2018
Jofre Rocabert: Parliaments in International Politics
The contestation of international decision-making is one of the most pressing problems affecting both national institutions and international organizations. As the main arenas of communal decision-making, the involvement of parliaments may be a solution to the legitimacy shortages of international decisions and the institutional paralysis that this may ensue. This dissertation examines two distinct processes that reveal the current place of parliaments in international politics.
In the first part of my dissertation, I focus on the role of national parliaments in the politicisation of European integration. Using original data on parliamentary debates and a large corpus of newspaper articles, I show that parliaments are channels for the politicisation of EU decision-making. I find that parliamentary debates on the EU have media attention, especially debates over EU institutions, and that news related to the EU in general are more likely to mention parliament than news unrelated to the EU.
In the second part of my dissertation, I study international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). I present the first large n study on the parliamentarisation of international organizations (IOs) and propose that IOs utilise IPIs to increase their democratic legitimacy. Specifically, IOs with a region-building objective seek to associate with an institutional design from a more legitimate example: national representative democracy. I support the conclusions of my quantitative analysis with a small n study of the creation of the Andean Parliament. Using original qualitative data, I argue that the transformation of the Andean institutions into a region-building project and the democratic transitions of military regimes at the time were conducive to parliamentarization.
My results support the idea that parliaments can help to resolve the inherent tensions between national polities and international decision-making. At the national level, parliaments debating international decisions regain their democratic function of communicating policy alternatives. For IOs, empowerment of existing IPIs following the example of the European Parliament would alleviate the democratic deficit in which they operate.
Mirjam Hirzel: Agency at the Margin: Indigenous Responses to State Expansion in a Context of Ongoing Conflict
This thesis comprises an exploratory analysis of the advancement of the state into parts of its territory in which it was previously absent or present only to a limited extent, and the responses thereto by local indigenous communities. Asking ‘how does state expansion in a context of ongoing conflict shape indigenous agency?’, it examines whether and when responses are oriented ‘towards’ and as such in acceptance or acquiescence of the state or ‘away’ from or in opposition to the state. In doing so, the thesis focuses on two analytic dimensions, subjective inequality and identity.
The analysis is located in Central India, specifically Chhattisgarh, the home of a large number of tribal communities who have lived in relative isolation from the outside world. At the same time the epicentre of a Maoist insurgency and rich in natural resources, the Indian state has over the course of the last decade however increasingly penetrated the interior areas of the region. It has done so using an expansion strategy centred on counterinsurgency, resource extraction and, in an effort to win over the tribals, socioeconomic development and welfare.
Predominantly drawing on primary data, the thesis uses a directed thematic analysis to interpret material from 61 interviews. These were conducted with a broad range of stakeholders during several months of fieldwork, including in the rural regions of Chhattisgarh. The thesis makes an orientative use of existing research on the subject, particularly by James Scott (2009) and Michael Hechter (1975), and builds on their insights by accounting for a wider repertoire of indigenous responses to an expanding state.
The analysis shows that the direction of tribal agency largely reflects local experiences of state expansion, or more specifically, the benefits and threats that state expansion brings. While agency is also a function of the extent of the state’s reach, the identified pattern strongly mirrors its expansion strategy, underscoring the role of the state’s approach in shaping indigenous action.