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Background: The number of institutions offering a postgraduate qualification in Physician Associate (PA) Studies is increasing in the United Kingdom (UK), particularly in the Northwest of England. This is to ensure that PAs can work as healthcare professionals, tackling workforce demands in the NHS. This PhD project addresses the lack of knowledge regarding the preparedness for practice and CPD requirement of PAs. Aims: 1)To understand how the training and early employment experience of PAs contribute to their preparedness for practice using the Competence Framework (Department of Health (DOH) 2012), a document which outlines the skills and behaviours which PAs are expected to exhibit upon qualifying, as a guide. 2)To understand how the educational and development needs of PAs can inform curriculum design during formal university training, as well as post-qualification CPD requirements. Methodology: A mixed methods approach was undertaken to ascertain the competence and preparedness of PAs, in addition to their CPD requirements. Electronic questionnaires (n=40) were completed by PAs and interviews (n=10) were conducted with PAs and clinical supervisors (n=3) using a virtual platform of their choosing. A fully virtual approach to collecting data was due to the safety precautions required in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Descriptive statistics were generated from the quantitative data. NVivo software was used to analyse the qualitative data thematically. Findings: Generally, most PAs (n=34, 85%) felt at least quite well prepared to work as a PA by their pre-qualification PA programme. In total, 100% of PAs (n=40) felt at least quite well prepared to perform a physical cardiovascular, respiratory or abdominal examination. The percentage of PAs reported feeling not well prepared to perform a physical paediatric examination was 25.6% (n=11). Furthermore, 42.5% of PAs (n=17) felt well supported to meet their CPD needs and 45% of PAs (n=18) felt that their overall CPD needs as a PA were being met. The findings from the PA interviews included many PAs being unable to articulate their learning or development needs due to lack of speciality knowledge and many PAs calling for protected time for training and CPD. Conclusion: The findings suggest that current PA curricula prepare and equip students with the skills and behaviour required for clinical practice. However, PAs need structured CPD to aid their development and this includes protected CPD time, greater access to conferences and more teaching opportunities, tailored to their specialty. There also needs to be increased teaching on CPD and paediatrics as part of the PA curriculum. Original Contribution to Knowledge: Research which has been carried out on PAs in the UK has been limited but has found that PAs are able to work successfully in healthcare teams. However, the preparedness for practice and CPD requirements of PAs is not exactly known. This PhD project has addressed this gap, thus making an original contribution to knowledge.

Within the UK, supervision attendance is mandatory for practising members of counselling and psychotherapy professional bodies. Supervision is a core element of the regulation of the counselling and psychotherapy profession. A significant amount of time and money is invested in supervision attendance. Whilst discourses in the field assign high status to supervision practice, there is a paucity of clarity in existing research regarding aims and impacts. This is amplified within Play Therapy supervision as the literature identifies a significant gap in empirical inquiry in this field. This thesis examines potential meanings and practice implications of play therapists' experiences of supervision. It includes the perspectives of students, qualified play therapists, supervisors, and supervisors of supervisors (metasupervisors) who work in UK statutory, voluntary, and private sectors. The study involves members of the British Association of Play Therapists (BAPT), Play Therapy United Kingdom (PTUK), and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). Constructivist grounded theory method has been used to examine patterns and processes for potential application to the development of Play Therapy supervision in the UK. The main contribution of this study is the creation of a substantive grounded theory which identifies processes and corresponding impacts of Play Therapy supervision in a UK context. Potential meanings for Play Therapy supervision development are identified through analysis of supervisees' creative representations and interviews. This theory affirms current rhetoric for mandated, regular Play Therapy supervision. However, it also confirms arguments that inadequate and harmful supervision are under-acknowledged and under-addressed. Power relations processes are identified as significant aspects of supervisory relationship facilitating or blocking supervision. The claim that creative exploration within a co-regulated, co-created supervisory milieu and relationship is time- and cost-effective in supervisor wellbeing and professional development is supported. Recognition of these processes has implications for future research and policies regarding supervision and the regulation of Play Therapy.

This mixed-method qualitative study examines debates surrounding the socio-ethical implications of human germline genome-editing (hGGE) technologies, focusing on how hybrid elite stakeholders' discursive and argumentative strategies have shaped the UK hGGE debate within the unique regulatory landscape of the UK. I utilise conceptual approaches from science and technology studies (STS) and ethics to explore how hGGE debates are architected through tools, such as the inclusion and exclusion of actors, rhetorical devices, and argumentative patterns. The thesis identifies multiple agorae in the UK where preparatory debates on hGGE occur, building upon approaches from NEST-ethics to produce a taxonomy of argumentative patterns employed by hybrid elite stakeholders in ethical discussions of hGGE. I argue that argumentative patterns identified - such as the creation of boundaries or the use of metaphors - are reified and stabilised by the agora. I conclude that these argumentative patterns contribute to the compression of UK hGGE debates in several ways, for example, by excluding various social actors and their viewpoints. The study describes hGGE as the latest in a series of biotechnology debates in the UK that encourage the liberalisation of embryo policy through a process whereby successive technologies are regulated, referred to as regulatory slippage. I argue that if steps are not taken to develop the quality of debate, hGGE may be legalised prior to comprehensive ethical discussion on the topic. I conclude by suggesting a series of practicable policy recommendations for improving hGGE debates.

Good plant health contributes to sustainable agriculture, food security and a healthy environment. Critically, the impact of turbo-globalisation, rapid environmental change and human induced climate change, are having increased impact on the transference and establishment of pests and diseases globally. Disease infestations can have devastating societal and economic impact, as experienced in Italy with the extensive loss of olive trees from Xyella fastidiosa, which is estimated to cost up to €5.2 billion, over the next 50 years, in one region in Italy. In the UK, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), have estimated the social and environmental value resulting from the loss of ash trees from ash dieback at £230 million per year and could total £15 billion. Plant health protection is a global imperative. Protecting plant health is embodied in regulatory and administrative procedures, applied globally by countries, to prevent plant pests and diseases from entering and spreading within their territories. This thesis seeks to examine how plant health protection could be enhanced in Northern Ireland, by the regulator, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), through the delivery of improved regulatory processes to implement the 2016 Plant Health Regulation. The thesis scrutinises and tests the application of better regulation to plant health, to assess the opportunity this provides to effect regulatory improvements within Northern Ireland. This is achieved through an examination of the history of plant health regulation, its implementation and enforcement mechanisms, accounting for realised successes and failures, taking into account the impact of devolution. Other jurisdictions in GB and ROI will also being assessed, identifying best practice, which DAERA could adopt, to improve precautionary and regulatory interventions. The opportunities presented by the post Brexit regulatory landscape are outlined, identifying where the application of better regulation could assist regulators navigate this uncharted territory. A number of key findings emerged from research, these included misunderstandings amongst policy makers regarding the meaning and application of better regulation; a belief that better regulation was implemented through the 2016 Plant Health Regulation; and differing perceptions of policy problems and risk shaped outputs and outcomes. Additionally, the thesis assessed the impact of historical environmental governance practices in Northern Ireland. The research identified how the concept of better regulation could be applied to enhance the delivery of plant health protection and while the thesis indicates that elements of the better regulation framework are being applied across the jurisdictions studied, significant shortcomings and weaknesses were exposed. This study ultimately concludes that applying better regulation could enhance the delivery of plant health protection in Northern Ireland, if underlying environmental governance issues are addressed.

The general aim of this thesis is to develop an efficient and accurate model to simulate upward flame spread in unventilated and ventilated cladding systems. The validated model is then used to assess the current Euroclass system of selecting external materials and proposes guidelines on how to improve external material selection while still within the simplistic framework of regulations. The model consists of the following main sub-models: a one-dimensional combined heat and mass transfer model to compute gaseous fuel production due to decomposition, and a simplified model to calculate surface heat flux and transient flame growth. To demonstrate the capability of the new model, vertical burning and upward flame spread on 2.4m high panels of wood and 5.0 m high panels of PMMA are carried out and compared with experimental results and FDS simulations. The new model calculation results, including propagation of the pyrolysis front, total heat flux, and heat release rate are in good agreement with experimental and FDS's results. However, the new model requires a fraction (a few minutes of CPU time) of that for carrying out the corresponding FDS simulation (CPU time of 2 days). The validated fire spread model was used to quantify the realistic ranges of combustible materials represented by the same SBI classification. The material properties were obtained by inverse analysis so that their combinations would exactly achieve the relevant thresholds for Class B and Class C materials according to SBI test. This thesis assessed fire spread behaviour of these materials in Full-scale test (BS 8414) when used as cladding, either on its own, or in combination with another material, both with and without cavity ventilation. The majority, but not all Class B materials would be able to pass the BS 8414 full-scale fire test criterion for flame height. The Class B materials that do not pass the acceptance criterion are combinations of high density (>120kg/m3) and high heat of combustion (>16 MJ/kg). Many Class C materials could still pass the BS 8414 full-scale fire test criterion for flame height. Such materials are characterized by low density (< 60kg/m³) and low heat of combustion (< 16 MJ/kg). The SBI-based material specification for multi-layered façade is severely restrictive if the insulation material is encapsulated by a non-combustible external surface. Instead of achieving Class A2, even Class C insulation materials can be used provided the thickness of the external layer is not lower than a critical thickness. This critical thickness is no more than a few mms and can be easily achieved in practice.

The IPSASB, a private sector body, has quietly attained dominance in the field of public sector financial reporting: nearly 50% of countries, and all major IGOs, draw on its standards in some form. The astounding success of these private standards in public sector accounting is inherently puzzling, but is made even more so by the meaningful distributional consequences within societies adopting IPSAS: the standards create winners and losers among parliaments, politicians, and within the bureaucracy, and have the potential to mechanistically drive financial policymaking and financialization, thus benefiting accountants and big accounting firms while potentially disadvantaging labor and taking discretion away from elected representatives. This puzzling regulatory relationship is understudied in the literature. Through an in-depth case study of this organization, this thesis explains why and how private actors successfully "standardize" states. Drawing on over 3400 pages of Board minutes, 37 elite interviews, and ethnographic observation of three in-person Board meetings, it argues that private rulers generate demand for their standards by pushing these standards through international and domestic "supply chains," targeting both IGOs and national and subnational bodies, while depicting them as universally applicable and apolitical - even if they have clear distributional implications. In doing so, the thesis makes several contributions to the literature. First, it uncovers an understudied phenomenon in transnational private regulation (TPR), in which the state itself is a target of rulemaking by a private actor. Second, it provides for the first time an empirical exploration of a case of private regulation of the public sector. Introducing the IPSASB as its case, the thesis expands existing literature on financial reporting, filling and important empirical gap. Finally, it develops a novel theory for this new regulatory arrangement which puts the suppliers of standards in the center of analysis.

This thesis sets out to determine how healthcare regulation in England might better ensure the safety of patients experiencing hospital discharge. The core problem at the heart of this thesis can be articulated as follows: healthcare regulation within England is suboptimal at safeguarding patients experiencing hospital discharge. The thesis is comprised of a series of published papers, each of which identify and address problematic aspects of the regulatory status quo. I consider in turn: the structure and strategy of healthcare regulation; the liminal spaces within this regulatory structure; and the concept of regulatory accountability. Through analysing the structure of healthcare regulation in England, and the risk-based regulation strategy employed by regulators, I present three weaknesses regarding how regulators identify, conceptualise, and subsequently prioritise risk in the context of regulating hospital discharges. By employing the anthropological concept of liminality as a lens through which to explore and identify these regulatory I bring into focus the liminal space that exists amongst regulatory bodies within the hospital discharge regulatory arena. Following this critical examination of structure, strategy, and space, I then analyse concepts of accountability in the regulatory context. The rationale for doing this is to consider the potential impact of regulatory actions upon registrants - for this impact is key to ensuring patient safety. Throughout this thesis I provide practical recommendations which regulatory bodies could incorporate to improve the safety of patients leaving hospital. Taken together, all of my research findings could inform regulatory approaches to improving patient safety more broadly throughout the NHS.

The Coalition Government announced in 2010 that it would "cut red tape by introducing a 'One In, One Out' rule whereby no new regulation would be brought in without other regulation being cut by a greater amount". The One IN, One OUT regime came into effect on 1 January 2011. It was superseded by One IN, Two OUT with effect from 1 January 2013. That was followed by a One IN, Three OUT requirement in 2016, accompanied and then replaced by a statutory target for impact reduction (the Business Impact Target or BIT). But how effective are these targets and regulatory off-setting requirements? What can they reveal about regulatory practices in the period 2010 to 2019? And what are their broader implications? After tracing the origins of the burden reduction mechanisms and describing their scope, methodology and compliance systems, the research creates a lens by coding primary and secondary legislation passed during the period 2010 to 2019 according to its status under those mechanisms, thereby isolating measures with an impact on business and civil society and categorising them according to their contribution towards burden reduction and/or their qualification for exclusion or exemption. As a first step, the research then turns the lens inwards to gain insights into the operation of the system of burden reduction itself, and it uses those insights to discuss the ramifications of a mandated system of burden reduction. Next, the research analyses the relationship between the drive for burden reduction and how regulatory legislation was structured and effected between 2010 and 2019. It starts by using the lens to quantify the prevalence, association with burden reduction and broader connotations of the three ancillary mechanisms associated with the burden reduction mechanisms: namely, Legislative Reform Orders, the Red Tape Challenge and special treatment for smaller businesses. Then, having collated themes associated with what Tony Blair's Government rebranded the "Better Regulation" initiative from reports issued under the auspices of the Better Regulation Task Force and Better Regulation Commission, the data is used to evaluate those themes. Finally, the research explores what is termed "the fragmentation of regulation", a phenomenon that captures the net effect (and logical extension) of several of the Better Regulation-inspired practices identified earlier.

Hypertension and vascular remodelling play central roles in the pathophysiology of heart disease, stroke, peripheral atherosclerosis, and renal failure. Gαs-coupled G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) activation [e.g. β2-adrenoceptor (β₂AR), adenosine A2B receptor (A₂_BR)] causes vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) relaxation, counteracting effects of vasoconstrictors. G protein-coupled receptor kinases (GRK) and arrestins regulate GPCR signalling, and dysregulated Gαs/GPCR signalling is key in the development of hypertension, probably via increased GRK2/arrestin VSMC expression. Evidence indicates β₂AR and A₂_BR are GRK/arrestin substrates, however similar potential interactions have not been fully investigated in VSMC. β₂AR and A₂_BR signalling promotes cAMP production, activating multiple downstream signalling pathways, including CREB, mediating vaso-relaxatory effects of Gαs-coupled GPCRs. Characterisation of β₂AR-induced CREB signalling revealed PKA is essential for the early stages, and EPAC the later stages of β₂AR-mediated CREB-phosphorylation, implying that cAMP-driven processes are required to produce β₂AR-stimulated CREB-signalling. A2BR-induced CREB signalling relied on p38/Src-kinase, and not cAMP/PKA/EPAC. GRK2 siRNA-targeted knockdown/or chemical inhibition, blocked β₂AR-stimulated CREB-phosphorylation. Similar data were obtained following arrestin2 depletion. A2BR-stimulated CREB-phosphorylation required GRK5/arrestin3 expression. β₂AR-stimulated p38 signals were PKA/EPCA independent, but required GRK2/arrestin2 expression. A2BR-induced p38 signalling was GRK5-dependent, but arrestin/PKA /EPAC-independent. VSMC migration is central to hypertension-induced vascular remodelling, and here β₂AR and A₂_BR-stimulated Gαs/GPCR signalling blocks VSMC migration through cAMP-dependent signalling pathways including CREB. CREB, GRK2 or GRK5 inhibition attenuated vasoconstrictor-stimulated VSMC migration, but failed to affect the ability of β₂AR and A₂_BR signalling to prevent vasoconstrictor-stimulated VSMC migration. Activation EPAC was equally as effective as β₂AR and A₂_BR agonists at blocking vasoconstrictor-stimulated VSMC migration. This research indicates that β₂AR and A₂_BR activate CREB and p38 signalling in RASM, and these signalling pathways are selectively regulated by GRK and arrestin proteins. β₂AR and A₂_BR activity prevents vasoconstrictor-promoted VSMC migration, however, it is unclear whether this blockade relies on agonist-stimulated CREB and/or p38 activation.

Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive DNA sequences that can mobilise in our genome by a process called transposition. Based on their mechanism of transposition, TEs can be subdivided into transposons and retrotransposons, which use DNA and RNA intermediates respectively. They are found in all branches of life and have been highly successful at colonising genomes along evolution, constituting up to 50% of the human genome. Although their profound influence on evolution is unquestionable, their function and influence within the organism's biology is still largely unknown. In humans, only retrotransposons are currently active, of which exclusively the Long INterspersed Element 1 (LINE-1 or L1) can mobilise autonomously. Although there are many cellular mechanisms in place to control LINE-1, their activity has been observed during embryogenesis, in neuronal cells, and in pathological conditions (i.e. cancer). In several cases, their insertional mutagenesis has been identified as the direct cause of genetic disorders and cancers, as well as a major contributor to disease progression by driving genetic instability. Notably, a growing body of evidence suggests that L1 encoded proteins and L1 retrotransposition intermediates can also influence cellular functions, such as inducing inflammation and senescence. Understanding the mechanisms underlying L1 regulation can help us prevent their deleterious effects and improve the prognosis of patients suffering from disorders where their activity is deregulated. Our lab has recently identified Ribonuclease H2 (RNase H2), a protein frequently mutated in Aicardi-Goutières Syndrome (AGS), as a positive regulator of L1 retrotransposition. It was proposed that the interaction of both RNase H2 and L1-encoded ORF2p protein with Proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA , a DNA clamp essential for DNA replication) through their PIP (PCNA Interaction Protein) motifs, lies at the basis of their mutual coordination and allows RNase H2 to fulfil its function in L1 retrotransposition. However, further research is needed to prove this model. Also, whether changes in LINE-1 retrotransposition levels contribute to the symptomology of AGS and other disorders where L1s are found to be deregulated remains unconfirmed. An easy to manipulate animal model, such as zebrafish, would be instrumental for research into these types of questions. Zebrafish are genetically very accessible and permit many research technologies unavailable for murine model. Despite the presence of polymorphic L1 insertions suggesting recent mobilization, to date no active L1 copy has been characterized in the zebrafish genome. This thesis has two distinct aims. Firstly, to elucidate the role of the PIP domain in RNase H2 and L1-ORF2p during retrotransposition. My research into this question revealed that the PIP motif of RNase H2 does not mediate the processes that underlie its function in human LINE-1 retrotransposition. Additionally, I found that very low levels of RNase H2 (< 15% of WT) are sufficient to support WT levels of LINE-1 retrotransposition. The second aim was to identify active LINE-1 copies in the zebrafish genome, in order to validate this animal model for future in vivo LINE-1 research. The specific copies from the different LINE-1 families investigated in this study did not show measurable levels of retrotransposition in our experimental setting. Nonetheless, this work cannot exclude zebrafish as a potential tool for research into the biology of LINE-1 and other TEs. Additionally, a potentially valuable LINE-1 reporter system was designed for this work, allowing the assessment of translation and retrotransposition separately. In conclusion, this work contributes to our understanding of LINE-1 biology, and can be used as a stepping stone for further research into the role of RNase H2 and PCNA in LINE-1 retrotransposition, as well the exploration into whether zebrafish could be used as an animal model for TE research.

A brief look into the history of the financial services will highlight a deep routed and inherent mistrust of the industry and the notion that any sort of ethics within this industry is oxymoronic. It is apparent from the prior literature that when financial services are left to self-regulate the priority is placed on profit maximisation and not on ethical conduct. Whilst in the UK the industry is has been governed since 1984, the regulatory landscape is constantly changing and increasing. However, ever-increasing regulations does not appear to be fundamentally changing behaviour within the industry. A lack of ethical decision-making was a direct contributor to the 2008 global financial crisis. With a reliance on compliance and legal departments to govern decisions there is a common mis conception that if a decision or product complies with regulation it is ethically sound. It is the purpose of this research to add to the existing literature, particularly in relation to the symbiotic relationship between ethics and regulation. Furthermore, to conclude whether or not increased regulation in the UK is leading to a disassociation in staff from ethical decisions, as well as the impact of continued regulatory and ethical failure. A particular emphasis is given to the extent that regulation might have a negative impact on ethical behaviour of staff and that regulation might require greater ethical insight to enhance a sufficient standard of behaviour in financial services. This research seeks to answer this main topic using five further research objectives. Utilising a mixed methodology, the primary research was carried out using 134 surveys and 11 in-depth semi structured interviews. Fundamentally, based on evidence presented in the thesis, where profit and money operate under regulatory conditions malfeasance is not consistently eradicated. Ethics and morality therefore ought not to be ignored in addressing problems of probity in financial services.

Canada's legitimate economy has fallen victim to money laundering for decades, especially through shell companies used by criminal organisations. More recently, the FATF has recognised Canada as having poor corporate transparency because of the frail federal AML framework that afforded beneficial ownership opacity. In response, lawyers and legal scholars have argued for greater transparency to combat money laundering nationally and prevent Canada from being an attractive destination globally for criminal enterprises to launder their dirty money. In June 2021, amendments to the Regulations under the PCMLTFA came into force, aiming to strengthen beneficial ownership transparency. This thesis concerns the impact of the amended legislation and explores the relevant regulatory amendments through doctrinal and socio-legal analysis. It also compares the amendments with the UK's robust AML framework using a comparative methodology to assess the strength of Canada's amendments and identify scope for further reform. There are three research questions addressed within this thesis: Will the amendments to the Canadian AML regulations create a more robust framework for reporting entities to obtain beneficial ownership information of legal entities to reduce money laundering through shell companies in Canada? If so, to what extent? Will such amendments reduce Canada's attractiveness as an offshore destination for money laundering? The findings conclude that while the amendments to the beneficial ownership provisions do bolster corporate transparency and thus diminish the efficacy of using shell companies for nefarious means, they do not render the Canadian AML regime as being robust. Further improvements are suggested by integrating several elements of the UK's framework. This thesis aims to contribute to criminal law in the corporate regulatory context by assessing Canada's current position concerning beneficial ownership transparency and the prevention of shell company exploitation by criminal organisations and recommending solutions to the legislative shortcomings with the help of a UK perspective.

Finance is an industry that needs to be regulated and supervised continuously to protect the interests of all its stakeholders. To do so, financial regulatory and supervisory organisations have been set up on the regional, national and international levels. On each level, these organisations support and guide the financial industry and protect its stakeholders. In order to deliver regulatory and supervisory services successfully, financial regulatory and supervisory organisations require a stable organisational structure and systematic operations. This research hence aims to deliver three key objectives. The first objective is to critically analyse the factors that have an impact on the structure of a financial organisation. The second is to identify and analyse the factors that influence the operations of a financial regulatory and supervisory organisation. The third and final objective is to investigate how international standards and enhance cross-border cooperation can be harmonising for the purposes of international financial regulatory authorities. To conduct this research, a qualitative approach to data collection was undertaken by conducting semi-structured interviews. The data was collected from a group of 44 participants, all senior financial regulators from across the globe. Of these, 21 participants came from developed economies, while 16 were from developing economies and seven from international regulatory bodies. The data was then analysed using a thematic analysis approach to examine the findings from the information given by the respondents. The data analysis identified five global themes and 13 organisational themes which were used to evaluate the factors affecting the structure and operations of the financial regulatory and supervisory organisations represented by the respondents. In addition, the themes identified were also used to evaluate the factors and barriers that directly impact upon international financial regulations. The study revealed that the structures of both financial regulatory and supervisory organisations are directly affected by external factors such as politicians, public opinions, market trends and market developments. The findings indicate that radical events, such as financial crises, typically lead to structural and operational changes within financial regulatory and supervisory organisations. The research also revealed that human culture and behaviour impact significantly upon the operations of bothnational and international financial regulatory and supervisory organisations. In terms of operation and structure of international financial regulatory organisations, the research found that a lack of communication, competition and accountability are major factors that hinder the effective application of financial regulatory and supervisory policies. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher suggests that before establishing a structure of financial regulatory authority, the founders should establish clear objectives. They should determine how the authority can be integrated into the existing national or international scenario, endeavour to limit the impact of external influences and then work to promote internal development. In terms of the operations of financial regulatory and supervisory organisations, the research here has emphasised the role and importance of human and cultural aspects of each respective country. Here, the study highlights these factors and recommends the policies that should be put in place to protect the cultural beliefs, norms and bias of each group. In order to harmonise operations between international and national financial regulatory authorities, it is further recommended that these organisations take into account the differences between legal and cultural traditions. These differences apply across their respective regions entailing that these organisations should aim to be independent of political influence and power. Overall, the research delivers an understanding of the factors that affect the structure and operations of financial regulatory and supervisory organisations. It proposes recommendations that can be adopted by these organisation, to help reduce the redundancy of work and encourage increasing cooperation and harmony between the various organisations that govern and supervise the financial industry, both at the national and international level.

The 1980s saw a turn by corporations towards shareholder value, based on the arguments of neoclassical economics and finance where maximising shareholder value is framed as the optimal outcome for the firm and for society as a whole. While the financialization literature has critiqued the rise of shareholder value, there have been relatively few, long-term, single-company case studies of how the pressure from capital markets to deliver shareholder value impinges on individual giant firm strategy. Furthermore, there have been no cases which have studied individual banks. This research explores two research questions which addresses these gaps. The first research question explores how the concepts of bricolage and conjuncture can offer a critical perspective of shareholder value and studies the case of Lloyds bank. Lloyds adopted shareholder value in the early 1980s with a focus on return on equity and shareholder return. This period seen Lloyds grow from the smallest of four UK clearing banks, to the largest bank in the world by market capitalisation in 1998. However, within ten years, it was on the verge of near collapse after agreeing to acquire HBoS, and reliant on a bailout by the UK state in the form of direct capital and liquidity support and other guarantees A second research question then re-orients the analysis to explore how the Basel regulatory capital rules play a central role in shareholder value bricolage, from their introduction in the 1980s - through to the post crisis period in 2016. Basel has been presented as a form of calculative practice by regulators and scholars who draw on econometric studies of what is 'safe' capital in the banking system and set capital requirements accordingly. Using conjuncture and bricolage, this research argues the rules do not capture outcomes which follow as management attempt to deliver shareholder value. As well as presenting an account of the Basel rules and how they are adopted in an organisational context, the study presents a critical perspective to inform policymakers and regulators of the problems with the current Basel framework which has a narrow calculative field of vision. Finally, this research challenges the notion that shareholder value driven banking is optimal for wider society through demonstrating a set of problematic case outcomes and presents recommendations for a new co-ordinated policy and regulatory response. The aim is to contribute to more socially useful, de-financialized and safer forms of banking, enabling banking to contribute (and not exacerbate) to the societal challenges ahead in the 2020s and beyond.

Governments worldwide are increasingly seeking to capitalise on technological advances in the collecting, linking, and analysis of ever greater sets of data. By applying novel analytical techniques to previously collected administrative data, governments and researchers seek to shed light on the causes of societal challenges and provide a robust evidence base for policymaking. However, these advances foster new opportunities and risks, particularly to citizens' privacy interests. Recent legislation has grappled with this modern data processing landscape by protecting individuals without unduly constraining the potential of such developments. Nevertheless, public backlashes to legal data-sharing initiatives and a wider societal unease towards the use of citizens' data question the ability of the law to secure societal acceptance in this context. Future data-sharing initiatives and the wider legitimacy of the law are put at risk if they diverge from citizens' views as to what is acceptable regarding data use. But how do such divergences arise, and how can we respond? An analysis of the General Data Protection Regulation and the Digital Economy Act 2017 provides insights into the influences that shaped these legislative outcomes. Understanding the law as the product of a fiercely contested process highlights the underlying motivations that shaped the law and the effects that arise as a result. A mixed methods study provides rich data on citizens' views towards the appropriate secondary uses of administrative data in research. This enables a comparison between the legislative approaches and citizens' views, suggesting areas of divergence and their underlying causes. In response to these divergences, the need to better incorporate citizens in the governance of secondary data uses is emphasised. Pursuing the law's legitimacy is posited as one requiring ongoing interactions between those using the law and citizens to continually develop and evolve the law over time.

During the last century we have experienced several financial crises with the most recent ones being those of 2007-2008, which have led to the collapse of many financial institutions. The failure of financial institutions has often built up to lead to financial crises that spread to the whole financial sector and the economy. One of the thesis's main arguments is that resilience should be 'part and parcel' of the business strategy through ex ante preparedness by adopting the necessary corporate governance (CG) standards and ensuring compliance with financial regulation. Thus, the thesis' purpose seems to be more squarely focused on the role of CG in mitigating problems of risk-taking and more specifically of leverage and liquidity. CG is seen as a mechanism in ensuring that risk-taking and instabilities created are curbed, but it is believed to have failed in its purpose after the events of the global financial crisis (GFC). The thesis evaluates various perspectives of corporate governance, the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), and their relationship with managerial incentives. Managerial incentives have promoted increase of share price value and firm growth to maximise managerial compensation. Subsequently, this thesis studies how the changes in the financial environment shaped managerial incentives and encouraged changes in the banking model. Managerial incentives contributed to the shift towards investment banking and the use of new financial instruments. Share-based managerial incentives not only failed to prevent excessive risk-taking, but also exacerbated its effects since investment banking is inherently riskier than retail banking. Investment banking is interconnected with the shadow banking sector, and thus, more prone to spill-over effects and contagion risk. The regulatory framework pre-GFC is evaluated along with how its interaction with the theoretical framework that has undermined resilience. The use of the 'comply or explain' approach and the assessment of managerial decisions against market norms has undermined accountability and does not provide incentives to shareholders to hold managers accountable. Furthermore, shareholders do not complain of risk-taking as long as the firm is profitable. Thus, market discipline as used by Basel I and II has failed to discipline managers in reducing risk-taking. The foundations of the problem lie in the fact that there are information asymmetries that have not been bridged with market disclosure. The case studies on Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland are used as a demonstration of this relationship. Managerial strategy has led to excessive risk-taking, and with the absence of CG standards promoting good CG practices, aggressive business models led to the failure of RBS and Northern Rock. Finally, the changes made post-GFC are critically analysed as to whether they would be successful in ensuring bank resilience by providing the necessary CG standards to align managerial incentives with regulation. The thesis looks at the proposals made, and the new regulatory measures adopted post-Crisis. It examines whether they can align managerial incentives with regulation through CG. The thesis concludes that without amendments in CG standards and the acknowledgement of the relationship between CG and financial regulation, attempts to improve the resilience factors, risk-taking, liquidity, and leverage on their own will not be successful. This is because risk-taking will continue creating problems, as market discipline is not an effective disciplinary mechanism.

My thesis offers a unique case study of how ongoing crises and continual government interventions can sap the financial and organisational capacities necessary to implement (and contest) regulation. Based on 60 semi-structured interviews and a review of pertinent government policy documents, I analyse how the regulatory space of tuition fee decisions by South African public universities was reconstituted by the 2015 to 2017 Fees Must Fall protests and their attempted settlements. I modify how regulatory space analysis has traditionally been used: by treating regulatory spaces as dynamic and evolving; by viewing the boundaries of regulatory spaces as porous and overlapping; and by developing how the resources of authority, organisational capacity, and wealth are understood. My application of this re-envisioned regulatory space analysis reveals that tuition fee decisions were regulated by the calibration of the interactions between three main actors, and the four income streams on which universities rely. Cumulatively, these calibrations shape: what is taught or researched, by who, to or for whom; who could learn what, where, and at what cost; and who paid what portion of that cost. They also prescribe the fora in which tuition fee decisions are made, and who participates in those fora. The protests and their attempted settlements reconstituted this regulatory space. An increasingly fragile link developed between fee determinations and student financial aid. Furthermore, new actors occupied dominant positions, and resources cascaded through this space - into and from cognate spaces. My analysis highlights the limits of what regulation can achieve. I re-iterate the importance of the place of space, underlining the binding constraint South Africa's macroeconomic deterioration placed on this regulatory space. I also discuss how government failure may undermine the regulatory regime operating in a regulatory space. My thesis reveals the insights which can be garnered from applying a regulatory lense to momentous political upheavals.

Synaptic plasticity is a crucial neuronal mechanism for learning and memory. It allows synapses to change their strength over time. This dissertation focuses on a particular form of synaptic plasticity called synaptic scaling, a homeostatic mechanism that preserves relative synaptic strengths in an activity-dependent manner. Synaptic scaling is fundamental for neuronal stability, regulating other plasticity mechanisms like Hebbian plasticity or long-term potentiation (LTP). The aims of this dissertation are to explore the implications of synaptic scaling (and other forms of plasticity, such as structural plasticity) on the overall behavior of neurons. This is done using system-theoretic tools and feedback control. We first formulate a biophysical closed loop model of synaptic scaling. We then study how synaptic scaling affect neurons' behavior in both abstract and reconstructed morphologies. This study reveals important tradeoffs between robustness, convergence rate, and accuracy of scaling. We first look at synaptic scaling as a "global control action" whose main role is to guarantee a steady level of neural activity. We then consider activity-dependent degradation as a "local control action" whose role is to assist the neuron in fine-tuning different desirable spatial concentration profiles. We show that, in extreme scenarios, it can promote a level of competition between synapses that has a destabilizing effect on the overall behavior. At the methodological level, we use compartmental modeling and we focus on the in- teraction between feedback and transport, in linear and nonlinear settings. Using classical system-theoretic tools like Bode and Nyquist analysis and singular perturbation arguments, and more recent tools like contraction and dominance theory, we derive parameter ranges under which synaptic scaling is stable and well-behaved (slow regulation), stable and oscilla- tory (aggressive regulation), and unstable (pathological regulation). We also study the system robustness against static and dynamics uncertainties. Finally, to understand how different plasticity mechanisms simultaneously affect the neuron behavior, we study synaptic scaling in the presence of activity-dependent growth (mimicking a structural plasticity mechanism). This is a third layer of control action shaping the neuron morphology. We find that activity-dependent growth improves the neuron's performance when synaptic scaling is insufficient.

This DPhil project addresses three distinct, yet interrelated, questions with respect to the nature of contemporary digital capitalism and participatory governance. Closely following standard comparative political economy research practices, I test several established theories about bureaucratic influence and participatory benefits on contemporary policymaking cases across capitalist democracies (Paper 1 and Paper 2). I also develop a somewhat more original theoretical proposition on the strategic use of participatory tools in the last paper (Paper 3). The primary goal of this doctoral project is to theoretically explain and empirically validate the overlooked - yet consequential - role of bureaucracy and participation in contemporary policymaking. Through my findings from the three papers, I emphasize that bureaucratic structures and participatory governance can often act as significant catalysing forces, which delimit some policy paths, while nurturing others.

In Sub-Saharan African cities, the majority of the population relies on onsite sanitation facilities, that typically generate faecal sludge. Emptying and transport services for this faecal sludge are key components of a complete sanitation service chain, without which the sludge would be left on site, pits or tanks would overflow, and sludge would not effectively reach treatment or safe disposal sites. These services are crucial to enable safely managed on site sanitation in cities, to protect public and environmental health. To address the adverse impacts and the inadequacy of many such emptying and transport services, local governments and national entities have started organising and regulating them. The effective regulation of these services, both on paper and in practice, is the focus of this research. The research explores the current regulation in place in sub-Saharan African cities and analyses the barriers and enablers to regulating emptying and transport services. It does this by using a mixed-methods approach and a combination of three studies: a Delphi study among emptiers, an Inventory of regulatory practices, and a multiple-case study of three cities (Kampala, Lusaka, Freetown). The research concludes that there are a variety of regulatory situations in sub-Saharan African cities. Many cities have at least some regulation in place for emptying and transport services, and this regulation is often at least partially implemented. Three regulatory approaches, often combined, are commonly used by the regulators: a) command and control; b) support and incentivise; c) self-regulation. The degree of implementation of the regulation is influenced by the content of the regulation, the regulatory process (from initiation, through creation/reform to implementation), and the context. The motivation, capacity, knowledge, and resources of all stakeholders are crucial considerations to achieve regulated services. Five categories of stakeholders were found to play an important role in the regulation of emptying and transport services: regulators, monitors/enforcers, regulated, self-regulation bodies, and influencers. This research led to the development of a framework incorporating the key elements to be taken into account when regulating services. This will prove a useful guide to regulators, sanitation planners, and their development partners, when starting the process of regulating services or when wanting to understand why the enacted regulation is not being successfully implemented. It will also enable researchers to further analyse the regulation and the regulatory processes within other cities where on site sanitation facilities services are present.

This thesis consists of three separate empirical chapters that investigate key determinants of three important aspects of banking systems: cost efficiency, competition and cost-reducing innovation. We focus our analysis on Asian commercial banks. In the first empirical chapter, we analyse if and how cost efficiency of Vietnamese banks has increased from the early years of transition until the present day (1992-2017), and we evaluate a series of potential drivers of such changes. Using a one-step stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach, we find that increasing efficiency characterises the period of analysis with a sharp increase at the beginning. This increase is explained by the regulatory changes implemented during this period. In particular, efficiency is fostered by financial freedom and foreign penetration (after Vietnam significantly reduces the restrictions on foreign banks' activities and entry). As a result of privatisations, reduction in the State's protection, and technological spill-overs, we find that state-owned banks (SOBs) overtake foreign banks (FOBs) and become the best performing group for the post-global financial crisis (GFC) period. Finally, we observe technological improvements, helped by better capitalisation and increased asset diversification. Overall, we find supportive evidence of the effectiveness of the regulatory changes introduced by the government. As the single-country dataset does not allow comparing the performance of the banking systems among countries, in the next empirical chapters, we use a cross-country dataset to magnify the contribution of the thesis. In particular, the second empirical chapter focuses on bank competition in nine Asian countries after the Asian financial crisis from 2000 to 2016. We use two complementary measures of competition: the relatively new "competition efficiency" measure introduced by Bolt and Humphrey (2010, 2015a, 2015b), which we implement using an SFA model; and the Lerner index (with a dynamic panel model). The two measures provide consistent results that bank competition increases with market concentration, financial liberalisation, foreign penetration, foreign ownership, and competition from the stock market. Low inflation and secured property rights are favourable conditions for banks to gain market power. Over the examined period, competition tends to increase. However, a decrease is observed after the global financial crisis. Finally, in line with Bolt and Humphrey (2015b), we do not find a strong correlation between the two measures as they use different approaches to gauge competition. In the last chapter, we estimate a one-step stochastic meta-frontier to measure cost-reducing innovation and examine its determinants. We use the same sample of the second chapter, except Singapore. In line with the theoretical models of Aghion and Griffith (2005) and Aghion et al. (2005), we find an inverted-U shape relationship between competition and innovation. Initially, competition fosters innovation. However, after competition surpasses an "optimal" level, the opposite effect is observed. This finding is robust over different measures of competition. In the chapter we deepen the analysis to also look separately at different output markets. Our evidence shows that the key driver of innovation is competition in the credit market; competition in the other earning assets market affects innovation but to a lesser extent, while competition in the fee-based service market has no impact. The insignificant effect of competition in the fee-based service market may be because competition in this market (with the recent emergence of mobile money in Asian countries) is more likely to encourage innovation in a form of new products for example new payment cards/apps (rather than cost-reducing innovation). Besides competition, banking innovation is favourably influenced by financial freedom, foreign penetration, and bank size. We find no significant impact of market concentration, the GFC and bank ownership. Finally, our result suggests that banks can reduce their total costs by 9% on average if they adopt the best available global technology. The empirical evidence from the three chapters shows consistent positive effects of financial freedom and foreign entry on all three key aspects of banking examined: efficiency, competition and innovation. This suggests that governments should continue to implement de-regulatory policies with further opening to foreign banks. Furthermore, as we do not find any negative effects of market concentration, the results support restructuring policies that merge banks to eliminate weak performers from the system.

Billions of people around the world use services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube every day to access information, engage in conversation, and stay in touch with friends and family. These hugely profitable and popular platforms for user-generated content, operated by large multinational technology companies, have in the past decade created complex systems of private regulatory standards that govern online behaviour and have a significant impact on the social, cultural, and political lives of their customers around the world. Where these systems --- which can be understood by International Relations (IR) scholars as an expression of private authority in global politics --- were once tacitly accepted or ignored by state actors, governments have in recent years increasingly sought to shape the rules and practices deployed by platform companies through various strategies. In some cases, governments have sought to `take back control' and re-assert state authority over this privately-managed domain, while in others they have opted rather to work directly with companies in more collaborative fashion. What explains the variation in how governments intervene in platform governance? The thesis argues that how governments seek to shape, challenge, or contest private platform rule-making can be understood as either fitting in within a collaborative or a contested strategy. Building upon literatures from transnational regulatory politics, the thesis explains variation between these two strategies as the result of an interplay between three factors: domestic demand for change, the ability to supply that change (regulatory capacity and transnational or domestic institutional constraints on that capacity), and normative understandings of an actor's appropriate degree of policy intervention. The plausibility of the argument is demonstrated empirically through three qualitative case studies of key regulatory episodes (the German NetzDG, the Australian AVM Act, and New Zealand's Christchurch Call) in which different governments have deployed different strategies to affect platform rule-making.

Many governments aim to rapidly expand the share of wind and solar energy in electricity generation as part of broader efforts to mitigate climate change. Despite being increasingly cost competitive, their integration into electricity systems requires adjusting a governance system intended for other technologies. This study contends that in order to better address technical and political challenges, regulators need to access scarce specialist knowledge. Regulators' access to such knowledge is dependent on brokerage, the strategic intermediation of actors in the industry, which can happen through different organisational arrangements. Power-generator and grid companies broker knowledge by providing expertise in ways that advance their own interests; whether that interest is to halt decarbonisation or capture the largest possible share of a growing renewable energy market. Independent system operators and expert organisations are alternatives for knowledge brokering that can be crucial to successful regulatory innovations. This research explores the mechanisms and significance of knowledge brokerage through the use of process tracing, network analysis and the controlled comparison of two liberalised electricity systems -Chile and the UK- and two state dominated systems -China and Mexico. Each pairwise comparison shows, independently, that knowledge brokers have become increasingly important in devising and deploying new market governance instruments that are relevant to renewable energy deployment. In liberal markets this is the result of a need to coordinate investment and create new market products. In state-dominated markets this is the result of a pursue to fragment and balance the influence of the state-owned grid and generation companies. The study shows that independent system operators and expert organisations can become substitutes, in terms of brokering specialised knowledge, but only as long as expert organisations are actively integrated in the regulatory process through delegation of crucial functions. This research slows programmatic alternative for developing regulatory capacity through building on the existing and potential competence of expert organisations and the system operator that exist in every electricity system.

As the provision of more and more public services becomes digitalised, administrative data research, i.e. statistical research on datasets collected by the central and local government throughout its operation, has received increased attention from policy-makers over the last few decades. In the UK, the government has embarked on a series of policy and legal initiatives, as well as financial investments, to widen access to public-sector datasets for research use. Yet, empirical studies identify the existence of 'legal' and 'cultural' barriers to 'sharing' administrative data for research purposes, raising questions about the forces that regulate data access decisions by public-sector organisations responsible for managing the datasets. This thesis examines the regulation of research data access decisions in the UK public sector through a 'regulatory space analysis' lens by asking: what are the 'rules of the game' that filter access to public-sector administrative data for research purposes in the UK? How and by which actors have these rules been developed over the last four decades? To address these questions, the thesis employs an in-depth, qualitative research design which involved semi-structured interviews (with 42 participants) and documentary data about the regulation of research data sharing decisions by specific organisations in the UK public sector. The thesis shows that research data access has been governed by rules which are incrementally established and revised via small-scale interactions, often between low-level technical staff, rather than momentous legal and policy decisions made by high-level officials or bodies. Through these interactions, the 'political' is artfully concealed behind the 'technical' and the 'commonplace'. Well-established political views, reflected in unwritten, conventional normative assumptions about the ownership of administrative data and the relevance of administrative data research for policy-making, effectively shape the 'rules of the game' that govern data access in practice.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is the agency in charge of detecting and assessing communicable diseases in the European Union (EU). Over its fifteen years of existence, the "Centre" has not only assessed risks but also occasionally advised on how to manage them. Assuming an advising role on the management of risks is usually how agencies contribute to policymaking in the EU, but the ECDC is particularly constrained by the limits imposed on its mandate by EU treaties. Public health is only a coordinating competence in the EU and the ECDC is, in principle, barred from giving explicit advice on how to manage public health risks. The goal of this thesis is to explain how the ECDC is empowered beyond its mandated activities. It addresses the puzzle of the Centre's empowerment by investigating the role of reputation and by proposing an original causal mechanism of empowerment through reputation. I probed this mechanism through a narrative analysis of four areas of empowerment of the ECDC: the creation of the Centre, HIV/AIDS, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the 2009 H1N1 crisis as well as an area with a negative outcome: non-communicable diseases (NCDs). My research shows that over the 15 years of the ECDC's existence, the role of reputation in the Centre's empowerment has been to assist actors in engaging in inferential processes that set a course of action towards the ECDC's empowerment. These findings are important for the literature on bureaucratic reputation: reputation ought to be further used in public policy to understand how and why agents put their trusts in others to produce change. On European agencies, this thesis also demonstrates that a power approach is relevant and, ironically the best way to not eschew the least powerful European agencies from scientific scrutiny.

A healthy neuron must continually produce millions of proteins and distribute them to function-specific regions of the cell. Among these proteins are ion channels that modulate neuronal excitability, allowing neurons to fulfill their primary role of information transfer. Neurons are unique among cells in their morphology, with projections that extend hundreds to thousands of microns. Neuron size and asymmetry pose a challenge for autoregulation of properties that require cargo transport across the cell. Homeostasis of ion channel localization has strong implications for neural excitability. This thesis concerns the intracellular distribution of ion channels in the context of longitudinal transport and global neuron regulation. The principal contributions are experimental measurements, data analysis, and modeling in the study of longitudinal neurite transport. Empirical investigations focus on the distribution and trafficking kinetics of ion channel Kv4.2, including quantitative measurements of both passive diffusion and active microtubule-based transport in both axons and dendrites (Chapters 3 and 5). Mass action models reveal that measured transport profiles corroborate discrepancies in Kv4.2 localization both between neurite types and along the somatodendritic axis (Chapter 4). Exchange between mobile and immobile fractions, inferred from analysis of repeated photobleaching, shapes intracellular distribution of Kv4.2 (Chapter 5). Further, the ensuing theoretical study surveys global regulation of ion channels, specifically for synaptic scaling, which requires cell-wide modulation of AMPA receptors for normalization of neural excitability. A unified model of synaptic potentiation, transport, and feedback reveals limitations imposed on synaptic scaling by neuron morphology. A neuron balances the stability, accuracy, and efficiency of synaptic scaling (Chapter 6).

The experience of one's own body is dependent on the integration of signals originating both from the body's internal milieu and the outside world. During the processing and integration of these signals, the bodily self must maintain a fine balance between stability and malleability. Across 4 studies, this thesis explored the role of autonomic regulation in maintaining psycho-physiological stability. Specifically, the present studies addressed different aspects of the individuals' engagement in explicit inference and unconscious interoceptive inference about one's self in relation to the external world and others. The main theory of this thesis predicted that autonomic regulation could contribute to the psychophysiological stability of the self across multiple hierarchical levels. In all studies participants received either congruent or incongruent feedback of their cardiac activity, while the experimental conditions were optimised to the rationale of the corresponding study. According to the findings of Study 1 and 2, autonomic regulation does contribute to the integration of self-relevant information across different hierarchical levels resulting in physiological stability. Study 3 revealed that autonomic regulation and physiological synchrony could function as self-stability preserving processes during competition. Finally, going beyond non-conscious interoceptive inference, Study 4 used a novel cardiac recognition paradigm that employed a set of different measures that correspond to different facets of interoception (i.e. the ability to infer the state of one's body). Integrating behavioural, psycho-physiological and metacognitive measures, the findings of Study 4 suggest that people can use different strategies (potentially linked to different hierarchical levels in the brain) to reach valid inferences about their sensations. When taken together, the findings of the present thesis have important theoretical implications for predictive coding models of the self and social-affective neuroscience as they pave the way for a more direct application of abstract theories in experimental designs. The general discussion outlines a novel mechanistic framework of interpersonal congruency that could contribute to closing the arbitrary gap between individual and social approaches in experimental designs.

The role of the state in the market affairs has been one of the most debated, yet highly controversial topics of discussion throughout recent history. Particularly, the economic impact of the state regulation evokes a spirited debate and splits the scholarship into various contesting groups. However, majority of studies investigating the nexus of state regulation and economic performance seem to have yielded overly ambiguous results due to the conceptual shortcomings. State regulation is often understood as simply an issue of the technical design of the regulatory framework and/or formal institutional arrangements. However, the current research argues that state regulation is a far more complex policy phenomenon, and actual regulatory environments could be considerably different from the formal de jure regulatory framework that the regulator establishes. Hence, success or failure of the regulatory policy depends not only on the capacity of the state to create a good regulatory framework and institutional arrangements, but also to deliver and enforce regulations effectively and efficiently. By examining the regulation and growth nexus in the case of Central Asian economies, this research demonstrates how a more broader conceptualization of the notion of state regulation can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the issues and yield somewhat different outcomes than the standard literature. In doing so, the research adopts mixed-method analysis: quantitative technique is employed to assess the relationship between variations in the quality of regulatory policy and economic outcomes in regional countries; qualitative research is used to complement and increase the robustness of the quantitative findings. The study concludes that despite having sound regulatory frameworks and appropriate institutional arrangements, regulatory policies' contribution to the economic growth have been insignificant in Central Asian countries due to the ineffective regulatory compliance and enforcement.

The translation factor, eIF4F is a complex made up of the eIF4E, eIF4G and eIF4A. The eIF4F is a major determinant in mRNA selection for recruitment of ribosomes for protein synthesis initiation. eIF4E recognises and binds the 5' cap. On actively translating mRNAs, eIF4G associates with eIF4E leading to increased synthesis of the encoded proteins. However, eIF4E-eIF4G interactions are regulated across all eukaryotes by a group of inhibitory binding proteins called the 4E-BPs that can displace eIF4G from eIF4E and repress translation. In yeast, Caf20 and Eap1 are the two 4E-BPs identified that associate with eIF4E and inhibit translation. Prior studies in Graham Pavitt's lab identified a new role for Caf20, whereby it was shown to interact with ribosomes and specific mRNAs independently of its binding to eIF4E. The research presented in this thesis describes an investigation of the elements of Caf20 important of its association with eIF4E, the ribosome and itself; and mechanisms of Caf20 interaction with other proteins. By a combination of systematic mutagenesis and immunoprecipitation experiments it was shown that Caf20 requires a short motif within its amino terminal region (NTD) to interact with eIF4E. In contrast Caf20 requires multiple elements driven largely by an extended region of the N-terminus to interact with the ribosome. By using a double tagging and immunoprecipitation approach, it was demonstrated that Caf20 interacts with its binding partners as a monomer rather than a homodimer or other higher order complex. In vivo crosslinking of whole cell extracts and polysome enriched fractions combined with western blotting identified some specific proteins including a novel approximately 10 KDa Caf20-interacting protein. Mass-spectrometry provided some candidates of which ribosomal proteins, Rps5, Rps24, Rps27, Rpl10, Rpl27 and Rpl30 of the small and large subunits were identified. The crosslinked ribosomal proteins are located around the interface of the 40S and 60S subunits. Results from different phenotypic characterisations for Caf20 indicated that it affects cell growth when there is a switch from glucose medium to respiratory medium, especially at low temperatures (16°C). Caf20 was found not to be a target of the TOR pathway, but Caf20 presence did increase strain sensitivity to clioquinol drug and excess CuSO4 treatments. CAF20 deletion in three RP-TAP strains was found to have synthetic growth defects when two strains (Rpl27-TAP and Rps27B-TAP) were grown at different temperatures. Mild phenotypes identified in this study all appear to be largely explained by the eIF4E-Caf20 interaction rather than the novel Caf20-ribosome interaction. In summary, this study broadens our understanding of how Caf20 binds to the ribosome.

Performance management of social work and social care services, complemented by effective regulation, is viewed as key to improving delivery and providing public assurance about care quality, and the value of listening to stakeholders as contributors to the knowledge base has long been recognised. The evidence base as it relates to stakeholders' experiences of regulation, however, has not been comprehensively explored. Many studies seek the views of stakeholders in the development of individual services, yet fewer studies seek their views in shaping regulatory methodology. The rationale for this research was to contribute to a knowledge base from evidence using an empirical approach and to contribute to better understanding of regulation from the perspectives of stakeholders. The research was undertaken using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. For the quantitative phase, a descriptive analysis of data held by the regulator in relation to the evaluations of care services, improvement in evaluations over a specified period of time and the impact of complaints, requirements or enforcements on this performance was undertaken. Data in relation to inspection satisfaction questionnaires was also descriptively analysed. Findings from the quantitative phase informed the qualitative phase. The qualitative phase began with a co-productive approach involving ten individuals: both regulatory staff and inspection volunteers. Themes arising from their responses, complemented by the findings from previous research phases, then informed the design of individual interviews with six service providers. A thematic analysis was undertaken for both parts of the qualitative phase. The research demonstrated some contradictory views between regulators and those being regulated. Regulators described building positive relationships with services within a model of responsive regulation. Service providers experienced a bureaucratic process with a compliance focus and relationships in which the power imbalance and a lack of knowledge often led to feelings of anxiety and fear. In the current environment in which high quality care is expected by both public and government alike, despite the impact of austerity measures, this research recommends that further dialogue needs to take place to ensure the impact and outcomes from regulation are better understood and explicitly articulated.

Trading in modern capital markets is currently dominated by algorithms and concerns over the impact of algorithmic trading on market quality have led a number of jurisdictions to regulate this new type of trading. The European Union ('EU') has been no exception to this trend. This thesis offers a critical analysis of the EU algorithmic trading regime, arguing that it rests on three fundamental misconceptions: that simpler execution algorithms carry less risk than other algorithms; that algorithmic trading has meaningfully added to the risk of market manipulation; and that the benefits and risks of different high-frequency trading ('HFT') strategies can be considered and discussed as if HFT were a monolithic category of trading. As a result, the EU algorithmic trading regime mistakenly leaves unregulated a type of algorithmic trading that carries significant risk for the quality of its capital markets, creates unnecessary suspicion that certain algorithmic trading behaviour carries an abnormally high risk of market manipulation, and unwarrantedly imposes onerous requirements on all high-frequency traders, regardless of the particulars of their strategies. In response to these errors, this thesis proposes three main solutions: amending the EU definition of algorithmic trading to include all execution algorithms; eliminating the add-ons introduced by the EU regime to the EU definition of market manipulation; and removing 'HFT' as a regulatory category-which should be accompanied by extending the rules needed to govern the activity of algorithmic traders (and only those rules) to all proprietary investment firms with disintermediated access to EU markets. Ultimately, the EU algorithmic trading regime should nonetheless be praised for its structure, comprehensiveness, proportionality and ability to effectively address many of the risks created by algorithmic trading and by the strategies inspired by this trading. As such, this thesis proposes small incremental changes to the EU regime, rather than its complete overhaul.

Nigeria operates a monolithic economy which mostly depends on the extraction and exportation of crude oil, which as a source of economic revenue is not eternal. Nigeria must therefore explore other energy options such as unconventional (shale) gas to remain relevant in the international oil and gas market. But whether unconventional (shale) gas can be exploited safely without causing severe damage to the environment and whether the environmental impact from fracking will outweigh the benefits of exploiting a fuel source that is cleaner than oil or coal, but a fossil fuel regardless is highly controversial. The United States of America (US) has established regulations for managing the risks of shale gas development, making them the market leader. Currently, many countries including the United Kingdom (UK) have shown interest in shale gas development as a potential source of energy expansion. For Nigeria to succeed in developing shale gas, it must adopt the proper policies for managing gas production, gas trade and its uses, and this research aims to provide recommendations to achieve that. In doing so, this research examines the practices in countries with a well-established risk regulation regime and a positive record on shale gas exploration and with activity-specific regulation in place for some years (US and UK, identified in this work as ‘pioneers’). The study from the regulations in the US and UK forms the background for learning opportunities and challenges for Nigeria. The possibility and the difficulty of learning from pioneers, and the problems of implementation in a country with poor environmental protection is studied on the basis of theories of policy convergence, policy learning, lesson-drawing and policy transfer. These theories provide an insight on why and how societies as they get more industrialised, begin to learn and copy the policies of more developed countries and draw lessons from experiences in more developed countries. The theories also show the difficulties in learning, especially due to national differences. For Nigeria, learning from the UK and US would be feasible but still challenging. Nigeria historically shares ties with the UK. Moreover, it has similarity in political structure with the US. As Nigeria has traditionally a much weaker risk regulatory regime, with less prevention and precaution, learning can be expected to be difficult as risk regulation theories show. By building on the theoretical framework of learning and risk regulation and by undertaking a comparison of pioneer countries, this research fills an important gap in the literature by providing a clear way forward for regulating fracking in Nigeria.

Despite their ubiquitous nature, there is currently a paucity of theorising and research on the drivers of human resource management (HRM) development within the context of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). Mainstream HRM models have tended to be biased towards normative prescriptions regarding 'best practice', often drawing insights more applicable to larger organisations with more formalised HRM systems. A principal objective of this PhD thesis is to illustrate the complexities and subtleties of life in small firms: to move beyond those accounts that criticise SME's for their informal agenda and a lack of uptake of best practice HRM to provide a more nuanced understanding of the drivers of HRM development and change in the context of the SME. Through in-depth case studies undertaken in two small firms operating within the aerospace sector, the thesis moves away from prevailing dichotomisations of formal vs. informal or 'small is beautiful' (Schumacher, 1973) vs. 'bleak house' (Sisson, 1993) in an attempt to provide an insight into the lived experiences of SMEs and to bring the voice of the SME and its workers and managers into the story. Moreover, rather than one universally applicable static model, the findings highlight various contingencies linked to growth and firm life-cycle stage that shape HRM development, as well as idiosyncrasies linked to the history and founder management culture. The broader regulatory context of the aerospace sector further illustrates how diverse institutional structures inhabiting the 'regulatory space' (Hancher and Moran, 1989) of organisations are shaping human resource management practices and processes of formalisation. Taken together, there appears to be a complex process of adaption occurring within the context of interacting external and internal contingent forces, which are negotiated within internal micro-politics and agency dynamics between owners and other actors. Such notions of heterogeneity, fluidity and agency are largely underrepresented in mainstream human resource literature and have broader implications for understanding HRM development within the context of SMEs. The thesis represents a broader re-examination of HRM and organisational growth in the SME, providing recognition of the need to bridge the gaps between regulation and governance debates and HRM and organisational debates on SMEs, thus bringing together a variety of perspectives that highlight the conceptual and theoretical limitations of each approach.

The current failures of electricity regulation in Nigeria are resulting from neoliberal, market-oriented ideas. The policies promised a competitive electricity market that would work well for all stakeholders. However, several years after implementation, these promises are yet to be realised. This thesis investigates the factors and root causes of the problems of the sector post-privatisation and the role that sector-specific regulation (SSR) and antitrust/competition law can and should play to solve them. The thesis analyses the theoretical and conceptual basis for the neoliberal policies of electricity regulation, their assumptions, expectations, and outcomes in practice. It evaluates the shortcomings of the system and reveals how its theoretical ideas of free, unregulated and self-corrective markets devoid of state intervention could not work as expected by neoliberal theory. It discovers how the option translated into the practice of regulating electricity sectors using SSR and an interventionist antitrust law in advanced countries. Based on the experience and current practice in Britain and the EU lessons for legal transplantation by Nigeria are drawn. A qualitative approach consisting of qualitative document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews was used to reveal that the electricity sector in Nigeria under post-privatisation suffers from corruption, regulatory capture, weak institutions of governance, slow development of the renewable energy market and anticompetitive practices by private electricity companies. The study assesses the role of SSR and an interventionist antitrust law in improving the situation and argues for a strict and concurrent application of the two by a strong regulator and the pursuit of green energy investments and commitments as solutions to the market failures in the sector. As an in-depth case study on Nigeria as a developing country, it contributes to debates about electricity regulation under and beyond neoliberalism and about how SSR and the recent 2018 antitrust law in Nigeria will be concurrently applied and enforced to address market failures in the sector. It analyses how conflict can be resolved between the two. It is the first attempt to conduct an in-depth qualitative study and assessment of the post-privatisation problems in the electricity sector in Nigeria and the role of the new antitrust law in solving them.

The literature on climate politics has often treated policy as being nationally uniform, obscuring the ways in which different groups in the economy face different costs from mitigation. Chapter 2 develops a formal model of climate change policymaking in which stringency can vary across sectors of the economy. I show that if capital-owners have some disproportionate influence over the government, it should affect which sectors get targeted with mitigation policy. Chapter 3 uses “shadow price” data developed by Althammer and Hille to measure the stringency of climate policy on a sectoral level. Using multi-level modelling, I show that economic interests have an advantage over environmental ones, that producers have an advantage over consumers, and that capital receives more protection than labor. Chapter 4 examines the role of ideology, and shows that while most parties protect capital to some extent, right parties do so more than left ones. Chapter 5 tests whether broader political economy arrangements that protect labor enable or block stronger mitigation policy. I find that an enabling effect predominates: labor-intense sectors accept heavier policy burdens when labor-protective institutions and policies are stronger. Chapter 6 moves beyond shadow pricing data to look at public opinion. It offers the first many-country study to show that climate attitudes are shaped by individuals’ sector of employment. Chapter 7 concludes with a review of the results and avenues for future research.

Over the last 30 years, globalization and advances in algorithmic trading have created new opportunities to engage in transnational market abuse, i.e., insider trading and market manipulation perpetrated across national borders. Regulators use various institutional arrangements to detect these schemes. What explains this variation? Or, more broadly, what determines the form of international cooperation public agencies utilize to detect transnational phenomena? To answer this question, I present and test the Two-level Cooperation Framework (TLCF). The TLCF’s core argument is that public agencies’ decision to outsource surveillance to non-state actors (i.e., regulatory intermediaries) in the past impacts the form of cooperation they utilize in the future. The TLCF conceptualizes this process as a sequential two-level game, in which public agencies must engage their regulatory intermediaries in a strategic interaction (domestic game) before negotiating with their foreign counterparts (international game). The sequential outcomes of these ‘surveillance games’ will, I contend, determine the form of cooperation public agencies utilize. A structured-focused comparison of five case studies corroborates the TLCF’s theoretical expectations. To perform these case studies, data was collected from numerous archives, a Freedom of Information Act Request, and 86 interviews in six countries. The results contribute to our understanding of International Relations (IR) by challenging a widely held implicit assumption that state and sub-state actors are able to share information with their foreign counterparts. By relaxing this assumption, the TLCF unveils novel causal pathways by which public agencies’ previous outsourcing decisions impact their future capacity and/or desire to engage in certain forms of cooperation. These observations are potentially generalizable to an increasing number of policy arenas governed by public-private partnerships. Through its analysis of transnational market abuse, this thesis pushes IR to consider the potential consequences of these partnerships for the form and effectiveness of international regulatory cooperation.

The findings from the challenges affecting most Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria highlights low managerial skills and lack of access to capital as the significant contributory factors to the constraints the companies face. In addressing the issues of low managerial skills and lack of access to capital, this thesis examines the causal reasons for low managerial skills, and lack of access to capital as well as, the existing mechanisms in place that take cognisance of these risks accruing from the contributory factors. Upon the examination and analysis of literature, the thesis hypothesis and questions, the thesis finds that the lack of proper knowledge of good corporate governance practices, Nigeria’s institutions, and regulatory environment are critical factors that contribute to the lack of good managerial skills and lack of access to capital. In consideration of how the regime of corporate governance enables companies to be conscious of the process by which companies are governed and controlled to reach its purpose and the importance of SMEs to any country, there is justification for the State to intervene to ensure SMEs are successful. In introducing the regime of corporate governance to SMEs in Nigeria, the thesis recommends and demonstrates the importance of co-regulation and a hybrid enforcement model of balanced soft and hard laws as an approach to improving the managerial skills and access to capital in Nigeria’s SMEs. The thesis proposes co-regulation, which is a situation whereby the government, together with the SMEs, develops a corporate governance regulation for SMEs. Co-regulation with its hybrid enforcement model came about following the theoretical examination of Nigeria’s SMEs' background. Including lessons from corporate governance theories, new institutional theory, constructivist institutionalism, and regulatory theories. Experiences from the system of corporate governance in the United Kingdom, entrepreneurial, and managerial self-efficacy assisted the thesis as well. The hybrid model of enforcing co-regulation consists of soft law enforcement approach in the areas where flexibility is necessary and hard law in the areas where coercion is essential to maintain effectiveness that would not negate the overall aims of the regulatory model. The administration of co-regulation contains tools within Nigeria’s context to bring about the desired result every corporate governance regime works to achieve – a successful company.

Corporations contribute over 71 per cent of global carbon emissions and are, therefore, the leading sources of the climate change problem. Nevertheless, they generally have apathy to participating in climate change mitigation by curbing their emissions or investing in low-carbon transition and mitigation projects, particularly in Nigeria and other developing countries. The weak legal and regulatory frameworks in these countries are exploited by corporations to evade their climate change obligations despite their significant contribution to the problem. This thesis critically analyses the prospects of overhauling the legal framework of climate change regulation of corporations in Nigeria through the implementation of the dilute interventionism paradigm. It argues that Nigeria should directly intervene through legislative mechanisms to compel corporations to incorporate climate change mitigation in their business activities. It proposes that this direct intervention should comprise of prescriptive and facilitative mechanisms structured in a dilute interventionism regulatory model with the strictest interventionist instruments at the foundation and de-escalation to milder prescriptive instruments based on increased corporate compliance. Adopting this model will halt the culture of regulatory impunity that corporations have imbibed in Nigeria and other developing countries. The thesis further argues that implementing this model requires the institution of a strong and independent regulator with a veto firewall protection system that guarantees its de facto independence from government and external influences. The thesis adopts a socio-legal research methodology in analysing the various legal mechanisms and alternative regulatory systems for corporate regulation and the regulatory theories developed in the literature for curtailing corporate excesses. It also undertakes a review of the successful implementation of an exemplar of the dilute interventionism model in the banking sector in Nigeria to establish the feasibility of the model for effectively reforming and incentivising corporate participation in a targeted sector - in this case, climate change mitigation. Although focusing on Nigeria, the analysis in this thesis has broader application to other developing countries around the globe with similar legal, regulatory and socio-economic circumstances as Nigeria.

International commercial arbitration has established itself as the main dispute resolution mechanism for international commercial disputes. This increased visibility has drawn attention to arbitrators’ public role, leading to a well-established general perception that arbitrators are bound to special obligations, such as the duty to be independent and impartial or the obligation to assure that arbitral proceedings are not abused to achieve nefarious goals. Despite this general acknowledgement, little attention has been paid to the mechanisms that ensure that arbitrators adhere to these obligations. In particular, there has been limited analysis of the underlying mechanisms that incentivise the production and enforcement of professional norms in this field. This thesis argues that the particulars of the arbitration market largely explains why the evolution of the regulation of international arbitrators has not matched those of other professions. At the same time, it will argue that those same particularities create incentives for several actors, most notably the arbitral community itself, to step in and occupy this regulatory vacuum. In particular, it explores the notion that the market strategies employed by arbitrators, arbitral institutions and other members of the arbitral community have the production of professional norms as a by-product. It further explores how the arbitral market tends to create an environment where compliance with professional norms is rewarded, leading, at the same time, the arbitral community to work as a network that promotes adherence to professional norms through mostly informal sanctions.

This thesis seeks to address the implementation gap between Mexico's regulatory normative framework, whose design seeks to deliver on certain goals, and the outcomes it has actually delivered. In 2015 Mexico was presented as a leading country in the use of tools of regulatory policy in the OECD's Regulatory Policy Outlook, an assessment of the conditions for good regulation among member countries. In the same year, the country obtained a sub-optimal score in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report, an assessment whose indicators are proxies for regulatory performance. To explain the gap between the two reports, the thesis adopts a systemic approach by focusing on Mexico's regulatory oversight body, and its role in the coordination of stakeholders and in the delivery of regulations, across different policy sectors. The purpose of focusing on the oversight body is to understand the networked-governance relations it holds with relevant stakeholders and the influence of this dynamic in shaping the country's regulatory capacity. The thesis claims that oversight bodies are crucial means to analyse regulatory governance, and the challenges that emerge from coordinating public and private networks from different policy sectors. Regulation is highly relational and its implementation has to recognize the networked nature of stakeholders along with their differences. Failure to introduce a variegated approach to regulation in the context of different policy sectors, that command contrasting sets of resources, expertise, and level of influence, leads to sub-optimal policy outcomes. To explore the nature of the stakeholders, the research draws on a qualitative research methodology, particularly in elite interviews, to tease out the dynamics underpinning the power relations involved. The thesis contributes to the existing literature on regulation by promoting the role of oversight bodies and regulatory improvement as key concepts that contribute to explain the intricacies of the process of regulation, particularly in its implementation. Both concepts have been understudied, yet the delivery of regulation occurs within their respective frameworks. The thesis also contests traditional approaches in the studies of regulation, and highlights the risks of not adopting a cross-cutting perspective in its analysis and implementation.

Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is known to exert a diverse range of effects in humans, specifically in the heart where it may cause apoptosis of cardiomyocytes at pathological concentrations. However, at physiological concentrations LPA may regulate cell migration, proliferation and even differentiation. The ability to drive stem cells down the cardiac lineage has, however not yet investigated and the potential underlying molecular mechanisms that could mediate this effect also remains to be determined. Since LPA is reported to accumulate in acute myocardial infarction and may rescue cardiac myocytes, we have hypothesised it may also be able to generate cardiac myocytes from stem cells. This hypothesis is based on observations that the signalling through which it exerts its biological effects are similar to those which have reported regulating stem cells regulation to various lineages. The aim of this thesis, therefore, was to study, firstly, the effectiveness of LPA in deriving cardiomyocytes and then to establish the molecular mechanisms involved focusing specifically on the expression profile of select miRNAs including mir-145, mir-1 and mir-133 which respectively linked to pluripotency and lineage commitments. All studies were carried out using the P19 stem cell line and were maintained and cultured in supplemented alpha-minimal essential medium (α-MEM), comprised of antibiotics and foetal bovine serum (FBS). Embryoid bodies were formed from aggregates of the cells in a non-tissue culture grade plates with or without LPA for four days. These EBs are subsequently plated in an adherent 6-well plate and maintained in culture between 3 and 12 days, before being lysed for either western blotting or RNA analysis. When used pharmacological inhibitors of LPA receptors (Suramin (P2 purinergic/LPA receptor 4), H2L5765834 (LPA receptor 1, 3 & 5), H2L5186303 (LPA receptor 2 & 3) and TC-LPA5-4 (LPA receptor 5)), targeted protein kinases (PKC; by BIM I) and PI3-kinase (by LY294002), they were added to the cultures 1 hour before treatment with LPA. In parallel studies, cells were transfected with mir-145 and mir-1 using siRNAs inhibitors or overexpression. The effect on MLC-1v and OCT4 protein expression then determined by western blotting. Successfully, the research revealed that LPA could achieve differentiation of P19 stem cells, and this was concentration and time-dependent. The maximum response was obtained with 20μM LPA and peaked on day 6. Subsequent experiments were carried out using 5 and/or 20μM LPA. Decreases paralleled the induction of MLC-1v in OCT4 expressions. The effects of LPA were mediated through its receptors, specifically LPA receptors 4 and 5 and partially on LPA receptors 2 and 3. The effects were also mediated through the kinases like protein kinase C, although the involvements of PI3 kinase was only partial. Expressions of mir-145, mir-1 and mir-133 elevated following treatment with LPA. Suramin, BIM-I inhibited these changes but not affected by LY294002, H2L5186303, H2L5765834 and TC-LPA5-4. Transfection studies also suggested that mir-1 regulate differentiation through enhanced MLC-1v protein expression with and without LPA. In conclusion, the program of research conducted for this thesis has confirmed that LPA could be an endogenous modulator of stem cells differentiation to a cardiac lineage, more importantly this effect is mediated through its receptors 2, 3, 4 and 5 collectively, that may activate protein kinase PKC and PI3K and is under the influence of mir-145 and mir-1. Our work in this thesis suggests the active role of miRNAs specifically mir-145 and mir-1, which can indicate the need of further investigation to instigate the possible therapeutic targets and further prevent any fatal consequences of atherosclerosis or other heart-linked diseases.

Could shareholder primacy, with its assumed short-termist practices, have had its day when it comes to managerial activity centered on creating corporate value? Many business and opinion leaders appear to take this position, not least Jack Welch who famously declared 'shareholder primacy is the dumbest idea in the world!' Indeed, in a post-Crash economy has a wider stakeholder focus with a longer-term outlook superseded any business notions of shareholder primacy and wealth maximization? This research examines these possibilities through a consideration of the narrative companies produce, such as annual reports. From this corpus material, an assessment is made of whether UK managers' perceptions about corporate value generation changed over the period covering the worldwide financial crisis, with respect to their relative favouring of shareholders and stakeholders. The corpus of narrative material used is visualized as a conceptual space in which a conversation reflecting perceptual bias to the generation of corporate value occurs. To explore such corpuses, in order to compare narratives at points either side of the 2008 Crash, a new methodology was devised called narrative staining. Hence, a detection and visual mapping over the period was made possible of managers' changing perceptions concerning primacy (shareholder or stakeholder orientation) with its mediation by termism (a short or long-term bias). Termism is also originally conceived as part of a larger temporal category, which includes a sense of urgency to act (urgent versus non-urgent) that is similarly examined. The investigation reveals that over time perceptual change about value creation happened, though in unanticipated ways. Companies pre-Crash were often short-term stakeholder oriented then moved post-Crash to a long-term shareholder orientation. A focus for this study was the corporate domain, consisting of a selection of FT250 companies. However, managerial perceptions about corporate value creation are influenced not simply by the conversation of the corporate domain but rather by a multi-actor conversation taking place throughout the business environment. To comprehend this effect, the research mines further corpuses that comprise the UK's regulatory domain (hard and soft law), the press (Financial Times and other newspapers), and relevant peripheral stakeholder organizations (including the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, and the Trades Union Congress). These organizations demonstrated more complex, unforeseen, perceptual effects as the financial crisis proceeded with many aligning according to their political or business agenda, which also impacted any sense of urgency to act they had. There appears to be no previous attempt at an extensive and multivariate analysis of this nature. And the findings challenge prevalent characterizations of shareholder and stakeholder behaviour. Moreover, the research shows that utilizing a wide set of stakeholder corpuses acts a viable proxy for broader financial perspectives amongst UK organizations. The technique of narrative staining therefore provides insights, hitherto inaccessible, for assessing and consolidating large-scale perceptual bias regarding value creation across the economy. The technique also has significant potential for other applications.

This dissertation reflects on building standardisation as a mode of design. Eschewing the architect's conventional disdain for regulation - as an external constraint on creative freedom - the ambition here is to ask; by way of their standardisation, how do buildings exert a shaping effect on government? The research presented has been framed through a focus on fire-safety standards and is presented through a series of city case-studies. Each city study has an historical dimension. They begin by reviewing historical accounts of specific fires, identifying the governmental response that those fires prompted. That is, standards are presented here as historically and geographically specific instruments. Read together these studies offer insight into the plurality of means through which regulators and building designers have responded to the common concern of fire. The city studies each include an element of by-design analysis, studying the marks that fire-safety standards make on the built environment, and the way they interact with other shaping factors in building design. The ambition here is to explore the unintended consequences of regulation, and the way they come to be 'captured', redirected to novel ends. That process of capture is taken to be politically ambivalent; the effects and side-effects of standardisation are shown to be highly contingent, shaped by the interests of those actors that work closely with them. Finally, each city study has a theoretical dimension. Fire-safety standardisation is used here as a means to broker dialogue between two related discourses, Governmentality Studies and Infrastructure Studies. Key terms and concepts are drawn from those fields as a means to reflect on the challenges and opportunities provided by the built environment as an instrument of technologically mediated government. Accident plays an important role in this reflection: programmes of standardisation are shown to respond to accidents, often those that occur in or around buildings; the design process is seen to have an accidental character, shaped by the aggregate of decisions made by different people, in different places, at different times, and with different interests; and buildings themselves are seen to be comprised of accidental qualities, properties that appear essential to some stakeholders, not to others. All these forms of accident shape the thesis findings; drawing on the work of Susan Leigh Star, standardisation is here construed as the construction of a 'Boundary Object', a means to navigate, through material things, the overlapping concerns of diverse actors, so as to facilitate their 'collaboration without consent'. The critical potential of this framing is to highlight the way building reveals fault-lines and powers of consolidation within particular ways of thinking. The concluding chapter reflects on the role that fire has played in shaping our govern-mentalities. It borrows a term from sociologists John Law and Anne-Marie Mol to describe the 'fire-space' of standards; it suggests that governmental ambitions, laws, and building designs interact, spread, and change in a fire-like way. Through a post-script, it uses this metaphor to engage with the ongoing Grenfell Tower Inquiry, and the way this threatens to shape future governmental, legal and physical architectures in the UK. That conditions of political possibility are shaped by buildings, fires, and fire-safety standards is brought into sharp relief by this particular case.

There have been considerable reductions in UK fire deaths and casualties over the last fifty years, but on-going innovation in the built environment means that fire risks need constantly to be reappraised and addressed. This innovation takes the form not only of new materials and architectural approaches, but also of new methods of fire safety regulation. While existing research has addressed many aspects of this innovation, one crucial area has been neglected: that of post-construction fire safety regulation. This thesis examines this topic focusing on how fire safety is maintained during the life times of buildings. All new buildings have fire safety features that are a requirement of design approval, but these need to be maintained and used appropriately for the remainder of the building's operational life. The key development in UK post-construction regulation in recent years has been the shift towards self-regulation in which the onus is on duty holders (usually the employer) to assess and maintain an appropriate level of fire safety. This thesis documents the emergence, rationale, and operation of this system, and addresses key issues and concerns with the way it functions. In particular, the efficacy of the current UK approach to post-construction regulation depends on the capacity of duty holders to carry out suitable fire risk assessments, either themselves or by employing suitable fire risk assessors. However, this hinges not only on whether a sufficient number of assessors have sufficient competence, but also on the ability of the assessor to understand the intended functionality of the original fire safety design, approved in the pre-construction phase. In addition, the system relies on external oversight by the fire and rescue services for high-risk premises, and this thesis explores the way that this fire and rescue service role has evolved, and its current rationale for deciding which premises are sufficiently high risk to audit. Drawing on interviews with key actors such as fire safety engineers, fire safety managers, fire risk assessors, and fire safety enforcement officers, the thesis unravels this complex system of regulation. This analysis suggests that the system at present has internal inconsistencies that call into question its effectiveness, highlights the concerns of many of those central to the operation of the regulation, and provides evidence from serious fires and other regulatory breaches to support the conclusion that UK post-construction regulation could be more effective.

The present doctoral thesis focuses on the complex topic of regulation, looking in particular at that fragment of economic regulation which is the employment relationship. The research discusses regulatory theory and, as a starting point, elaborates on the concept of 'regulatory space', identifying arenas', sources and agency where regulatory phenomena can be investigated. In particular, deepening in the investigation, the research is focused on the contested terrain of working time, in a peculiar sector of the emerging labour market, which is the gig-economy. Combining legal, industrial relations, managerial and sociological discussions, the present work has the precise purpose to address the question of 'how do employment relations' actors influence the regulation of working time, both in general and in relation to the gig-economy context?' Agency and sources of regulation are investigated through analytical lenses, by adopting a theoretical and analytical framework able to take account of the multi-dimensional and multi-level aspects of the matter. The framework allows for a holistic look at regulation that encompasses the dimensions of legal regulation, negotiation (mandated and voluntary) and unilateralism. By focussing on the topic of working time in the gig-economy, the research addresses both a legal discussion on regulations, legal disputes and contracts; at the same time, it undertakes a qualitative empirical investigation conducted with key informants (at international, national and workplace level). The thesis contributes to the debate on regulation, as well as provides insights on the recent phenomena of the gig-economy. The results show how the contested terrain of working time regulation is fragmented in its agencies, sources and processes. The distribution of regulatory agency is of particular relevance because it reveals patterns of employers' domination and managerial 'manufactured ambiguity', which are tentatively counterbalanced by workers' resistance and organization.

State funding is currently provided to parties in most first and second wave democracies. For European political parties, state funding has come to constitute a majority of their income. Existing studies have found that state funding is linked with staffing, shifting structures of intra-party power (centralisation), and continued pursuit of constitutive function, i.e. electoral participation (survival). However, the results are far from unequivocal. In consequence, we have only a limited understanding of the ways in which state funds shape contemporary parties, and in particular, the extent to which state funding fosters or hinders the performance of political parties' crucial linkage function between citizens and the state. This thesis addresses this limitation, by analysing the impact of state funding in parties where this impact is most likely to manifest itself, namely in newly established (post-1980) and electorally minor parties (with less than 10 percent of the vote). The central research question is: How does state funding influence processes of staffing, centralisation, and pursuit of constitutive function (electoral participation) in newly established, electorally minor parties? State funding is defined as state benefits, comprising direct (e.g. annual grants), and indirect (e.g. party tax) state funds, and state constraints, comprising criteria related to access to and maintenance of state benefits. Staffing is defined as shifts to a party's number of staff, while centralisation refers to the process in which elites increase their share of seats in the (national) executive council at the expense of members. Pursuit of constitutive function (electoral participation) is defined as surpassing Pedersen's (1982) threshold of authorisation, i.e. exceeding ballot access requirements and presenting an electoral list. The thesis develops three hypotheses to guide the empirical analysis. Firstly, I argue that an increase in state funding sparks hiring processes (H1). Secondly, I argue that state funds and staff strengthen party elites, in turn enabling them to initiate and execute centralising reforms (H2). Finally, H3 contends that state funding and staff contribute to new minor parties' pursuit of constitutive function by facilitating their compliance with ballot access requirements and their presentation of an electoral list. A comparative case design is adopted to empirically explore H1, H2, and H3. The comparison takes place both across the 14 selected new minor parties in Norway and Italy, and within these parties, as the exploration of staffing, centralisation, and pursuit of constitutive function take place by means of analyses of individual party life cycles. A range of primary documents, 61 interviews, and secondary sources are used to analyse the research question. The main conclusion from the in-depth, exploratory analysis is that state funds do indeed shape new minor parties' staffing patterns, supporting H1. In a similar vein, state funds and staff strengthen elites, in turn enabling them to initiate centralising reforms, and - in some instances - state funds and staff contribute to execute centralising reforms, thus supporting H2. Finally, state funds and staff broadly contribute to new minor parties' ability to exceed ballot access requirements and present an electoral list in both Norwegian and Italian new minor parties, in line with H3.

This argument rests on the claim that i) local authority, ii) rites, iii) emotions, iv) ethics and v) action are co-constitutive, mediated somewhat by vi) intra-class divisions and that the outcome of this is vii) the local sacred. The claim is that the local level matters. Local authorities foster particular varieties of the sacred created over long periods. Each is the outcome of local rites at first contested, then affirmed and re-affirmed over time. Long-term diachronic and synchronic comparisons of two local authorities, using methods chosen pragmatically, divined two local authorities' contrasting 'religious lives'. One location demonstrates regular, large-scale and spectacular gatherings, which sustain a shared categorical distinction between a 'Dirty Old Dartford' and a 'Brighter and More Beautiful' future Dartford. Impatient Improvers displaced indignant Economisers, ethical distinctions which correspond only approximately to protagonists' class positions. The second location demonstrates quiescence today. However, though Uxbridge, by common consent, is identified as 'okay', it was once animated by fierce seventeenth century disputes over collection of market tolls and later by mid nineteenth-century Chartist attempts at 'vindication of the working man', articulated locally by Gerald Massey and John Bedford Leno in The Uxbridge Spirit of Freedom and Working Men's Vindicator. Conducted by Working Men (1849). I trace how pronounced ritualised disputes were then supplanted by quieter gatherings such as fruit and vegetable competitions, agricultural shows and horticultural displays. In this way an ordinary and quiet life of domesticity was treasured. Again, class was only part of the account of burgagers versus aristocrat, then artisan versus petty bourgeois (Steinmetz and Wright, 1989). To understand local authority-formation it is necessary to understand its varying ritual and sacred impetus. For this task I develop especially Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life ([1912] 1915) and more recent neo-Durkheimian writing. However, in considering the development of local authority Regulation Theory is acknowledged and the 'relative autonomy' thesis as applied locally (Smith, 1984) which also rests on historical analysis, but of class. But neither Smith nor other neo-Marxist regulationists investigate ritual and affect while much regulation theory is altogether ahistoric. I also find major discrepancies between Marxist regulation theory and the evidence; doubting - especially at the local level - links supposed to exist between regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation (cf. Peck and Tickell, 1992) claimed as necessary to accumulation. While the local actors studied could be said to have enacted class interests - and for this reason we must consider the contribution which neo-Marxist Regulation theory might make - the animation of an interest is treated instead using a neo-Durkheimian approach. Interests remain inert unless invested with passion and this seems unlikely without ritual enactment. The sacred has powerful constructive and destructive social potentiality (Durkheim, [1912] 1915) but it is notoriously difficult not only to define but also to identify. As will be demonstrated, local authorities do much to harness, demarcate and contain the local sacred by careful placement of special totemic objects in defined spaces. The elements of this model of local authority may be used to divine the local sacred empirically. It can be employed by researchers, town centre managers and the local population.

This thesis seeks to analyse the impact that operating in jurisdictions with different socio-economic and legal contexts can have on taxpayer regulation. This is done by comparing large corporate taxpayers in the UK and in Colombia using empirical qualitative methods to examine the alignment between factors at different levels that can influence corporate tax behaviour, and the premises of the co-operative compliance. The main conclusion is that the factors present in Colombia are contrary to introducing this type of regulation. This is because critically-negative perceptions of the administration -particularly of its trustworthiness- corporate tax governance weaknesses, tax-risk prone social norms, and contextual factors like a high perception of corruption create an environment adverse to this model's philosophy, which is highly dependent on interparty trust and taxpayer risk aversion and compliance-mindedness. Results from the UK show that co-operative compliance can contribute to improve taxpayer governance, strengthen risk-averse and/or compliance-minded taxation norms, and encourage perceptions of the administration that are favourable for voluntary compliance. However, the evidence also shows that operational difficulties can quickly erode taxpayer trust in the administration and on the value of collaboration, and jeopardise the progress made. This is the case with administrative business understanding, responsiveness, and providing of legal certainty while maintaining the model's legitimacy and answering demands for fair and responsible outcomes. Accordingly, this thesis proposes policy measures designed to facilitate the conditions necessary for establishing co-operative compliance in contexts like Colombia's, where shifting from adversarial, non-responsive regulation towards collaborative, responsive regulation could assist in improving voluntary compliance. Additionally, the author recommends policies for enhancing co-operative compliance's sustainability in jurisdictions like the UK, where the model is developed, but the progress it has achieved needs to be protected against the trust and compliance-eroding effects arising from the regulator's difficulties in satisfying taxpayer expectations.

In 1974 the Committee on Banking Regulations and Supervisory Practices was created and supported by the Bank for International Settlements. It was envisaged that a forum should be created so that regular interaction and co-operation could be achieved by member countries to improve financial stability and to enhance the quality of banking supervision. The aim of this research is to examine the risks and shortcomings posed by Basel III; specifically capital ratios, credit rating agencies and value-at-risk. These are based on the author's initial research that indicated these to be the most problematic. The research also aims to provide recommendations in order to improve Basel III. Additionally, the research includes Basel I and II to illustrate the developments, problems and milestones to create a wider appreciation of this area. The title of this research is tackled extensively in Chapters 4 and 5 where the risks and shortcomings are considered in the former and recommendations are put forward in the latter. This consists of changes that are taking place or have been suggested. It is argued that there is still much work to do, but there has been significant improvement(s). The main contribution to knowledge and understanding the field in the form of originality is found throughout the research in its treatment of the subject matter and can also be viewed substantially in Chapter 5. The recommendations can be summarised below. Capital Ratios 1. A longer implementation period for liquidity coverage ratio and high quality liquid assets. 2. A longer implementation period for high quality liquid assets in a European context. 3. High quality liquid assets need re-categorisation. 4. The creation of a dedicated liquidity risk management team. Credit Rating Agencies 1. International Organisation of Securities Commissions model and more enforceability through regulators and governments. 2. Tighter regulation through the Basel regulations. 3. The creation of a public credit rating agency. 4. Uniformity on whether agencies offer opinions or advice and more accountability through the Basel regulations. Value-at-Risk 1. Research and investment to improve credit value adjustment value-at-risk. 2. The use of all three conventional approaches - Analytical Variance/Covariance, Historical, and Monte Carlo. 3. Penalising those who manipulate value-at-risk to turn products/positions from high risk to low risk.

In resource-restricted micro-firms, there is limited opportunity for owner-managers (for they are generally one-and-the-same) to maintain their regulatory awareness and implement changes as required. The challenge is achieving this while also managing almost all aspects of the business, including dealing with customers. Given that regulations are far reaching and constrain the operations of firms, regulatory understanding and compliance are essential to running a successful (legal) business. This thesis uses an (unusual) balanced approach to explore both the impact of 'burden' (which is widely investigated for small firms) and 'value' of regulation (which is not) on under-researched micro-firms. The core of this thesis comprises three papers, which each explore a particular aspect (knowledge, performance, and compliance) using multivariate techniques across several models, using newly collected survey data from English accommodation providers. From this a number of insights are made relating to the role of trade-associations in disseminating information, the accuracy of owner-manager self-assessment, the actual level of regulatory knowledge, and the role of value and burden on performance and compliance. Such findings extend and reconcile prior literature, which thus far has been limited by burden-led approaches, one-dimensional measures, and contradictory conclusions. Building upon these insights, practical recommendations are made which extend beyond a simple "more, better information" to include a cross-association campaign (for trade-associations remain best placed to address issues identified, despite their current apparent failings and in the absence of an alternative). The recommendations comprise better communication and networking, improvements to self-assessment skills, as well as a focus on the value (i.e. the benefits) of regulation, and enhancing firm performance (using an appropriate performance measure). Finally, a number of potential future directions for research, continuing to use the data collected herein and original research projects are also identified and discussed.