Is unipolarity sustainable? The dominant perspective among international relations scholars is that the United States is in decline relative to China, and that much of this decline is the result of globalization and the hegemonic burdens the United States bears to sustain globalization. According to an alternative perspective, however, globalization and hegemony reinforce unipolarity. This study tests these perspectives against each other and finds significant support for the alternative perspective. The results suggest that unipolarity is not a temporary aberration, but rather a deeply embedded condition with the potential to persist well into this century.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Marilyn Young, Florida State University, College of Communication, Dept. of Communication. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 14, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of London, 1996. / Title from e-book title screen (viewed October 15, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-292) and index.

This thesis aims to explain the change in developing countries’ intellectual property legislation as a response to their Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) obligations. When the TRIPs Agreement was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade talks, developing countries resisted its adoption because of their different domestic norms and traditions relating to intellectual property rights and concerns about the administrative costs of implementing the agreement. Nevertheless, when the TRIPs Agreement came into force, almost all developing countries altered their domestic intellectual property laws, and many did so prior to the deadline for implementation and/or adopted more rigorous intellectual property rules than required by TRIPs. That many developing countries have adjusted their domestic intellectual property law poses the puzzle that this thesis seeks to explain. It does so by testing two competing explanations: the role of external pressures (both in terms of great power coercion and legalisation of international institutions) and domestic politics. This thesis combines a survey of the timing and quality of 102 WTO developing country members’ legislation across patents, copyrights, and trademarks, with detailed case studies of changes to intellectual property legislation in India and Indonesia, which are both unlikely cases for compliance, but reflect different domestic political circumstances. The empirical findings demonstrate that external pressures cannot provide a satisfactory explanation, as policy change occurred both with the presence and in the absence of these pressures. In order to fully understand the change in developing countries’ intellectual property legislation, it is also necessary to analyse the preferences of domestic actors (societal and governmental) and how they interact. By arguing this, this thesis thus suggests the importance of taking domestic politics into account to explain change in developing countries’ domestic legislation as a response to inconvenient international obligations.

The concept of order in international politics, despite its very frequent use in all strands of ir literature, is seldom explicitly addressed as an object of analytical reflection and definition, and remains often opaque. This research aims to clarify the nature of order as a concept within ir theory, by highlighting its constitutive elements and by positioning it within the horizon of current political-philosophical and sociological discussions. This thesis starts with a literature review showing the limitedness of the ways in which order is employed as a concept in many ir theoretical works, while underscoring its critical problematisation as the main path towards its clarification. Following and integrating Nicholas Rengger’s seminal work on the topic, this research argues that the concept of order, which entails the double nature of a descriptive/explanatory but also normative account of reality, has to be understood within a philosophical discussion of the political, lying between the two poles of political theology (Carl Schmitt) and the sociological theory of secularisation (Jürgen Habermas). While introducing and discussing the two authors, this thesis illustrates the roles which they have assumed in inspiring ir theoretical work (in critical theory), pointing at the limits of their established readings within the discipline and offering new perspectives, which should essentially rely on a more direct critical politicisation of the sacred. This thesis proceeds with an exploration of the problem of order in the modern condition, through a reconstruction and a discussion of the common Weberian genealogy in both Schmitt and Habermas, focusing on the importance of the sociology of religion for the conceptualisation of the political in modernity (Schmitt) and of the concepts of rationality and rationalisation (Habermas) respectively. Against this background, a critique of the Habermasian view on secularisation is developed, as Habermas’s argument appears to be an incomplete answer to the problem of the symbolic relations between the religious and the political, and hence of his conceptualisation of political order, a problem which is also reflected at the level of international politics. Note: translations of original texts in this thesis are done by the author unless otherwise specified.

Through official and academic circles a particular understanding of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) had spread: an almost devastated terrorist group whose interests in profiting from drug trafficking clouded its political objectives. Its transnational networks were either underestimated, perceiving they didn’t offer much to the organization; or overestimated, believing that every Latin American agent on the Left of the political spectrum was part of a conspiracy against the Colombian state. The dissertation proposes a different narrative to explain the importance of transnational networks and structures, especially how they may serve as a base for FARC to survive. The Colombian insurgency is here addressed as a typical case of a kind of organization in which political and criminal interests are blended. It further develops the concept of ‘commercial insurgencies’, opposing a vision of the insurgency as a monolithic entity, to explain it as a system of interconnected individuals with diverse functions and interests who constitute its three dimensions: political, military and criminal. It is here argued that commercial insurgencies exploit specific elements through the environment to embed its nodes beyond the borders of a single state. These include sympathy from individuals, support from national governments, connections with political and social organizations, alliances with armed actors, the exploitation of empty spaces, and the secretive placement of nodes. Common single-variable explanations to the embedment of insurgents, such as support from a foreign allied government, are insufficient as an objective account of this phenomenon. Furthermore, given certain environmental processes, survival of insurgency elements may contribute to the reconstitution and re-emergence of the organization. In this sense the challenge of the counterinsurgent is two-fold: the insurgency is multidimensional, and it tends to be transnational. Consequently, for an offensive to be successful it needs to address all the dimensions simultaneously and to control the effects of elements existing beyond borders.

Since the reformation of the Chinese economy, two notable trends have developed. First, the growing prominence of multilateral economic regimes (MERs) on the political agenda of Beijing has propelled deepened engagements between Chinese policy actors and institutions, and the agencies of MERs. This development is accompanied by a second trend, which is a growing dynamism in China’s economic diplomacy within the multilateral arenas. This dynamism is reflected in the evolving national preferences and approaches for multilateral economic negotiations, from outright resistance to gradual flexibility, and in some cases, acceptance. The simultaneous and parallel developments of these two trends stem a curiosity on whether a causal relationship exist between the deepened China-MER engagements and the dynamism of China’s economic diplomacy. Has Beijing’s open-door policy to global economic integration opened new windows of opportunity for the MER agencies to influence China’s economic diplomacy and its preference formation? In what way(s) and/or in which capacities can the agencies of MERs assert influence on China’s economic diplomacy preference formation? Under what conditions is this form of external influence successful? What are the long-run implications of the deepened China-MER engagements on Beijing’s economic diplomacy preference formation structure? What does the China-MER relationship tell us about China’s economic diplomacy preference formation in the 21st century? Although China’s partake in the international political economy has received much scholarly attention, few studies have attempted to decode China’s economic diplomacy preference formation, and even fewer have investigated the important nexus between the China-MER relationship and the behaviours of Chinese economic diplomacy. This thesis is a response to the knowledge deficit in these regards. By examining China’s participation in the multilateral climate change, and trade 4 negotiations, the thesis addresses the primary research question, how do multilateral economic regimes and their agencies influence China’s economic diplomacy preference formation? The study finds that the MER agencies do affect Chinese economic diplomacy preference formation. However, their influence peaks at an absorption level whereby Chinese preferences adapt to external preferences but not to the extent of reforming traditional principles and beliefs. The comparatively more effective ways of asserting influence for the MER agencies is through a costs-and-benefits calculus, information dissemination, shuttle diplomacy proximity talks, and informal negotiation practices. In general, Chinese policy actors do not refute the influence of the MER agencies; rather they absorb and adapt to it. In addition, the MER agencies assert influence at different stages of the preference formation, and over time, implicitly establish themselves as integrated policy actors in Beijing. On the whole, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding about how, why, and when international linkages matter in China’s economic diplomacy, and to the extent of driving preference transformation. The study provides useful analytic lenses that flesh out the variety of functions the MER agencies have in shaping and informing China’s national preferences and negotiation approaches. At the same time, it offers a fuller description of how the Chinese policy actors and institutions respond to (implicit) external interventions in its policy processes. Consequently, this thesis is a significant contribution that adds value to the scholarly debates and knowledge-building about one of the most important political and economic phenomenon of our time.

This project interrogates how the biopolitical rationale conditions our contemporary subjectivities, politics and ethics, in order to critique the ethical justifications of technology driven practices of political violence put forth in present counter-terrorism struggles. Employing the work of Hannah Arendt, and her insights into life-politics and technology to construct a biopolitical lens that adds to traditional Foucaultian analyses of biopolitics, my original contribution to knowledge is thus twofold in a) elaborating core aspects of an Arendtian theory of biopolitics, with which then to b) identify the theoretical underpinnings of biopolitically informed forms of ethics in emerging practices of technology-driven political violence. While a number of scholars have drawn on Arendt for the analysis of the biopolitical dimensions of contemporary violence, a systematic independent account of her work on biopolitical trajectories and technologies remains under-developed in current scholarship. In this work, I suggest that the Arendtian life-politics account allows us to recognise a duality at work in the biopolitical shaping of subjectivities: the politicisation and technologisation of zoe, on one hand, and the ‘zoeficiation’ of politics on the other. It is this duality that conditions the human, politics, and the role and justifcations of violence in modernity. Within these two umbrella categories, the project addresses the equally under-examined but pressing question of the ethics of technology-driven modalities of political violence in a contemporary context and argues that a biopolitically informed rationale of ethics occludes the possibility to engage with ethics as a perpetual and ever-anew arising and political demand that must be taken responsibility for. The analysis in this work unfolds in two parts to draw out and critically address the biopolitically informed ethical rationales of political violence. The first part engages closely with Arendt’s work to establish the theoretical framework of biopolitics for the project’s central analysis. The second part then departs from an exposition of Arendt’s work and draws on this framework to highlight and critique the implications of biopolitically infused subjectivities, politics, violence and ethics.

This thesis considers two interrelated themes: the emergence of aggregate volatility from idiosyncratic shocks and optimisation under incomplete information when, for reasons of strategic complementarity, agents are interested in both simple and weighted averages of their competitors' actions. I first develop a model of Bayesian social learning over a network. Unlike earlier literature that abandons one of the assumptions that agents (a) act repeatedly; (b) are rational; and (c) face strategic complementarities, I obtain tractability for arbitrarily large networks by also assuming that agents do not know the full structure of the network, but do know its link distribution. An AR(1) process for the underlying state induces an ARMA(1,1) process for the hierarchy of expectations, with current and lagged weighted averages of agents' idiosyncratic shocks entering at an aggregate level. For sufficiently irregular networks, these shocks do not wash out, thus causing persistent aggregate effects. I next apply this to firms' price-setting problem, demonstrating that even when firms possess complete price exibility, network learning induces considerable persistence in aggregate variables following monetary and real shocks and that network shocks plausibly represent a source of aggregate economic volatility. Finally, I explore price setting under monopolistic competition when facing TransLog preferences. I solve explicitly for a firm's best-response pricing rule under full information and show that in partial equilibrium under incomplete information, larer firms will focus on their marginal costs while smaller firms will place more weight on changes in consumer preferences and competitors' prices. In general equilibrium, I estimate the effect of two distinct sources of real rigidity that emerge from TransLog preferences: the well-known curvature in demand and the dramatic increase in complexity of firms' signal-extraction problems. With non-uniform preferences, the model represents another channel through which idiosyncratic shocks can cause aggregate volatility.

This thesis examines the contribution of Truth Commissions (TCs) to national reconciliation and peace-building in post-conflict societies, via the case studies of Sierra Leone and Peru. While TCs have become a rapidly proliferating form of transitional justice, the thesis argues that there is still insufficient understanding of the functions and impact of TCs and the contexts within which they are established. In contrast to earlier Cold War TCs, which were established during regime transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy, recent hybrid Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), as in Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Peru, were established in contexts of protracted social conflict and civil war. Whereas earlier Cold War TCs, were set up by domestic civil society as instruments of human rights against strong states, hybrid TRCs focused on democratization and peace-building in fragile states and often with global support. This thesis offers a typology of TCs, distinguishing participatory TRCs and didactic TCs from recent hybrid TRCs. It that hybrid TRCs integrate rigorous fact-finding and public testimony, focusing their work on the civic sphere. The thesis offers a theoretical conception of national reconciliation. Utilizing extensive qualitative research carried out in Sierra Leone and Peru, the thesis argues that hybrid TRCs in Sierra Leone and Peru had an important normative and discursive impact on procedural reconciliation. In both contexts, hybrid TRCs mobilized civil society, raised awareness, and altered norms of engagement. At the same time, the thesis argues that mechanisms of transitional justice are endogenous to their contexts. The nature of the conflicts, particularly a long backdrop of political and economic marginalization, the legacies of violence in remote areas, and the lack of implementation of hybrid TRCs’ recommendations, undermined their contributions. The thesis concludes that durable reconciliation requires a deeper level of public commitment and social justice. It raises implications for future research and practice, specifically the risk of institutional overstretch in current holistic transitional justice and the importance of a long-term transformative approach.