold's politicisation is explored and her experiences compared with those of men and women activists who worked in the industrial and political wings of the Coventry Labour movement. Additionally material that allows comparisons to be made with national figures as well as those from other localities is employed. As well as emphasising the influence of factors including gender, class and political affiliation upon Arnold's position within the male dominated labour movement between the wars, there is consideration of the effect that her status as a single woman had upon her career. The thesis advances what is known about the development of regional labour politics and emphasises the effects that local political, economic and social factors had upon both the involvement of women and on the attitudes of male colleagues towards women's participation. The study is situated within a tradition of feminist history that seeks not merely to draw attention to what women did but questions their motivations for doing it and how they were able to pursue their political ambitions. Through analysis of a range of primary sources, it examines the effects that gendered perceptions and sexist stereotypes had on the ways in which women were able to work within trade unionism and municipal politics. It places women's interests first in an area of history that has traditionally been dominated by accounts of men's involvement and it challenges the construction of historical accounts that have ignored or marginalised women. The influence of masculine epistemology on the ways in which women's political work has been recorded both nationally and at a local level is examined throughout the thesis.

Asking the question ‘why do ideas catch on in public policy’ reveals the inadequacy of ideational accounts to compete with the predominance of mainstream models of policy analysis. This thesis reasserts ideational accounts through the application of the political discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. The approach posits ideas as demands operating in governing discourses and understands how general equivalent demands then become empty signifiers. This thesis develops current understanding on how general equivalents and empty signifiers function through an application to urban governance. It develops a qualitative account of governing in Birmingham using interviews between 2003-2005, and documents and media archives from the past twenty years. The thesis examines how mainstream ideational, rational, institutional and interpretative accounts understand the emergence of policy ideas and their role in coalitions, policy change and agency of actors. Discourse theory is revealed as a comprehensive approach for understanding these questions of ideas. The thesis develops a framework for the empirical application of discourse theory in Birmingham, exploring the relationship between two taken-for-granted governing discourses: renaissance and size. It shows how actors were motivated to reiterate and protect discourses from dislocation with development of the empty signifier of ‘flourishing neighbourhoods’. The thesis traces the credibility and emergence of flourishing neighbourhoods and contributes to a research agenda around hegemonic policy analysis.

This thesis explores the impact of two behavioural finance concepts, social psychology and psychology, on household financial decisions. Under social psychology, I investigate whether the variety and intensity of social engagement enhances stock market participation. With regard to psychology, I examine two behavioural biases. First, I investigate whether mental accounting influences portfolio choice in three asset classes and whether financial advice and housing tenure increase (decrease) the effects of mental accounts on portfolio choice. Second, I examine whether households’ self-reported housing wealth are anchored on published house price indices and whether anchoring bias is mediated by market information, mortgage refinancing decisions and social factors. The main contributions and findings in the three studies are as follows. First, although there is an elaborate body of research concerning the relationship between social engagement mechanisms and portfolio choice, most studies investigate specific mechanisms in isolation. Using three waves in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), I bring together five social engagement measures in one model and show that socially engaged individuals are more likely to participate in the stock market. Consistent with Granovetter’s (1973) theory of social networks I find that a weak tie (measured by social group involvement) has a positive effect on stock market participation whereas a strong tie (measured by talking to neighbours) has no effect. More trusting individuals are more likely to participate in the stock market, as are those who identify with a political party. In contrast, the degree to which religion is important appears to have little impact. These results are robust using different specifications. Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that the likelihood of stock market participation increases with the variety and intensity of social engagement. Second, despite the established theoretical underpinnings of mental accounting in behavioural portfolio theory (BPT) and recent extensions, not much is known about their implications in real life situations. I use a recent UK household survey, the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS), which has comprehensive information about financial assets to investigate whether there are differences in the ownership and portfolio share of three asset classes among individuals who exhibit no mental account, a single mental account and multiple mental accounts, and the conditional influences of financial advice, housing, cognitive ability, time preference and risk tolerance. Overall I find that mental accounting together with financial advice and housing tenure explain variations in both the probability of ownership and portfolio share in the three asset classes. Households that exhibit a single mental account have low share of investments in, and are less likely to own, a risky asset when compared to those that exhibit no mental account or exhibit multiple mental accounts. I also find that, when compared to having no mental account, exhibiting a single mental account or multiple mental accounts increases both the probability and investment share in a fairly safe asset but decreases portfolio share in safe assets. In addition, among those that exhibit a single mental or multiple mental accounts, financial advice decreases portfolio share in risky assets and fairly safe assets and increases portfolio share in safe assets. Housing tenure increases both the probability and portfolio share in risky assets, decreases portfolio share in fairly safe assets and increases portfolio share in safe assets. These results are consistent using multi-equation regressions, sub-samples, reparametrised variables and poisson regressions. Finally, as little is known about how households derive the self-reported house prices estimates that are commonly used to determine housing wealth, the third study examines whether households are anchored on published house price indices. The key conjecture is that, while assessing the values of their homes, homeowners place more weight on house price news at the expense of property characteristics and other market information. I find support for this hypothesis using sixteen waves of the BHPS, multiple methods, and both regional and national house price indices. I conclude that changes in self-reported housing wealth are anchored on changes in published house price indices. Specifically, ownership through a mortgage and greater financial expectations increase anchoring effects while mortgage refinancing decreases the effects. Moreover, use of money raised from refinancing for home investment, as opposed to other consumption purposes, has a positive association with change in self-reported house value and both uses reduce anchoring bias. In addition, I find that computer use increases anchoring bias and, among social engagement mechanisms, religiosity reduces anchoring while other measures have no effect. These results are robust to internal instrumental variables, national aggregate house prices, alternative indices and sub-samples.

This thesis seeks to provide a qualitative and comparative account of politics and power in two densely-populated Scottish suburban communities: the former Police Burghs of Partick and Govan. These are communities whose rich urban history has been relatively underexplored by dint of their proximity to Glasgow and the fact that they were formally outside the city boundaries until 1912. The study aims to redress the balance in the burghs’ favour, making a substantial qualitative, analytical contribution to the wider historiography of political change in the British Isles, while simultaneously adding a comparative empirical case study to the conceptual debate over centralism versus localism. Foremost among the historiographical concerns addressed are civic nationalism and local self-government, class politics, the rise of Labour, including ‘Red Clydeside’, and the interlinked electoral demise of Liberalism. This qualitative study of political change in two populous and pioneering ‘locally self-governed’ communities therefore goes beyond merely chronicling Partick’s and Govan’s creation as burghs, their subsequent development and annexation to Glasgow. Rather, it examines the dynamics of ideological and party-political change in two significant urban localities from the mid-Victorian period up to the arrival of near-democratic electoral politics after the First World War. Close attention is therefore paid throughout to political rhetoric in relation to the local experience of ideological, institutional and electoral change. The central contention of this work is as follows. Partick’s and Govan’s political and administrative development from the 1850s to the 1920s is best understood within the wider ideological context of the rise and fall of ‘local self-government’. ‘Local self-government’ was a mid-nineteenth century bourgeois Liberal solution to the myriad problems associated with urban industrial life in the Scottish context. In Govan’s and Partick’s cases, ‘local self-government’ was in large part sustained by the promotion of local civic nationalism, albeit this phenomenon persisted in the Scottish context until at least the 1975 local government reorganisation: long after the burghs and the legislative framework that allowed their creation were extinguished. By 1912, when the burghs were absorbed into Greater Glasgow, the ideology of ‘local self-government’ had been gradually eroded by large-scale ‘municipal socialism’ combined with ‘national efficiency’. In broad-brush terms, it is argued here that the transition between these dominant ideals mirrored, and in some ways pre-figured, the rise of Victorian Liberalism and its eventual eclipse by independent Labour. These developments and the political conflict which accompanied them are traced throughout the study with careful analysis of the political discourse from various ‘players’ in both communities from the formation of the burghs until their annexation, and even beyond, to the electoral politics of the early post-1918 period. It is shown that notwithstanding its intrinsic merits in theory, ‘local self-government’ as practised in Partick and Govan was often undermined by hypocrisy and self-interest from the burghs’ civic leaders. Analysis of the political culture and traditions of anti-landlordism in the former burghs also sheds new light on the phenomenon of ‘Red Clydeside’. Partick and Govan were shipbuilding boom towns from the mid-nineteenth century and throughout the years examined in this study. While both communities experienced rapid industrialisation and demographic growth in the mid-nineteenth century, the latter burgh was more populous and proletarian than the former. The implications of this for their comparative political development were significant, as is outlined below. Both communities’ rapid rise in the mid-nineteenth century prompted them to adopt the ‘populous place’ provisions of the 1850 and 1862 General Police Acts (respectively) to become quasi-autonomous police burghs, a distinctively Scottish form of municipality. Both communities jealously maintained their independence from the neighbouring city of Glasgow through several aggressive ‘annexation’ attempts until they finally amalgamated with the city in 1912. By 1904, the burghs had grown so fast that they were two of only nine Scottish towns and cities (including Glasgow and Edinburgh) whose population exceeded 50,000. As major urban centres by the 1900s, their political development clearly merits more than parochial interest. The thesis is divided into two complementary sections. The first considers the development of key themes in the burghs’ civic life, including the Liberal ethos of local self-government, industrial paternalism and the emergence of class-based politics. This begins with an examination of the reasons why Partick and Govan adopted the General Police Acts in 1852 and 1864 respectively, followed by an appraisal of the municipal policies pursued in both burghs’ formative years. There is especial focus on Partick, as one of Scotland’s first ‘populous place’ burghs. The focus then moves on chronologically to consider the ways in which both burghs responded to a number of critical episodes in the late 1860s and 1870s, with reference to what the community leaders perceived as threats to their existence emanating from outside and inside the burgh boundaries. From the mid 1880s until the 1912 annexation, the Burgh Halls became theatres of partisan and ideological conflict. The 1886 Home Rule crisis triggered a split in the ranks of the local Liberal Party, which among other things had the effect of introducing openly party politics to the municipal scene. The later municipal chapters examine the competing visions of the nature, purpose and extent of municipal power proffered by Liberal, Liberal Unionist, Conservative and Labour councillors, in addition to identifying tensions regarding temperance and sectarianism. This is followed by a longer term analysis of the reasons why both communities amalgamated with Glasgow in 1912, including discussion of annexation in the context of wider ideological debates about ‘municipal socialism’ and ‘national efficiency’ against the formerly prevailing ethos of local self-government. The second and final section of the thesis considers parliamentary politics from the burghs’ 1885 formation into county divisions of Lanarkshire, each returning one MP to Westminster. This includes scrutiny of the extent to which both communities deserved their reputation as ‘strongholds’ of Liberalism in the period before 1914. Consideration is given to the Home Rule split and its implications, and to the extent to which Labour was able to dent the dominance of the Liberals and Unionists before the war. Here, as with the earlier municipal analysis, much consideration is given to paternalism and sectarianism. Neil Maclean’s precocious victory in Govan in 1918 owed much to the community’s more proletarian character than Partick, and to Labour’s emerging ability to transcend sectarian boundaries there; an ability which had been evidenced in local municipal and parliamentary politics since the 1880s, well before the upheaval of annexation and the cataclysm of war. The specific focus of this study does not detract from its general contribution to historiography as outlined above. Nevertheless, it is conceded that the emphasis on municipal and parliamentary politics, especially electoral discourse, is overwhelmingly and necessarily qualitative in approach. In consequence, the war years are discussed only briefly, due to the associated abeyance of municipal and parliamentary contests from 1911 until 1918. And as this is not a social or economic history of the former burghs, it is not intended to be read as either, still less to substitute for them.

This thesis is an exploration of the relationship between trade unionism and politics viewed primarily through events within the London Borough of Haringey. These events are examined through two case studies of local government union branches between 1965 and 1987. In these studies I use original research data with the aim of unifying what are usually deemed separate theoretical approaches, for example concern with either the labour process or with the bargaining relation. I show that by unifying these different strands of analysis a far greater depth of understanding is achieved. The research also examines the development of Labour Party politics in the 1980s, and particularly the rise of 'radical municipalism' as a response to traditional labourism. Finally this critical appraisal is extended to provide a critique of dominant themes running through radical and Marxist literature concerned with labour movement politics and in particular the trade unions.

This thesis presents an interpretivist analysis of institutional development in the English regional assemblies. It presents a history of institutional development in the regions, arriving at a conceptualization of this tier as a site of ‘institutional ambiguity.’ Exploring the theoretical bases of institutions and conducting a thorough critique of the schools of institutionalism, this thesis takes forward the theory of ‘constructivist institutionalism.’ A theoretical framework focussed on the processes of institutional design and change is built from constructivist institutionalism, as is a complementary and coherent methodological package to explore the empirical sites of the West Midlands and North West regional assemblies. The concepts of ‘frames’ and ‘stories’ are set out as interpretivist tools through which the primary interview data is analysed, to capture the development of the democratic institution of representation as it relates to the local government and stakeholder actors involved in these two regional assemblies. This thesis finds actors engaged in interplay between structure and agency while contributing to the processes of institutional design and change. Actors draw together their ideas with the pre-existing institutional context, relating them together in discursive constructions (frames, stories) that underpin their strategic-relational action, which in turn underpins the institutions of the assemblies. Regional representation transpires to mimic local governmental norms due to the dominant influence of the pre-existing context.

This thesis investigates the development of radical politics in Liverpool in the first half of the nineteenth century and argues that distinctive events and trends in Liverpool exercised an important influence on the activities of the Reform Movement nationally between 1848 and 1854. It addresses two important but largely neglected areas of historiography: first, the political history of Liverpool in the years between the abolition of the slave trade and the mass influx of Irish refugees in mid-century, during which time the town rose to commercial pre-eminence; secondly, the influence of major provincial centres such as Liverpool on politics at the national level. The origins of Liverpool’s reformist Town Council of 1835-1841 are traced and show a continuity of thought and personalities over several decades against a backdrop of Tory paternalism and institutionalised corruption. The new reformist administration is seen as laying the foundations of a modern society through good governance, financial economy, civil liberty and innovation. On the Corn Laws issue, Liverpool’s reformers were reluctant to follow Manchester’s lead, preferring to pursue free trade on a broad front. This study follows their progress and shows how, ultimately, their thinking on financial reform influenced Cobden’s “National Budget” and remained an ever-present stimulus for several decades. The most prominent of Liverpool’s radical reformers was Sir Joshua Walmsley, whose achievements in both municipal and national politics have received much less attention from historians than they have merited. This study details the influences and experiences in his early career and then traces how, through political dexterity, he pushed parliamentary reform to the forefront of the national political agenda and established the National Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association in 1849. The influence exerted by his Liverpool background on both his political development and style of campaigning may be seen throughout his parliamentary career.

UK regeneration exists amid a ‘burgeoning’ literature which states the ongoing desire to improve the outcomes of urban policy. However, concern about the symbolic nature of regeneration policy and its re-production in the form of ‘linguistic debates’, can latterly be witnessed in the context of more ‘discursive’ concerns rooted in shifting patterns of governance. Drawing empirically from research with fifty UK regeneration professionals and Laclau & Mouffe’s (2001) theory of socialist hegemony to explore reasons for the persistence of such ambiguity, three rival discourses emerge in the form of ‘Building City Regions’; ‘Narrowing the Gap’; and ‘Building Community Capacity’. What a critical analysis suggests is that by ‘deconstructing’ rather than ‘deciphering’ the goals of regeneration policy, a temporary ‘discursive’ form of regeneration emerges in which the contradictions and tensions within the discourse are represented in the form of ‘nodal points and floating signifiers’ and articulated through the notion of lack. This can be linked to the bureaucratic struggles which emerge as a result of a ‘new right’ hegemony, which commodifies all aspects of work and social life to bring market-informed ways of seeing and doing to every aspect of regeneration practice. Actors seek to manage such complexity through emotional investment.

This thesis examines the work undertaken by Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury (1858-1951) to support social reform in Bournville and Birmingham during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It concentrates on her involvement in the development and promotion of Bournville village, the establishment and management of elementary and infant schools in Bournville and her local government work implementing school medical treatment provision in Birmingham. The thesis argues that Taylor Cadbury’s approach to social reform was shaped by her sense of religious faithfulness expressed through social service and by perceptions of women’s maternal expertise, demonstrating that she engaged with maternal work supporting social welfare as a form of religious service. Interpretation of Taylor Cadbury has been informed by the production of a revised catalogue of her largely unexplored personal archive within the Cadbury Family Papers. This catalogue enhances access to papers created and preserved by Taylor Cadbury and provides insight into the religious and social discourses within which she defined her identity and social work. By combining archival cataloguing with analysis of Taylor Cadbury’s philanthropic and municipal activities, this thesis offers a distinctive contribution to scholarship exploring how women identified with religion and maternalism in their social reform work during this period.

Defence date: 24 September 2005
Examining board: Prof. Neil Walker, European University Institute (supervisor) ; Prof. Bruno De Witte, European University Institute ; Prof. Carol Harlow, London School of Economics and Political Science ; Prof. Stefan Oeter, University of Hamburg
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Award date: 30 November 2015
Supervisor: Professor Loïc Azoulai, European University Institute
This thesis considers the Europeanisation of English administrative law, in the specific context of the principle of protection of legitimate expectations. It assesses whether, how and to what extent the way in which the way in which legitimate expectations are protected in EU law has influenced the protection of legitimate expectations in English law. To make this assessment, a thorough analysis is conducted of case law in both jurisdictions. The thesis is structured into five main Chapters. Chapter A provides an introduction and looks at some general issues surrounding the concept of legitimate expectation, including which expectations are protectable and what is meant by legitimacy. Chapter B traces the development of the protection of legitimate expectations in English and EU law, and considers certain particular features in more detail for each jurisdiction, with the aim of establishing some parameters against which more recent case law can be tested and compared. In Chapter C an in-depth analysis of recent case law of the English courts, both falling within and outside the scope of EU law, is undertaken, and comparisons are drawn between these cases and with the traditional position of EU law on the protection of legitimate expectations. Chapter D contains a similar analysis in respect of recent cases of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Finally, Chapter E draws these analyses together and concludes that while there is limited convergence in the way English and EU courts approach the protection of legitimate expectations, both jurisdictions remain wary of external influence.

Defence Date: 17 May 2010
Examining Board: Prof. Fabrizio Cafaggi, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof. Hans W. Micklitz, European University Institute; Prof. Katharina Pistor, Columbia University; Prof. Michel Tison, Ghent University
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This book provides a model for the evaluation of potential biased regulatory actions by stock exchanges in relation to their own governance as well as in relation to the governance and activity of their regulatees; based on the analysis of the ownership, governance, allocation of regulatory powers, discretion‘s exercise and rule‘s content, this book gives the reader a comparative analysis that addresses how different exchanges‘ organizational and regulatory structures can lead to different forms of biased regulation as well as externalities in the financial system. The book develops case studies regarding three major stock exchanges‘ holding companies (BME, the LSEG, and NYSE-Euronext) and the markets they operate in Spain, the UK, France and the US. One of the main findings of the book is the relation between the ownership/governance of exchanges and the quality of their regulatory output; stock exchanges subject to concentrated and path dependent ownership structures and weaker governance regimes in which there is low separation between the ownership of the exchange and its governance, tend to produce rules that maximize the interest of the persons exercising control over those exchanges. Moreover, these persons have the incentive to keep a lock on control because, by doing so, they extract important private benefits of control in the form of regulatory power and discretion that can be used in a biased manner in their own interest. This finding has important implications in terms of policy making; if there is such a relation between governance and regulatory output, efforts by public regulators should be put on the governance of exchanges in order to avoiding the possibilities of biased influence over exchanges‘ regulatory processes.

The aim of the study was to analyze the effect brought about by the promulgation of the British Local Government Act of 1988 on the maintenance of parks and recreational services. The Act made it compulsory to local authorities to expose the maintenance of parks and recreational services to a tendering process, commonly known as compulsory competitive tendering. The implementation of compulsory competitive tendering had to be done between the promulgation of the Act in 1988, and 1994. With regard to this period, a perception existed that the standard of the administration of the maintenance of parks and recreational services declined. The research was done to determine if the implementation of compulsory competitive tendering on the maintenance of parks and recreational services could have resulted in a decline in the standard of the administration of the services, and how it could have happened. It was determined that the motive of the British Government at the time of implementation of the compulsory competitive tendering was primarily to save money. The result of the implementation of compulsory competitive legislation on the maintenance of parks and recreational services were amongst other things: - low morale of staff who were pressured to change - culture changes necessary to comply to compulsory competitive organisational structures - legislation that influenced the lives of traditional local authority employees drastically, and - the development of a new approach to financial management to comply to the government's expectations of saving money.
Public Administration
M. A. (Public Administration)

Hierdie proefskrif handel oor aspekte van inaedificatio (bebouing) in die Suid-Afrikaanse, Engelse en Nederlandse reg. Die klem val op die maatstawwe wat aangewend word om te bepaal of aanhegting van ‘n roerende saak aan ‘n onroerende saak plaasgevind het. Die maatstawwe in die drie stelsels toon ooreenkomste en verskille. Een ooreenkoms is dat die graad en wyse van aanhegting in die Suid-Afrikaanse reg oorweeg word, terwyl daar in die Engelse reg slegs na die graad van aanhegting gekyk word. In die Nederlandse reg word ’n duursame verbinding vereis om te bepaal of bestanddeelvorming plaasgevind het, en word gevra of verwydering van die saak sonder beskadiging kan plaasvind. In die Suid-Afrikaanse reg word die doel van die aangehegte saak oorweeg, hoewel Innes HR dit nie in MacDonald Ltd v Radin NO & The Potchefstroom Dairies & Industries Co Ltd so formuleer nie. Die aard van die roerende saak word in die Suid-Afrikaanse reg oorweeg, terwyl die aard en ontwerp van die roerende saak in die Nederlandse reg oorweeg word. In die Engelse reg word die doel waarvoor die aanhegting gemaak is oorweeg om die bedoeling met die aanhegting te bepaal. Die vraag is of die saak vir die permanente en substansiële verbetering van die gebou (grond) aangeheg is, of vir ’n tydelike doel of vir die beter benutting van die chattel. Die Nederlandse reg beklemtoon die bestemming van die aanhegting. Die opvallendste verskil tussen die Suid-Afrikaanse reg en die ander twee stelsels is die belang van die subjektiewe bedoeling van een of ander betrokkene. Die regsposisie van huurders wat sake aanheg verskil van dié van ander aanhegters. In al drie regstelsels kan huurders voor afloop van die huurtermyn sommige aangehegte sake verwyder, mits die huurgrond in dieselfde toestand gelaat word as waarin dit was voor die aanhegting. Die drie stelsels vertoon verskille soos dat onsekerheid bestaan oor wie die eienaar van die aangehegte sake is voor verwydering. In die Engelse reg heg bedryfsaanhegtings en ornamentele aanhegtings, nie aan nie. Ingevolge die Nederlandse reg is die verhuurder gedurende die huurtermyn eienaar van die aanhegtings, aangesien aanhegting plaasvind sodra die roerende sake aan die huurgrond heg. Die Suid-Afrikaanse reg hieroor is onduidelik.
This thesis deals with aspects of inaedificatio (building) in South African, English and Dutch law. The emphasis falls on the criteria that are applied to determine whether attachment of a movable to an immovable thing occurred. The criteria in the three systems show similarities and differences. One similarity is that in South African law the degree and manner of attachment are considered, while in English law only the degree of attachment is considered. To determine whether one thing became a component part of another thing (bestanddeelvorming) a durable connection is required In Dutch law. The question is whether removal can take place without causing damage. The purpose of the attached thing is considered in South African law, although Innes CJ did not formulate this criterion in this manner in MacDonald Ltd v Radin NO & The Potchefstroom Dairies & Industries Co Ltd. The nature of the movable thing is relevant, while the nature and design of the movable thing are considered in Dutch law. In English law the purpose of the attachment is considered to determine the intention with the attachment. The question is whether the thing was attached for the permanent and substantial improvement of the building (land) or for a temporary purpose or for the better use of the chattel. The destination (bestemming) of the attachment is considered in Dutch law. The most significant difference between South African law and the other two systems is the importance of the subjective intention of some person involved in the situation. The legal position of lessees who attach movales differs from that of other persons who make such attachments. In all three legal systems lessees may remove certain attached movables before the expiry of the term of lease as long as the leased land is left in the same condition that it was in before the attachment. The three systems also differs for example it is not certain who the owner of the attached things is before removal of the attachments. In English law trade and ornamental fixtures do not attach. In Dutch law the lessor is the owner of the attachments during the term of lease, because attachment takes place when the movable things are fixed to the leased land. The position in South African law on this is unclear.
Private Law
LL. D.

This dissertation is a critique of Marx's theory of alienation with emphasis on how Marx constructed his definition of man and consciousness. The main premise of the theory is that private property caused alienation but the hypothesis of this dissertation is that because the theory defined man and consciousness in an erroneous manner alienation was not possible, and that the conditions observed by Marx were exacerbated by landlessness.
Political Sciences
M.A. (Politics)