Browsing by Subject "The United Kingdom"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Illiberal security practices of liberal states in the post 9/11 era : Aberystwyth & Paris School compared
(2012) Türe, Tuğçe
The relationship between security and liberty is an issue that has always attracted scholarly attention. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this issue received a new lease of life in the literature. This is because some liberal states have increasingly adopted security practices that are in conflict with liberal principles. These illiberal practices of liberal states have had implications for non-state referents in the context of the war on terror. This thesis examines the question of what the implications of the illiberal security practices of liberal states are for referents other than states in the context of the war on terror. While examining this question, this thesis adopts a critical perspective by bringing in the perspectives of the Aberystwyth School and the Paris School in a comparative manner. It then, examines this question through a case study on the UK as a liberal state by comparing the perspectives of the Aberystwyth and Paris Schools. In doing so, it offers the argument that seeing liberty and security as separate values that are in conflict with each other results in further insecurity for non-state referents in the context of the war on terror. In this way, this thesis emphasizes the need for going beyond the balance argument of the relationship between liberty and security.
Open Access
The role of legislative committees in parliamentary governments’ accountability: a comparative analysis of the United Kingdom and Turkey
(2018-06) Bektaş, Ümmühan Eda
Present study examines the role of legislative committees in single party majority and coalition governments’ accountability in the U.K. and Turkey. The literature discusses both legislatures’ contribution to policymaking as “marginal” or “ineffective” vis-a-vis governments, and their committees are expected to reflect this tendency. This approach equates formal capabilities (potential) with scrutiny behavior (influence), and claims that weak legislatures cannot substantially influence their governments’ legislation. In contrast, this research argues that legislative committees function as accountability mechanisms when they activate their formal capabilities and change the content of government bills. Rather than a description of formal capabilities, this study uses scrutiny powers and committee amendments as direct empirical measures to estimate the impact of legislative committees on governments. It also argues that committees’ scrutiny of government bills depends on the government control over the committees changing according to government type. The overall findings based on an original dataset suggest that both in the U.K. and Turkey, legislative committees can and do amend the content of government bills, and their likelihood of making substantial amendments to government bills increases when they base their intervention on their scrutiny powers. In both cases, committees during the coalition government term were more open and inclusive to actors outside the parliament leading committees to be affected by this knowledge and information in their scrutiny of government bills. In contrast, committees during single majority government term remained majoritarian and based their amendments on the information provided by the government representatives in committees.
Open Access
A study on political economy of peripheral and advanced capitalism : a simultaneous transformation with different results in the post-1980 United States, United Kingdom and Turkey
(2005) Kalkan, Kerem Ozan
This thesis focuses on the post-1980 neo-liberal transformation experienced in the United States, the United Kingdom and Turkey. These are the countries which started to implement neo-liberal policies simultaneously under Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Turgut Özal administrations. I developed a political economy outlook on these countries in such a fashion that compares welfare state implementations to neo-liberal policies. After having analyzed four main macroeconomic indicators which are real GDP growth, inflation rates, real interest rates and real wage rates in three countries, we see that the outcomes of the transformation were sharply different in the advanced capitalist countries, namely the United States and the United Kingdom, from those of in peripheral countries like Turkey.