Congratulations to Claudia Badulescu and Johannes Rothe from the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences for receiving their doctorates in January 2024, after unanimous decisions from the jury.
Claudia Badulescu defended her thesis on The Europeanisation of post-communist administrations: The Commission as a driver? A study of the European Commission’s efforts to support administrative reform in Romania, Serbia and Moldova between 2000-2020 on 24 January 2024. The thesis set out to analyse the role of the European Commission as a driver of administrative reform in three countries - Romania, Serbia, Moldova - that carried distinctive legacies of public administration and state tradition into the post-communist era. The research covers a lengthy time period of 20 years and a number of reform packages. This facilitated an analysis of the co-evolution of the Commission's changing policy tool kit (PAR Toolkit), change in the status of these countries, and domestic developments within all three countries.
Read Claudia Badulescu's thesis in Cadmus.
Johannes Rothe defended his thesis on Alternative Orders. Governance Under Insurgency in Syria's Idlib, 2011-21 on 24 January 2024, with external examiners Professors Hanna Pfeifer (Goethe University, Frankfurt) and Thomas Pierret (CNRS, Aix-en-Provence). Professor Agnès Favier chaired the defence, with Professor Jennifer Welsh as supervisor. The jury praised the candidate for producing an original work that succeeded on several levels: extensive fieldwork conducted in Arabic in the region; a sophisticated theoretical framework and novel typology of possible governance outcomes; a rigorous research design; and rich empirical findings. Johannes and the jury engaged in a lively discussion about the different factors that shape rebel and civilian behaviour in situations of civil conflict, and possible future research that could build on his significant contribution to understanding how governance emerges in contexts of civil war.
Read Johannes Rothe's thesis in Cadmus.