VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
From delegation to participation

Examining the period between 1958 (the inception of the Fifth Republic) and 1981 (election of François Mitterrand as President and Socialist parliamentary majority), my research sought to answer the question: why and how did grass-roots mobilisation in favour of citizen participation develop in two French cities, Grenoble and Toulouse?
The thesis first develops a general conceptual framework within which to analyse each locality. It elaborates the notion that there existed two public action cycles in France. The first was a 'reform cycle' (1958-1968) which preceded, and was interrupted by, a more critical 'contention cycle' which developed post May 1968 (ending by about 1981); both were triggered by major political crises. The reform cycle was marked by a high level of extra-party organisation through clubs and educational associations, which attempted to change patterns of interaction between civil society and the political process. In contrast, the contention cycle that followed May 1968 was far more radical in its critique, range of themes, organisational structures and forms of action.
In the case studies, I explore the contrasting experiences of Grenoble and Toulouse during the two cycles. We see how the development of powerful associative currents in Grenoble during the reform cycle facilitated the emergence in 1964 of a citizen action movement, the Groupe d'action municipale (GAM). The success of the GAM in coming to power in coalition with other parties of the non-Communist Left created a municipality determined to institute improved participationary practice. This commitment to new forms of democracy from within city hall meant that the contention cycle in Grenoble did not precipitate major pressure for fundamental change in local government structures.
However, in Toulouse, the reform cycle had no comparable impact upon city politics or associative life in the 1960s. The local associative world was far more fragmented and unable to exert any substantial influence. The traditionalist Socialist administration and subsequently a centre-right, conservative municipality were then confronted with sustained grass-roots opposition in the aftermath of May 1968. What occurred in the city during the contention cycle was typical of patterns elsewhere in France. For close to a decade, a small core of associations, seeking a radical overhaul of municipal decision-making, consistently challenged city hall, using a mixture of diplomatic approaches and direct action techniques.
I draw two central conclusions from my research, one empirical, the other conceptual. Firstly, evidence from both the national and local level indicates that associations played a key role in the public action cycles. This challenges the traditional view of France as having inherently weak associative structures. Secondly, my research questions the frequently made connection between a so-called 'new middle class' and innovative forms of political action, showing the term 'new middle class' to be misleading and inexact.
Makeshift freedom seekers: Dutch travellers in Europe, 1815-1914

This thesis questions a series of assumptions concerning the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century modernization of European spaces. Current scholarship tends to concur with essayistic texts and images by contemporary intellectuals that technological and organizational developments increased the freedom of movement of those living in western-European societies, while at the same time alienating them from each other and from their environment. I assess this claim with the help of Dutch travel egodocuments such as travel diaries and letters. After a prosopographical investigation of all available northern-Netherlandish travel egodocuments created between 1500 and 1915, a selection of these documents is examined in greater detail.
In these documents, travellers regarded the possession of identity documents, a correct appearance, and a fitting social identity along with their personal contacts, physical capabilities, and the weather as the most important factors influencing whether they managed to gain access to places. A discussion of these factors demonstrates that no linear increase, nor a decrease, occurred in the spatial power felt by travellers. The exclusion many travellers continued to experience was often overdetermined. The largest groups affected by this were women and less educated families. Yet travellers could also play out different access factors against each other. By paying attention to how practices matched hopes and expectations, it is possible to discover how gravely social inequities were really felt by travellers. Perhaps surprisingly, all social groups desired to visit the same types of places. Their main difference concerned the atmosphere of the places where the different groups felt at home. To a large degree this matched travellers' unequal opportunities. Therefore, although opportunities remained strongly unequal throughout the period, this was not always experienced as a problem. Also, in cases where it was, many travellers knew strategies to work around the obstacles created for them.

Keywords: transport
accessibility
identity
expectations
education
modernization
tourism
knowledge
travel
egodocuments
clothing
mobility
nineteenth century
practice
material culture
Netherlands
technology
social status
experience
Europe
interpersonal contacts
passports
visiting
identification
social connections
weather
aspirations
modernity
appearance
Advisor: Zimmer, O
Drukker, J
'Radical Orthodoxy' and debating the foundations of the legal protection of religious liberty

This thesis examines the rationale for religious liberty in England and Wales. Currently, United Kingdom religious liberty literature shows very little sustained interrogation of the topic. Authors are likely to assume religious liberty is, most notably, a species of personal autonomy. This fails to explain why we should care about religious liberty and deepens religion’s privatisation, its separation from politics or public life.
Drawing from a theological sensibility known as Radical Orthodoxy (RO), this thesis criticises current assumptions and argues that religious liberty discourse should be re-envisioned.
The Introduction and Chapter One explore the current problems facing religious liberty discourse and map rationales given by prominent authors. Chapter Two argues that the main problem is that current discourse is shaped by a secularisation narrative: the differentiation of religious and secular spheres. Chapter Three relates the RO argument that this differentiation is underpinned by three themes, all of which have theological components: the rise of secular order as the protection of individual rights; the invention of private religion in modernity; and the contemporary shift to 'authenticity' or diffuse individual experiences as the hallmark of religion. Chapter Four contends that these three themes are echoed in religious liberty discourse and jurisprudence, leaving us with the question of why religious liberty matters.
Chapters Five and Six explore the RO-influenced alternative, in theory and with reference to common questions in religious liberty discourse: the relationship between an individual claimant and the group; the reality of plural religious traditions; and the tension between sexual orientation non-discrimination and religious liberty. On the RO-influenced account, religious liberty concerns, against sphere differentiation, a commitment to the flourishing of multiple groups contributing to desirable social ends, understood ultimately as participating in the life of 'charity', the love of God and of others. This encapsulates two themes, both rooted in the Christian tradition: judgement against politics (as reflected in the secular order), and transformation of society along social pluralist lines. These two themes, the thesis argues, better explain why religious liberty matters.

Keywords: England and Wales
religious liberty
Radical Orthodoxy
law and theology
Advisor: McCrudden, C
John, P
Model testing and analysis of interactions between tunnels in clay

This dissertation describes a study of the interaction between closely spaced tunnels during shield tunnel construction, concentrating on the study of the short-term incremental behaviour of the liner. Carefully controlled physical model tests were carried out and the test results were complemented by a limited amount of numerical analysis. In the physical model tests described in this dissertation, two groups of tests were carried out at a laboratory scale; one set of tests studied closely spaced parallel tunnels and the other set investigated perpendicular tunnels. An important feature of the study was that a novel model tunnelling machine was designed and developed as part of the research. Thin steel tubes were used to model the tunnel linings. The experimental technique adopted in the preparation of clay samples (which is a well-established procedure) was found to produce high quality samples. Good repeatability was achieved in preparing the kaolin samples. The tunnelling machine allowed tunnel liners to be installed using similar procedures to those adopted in the construction of full scale shield tunnels using an earth pressure balance approach. The instrumentation system used in this experimental programme are shown to produce reliable data. During the model tests measurements were made of liner strains, pore water pressures and total stresses acting on the liner. Errors in the data logging system were shown to be very small (of the order of less than 2% of peak values). The mechanisms governing the structural interaction between closely spaced tunnels are highly complex. The tunnel installation was shown to modify the stresses acting on the liner of the adjacent tunnel. These stress increments led, in turn, to line deformations and induced bending moments. The nature of the interaction mechanisms depends on the geometric configuration of the tunnels, the liner properties, and overconsolidation ratio. For the parallel tunnels, the pillar width ratio (W/D) is an important parameter governing the magnitude of the interaction effects. the interaction effects increase as the pillar width ratio is reduced. Increasing the liner flexibility was found to reduce the induced bending moments but to increase the induced displacements. The interaction effects were larger in overconsolidated clay than normally consolidated clay. The worst case for interaction effects occurs when the pillar width is small, the liner is flexible and the value of OCR is large. Three-dimensional considerations suggest that interaction between parallel tunnels may be more severe than those measured in the corresponding perpendicular tunnel tests. However, the different nature of the mechanisms in the two cases appear to be more significant than this geometric effect.

Keywords: tunnelling
Advisor: Burd, H
Milligan, G
Integration of rationale management with multi-criteria decision analysis, probabilistic forecasting and semantics: application to the UK energy sector

This thesis presents a new integrated tool and decision support framework to approach complex problems resulting from the interaction of many multi-criteria issues. The framework is embedded in an integrated tool called OUTDO (Oxford University Tool for Decision Organisation). OUTDO integrates Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), decision rationale management with a modified Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) representation, and probabilistic forecasting to effectively capture the essential reasons why decisions are made and to dynamically re-use the rationale. In doing so, it allows exploration of how changes in external parameters affect complicated and uncertain decision making processes in the present and in the future.
Once the decision maker constructs his or her own decision process, OUTDO checks if the decision process is consistent and coherent and looks for possible ways to improve it using three new semantic-based decision support approaches. For this reason, two ontologies (the Decision Ontology and the Energy Ontology) were integrated into OUTDO to provide it with these semantic capabilities. The Decision Ontology keeps a record of the decision rationale extracted from OUTDO and the Energy Ontology describes the energy generation domain, focusing on the water requirement in thermoelectric power plants.
A case study, with the objective of recommending electricity generation and steam condensation technologies for ten different regions in the UK, is used to verify OUTDO’s features and reach conclusions about the overall work.

Keywords: semantics
probabilistic forecasting
energy and water
IBIS
energy ontology
decision ontology
MCDA
decision support systems
Advisor: Bañares-Alcántara, R
Volcanic and magmatic processes at a young spreading centre in Afar, Ethiopia

The Dabbahu-Manda Hararo rift segment is a ~25 x 60 km rift zone in Afar, Ethiopia, where a series of axial dyke intrusions has recently occurred. Basaltic eruptions associated with individual dyking events between 2007-2010 have been fed from fissures along the rift axis and been relatively short-lived events lasting less than 60 hours. The volume of melt delivered to the rift surface by these eruptions has been a minor component of the total melt volume supplied to the shallow crust since the onset of the active rifting phase in 2005 and the current intruded to erupted melt ratio for the 2005-2010 period is ~260:1. This is below typical values for magmatic rift zones and may suggest that further volcanism is likely to occur before this activity ceases. 40Ar/39Ar geochronology of basaltic lavas from the flank of the rift and from a region of off-axis volcanism to the west of the rift zone gives ages of 25 – 450 ka. These constrain the development of a prominent axial graben in the northern part of the rift to < 30 ka and based on the age-distribution of lavas across the rift flank suggests that volcanism has been focused to the present neo-volcanic zone for at least 200 ka. Geochemical and isotopic constraints on melt generation suggest ~4-6 % partial melting of fertile mantle beneath rift at depth of ~100-75 km. Lavas erupted at the rift axis and from off-axis volcanoes are derived from a common mantle source, however, axial lavas are shown to represent slightly greater extents of partial melting suggesting a focused mantle melting anomaly, such as those seen at ocean ridges, is forming beneath the rift zone.

Keywords: volcanology
Afar
tectonics
petrogenesis
Advisor: Pyle, D
Blundy, J
Oppenheimer, C
The effect of electoral institutions on party membership in central and east Europe

Party membership levels in the new democracies of central and east European were predicted to remain universally low, stymied by post-communist legacies, the availability of state funding and the prevalence of mass media communications (van Biezen, 2003; Kopecký, 2007). However, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, membership levels vary considerably between countries, and also between individual parties within party systems. Using freshly gathered party membership data, elite surveys and interviews, this thesis explores a number of institutional hypotheses to test whether, as in western democracies, electoral institutions influence how parties organise and campaign. This thesis finds that national electoral systems, municipal electoral rules and business funding regulations have an observable impact on how parties use their members. In particular, 'decentralised' electoral systems encourage greater involvement of members in voter contacting and other small campaign tasks. This thesis concludes that, contrary to the dominant literature, the availability of state funding has little impact on party membership recruitment. Instead, central and east European parties' attitudes to members are shaped by a complex interaction of institutional, cultural, ideological and strategic factors.

Keywords: Party Funding Regulation
Comparative Government
Electoral Institutions
Central and East Europe
Electoral Systems
Politics
Democratisation
Advisor: Chaisty, P
Static Elastic Properties of Composite Materials Containing Microspheres

This thesis aims to model the uniaxial deformation of a class of materials consisting of microscopic spherical shells embedded in a rubber matrix. These shells are assumed to buckle as the stress on the material increases. To motivate the analysis we consider the paradigm problem of the debonding of a distribution of cylindrical inclusions in an elastic material undergoing antiplane shear, with bonded and debonded inclusions playing the role of unbuckled and buckled shells respectively. We begin the modelling of the microsphere-containing material by considering the buckling of an isolated embedded shell inclusion with a uniaxial stress field at infinity, using Koiter's theory of shallow shells. The resulting energy functional is solved as an eigenvalue problem by the Rayleigh-Ritz method. Subsequently, we analyse the buckling criterion asymptotically in the limit as the thickness ratio tends to zero by analogy with the WKB analysis of a beam on a variable-stiffness substrate. To model the shell after buckling we consider the simplified case of an embedded shell with a crack around its equator. The system is solved by expressing the displacements in the shell and matrix as series of Love stress functions, with the resulting infinite system of equations solved numerically with the aid of a convergence acceleration method. Finally we consider a composite material consisting of a homogenised dilute distribution of buckled and unbuckled shells, with the proportion of each type of shell dependent on the stress applied to the material, according to an asymptotic formula relating the size of the inclusions and the critical buckling stress that was obtained previously.
High density ammonia storage materials

This Thesis considers the use of solid-state metal ammines as ammonia storage materials and endeavours to understand these materials on a fundamental chemical level. The ammines of LiBH₄, MgCl₂, MgBr₂, MgI₂ and Mg(BH₄)₂, are investigated. The structures of lithium borohydride ammines, Li(NH₃)nBH₄ with n = 1, 2, 3 and 4 are solved using X-ray and neutron diffraction, vibrational spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, and first-principles calculations. The reversibility, bonding and ammonia storage properties of this system are discussed, and investigated using gravimetric analysis and vibrational spectroscopy. The ammines of magnesium halides are investigated using X-ray and neutron powder diffraction, gravimetric techniques, nuclear magnetic resonance, first-principles calculations and vibrational spectroscopy. Their disordered structures, bonding, and decomposition are discussed, and the trends in their properties are used to interpret the properties of other ammines. The ammines of magnesium borohydride are investigated using X-ray and neutron powder diffraction, gravimetric techniques, first-principles calculations and vibrational spectroscopy. The structure, decomposition and reversibility of Mg(NH₃)₆(BH₄)₂ as an ammonia store are presented. Throughout the Thesis and at the end of each Chapter the possibility of using these ammines as solid-state ammonia stores is discussed.

Keywords: hydrogen storage
ammines
ammonia storage
ammoniates
borohydrides
ammonia
Advisor: David, W
Edwards, P
Electrochemical properties of redox mediators at carbon electrodes

Chapter1 gives an overview of the basic principles of electrochemistry.
A rigorous electrochemical study on the solution phase and solid phase cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPC) is presented in chapter2. The formof CoPC on carbon electrodes was characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The use of CoPC modified edge plane pyrolytic graphite (CoPC-EPPG) for sensing nitrite (NO₂⁻) was also investigated. It was found that the claimed mediator CoPC has no influence on the process. A bare glassy carbon (GC) electrode was successfully applied for the quantitative determination of nitrite as a simple alternative to the modified electrodes reported in the literature (chapter3).
Chapter4 compares the voltammetric responses of an edge plane pyrolytic graphite electrode covalently modifed with 2-anthraquinonyl groups (EPPG-AQ2) and solution phase anthraquinone monosulphonate (AQMS) in the presence of a limited concentration of protons. The solution phase and surface bound species show analogous responses resulting in split waves. Digisim™ simulation of the AQMS voltammetry have shown that the pH adjacent to the electrode may be altered by up to 5-6 pH units in low buffered solutions; this is caused by the consumption of protons during the electrochemical reaction.
Chapters5 and 6 compare the electrochemical properties of 2-anthraquinonyl groups covalently attached to an edge plane pyrolytic graphite (EPPG) and to a gold electrode. In both cases simulations using newly developedMarcus-Hush-Chidsey theory for a 2e⁻ process assuming a uniform surface did not achieve a good agreement between theory and experiment. Subsequently two models of surface inhomogeneity were investigated: a distribution of formal potentials, EӨ, and a distribution of electron tunneling distances, r₀. For both EPPG-AQ2 and Au-AQ2 modified electrodes the simulation involving EӨ distribution turned out to be the most adequate. This is the first time that Marcus-Hush-Chidsey theory has been applied to a 2e⁻ system.
Chapter7 briefly summarizes the obtained results.

Keywords: cobalt phthalocyanine
cyclic voltammetry
quinone
carbon
nitrite
Marcus-Hush-Chidsey theory
sensing
potential distribution
modified electrode
electrochemistry
Advisor: Compton, RG
Ordering transitions and localisation properties of frustrated systems

In this work we investigate themes related to many-body systems in which multiple ground states are accessible, a condition known as frustration. Frustration can arise in a number of contexts, and we consider the consequences of this situation with some examples from condensed-matter physics.
In some magnetic materials interactions between spins are such that no single spin configuration provides a unique ground state. In the class of frustrated magnets where the number of ground states is extensive, thermal fluctuations are strong even at temperatures significantly below the interaction strength. At such temperatures spins are highly correlated, and small perturbations may have profound consequences.
In this thesis we provide an example of this. By considering classical n-component spins with nearest-neigbour exchange on a frustrated octahedral lattice we show that – in the limit where exchange interactions are large – the system is in a disordered, correlated phase where correlations have the form of a dipole field. This is termed a Coulomb phase. From this phase we induce an ordering transition, lifting the degeneracy with weak, additional short-range interactions. By studying the transition in the solvable limit of n &rightarrow; ∞, we discover that the transition has identical thermodynamics to that of a magnetic system interacting through long-range, dipolar forces. Finally, we provide a more apposite characterisation of the transition, where the high-temperature side of the transition is described through the fluctuations of solenoidal fields, and the ordering corresponds to a condensation of these fields.
In a separate part of the thesis, we investigate the influence of disorder on frustrated lattices. We study a two-dimensional tight-binding model with nearest-neighbour hopping and on-site disorder. Restricting the allowed states to being those from the low-lying manifold of ground states, the disorder feeds through to act as effective disorder in the hopping terms, which decay algebraically with distance. The quasi-long range nature of this effective hopping leads to a situation in which the resultant single-particle eigenstates are critical, and we probe their behaviour numerically with a transfer matrix calculation.

Keywords: frustration
phase transitions
localisation
critical phenomena
Advisor: Chalker, J