<p> The purpose of the current phenomenological study was to understand the developmental experiences of authentic leaders by documenting their own stories of how they view their growth into a successful global leader. The study used three overarching research questions: (1) How do leaders within international cooperatives describe their lived experiences that contributed to their development into successful and authentic global leaders? (2) How do cooperative leaders explain how they apply/use the principle of stewardship on a daily basis? (3) What experiences are described as challenges in the application of authentic leadership? Using these overarching questions as a guide, the current study posed interview questions that explore participants&rsquo; experiences in developing into an authentic leader. The study also explored how operating in a global environment has influenced their ability to be authentic in their leadership. Additionally, interview questions explored the context of authentic leadership and global leadership within cooperative organizations and how the role of being a steward for the organization influences their leadership style.</p><p> The theoretical framework for the study was guided by global leadership theory, authentic leadership theory, and stewardship theory. Purposeful sampling and snowball sampling were used to select study participants who are senior leaders within international cooperative organizations. Data was collected through the use of semi-structured interviews, and the interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using NVivo qualitative analysis software. The information collected and subsequent analysis may help future cooperative leaders develop into successful and authentic global leaders, as well as help close the gap in the literature on leadership within international cooperatives. The research findings led to the development of five themes surrounding the phenomenon of developing into an authentic leader within an international cooperative: (1) leading successfully, (2) leading globally, (3) developing authentically, (4) meeting the leadership challenge, and (5) cooperative appeal. </p>

In June 2012 the European Union signed bilateral Association Agreements (AAs) based on a neoliberal economic growth philosophy with Central American states as well as! with Colombia and! Peru. In addition to free trade, these also include a ppolitical dialogue as well as an international cooperation pillar. This thesis explores empirical disconnects and contradiction in the EU’s efforts to combine these different aspects in it foreign policy. In particular, it investigates how successful the EU is in linking these AAs to it work towards sustainable development and gender equality at multiple levels. It does this by moving from a wide and international perspective to a local and more specific one. In doing this the thesis examines international trends, while concentrating on EU development policies in relation to trade with Latin America, using Guatemala as a case study. Most critiques against the AAs take place within a modernity framework but this research moves beyond these notions and considers how we may account for ‘the local’ and critically engage with Western mainstream development discourses. This thesis argues that there, in addition to the empirical disconnects in EU policy, is a disconnect within theory between gendered international political economy (GIPE) and theories on sustainability. Therefore the theoretical framework aim at bridging this gap by linking environmental feminist thought with feminist economics. In addition, this thesis includes Mayan cosmovision (worldview) and the concept of buen vivir (good life), which is inspired by indigenous people’s worldviews and is present in the Bolivian as well as the Ecuadorian constitutions. This way local forms of theoretical knowledge is taken into account and combined with complementing forms of feminisms, allowing for a critical analysis of trade, gender and sustainable development in Latin America.

<p> The emerging global structure is wrought with tension. The contemporary international system, marshaled by the communications-and-information revolution and characterized by dense interaction capacities among transnational actors, can be conceived as a global society wherein a common normative framework guides and constrains state behavior. Its intersection with revisionist rising powers harboring intentions to mold that framework to reflect their own preferences risks an ambiguous standard of behavior, confusion, and a clash of norms that threatens to transform the cohesion that underpins accord in the global society into chaos. As the state upon whose values and principles the existing international system is based upon, it is the responsibility of the United States to ensure the stability and viability of that system and &ndash; as far as other states are expected to conform to the normative standards thereof &ndash; its ability to accommodate the development of the states within it. The United States has traditionally promoted the democratic peace as the key stabilizing mechanism in the international system. While fully institutionalized democracies may be more stable and less aggressive than other forms of government, however, emerging democracies tend to be extraordinarily violent as self-rule precipitates secessionist wars, pathological homogenization, and ethnic cleansing as &ldquo;the people&rdquo; are defined and those excluded are sorted out. In regions beset by the legacies of colonialism and multi-ethnic empires, wherein state boundaries were arbitrarily drawn to aggregate and divide a complex mosaic of social identity groups, the results are national cascades fueling pervasive identity-driven conflict in a struggle to reify into the primary organizing structure of modernity: the nation-state.</p>

<p> Millennia ago, a vital trade route connected the thriving civilizations of ancient Greece, Persia, and China. Through the ancient Silk Road, China was able to influence societies far beyond its national borders. And now, in the twenty-first century, it seeks to do the same. This paper will attempt to develop a new paradigm that more fully explains the rationale and objectives of the One Belt One Road initiative. It argues that nation-building is the most comprehensive way to understand the Chinese government's intentions with OBOR. The following chapters will also demonstrate how OBOR fits into the CCP's larger ethno-nationalist "China Dream" campaign, which crafts a narrative of a unified and rejuvenated China predicated on a single identity.</p>

<p> This paper will examine how the organizational structures of the U.S. military and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) evolved to address the proliferating array of cyber threats. One of the gaps in military cybersecurity is the growing demand for qualified cyber security personnel. Estonia and other countries have employed all-volunteer cyber militias to help protect national security during emergencies. However, the U.S. and NATO are not in the political or legal position to rely upon an all-civilian group. Utilizing Thomas Malone's framework for business, the U.S. military and NATO could abandon their traditional hierarchies and embrace a centralized market model in order to delegate some of their cybersecurity tasks. One way to decentralize their structures is to modify the Estonian Cyber Defense League model by further implementing their reserves systems. They could hire skilled civilian technology professionals through their reserves, eventually creating Cyber Defense Leagues that are primarily comprised of non-commissioned officers.</p>

This thesis examines the Anglo-American Relationship around international drug control and addresses two main questions: first, was there a ‘special relationship’ in the field of drug control? Second, what impact did their relationship have on international control efforts? It highlights that the relationship was far from ‘special’ and was frequently strained. Further, it argues that the outcomes of international drug control efforts, between the collapse of the League of Nations system during World War II and the coming into force of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1964, derived from a triangulation of three international drug control blocs: control advocate states, led by the US; producing states and their noninterventionist allies, led by Turkey and the Soviet Union; and moderate manufacturing and consuming countries, led by the UK. In this triangulation process the UK and US remained the lead international actors and represented the two core policy strands within the system: regulation and prohibition respectively. The Anglo-American drug relationship saw overlap and division in policy interests, resulting in both cooperation and competition. They overlapped around pursuing a global regulatory system managing the flows of ‘dangerous drugs’ internationally. They diverged around the peripheral or frontier aspects of this system: namely, where to draw the line between licit and illicit consumption; how tightly to restrict, regulate and prohibit global production; how much national oversight and interference to provide international organisations; and how to deal with existing drug consuming populations. Where their policy interests overlapped, and when the UK and US consciously worked together, international political progress was possible. Where the two diverged, around strict adherence to prohibitionist principles; overly restricting the manufacturing sector’s ability to procure raw materials; and assuming national obligations for a repressive ‘closed institutional’ model of dealing with ‘addiction’, political momentum generally stalled. Finally, this thesis argues that the 1961 Single Convention evolved via Anglo-American ‘competitive cooperation’ and was ultimately a joint Anglo-American creation: a regulatory system with prohibitionist aspects. However, the 1961 Single Convention ultimately represented a victory for the regulatory strand and the UK over the US-led prohibitionist strand.

This thesis is a study on the use of military force in United States peacemaking in Lebanon between 1982 and 1984. It argues that the failure of the Reagan Administration to understand accurately the complex political landscape of the Lebanese Civil War resulted in the US and the Multinational Force in Beirut becoming intertwined in the broader Lebanese conflict. Because of this, President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz applied a policy focusing on military force with a vague peacekeeping vision which led to catastrophic US casualties. This thesis also argues that US policy in Lebanon was inaccurately designed because, from the outset, Washington did not see Lebanon as a key policy frontline. However, the Administration’s failed attempts to resolve the crisis and Reagan’s personal pursuit for international credibility bound the US to one of the world’s most complicated and violent conflicts. By examining newly released archival material this thesis will show how the foundations of the US’ interventionist policy in Lebanon came from the Reagan Administration’s desire to see the US as the key military power in the Middle East rather than protecting Lebanese sovereignty or containing the Soviets. This thesis offers a fresh perspective on the impact of the US intervention and the decisionmaking drivers that led Reagan into the Lebanese Civil War. It challenges the notion that Reagan deployed US Marines under the ideals of international peacekeeping. Rather it will argue that the Multinational Force withdrew from Lebanon as a failed military force having made little progress.

Since the end of the Cold War private military companies––conflict entrepreneurs that kill or train others to kill, typically in foreign lands––have proliferated at an alarming rate. Curiously, the primary consumer of this new service are not weak states looking to consolidate their monopoly of force (although this has happened) but strong states like the United States of America, which possesses the greatest monopoly of force in the world. This thesis examines how and why this has occurred. The reappearance of private military actors is also a harbinger of a wider trend in international relations: the emergence of neomedievalism. The erosion of the taboo against mercenarism signals a return to the preWestphalian norm of the Middle Ages, when states did not enjoy the monopoly of force and subsequent special authority in world politics. Instead, the medieval system was polycentric in nature with authority diluted and shared among state and non-state actors alike. Because the return to the status quo ante of the Middle Ages is occurring worldwide, it is best described as 'globalised neomedievalism'. Globalised neomedievalism is a non-state-centric and multipolar world order characterized by overlapping authorities and allegiances on a local and global scale. It does not imply worldwide atavism. States will not disappear, but will matter less than they did a century ago. Nor does neomedievalism connote chaos and anarchy; the global system will persist in a durable disorder that contains rather than solves problems. A key challenge of neomedievalism is the commodification of conflict: offering the means of war to anyone who can afford it will change warfare, why we fight and the future of war. The implications of this are enormous since it suggests that international relations in the twenty-first century will have more in common with the twelfth century than the twentieth.

The thesis looks at Robert S. McNamaraʼs support for withdrawal from Vietnam between 1962 and 1964, during the John F. Kennedy administration and during the transition to the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency. It offers a reassessment of McNamaraʼs role as one of the primary architects of the Vietnam War. From a methodological point of view, it approaches McNamaraʼs recommendations on Vietnam from the bureaucratic perspective of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), explaining the evolution of the office and the balance of civil-military relations during his tenure. Through a bureaucratic lens, McNamaraʼs support for a policy aimed at disengagement from Vietnam is logical. First, the withdrawal plans – the Comprehensive Plan for South Vietnam (CPSVN) – supported a strategy informed by the counterinsurgency thinking of the Kennedy administration. McNamaraʼs changes at the OSD were designed to align defense tools to civilian strategy. As a result, as Kennedy and McNamaraʼs counterinsurgency advisers suggested, the CPSVN put the onus on self-help (i.e. the South Vietnamese doing the fighting themselves), clear-and-hold strategies and the strategic hamlet program that was buttressed by paramilitary, rather than traditional military, forces. Secondly, the CPSVN dovetailed with McNamaraʼs economic priorities for the OSD, both mitigating the departmentʼs impact on the nagging balance of payments deficit and, in the nearer term, the impact of South Vietnamese operations on the Military Assistance Program.

This thesis seeks to understand change within China's foreign policy under a 'Going Out' strategy in Sudan and South Sudan between 1993 and 2013. China has traditionally viewed the Sudanese and African context more generally as having a wholly positive impact on its interests. However, in the Sudan case, the insertion of China's leading National Oil Company into the Sudanese political economy from the mid-1990s has meant that Sudan's internal situation has negatively affected China’s interests and, in turn, impacted on its foreign policy. Drawing from 'learning' theory within International Relations' sub-field of Foreign Policy Analysis, this thesis develops a concept of negative experiential 'adaptive learning' to explain change within this case study. It firstly argues that from 2005 China tactically adapted its foreign policy approach in response to challenges that emerged along the trajectory of engagement. Secondly, China's foreign policy implementing institutions collectively learnt the specific lesson that local conflict dynamics in the Sudans could negatively affect Chinese interests, and also learntthe limitations within China’s foreign policy approach. This research finds that throughout the period of change between 2005 and 2011, China's diplomacy remained predominately reactive and defensive. However, since 2012 China began to develop a more assertive foreign policy approach vis-à-vis the long-term resolution of Sudanese conflicts. This has been underpinned by the gradual learning of broader lessons regarding China's traditional understanding of the nature of Sudanese conflicts and its peace and security role therein. Overall, this thesis aims to provide an in-depth holistic analysis of the evolution of China's contemporary foreign policy towards Sudan and South Sudan. A specific contribution to the literature has been to develop the concept of 'adaptive learning', which can be utilised across other case studies to broaden our understanding of Chinese foreign policy towards Africa in the 'Going Out' era.