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Studying the ideational frame and methods of action of an Islamist revolutionary movement from social movement studies' perspective
No full textDefence date: 09 October 2020Examining Board:
Prof. Donatella della Porta (formerly EUI/SNS Florence);
Prof. Steven Heydemann (Smith College, USA);
Prof. Olivier Roy (EUI/RSCAS) (Supervisor).For the second question, I argue that changes in one or two of the strategic pillars are influenced by two external factors and one internal factor, where the influence of the latter is significant. Specifically, the external factors are the interaction between the movement and challengers (competitors and adversaries, which include groups and states) operating in the same context and its alliances with actors (groups and states). The internal factor is the movement’s decision-making structure and process—in which the movement’s leaders make decisions in light of lessons learned from the experiences of the movement and those of other movements. Here, I argue that this internal factor has a significant impact on the changes that occur in one or both of the movement’s strategic pillars. To investigate the influences of the aforementioned factors on the process of articulating, selecting and changing the movement’s strategic pillars, I have used three main theoretical approaches developed within Social Movement Theory (SMT). The first is the political opportunity structure approach; the second is the organizational approach; and the third is the strategic approach to collective action.
Concerning data collection, I have applied a multi-method qualitative approach wherein I conducted in-depth interviews (one-on-one and group), online interviews, and group meetings. Along with interviews, I collected data through observation, documentary analysis, and analysis of posts on social media platforms, videos, and audio recording.
The main findings of my research are as the follows. The initial strategic ideational frame and methods of action of Ahrar Al-Sham in its first phase as a group of battalions were indeed significantly influenced by confronting a state that used repressive strategies and policies against opposition groups, as well by its decision-making structure and process, in which the leaders took into consideration lessons learned from their past experiences and those of other movements. When changes occurred to one or two of the strategic pillars of Ahrar Al-Sham – a movement which has operated in a dynamic context - two external factors and one internal factor influenced these changes. The external factors were the confrontation between the movement and challengers (that included competitors and enemies) and the alliances with other actors: groups and states. The internal factor was the movement’s decision-making structure and process, in which the movement’s leaders made their decisions in light of the experiences and lessons learned from their movement and other movements as well. Here, the internal factor’s influence was significant on the changes that occurred to the strategic pillars
The emergence of a European empire : an inquiry into the changing political order of world society
No full textDefence date: 03 June 2013Examining Board: Prof. Friedrich V. Kratochwil, (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Ulrich Krotz (European University Institute); Prof. Iver B. Neumann (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs); Prof. Mathias Albert (Universität Bielefeld)PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses (June 2025).This study inquires the changing political order of world society focusing on the emergence of a hierarchical discursive configuration at the margins of the European Union. The reflexibilisation of geopolitical as well as constitutional structures after the end of the Cold War triggered a dynamic process of extroversion whereby the EU projects its internal hegemonic formation beyond its organisational boundaries. Within its new periphery, laboratories of experimentation have been created where a wide range of subtle and sophisticated technologies of government are being applied. The European Union is part of a wider process of asymmetric constitutionalisation in the course of which the classical states system is increasingly integrated into or absorbed by an internally fragmented global techno-bureaucratic structure. Domestic political and administrative institutions are progressively transformed into pure organisational forms which can be programmed from a meta-organisational level. In Europe a form of postmodern imperial order is silently emerging without following an elaborated masterplan. Analysing the emergence of a European empire understood as a dynamic process that unfolds within modern world society calls for the flexible combination of diverse theoretical and methodological tools. An adequate understanding of the changing order of world society, I argue, requires a parallel focus on evolving forms of social organisation, on the development of technology as well as on the transformation of symbolic orders. This study tries to combine a re-constructed concept of empire with elements of modern social systems theory and post-Marxist discourse theory. If one assumes the idea of an increasingly internally differentiated world society forming a polycontexturality of social systems as well as of discursively sedimented political forms, then only a critical or problem-oriented (rather than problem-solving) approach can be useful. My primary concern is, therefore, not to specify the ontological quality of the EU ‘polity’ but rather to analyse more concretely what consequences these transformative processes have for political practices as well as for the conditions of constituting legitimate political order and authority
Lessons (not) learned? : EU military operations and the adaptation of CSDP
No full textDefence date: 13 June 2013Examining Board: Prof. Pascal Vennesson (European University Institute, Supervisor); Prof. Marise Cremona (European University Institute); Prof. Michael E. Smith (University of Aberdeen); Prof. Sophie Vanhoonacker (Maastricht University)PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD thesesEver since the launch of the EU’s first military operations in 2003, the Council recognized the importance for the EU to learn lessons from all its missions. Indeed, preliminary evidence from primary and secondary sources suggests, that at least part of the CSDP developments of the past years in the field of military crisis management result from lessons as identified during the first CSDP military operations. But despite the EU’s objective to learn from its missions and tentative proof that learning is actually happening, CSDP remains characterized by a number of limits and drawbacks. But why? Why did the EU, in the field of military crisis management, learn some lessons from its missions, and not others? The thesis explores this empirical puzzle and qualitatively investigates this research question. In order to do so and from a theoretical perspective, it makes use of Organizational Learning Theory (OLT), which provides the theoretical and analytical tools to explain how learning and non-learning can possibly occur within CSDP. Empirically, it is based upon 85 interviews that were conducted across the institutional landscape of CSDP as well as with some UN and NATO staff. The first chapter lays out the theoretical, analytical and methodological framework of the thesis. The second chapter introduces its case studies – the EU’s first three military operations (EUFORs Concordia, Artemis, and Althea) and provides the necessary information to embed the research analyses to follow. The third chapter presents first empirical findings, focusing on the EU infrastructure for learning in EU military crisis management. It introduces the actors involved in the learning process and sheds light on the processes that account for learning in this field. Chapter four uncovers and explains the lessons identified from the case studies. Chapter five fleshes out the underlying causal mechanisms that explain why specific lessons were learned from the EU’s first three military operations. In order to do so, it contrasts one successful with one unsuccessful area of lesson learning. Building upon that, it adapts the model of learning processes within organizations as developed in chapter one. To support these theoretical and empirical findings, chapter six provides additional information on EU developments in all the remaining fields of lesson identification from chapter four. Concluding the thesis, chapter seven summarizes its empirical and theoretical findings, fleshes out its contribution, develops recommendations on how to improve the learning process in EU military crisis management and lays out research questions that emerge from its findings
The evolution of principle of state sovereignty and non-interference in the protection of human rights in China
No full textAward date: 12 December 2011Supervisor: Prof. Martin Scheinine (European University Institute)The debate on Sovereignty and human rights has been a long lasting one. International and domestic discussions from different perspectives contributed to the topic extensively. It should be recognized that the understanding of sovereignty differs from states and historical contexts at the motivation of state interests. The People’s Republic of China had its own view on sovereignty which evolved throughout the time particularly in the realm of human rights. From its establishment in 1949 till the 70’s China basically upheld and practiced a static and absolute sovereignty. The domestic reformations in the late 70’s and 80’s led China to re-evaluate its convictions as well as subjected it to external influence and impact. As China’s international integration deepened it was also inextricably absorbed into the international human rights regime. During this process the conflict between sovereignty and human rights, international law and domestic law increasingly advanced. With and due to such conflict the sovereignty and human rights commitments of China gradually but substantively modified. The paper is in the main effort of discussing the evolutionary process of the interaction between Chinese sovereignty and human rights in the wish to disclose their dynamic relationship and underlying implications
Political mobilization in times of crises : the relationship between economic and political crises
No full textERC POLCON project funded
Party systems, electoral systems, and social movements
No full textThis discussion of the relationship between political parties and social movements starts out with the conventional view of the political process approach by conceptualizing the parties as part of the political context the configuration of which is determined by the institutional structure. It then moves on to consider parties as social movement organizations. Finally, it goes one step further by also taking into account the effect of social movements on party systems. Some social movements have the capacity to fundamentally transform individual parties and entire party systems. This kind of impact is, of course, not given to any kind of movement, but only to important movements capable of expanding the scope of conflict society-wide. More generally, the chapter attempts to show that the borderline between insiders (political parties) and outsiders (social movements) in politics is not as clear-cut as is often assumed by social movement scholars.ERC POLCON project funded
The Europeanization of the national political debate
No full textPublished to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2014This chapter shows that the euro crisis has been boosting the Europeanization of the political debate in EU member states, but that Europeanization is not coterminous with politicization. With respect to politicization, the results are mixed: while the debate has been exceptionally salient and has contributed to the visibility of Europe in the politics of the European nation states, it has not accelerated the transfer of European politics into ‘mass politics’. The debate on the euro crisis has been dominated by executive actors, in particular by supranational actors and by the German executive.ERC POLCON project funded
El proceso de civilización y sus paradojas : tensiones y diálogos culturales
No full textLas profundas transformaciones culturales del siglo XVIII suelen interpretarse, en especial en España, como un “proceso de civilización” que amplió el abismo entre una cultura minoritaria, apoyada por las elites modernas e ilustradas, y una cultura mayoritaria arraigada en las clases populares, la Iglesia y las elites más conservadoras, lo que a su vez lleva a minimizar el significado y alcance de la revolución liberal en el siglo XIX. En este capítulo propongo una lectura más matizada que señala las paradojas de la propia idea de civilización (con especial atención a sus aporías de género) y se interesa por las formas en que novedad y tradición coexistieron y se mezclaron en diversos ámbitos, desde la literatura de cordel a los textos de civilidad, pasando por la literatura científica, la religión y el teatro. En lugar de presentar lo civilizado y lo rústico, lo moderno y lo tradicional, la opinión cultivada y la vulgar como dicotomías irreductibles, me intereso por cómo se forjaron esas categorías en los procesos de formación de nuevas elites, de construcción de la nación y reconfiguración de hegemonías imperiales. Al mismo tiempo, pongo el acento en la diversidad de la Ilustración, los intercambios entre elites y clases populares, mujeres y hombres, criollos y peninsulares, expertos y legos, y en el carácter activo e imprevisible de la recepción individual y colectiva.The profound cultural transformations of the 18th century are often interpreted, especially in Spain, as a ‘civilizing process’ that widened the gap between a minoritarian culture, supported by modern and enlightened elites, and a majoritarian culture rooted in the popular classes, the Church and the more conservative elites, which in turn leads to minimizing the significance and scope of the liberal revolution in the 19th century. In this chapter, I propose a more nuanced reading that highlights the paradoxes of the very idea of civilization (with special attention to its gender aporias) and focuses on the ways in which novelty and tradition coexisted and intermingled in various fields, from chapbooks to politeness manuals, science, literature, religion, and theatre. Rather than presenting civilization and rusticity, modernity and tradition, cultivated and vulgar opinion as irreducible dichotomies, I am interested in how these categories were used in the processes of new elites’ formation, nation-building, and the reconfiguration of imperial hegemonies. At the same time, I emphasize the diversity of the Enlightenment, the exchanges between elites and plebeians, women and men, criollos and peninsular Spaniards, experts and laymen, and the active and unpredictable nature of individual and collective reception
Unholy spirits : taverns, power, and subaltern life in the Early Modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
No full textDefence date: 16 February 2026Examining Board: Prof. Giorgio Riello (European University Institute, supervisor); Prof. Lauren Kassell (European University Institute); Prof. Beat Kümin (University of Warwick); Dr. Dorota Dias-Lewandowska (Polish Academy of Sciences)This thesis examines taverns in the early modern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as infrastructural and symbolic sites where power, economy, and subaltern agency intersected. It argues that drinking houses were not peripheral spaces of sociability but central institutions within the manorial-corvée system, through which lords extracted labor, enforced dependency, and mediated everyday life. The study reconstructs taverns as nodes of the propination monopoly – a system that bound peasants to purchase their landlord’s alcohol and thus transformed intoxication into a mechanism of governance. At the same time, by analyzing legal regulations, estate inventories, contracts, censuses, and criminal records, it uncovers how these spaces enabled moments of negotiation, refusal, and solidarity that escaped the formal record. The thesis intervenes in three historiographical debates: it situates the Commonwealth within global histories of early modern capitalism and coercion, focusing on how Central and Eastern Europe was constructed both in the early modern period and later in the historiography; it challenges the hypothesis that the nobility forced peasants to drink, and reinterprets Jewish tavern keeping through the lens of legal status rather than ethnicity or religion. Methodologically, it advances a hauntological and subaltern approach to early modern social history, treating archival silence not as absence but as trace – evidence of both domination and resistance. Bringing together microhistorical case studies with global economic perspectives, Unholy Spirits reimagines the tavern as a site where early modern subjects drank, labored, and contested their place in a world governed through spirits in every sense of the word.Chapter 2 'The materiality of taverns' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'Taverns, alcohol monopoly in the Early Modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the micro/global perspective' (2024) in the journal 'Praktyka teoretyczna'
The wicked nature of artificial general intelligence : a hybrid approach to the governance of AGI
No full textDefence date: 19 January 2026Examining Board: Prof. Nicolas Petit (European University Institute, main supervisor); Prof. Giovanni Sartor (European University Institute, co-supervisor); Prof. Rostam J. Neuwirth (University of Macau); Prof. Elif Küzeci (Bilkent University)The unpredictable, dynamic, and potentially limitless nature of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) characterises it as a 'wicked problem' that fundamentally resists traditional, static governance approaches. The core argument of this thesis is that effective AGI governance must therefore rely on a hybrid architecture that combines mandatory external legal controls with complementary, internal, learning-based ethical reasoning. The thesis consists of three interconnected parts. Part I establishes the conceptual foundation by defining AGI through five specific Properties and diagnosing its wicked nature by applying ten characteristics of Rittel and Webber's wicked problems theory. This demonstrates that addressing the challenge of AGI cannot be accomplished with a 'business as usual' approach. Part II, in turn, critically evaluates the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act against this wicked problem framework. While the Regulation provides fundamental constraints for Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), its inherent logic of treating AI primarily as a 'product' is structurally strained due to AGI's 'unknown unknowns' nature and the radical uncertainties it would bring if realised. To fill this governance gap, Part III explicitly reframes the challenge from 'taming the product' to 'guiding the learner,' establishing a new architecture for internal ethical learning. This part proposes the WREL model, a novel hybrid approach to machine ethics that integrates David Kolb's Experiential Learning (EL) for the bottom-up development of ethical judgments with John Rawls's Wide Reflective Equilibrium (WRE) for top-down normative constraint and justification. The WREL model is not designed to replace law, but rather as a necessary second layer of governance intended to enable AGI systems to responsibly develop their ethical reasoning in dynamic environments. The thesis concludes that a resilient AGI governance strategy must develop internal systems capable of producing justified ethical judgments under uncertainty, complementing external legal oversight.Chapter 1 'The wicked nature of AGI' and chapter 2 'Law and policy response' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'The wicked nature of AGI' (2025) in the journal 'Law, techonology and humans'