The original contribution to knowledge of my thesis is a comparative historical analysis of the rhetoric used by four Democratic presidents to expand access to and affordability of healthcare. Specifically, the thesis situates Democratic presidential healthcare reform rhetoric in relation to opposing conservative Republican ideologies of limited government and prioritization of negative liberty and their increasing prominence in the post-Reagan era. It examines how the American moral order and social imaginary has evolved and how Democratic presidential healthcare reform rhetoric was both informed by and responded to it. I employ Aristotle’s tripartite categories of ethos, pathos and logos to undertake rhetorical analysis. I illuminate how each president sought to persuade audiences, what rhetorical strategies they used and how they justified their healthcare reform efforts. I pay particular attention to the compromises entailed by the usage of specific strategies and their rhetorical effects. The thesis illustrates how Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson contextualized healthcare reform within their broader efforts to secure positive liberty and social and economic rights in the Fair Deal and Great Society, respectively. This is in contrast to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who did not advance a comprehensive vision of government guaranteed positive liberty and citizen welfare. Rather, they made arguments for healthcare reform based on pragmatism and economic efficiency and appropriated tropes of conservative rhetoric such as efficiency to critique market failure. They showed deference to the conservative principle of maximizing the role of the private sector in healthcare provision. There is a marked contrast between Truman and Johnson’s explicit expressions of care for economically disadvantaged and working class Americans and Clinton and Obama’s rhetorical elision of these populations, and their focus on the ‘middle class.’ Despite these substantive differences a major continuity in the rhetoric is an enduring appeal to communitarian solidarity.

Military intervention in internal conflicts represents a recurrent practice in international history. This thesis provides a theoretical framework for the study of the political and sociological processes that lead political elites to militarily intervene in internal conflicts. Following the renewed interest in political elites both in Sociology and International Relations, the thesis draws on Elite Theory to address the dual nature of political elites as both domestic and international actors. In doing so, it develops a framework for the study of military intervention centred on political elites that overcomes the limits of existing contributions on the subject. In particular, the thesis highlights how interventionary policies are shaped by three overlapping causal antecedents: elites’ contending ideological claims; elites’ struggle for both domestic and international power; and the relationship established by the intervener’s elite with elite and counter- elite groups in the target state. The thesis tests the plausibility of the proposed framework by examining US decisions in three cases: US intervention in the Cuban War of Independence (1898-1902); US intervention in the Russian Civil War (1918- 1920); and US non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). This analysis highlights three elements. First, ideological considerations set significant limits to US cooperation with leaders in the target country despite the strategic rationale for cooperation against common enemies. Second, the interplay between international and domestic political considerations represented a fundamental ‘push factor’, shaping the objectives US elites sought. Third, foreign elite groups played a crucial role in ‘pulling’ US interventions, both by representing local allies instrumental to Washington’s objectives and by directly accessing and influencing US decision-making processes. For the same reasons, the lack of these push and pull factors are key to explaining US non-intervention in the Spanish case. Overall, the thesis offers a twofold contribution to the study of military intervention. First, it explores how military intervention permits decision- makers to affect the ‘circulation of elites’ in both their own societies and in other societies. Second, it indicates how military intervention affects the international system by altering ideological homogeneity, international alliances and hierarchical relations between elites.