The chances that a Greek-speaking scholar had to gain power, wealth, and connections in Rome were dictated by how he identified himself with respect to the classical period of Greece. Those scholars who venerated the classical past of Greece and displayed their mastery of its li…
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The dissertation explores the consumption practices of economic elites in Amman, Jordan, with elites defined as those individuals possessing both the means and the inclination to enjoy the luxuries of a consumer lifestyle. The reciprocal influences of the purchase and use of a w…
This dissertation posits that the relationship between processes of regime change and cultural pluralism are mutually informing. It explains why it is possible that, despite the recurrence of ethnic tensions in a multicultural state like the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a cou…
The thesis examines the practice of corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the period of its establishment until the death of Arafat. Palestinian elite formation from the late Ottoman period until the establishment of the PA was assessed in order to identify the elite…
This thesis examines Peruvian popular intercultural music fusions and their impact among the white upper classes of Lima, Peru. Often antagonised, essentialised and understudied, Lima's white upper classes have historically distanced themselves from the city's migrant Andean/Ama…
My dissertation explores how a new relationship between the state and society was formed in twelfth-fourteenth century China. Taking Mingzhou, modern Ningbo city, Zhejiang Province, as my case study, I challenge the assumption on which many interpretations of this period are bas…
In this dissertation I examine the impact of core values on foreign policy opinion, the dynamics of value change, and the differences between elites and the mass public in their values change. I find that two core values - humanitarianism and democracy - strongly affect citizens…
Reporting the European Union (EU) is the mother of all political coverage in Turkey even if the actors deny it. In mediating the EU, senior journalists, editors and columnists act not as spokespersons of other elites but become a group of elites that organize, produce, mediate t…
Scholars of medieval China agree that between the late Tang (618-907) and the early Song (960-1279), Chinese society underwent a remarkable cultural, social, political, and economic transformation. One of the most dramatic aspects of this "Tang-Song transition" was the upheaval …
In February 2014, violent protests erupted in Tuzla and quickly spread to multiple other Bosnian cities, including Mostar and Sarajevo. Initially, the protests were labeled as the "Bosnian Spring," a term used to describe a state that is undergoing revolutionary change; however,…
Why do some autocrats redistribute resource rents through high welfare spending, while others do not? Conventional wisdom suggests that authoritarian leaders unconstrained by institutions and with unlimited access to resource wealth would siphon off these funds for themselves an…
This dissertation proposes a theory on the determinants of inter-ethnic electoral violence. Based on the construction of an original dataset on communal clashes that occurred around multiparty elections in Kenya between 1991 and 2013 as well as extensive field research including…
The origins of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia date back to the alliance forged between the AlSaud and the preacher Muhammad Ibn AbdulWahhab in the 18th century, and the subsequent establishment of the first Saudi state. Since then, the religious scholars, or ulama, have played an i…
This PhD thesis compares Egypt and Syria’s authoritarian political systems. While the tendency in social science political research treats Egypt and Syria as similarly authoritarian, this research emphasizes differences between the two systems with special reference to instituti…
This dissertation examines the relationship between violent mass mobilization, elite response, and democratization in Indonesia from 1997–2000. It argues that violent mass mobilization was a necessary condition for a successful transition to democracy because of the absence of a…
Islamic law has changed radically in the last 150 years this project focusses on the dramatic transformation of Islamic law during the British colonial period in three cases: India, Malaya and Egypt, and its effects in the post-colonial state. It argues that colonial and local e…