Thesis Chapters Presentation 2026

PROGRAMME

Bob Kasper J  MERTENS

Asylum determination in Italy: a relational approach to decision-making in the Territorial Commissions

The chapter analyses how administrative decision-making on applications for international protection is shaped inside the Italian asylum system. Focusing on the Territorial Commissions, it traces their institutional development, the sources of variation between them, and the influence exercised by institutional actors, namely the National Commission for the Right to Asylum and the immigration tribunals. Drawing on four months of immersion at a Territorial Commission, semi-structured interviews, and internal decision-making data, it offers an empirical account of how the system functions in practice and how it has evolved within the broader context of European practical harmonisation. By adopting a relational approach, it shows that Territorial Commissions are shaped by institutional actors that interact with the asylum offices and thereby enable and constrain their day-to-day work and, ultimately, shape administrative decision-making. The chapter, as part of a wider dissertation on the impact of asylum authorities on asylum determination, contributes to understanding administrative decision-making not as a uniform process, but as one driven and shaped by layered institutional pressures, organisational variation, and the discretion of those who decide.

Giovanni Tommaso ROBERTO

Human Rights Due Diligence as a Labour Law Instrument

The chapter, second of the thesis, examines human rights due diligence (HRDD) as a regulatory response to labour exploitation in global value chains, with particular attention to agri-food value chains and to the role of large grocery retailers in its implementation. The chapter asks whether HRDD, as codified in international soft law, corporate practice and emerging national legislation, can be read in a labour-oriented key capable of confronting the decent work deficits in global value chains.

The chapter proceeds in three sections. Section 1 reconstructs the three transnational soft-law sources of HRDD (the ILO Tripartite Declaration, the OECD Guidelines, and the United Nations Guiding Principles) and reads them against the five essential features elaborated in doctrine for a labour-oriented reading of HRDD. Section 2 turns to HRDD in corporate practice by assessing the current human rights due diligence cycle and the presence of international labour standards as substantive content of voluntary HRDD documents such as codes of conduct, private labour standards, sustainability reports and compliance disclosure documents, and international framework agreements. It then looks at the sectoral diffusion of HRDD across industries and finally turns to the European food retail sector as an illustrative case. Section 3 compares the main ideal types of national mandatory HRDD (mHRDD)

legislation along the dichotomy of transparency and duty of vigilance against the findings on European retailers and articulates the link between international and national law operated through mHRDD. The chapter concludes by tracing the legislative path towards the European Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

Sandro Nicolas SCHRAUDOLPH

Backlash to External Conflict - Statistical Findings

This chapter empirically examines the relationship between international conflict participation and domestic backlash in initiating states, focusing on protest intensity and broader forms of unrest. Using two complementary datasets—a yearly country-year dataset (DB1) and a monthly country-month dataset (DB2)—the analysis evaluates the central hypothesis (H1), namely that domestic backlash varies systematically over the temporal progression of conflict, alongside a set of conditional hypotheses (H2–H9) concerning conflict characteristics, institutional contexts, and economic conditions.

The results provide partial but robust support for H1. While yearly models (DB1) indicate elevated unrest during active conflict periods, these temporal effects are sensitive to measurement choices and limited by aggregation. By contrast, the monthly analysis (DB2) reveals clearer temporal dynamics: protest intensity increases prior to conflict onset, follows a non-linear and cyclical trajectory during active conflict, and declines after conflict termination. No evidence is found for a short-term rally effect.

Beyond temporal patterns, the findings highlight the importance of structural and contextual factors. Strong support emerges for casualty sensitivity (H3), with higher battle deaths consistently increasing protest intensity, and for military spending trade-offs (H7), indicating that the domestic costs of war fuel mobilization. Conflict outcomes also matter (H4), as defeat significantly increases protest activity, while coalition participation reduces overall backlash. Democratic opportunity structures (H5) and repression (H6) further shape protest dynamics: institutional openness facilitates protest, whereas repression increases the likelihood of violent escalation. By contrast, economic downturns (H8) and electoral cycles (H9) do not exhibit consistent effects.

Overall, the analysis demonstrates that domestic backlash to international conflict is driven less by short-term fluctuations than by the interaction of conflict severity, institutional environments, and resource allocation. These findings underscore the importance of integrating temporal and structural perspectives in explaining protest dynamics during international conflict.

Chiara SERIOLI

A Pentad Framework of Indigenous Recognition: Understanding the Conditions behind Constitutional Referendums in Chile (2022-2023) and Australia (2023)

As Indigenous social movements developed in the 20th century, their revendications contributed to new waves of reforms, aiming to counter the effects of centuries of colonialism, violence, and ongoing structural inequalities. While reforms became widespread in regions like Latin America, often described as "nuevo constitucionalismo latinoamericano", not all countries have constitutionally recognized Indigenous Peoples. This has been notably the case for Chile and, beyond Latin America, Australia, where recent referendums on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Peoples were rejected (in Chile in 2022 and 2023, in Australia in 2023). This chapter explores how Chile and Australia have interpreted recognition of Indigenous Peoples prior to constitutional referendums and how they have translated international provisions on Indigenous rights into their legal systems. In doing so, it develops an analytical framework that disaggregates recognition of Indigenous Peoples into five dimensions: formal (non-constitutional) recognition, land rights, political rights, cultural rights, and the enabling mechanisms that ensure their effective exercise. Through a comparative legal analysis of these most-different-cases, the chapter identifies gaps, mismatches, and patterns of incorporation across the five dimensions. Findings suggest that, while Indigenous political rights represent the most critical dimension of recognition in Australia, contestation over Indigenous land rights and emerging securitization processes have been central in Chile. The chapter has both theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, it rejects understanding recognition as merely granted or not granted, but rather conceives it as a multi-dimensional and social construction. Practically, by identifying the legal conditions leading to the constitutional referendums, it helps anticipate why specific configurations of constitutional recognition were contested, politically mobilized, and ultimately rejected.

Daniele STRACQUADANIO

From ice to water: Exploring the peaceful thawings of non-international frozen conflicts from a quantitative perspective

In recent decades, separatist conflicts have often produced incomplete peace processes between de facto states — such as Abkhazia, Transnistria, or Kosovo — and their parent states, leaving these disputes unresolved and prone to renewed instability. Despite growing scholarly interest in frozen conflicts, existing research does not offer a comprehensive examination of the factors that facilitate, or hamper, their peaceful transformation.

Employing a large-N analysis, this study identifies unit-level and systemic-level conditions affecting the likelihood of peaceful thawing in non-international frozen conflicts. At the unit level, while high recent conflict intensity and power preponderance independently increase the likelihood of peaceful thawing, the interaction of the two variables significantly diminishes their positive effect on a negotiated settlement. At the systemic level, the presence of mediators and peacekeeping operations fosters peace progress. On the other hand, external patronage of de facto states hinders the resolution.

Francesca ZAMBELLI

Decentering Brussels: Domestic Agency and the Co-production of EU Security Sector Reform in Georgia

The chapter examines the EU’s most comprehensive Security Sector Reform (SSR) initiative in Georgia — the EU4 Security, Accountability and Fight Against Crime in Georgia programme (SAFE, 2019–2025) — through an assemblage lens.

This approach allows me to illustrate how the heterogeneous elements that characterize this initiative — people, documents, technologies, and localized practices — are brought and held together to create a functioning security sector reform, as well as how frictions and dissonances that emerge in the process can undermine such efforts.

Drawing on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with EU officials, Georgian security providers, oversight bodies, civil society representatives, and implementing partners, the chapter challenges the view of EU SSR assistance as a unidirectional transfer of security knowledge and procedures from Brussels to the periphery.

The analysis shows that the SAFE programme was not a linear implementation of donor blueprints, but rather a site of co-production, where security knowledge and governance orders are performatively constituted through the practices and interactions between heterogeneous local and EU-level actors.

By tracing the life of the SAFE programme, the chapter reveals the everyday practices through which various domestic actors, rather than passively acquiescing to externally driven SSR reforms, actively negotiate, adapt, or resist the security knowledge, procedures, and structures transferred by the EU, impacting the outcomes of SSR initiatives. Such local practices include quietly reinterpreting programme objectives, openly contesting EU norms, and abolishing key oversight institutions.

By applying assemblage thinking to EU SSR assistance in the Eastern Neighbourhood — a gap in the existing literature — the chapter contributes to debates on EU security actorness, on the international-local interaction in SSR, and on the conditions under which externally driven SSR initiatives succeed or fail.