Tübingen, Universiẗat, Diss., 2005.

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-184).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1934. / Typescript. Title from title screen (viewed May 9, 2006). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-290). Online version of the print original.

Stuttgart, University, Diss., 2000.

Stuttgart, University, Diss., 2003.

Stuttgart, University, Diss., 2003 (Nicht für den Austausch).

Heidelberg, University, Diss., 2002.

Why have attempts to repeal presidential term limits succeeded in some African countries and failed in others? What measures and pressures were required to demand and enforce presidential term limits compliance? The lack of precise and effective strategy to enforce term limits compliance seems to expose term limits to incipient repeals by incumbent presidents in Africa. My field observation in various African democracies shows that the parliament, the judiciary, democracy movements and the international community, though occasionally influential, have not played a decisive role in enforcing term limits compliance in Africa. Their roles rather appear to be dependent on elite dissidence, resistance, sponsorship and sometimes manipulation. My fieldwork in Zambia, Nigeria and Malawi reveals the critical influence and role of political elites in mobilizing and converging pressures to demand and enforce compliance. These cases further find that a compliance outcome becomes possible if individual political elites choose to resist any incumbent president seeking to repeal term limits. The ability of dissenting elites to provide an alternative platform for the convergence of other pressures raise the cost of repression for presidents and force them to compliance. Since othe pressures achor around elite dissidence, the position of some political elites either for or against the removal of term limits explains why some presidents have succeeded and why others failed in repealing term limits in Africa.

What and how should individuals resist in political situations? While this question, or versions of it, recurs regularly within Western political philosophy, answers to it have often relied on dyads founded upon dogmatically held ideals. In particular, there is a strain of idealist political philosophy, inaugurated by Plato and finding contemporary expression in the work of Alain Badiou, that employs dyads (such as the distinction between truth and doxa or the privilege of thought over sense) that tend to reduce the complexities of practices of resistance to concepts of commitment. Although these dyads have been challenged by, amongst others, poststructuralist theorists, this has often been at the cost of losing their structuralist heritage. This thesis develops an ontology proper to structuralism that engenders non-idealist and non-dogmatic, yet ethical, practices of resistance against commitment orientated accounts of resistance and the return of classical ontological dyads. The thesis begins with an examination of the extent to which a dogmatic use of idealism grounds the work of a prominent contemporary theorist, Alain Badiou. In developing his neo-Maoist metapolitics, Badiou follows both Platonic ontology and the Marxist tradition of dialectics by claiming that political practice can only be carried out in truth by paying fidelity to an event that ruptures the presented order of things. Chapter one opens with an exploration of Badiou's mathematic meta-ontology to draw out its three foundational dyads (truth/doxa; sense/intelligibility; is/is not). It is argued that although Badiou makes important criticisms of the preponderant trends of political philosophy, he is unable to support his own account of politics due to his dogmatic reliance on idealist principles. Chapter two begins by developing two accounts: first, of the relations between Badiou's work and that of his former teacher Louis Althusser and, secondly, the relations between Althusser's thought and that of Gilles Deleuze, in particular his reading of David Hume. Discussion centres around the importance of the role that time plays within the works of all three authors, particularly in regard to the idea of the void. The chapter concludes with the argument that Hume's temporal idea of human nature is the key to a symptomatic reading of Althusser that accounts for the persistence of ideas in the latter's social theory. In chapter three, Deleuze's reading of Hume's idea of relations is developed to take into account Bergson's theory of time. Read in contrast to Quentin Meillassoux's speculative realism, the chapter argues that Deleuze's account of temporal relations informs Althusser's social theory to create the ontological grounds for non-dogmatic and non-idealist practices of resistance. These practices are developed in chapter four with an unlikely turn to John Stuart Mill's idea of genius, the metaphysical property of the individual that signifies the discovery of new truth. The chapter begins with an argument that there is an under-developed account of ethics in Deleuze's work. Distinguishing the idea of genius from both Mill's moral philosophy, as well as from utilitarian thought more generally, the idea of genius is sutured onto Deleuze's ontological account of individuation. Read alongside Althusser's social theory, which accounts for the non-idealist conceptualisation of situations, this suture creates an ethically oriented structuralist ontology. The thesis concludes with the argument that the idea of genius is the ethical imperative that motivates practices of resistance. When individuals are understood as embodied within situations, practices of resistance are conceptualised not against other components of a situation, but contra them, taking them into account in order to amplify, multiply and transform the individual's potential within a situation.

In 2009, with the continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a global financial crisis, fears of American decline were compounded by the 'rise of China' and the potential for a transformation in the Asia-Pacific geopolitical environment that would destabilise the region's post-war order and challenge U.S. regional hegemony. In the same year, the Obama administration initiated a recalibration of U.S. foreign policy towards the Asia-Pacific that became known as the strategic rebalance. This thesis examines the way in which the Obama administration has responded to the Asia-Pacific's regional geopolitics through its signature rebalance strategy in order to maintain its hegemonic position. This research contributes to IR by using a constructivist approach and discourse analysis to interpret hegemony as both an intrinsic part of U.S. identity, and a social, asymmetrical relationship, derived from multiple and overlapping sources of power. Hegemony is an asymmetric relationship that requires consent from the Asia-Pacific nations for its ongoing legitimacy. The rebalance strategy is an effort to make the U.S. ontologically secure - to secure its hegemonic identity in the Asia-Pacific. In examining how the U.S. reproduces its regional hegemony from these angles, this thesis develops the constructivist focus on ideas, identity and narrative as being intrinsic to foreign policy output. This approach allows for consideration of the co-constituted relationships between the belief system of American exceptionalism, the 'rise of China' narrative, U.S. hegemonic identity formation and U.S. foreign policy practice. The empirical analysis of U.S. hegemony applies Barnett and Duvall's taxonomy of power to examine the interplay between the different components of American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific. This holistic approach to U.S. hegemony and the exertion of power determines that the U.S. does not solely rely on coercive military power to achieve foreign policy outcomes. Instead, this thesis interprets the rebalance strategy as part of complex processes of social bargains, identity, narratives and forms of power working collectively in the production of U.S. foreign policy.