The study has been conducted in order to gain an understanding on t he causes of the complexities of sustainable peace in the D.R.C. What is the ro le of the main actors in the DRC peace process? Secondly factors leading to the elusive search for peace in DRC. Finally we will look at the DRC history from 1960 to 2002 from the socio-economic and political aspect to the government by thieves and dictatorial leadership. Series of violent conflict started with the rise into power from Laurent Kabila till the succession of his son Joseph Kabila. They are various causes that led to the conflicts in the DRC, which were caused by unlawful succession of its leaders, lack of political will of its leaders to serve the people of Congo, ethnicity and another big problem it is the size of the country causing a problem to central government in exercising its autonomy fully. Fina lly t he DRC mineral riches have been attracting external forces that came and exploited illegally the resources of the country. This further fueled the conflict. The persistence of the war brought about threat to political, economical and social stability to the Congolese government. This study focuses on factors leading to the elusive search for peace in DRC. The study further found that solid minerals have been linked to recent African conflicts. The center of our argument here will be, to analyze the impact of natural resources on the DRC conflict and to analyze the role of MNC's in the DRC conflict: peace broken or encouraging or sustaining the conflict. / Thesis (M.A.(Politics and International Relations) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2012

This thesis is an exploration of China’s bilateral foreign economic policy (FEP) towards Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia in the open era. It expects to answer the central question that what motivated China’s bilateral economic cooperation with small partners? Is it for political domination, or is it for national prosperity? Drawing upon the evidence from primary materials, this thesis challenges the hypothesis that China, as a rising economic power, intends to generate political gains from the creation of trade asymmetry of small partners. In contrast, this thesis argues that China’s bilateral economic cooperation with individual ASEAN members is for the pursuit of prosperity; in this process, the shared concerns of Beijing’s management of bilateral economic relations with individual ASEAN members are to raise the national income and to sharpen the national competitiveness in exports. In other words, Beijing’s FEP at bilateral level has the very strong implication for national economic development in general. Contrary to the realist expectations about foreign trade, this thesis shows that China did not take initiatives in bilateral economic cooperation to ensure the advantageous political gains; in addition, this thesis also finds that different political relations did not seem to affect the implementation of China’s bilateral FEP towards individual partners. By revealing China’s preference order of foreign economic cooperation at different levels, this thesis also argues that the calculations of welfare effects, rather than the consideration of relative gains, is more likely to be the determinant of China’s foreign economic behaviors.

This thesis seeks to analyse and explain the role of the African Union (AU) in managing intra-state conflicts in Africa. It first identifies the key reasons for the establishment of the African Peace and Security Architecture, namely the failure of the UN and the international community to intervene in remote conflicts in Africa throughout the 1990s and the reluctance of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. Then, it points to the gap between the optimism of the AU’s founders and its implementation record: in fact, the AU’s capability to stop conflicts in Africa has produced mixed results at best. Focusing on three different case studies – Burundi, Darfur, and Somalia – this thesis unravels the key factors behind the AU’s performance in promoting peace and security. More specifically, it argues that the AU’s effectiveness to achieve its goals is contingent upon four conditions: the internal process, the mandate of the mission, the commitment of AU member states, and external support. By developing this argument, this thesis highlights the importance of both organisational processes and external factors with the view to contributing to the general literature on effectiveness of international and regional organisations in managing intra-state conflicts.

China’s rise has put it on a trajectory to overtake the international system’s dominant powers – the United States of America (US) and the European Union (EU) – at some point this century. Some observers conclude that the historical pattern of such transitions catalysing great power conflict is likely to continue with China’s ascendancy. Power-transition theory (PTT) anticipates that the established powers will strive to maintain the status quo by extending their relative power advantage over the rising challenger and curtailing its power where possible. Yet the actual responses of the US and the EU have not conformed to these expectations; instead, they have both largely welcomed China’s rise and sought to integrate it into the international system. We can see that policymakers continually express interpretations of China’s rise which we would not expect to find if the logic of PTT prevailed. This raises a question: How have different interpretations of the ‘rise of China’ influenced the foreign policies of the US and the EU towards China? I argue that varied perceptions of the implications of China’s rise have shaped policy preferences in ways that are inconsistent with concerns over the threat of an impending power-transition. Policy discourse at key junctures in bilateral relations revealed that ‘China’s rise’ is actually a contested notion and that the different interpretations in play at that point in time affect the policymaking process in ways that cannot be accounted for from state-centric perspectives. While China’s growing power and relations with these actors have been widely studied, little attention is paid to how competing interpretations of China’s rise impact upon policymakers’ preferences and the eventual responses. Despite the growing prevalence of threat rhetoric (at least in the US), China’s rise is often conceptualised by key policymakers as presenting considerable economic and political opportunities. In the EU, perceptions of economic and political opportunities have not been challenged by threat interpretations and thus its overall approach has been informed by the former with little substantive debate amongst key actors.

Indonesia’s cooperation in maritime security initiatives is vitally important because half of the world’s trading goods and oil pass through Indonesian waters including the Straits of Malacca, the Strait of Sunda and the Strait of Lombok. Consequently, Indonesia’s active engagement in maritime cooperation is a matter of some import for the international community. However, Indonesia’s varying participation across maritime cooperation arrangements is puzzling. Indonesia has joined some of these cooperation initiatives and opted out of others despite the presence of United States leadership. This thesis addresses this puzzle by carrying out a comparative analysis of 26 cooperation arrangements using government documents and elite interviews in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and New York. In addition to addressing an empirical puzzle, this thesis also contributes to the theoretical debate on international cooperation. The International Relations literature on cooperation tends to focus on great power bargaining. Whether, why and how middle powers decide to join international initiatives over which they have little influence has been overlooked. The implication of this study suggests that neither the calculation of relative gains as argued by neorealists, the constructivist expectation regarding the importance of shared identity, the neorealist or the neoliberal argument on the role of hegemonic leadership nor the bureaucratic politics approach emphasis on competing government actors’ preferences can explain the variation in Indonesia’s engagement with cooperation initiatives. I argue that Indonesia’s decision to cooperate is formed by the calculation of absolute gains. Indonesia cooperated as long as the benefits of cooperation exceeded the costs.

The thesis analyses the development of the concept of flexible integration in the 1996-97 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) of the European Union (EU) and outlines an array of ideas, interests and issues at stake for the actors in the negotiations. The thesis has two objectives: (1) to explain the 1996-97 IGC process of negotiation which led to the institutionalisation of flexible integration in the Amsterdam Treaty and (2) to analyse the substance of the flexibility debate from the early 1970s to the present day. The research aims to show that flexibility comes to the fore whenever at least one of the following five issues is debated on the European level: (1) economic and monetary union, (2) free movement, (3) defence, (4) enlargement and (5) the exclusion of recalcitrant member states. The 1996-97 IGC was exceptional in that it met all the five criteria which have a tendency to trigger the flexibility debate. The thesis has three basic lines of argumentation. The first relates to the ICC process, the argument being that the 1996-97 IGC negotiations on flexibility were m incremental learning process where the basic positions of the member governments illustrated some continuity, but the specific positions of the negotiators fluctuated with the dynamics of the negotiations. The second line of argumentation relates to the concept of flexibility itself (substance), the argument being that one of the main difficulties with the flexibility negotiations was that flexibility meant different things to different people. Member governments did not necessarily agree about its purpose. The final strand of argumentation relates to the key players in the flexibility debate. Although all member states, large and small, played an important role in the IGC process, the most influential actors in the 1996-97 IGC were the civil servants of the respective Presidencies and the Council Secretariat.

China has become heavily dependent on Australia for resource supply as a result of her rapid economic growth over the 2000s. Stable and reliable resource supply from Australia has become a matter of national economic security. Yet, China’s resource relationship with Australia is grown out of a delicate geopolitical framework, because Australia is not only a resource superpower but also a staunch U.S. ally in the Asia-Pacific region. Despite extensive economic interdependence between the two countries, China faces a huge challenge to build a genuinely reliable and close resource partnership with Australia. This study discusses how China has pro actively sought to shape or adapt to the evolving power dynamics behind the bilateral resource politics over the 2000s. It provides a relevant case study on the resource politics between a rising great power and a resource superpower under the condition of complex interdependence. China’s search for resource security has become the primary goal of her policy towards Australia in the 2000s. However, China’s engagement with Australia has led to an uneasy resource partnership with growing competitive dynamics and constant power struggle. The political context of the resource ties between China and Australia has changed dramatically towards the end of the 2000s, as the systemic impact of China’s rise has resulted in a deterioration in the strategic dimension of China-Australia relations. This has in turn created considerable constraints and uncertainties in China’s resource cooperation with Australia. Both the difficult resource investment ties and the inequitable iron ore trade relationship show the limits of this resource partnership. Australia’s approach to this critical resource relationship with China remains ad hoc, transactional and oriented to short-term interest maximisation. Despite her growing power, China remains the more vulnerable party in the uneven resource interdependence with Australia. The Chinese have sought to improve their power position vis-à-vis the Australians; but domestic economic constraints and internal fragmentation have considerably undermined Chinese efforts to gain the upper hand in the bilateral resource politics. China has to navigate cautiously between power and vulnerability in her engagement with Australia.

In an increasingly interconnected global political sphere, Islamist political actors have undergone a process of transformation, notwithstanding the self-referential character of their ideology. The present study assesses to what extent international norms have influenced this process. The argument is that these norms challenge the self-referential character of Islamism and its communitarian assumptions. The thesis initially provides an overview of Islamist political theory with reference to Muḥammad ʿAbduh, Sayid Quṭb, Bāqir al-Ṣadr and Ruhollah Khomeini, and argues that Islamism is not a particularly original critique of liberalism, but can be considered a form of communitarianism. The study then focuses on the case of Hezbollah to substantiate the claim that international norms influenced Islamist politics. It conducts an empirical analysis of four instances of Hezbollah’s interaction with international norms. The norms in question are non-combatant immunity, human rights, and maintenance of international peace, whereas the fourth example provides a more general overview on the impact of international norms on Hezbollah’s political language. The case study shows that by interacting with international actors and state institutions, and by looking for legitimacy for its actions - not only vis-à-vis its community - but also within the international normative system; Hezbollah’s political identity was modified by the influence of international norms. International norms then challenge the communitarian assumptions underlying Islamist politics. They are important factors in the socialisation of Islamist actors within the international normative system and become constitutive elements of the political identity of Islamist movements such as Hezbollah.

After its transition to democracy and decolonisation in the mid-1970s, Portugal’s main external focus shifted from Africa and the Atlantic to Europe. However, past priorities continued to occupy an important place in its foreign policy. This thesis assesses the impact of European Union (EU) membership on Portuguese foreign policy by focusing on relations with Angola and Mozambique, the two largest former colonies of Portugal in sub-Saharan Africa. The thesis uses the concept of “Europeanisation”, comprising three relevant dimensions for examining possible changes in the foreign policy of an EU member state: national adaptation (a “top-down” process), national projection (“bottom-up”), and identity formation (socialisation process). In order to better control for the influence of other variables (beyond the EU) on Portuguese policy, the concept of Europeanisation is framed within a foreign policy analysis approach. The study focuses on the period between 1978 and 2010, and covers three policy areas: external trade, development aid and political-diplomatic issues. The application of this analytical framework produced significant evidence of Europeanisation, both in its dimension of national adaptation and, chiefly, national projection. The analysis also revealed variations across policy areas and country cases, with the strongest evidence of Europeanisation found for the domain of trade and for the case of Mozambique in general. These findings give support to studies stressing that EU membership “strengthened” Portugal’s postcolonial relations, but also add a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the EU’s impact on the national level.

Although the conundrums of why states falter, how they are reconstituted, and under what conditions war may be constitutive of state-making have received much scholarly attention, they are still hotly debated by academics and policy analysts. Advancing a novel conceptual framework and analysing diverse Somali state trajectories between 1960 and 2010, this thesis adds to those debates both theoretically and empirically. The core issues examined are why and how Somaliland managed to establish state-run structures of governance, how far its development paralleled or diverged from past Somali state trajectories, and under what conditions violent conflict advanced or abridged the polities’ varied state-making projects. Drawing on diverse strands of literature on state-building, nationalism and warfare, the thesis develops an original analytical frame to better understand processes of state-making and state-breaking. It argues not only for the need of ‘bringing the nation back in’, but proposes to conceptualize state trajectories in terms of changing levels of institutional and socio-cognitive standardization. Scrutinizing received wisdom, the empirical research presented finds, amongst others, that Somali state trajectories have been less unique than commonly claimed, and proposes that Somaliland’s alleged state-making success between 1991 and 2010 hinged at least as much on autocratic governance, top-down policies and coercive means as on frequently emphasized elements of grassroots peace-making, ‘traditional’ reconciliation and ‘home-grown’ democracy. Conceptually, the project is located at the intersection of political-economy and historical and institutional approaches to state-making. Applying qualitative research framed in comparative case studies the thesis not only advances the theoretical debate surrounding issues of state fragility and state-making, but also offers novel insights into Somalia’s history and presents new empirical findings on the frequently romanticised case of Somaliland. Yet, the research results are significant beyond Somali boundaries as they provide relevant insights for our general understanding of state trajectories and the role of conflict in statemaking and state-breaking.