How do policymakers make decisions during financial market uncertainty? I develop a straightforward framework of policymaking in uncertainty. To overcome uncertainty, policymakers gather information using strategies discussed across a variety of political science disciplines. Policymakers need information to be able to make goal-oriented decisions. The information strategies actors choose are conditioned on the uncertainty problems they face. In turn, the information they receive impacts their policy decisions. My three empirical papers investigate what strategies are likely to be chosen in different types of uncertainty and how these choices affect policy decisions. My first paper, co-written with Mícheál O’Keeffe, develops a signaling game that policymakers play when they perceive data uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty about economic fundamentals. The model is supported empirically with analytic narratives of recent crises in Korea and Ireland. My following two papers deal with situations of increasing causal uncertainty, i.e. uncertainty about how actions cause outcomes. In both of these papers I use Multi-state Event History Analysis. I find that when there is high causal uncertainty policymakers tend to use learning strategies that start with international-level policy recommendations. These recommendations are then updated with the experiences of regional peers who have adopted them. Beyond creating and finding evidence for a parsimonious framework of decisionmaking in uncertainty...

This thesis investigates the politics of privatization and contentious collective action in the water sector in the Philippines. It examines the complex interplay of diverse forces in the everyday politics of water in Metropolitan Manila with a particular emphasis on organized urban poor communities and non-governmental organizations. The thesis illustrates how these groups engage with regulatory agencies, multilateral institutions, transnational corporations, informal water venders, and local machine politicians to play key roles in shaping the regulation of water provision in the developing world. Thus, to understand the material realities and lived experiences of the urban poor in cities like Metro Manila, close attention must be paid to patterns of contestation, competition, and collaboration among a diverse array of actors, across local, national, and international levels of analysis. Using Karl Polanyi’s insights on the socio-political consequences of market extension as a point of departure, I show that although water privatization and social resistance can be understood in terms of a ‘double movement’, Polanyi’s framework is insufficient for more detailed analysis. Hence, I develop new analytical tools to examine the nature of water privatization-related mobilization in the Philippines. Examining the micro-politics of the urban poor in their collective action for water at the local level...

This thesis examines the causal pathways underpinning the moderation of radical ethno-nationalism using the case of Irish republicanism (Sinn Féin and the IRA) between 1969 and 2010. Through the application of the ‘inclusion-moderation’ framework, I argue that a strong macro-institutional framework is central to the process of moderation. Existing explanations that emphasise the role of interplay, exchange and leadership choices typically neglect the importance of this wider institutional framework in enabling and shaping the decisions made. In the case of Irish republicanism, the processes of electoral participation, bargaining to design stable democratic institutions, and securing credible guarantees to protect their interests from the United States, all combined and reinforced each other to create a scenario whereby republicans moderated. These processes hinged upon stable democratic institutions that were perceived by republicans as embodying relatively low risks for participation, providing a stable basis for future competition, and rendering the future of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom potentially uncertain. Moderation was a gradual and path-dependent process of increasing returns whereby contact with the stable institutions imposed constraints against radicalism and incentives towards moderation. Republicanism’s transformation is best understood as moving through a series of phases...

This study explores the popular politics behind the main milestones that shape Nasserist Egypt. The decade leading up to the 1952 revolution was one characterized with a heightened state of popular mobilisation, much of which the Free Officers’ movement capitalized upon. Thus, in focusing on three of the Revolution’s main milestones; the resistance to the tripartite aggression on Port Said (1956), the building of the Aswan High Dam (1960-­1971), and the popular warfare against Israel in Suez (1967-­1973), I shed light on the popular struggles behind the events. I argue that to the members of resistance of Port Said and Suez, and the builders of the High Dam, the revolution became a struggle of their own. Ideas of socialism and Arab nationalism were re-­articulated and appropriated so that they became features of their identities and everyday lives. Through looking at songs, idioms and stories of the experiences of those periods, I explore how people experimented with a new identity under Nasser and how much they were willing to sacrifice for it. These songs and idioms, I treat as an ‘intimate language’. A common language reflecting a shared experience that often only the community who produces the language can understand. I argue that songs capture in moments of political imagination what official historical narratives may not. Furthermore...

This thesis offers a new interpretation of the life and importance of George Padmore (1903-1959). Padmore was one of the most well-known ‘black communists’ in the 1930s. He became a major nexus for anti-colonial resistance in London between 1935- 1957 and one of the foremost political thinkers behind the pan-African movement. Through an analysis of his writing and his networks this thesis argues that Padmore engaged in a permanent state of political activity, guided by a practice of ‘pragmatic anti-imperialism.’ By tracing his journalism in West African and West Indian colonies, it shows that Padmore’s influence was far more extensive than previously imagined. This study begins from the hypothesis that the pragmatism of Padmore’s politics can only be demonstrated by examining his whole life, and thus takes the form of a biography. Taking Padmore’s pragmatism as a starting point, the forms in which he was understood and labeled by others are fundamental to this study since they demonstrate the extent to which Padmore was willing to compromise and ‘play the game’ of imperial politics, and they show the boundaries of the field in which he operated. Overall, this thesis aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of race and non-violent resistance in anti-imperial politics in the first half of the twentieth century by focusing upon the role of a mobile...