In recent years, scholars of political theory and intemational Relations (IR) have paid increased attention to the problem of instituting order and justice on an international scale. Operating on the premise that the conditions of order and justice are the same among states as they are within them, this study inquires into the prospects of extending Thomas Hobbes's idea of a common authority and John Rawls's notion of a redistribution scheme to the international level. Although Hobbes and Rawls make some important concessions to the domestic analogy, both philosophers reject the (full) application of the social contract to international relations on the ground that cooperation is not as essential for states as it is for individuals. However, since Hobbes's publication of Leviathan, the international system has undergone some tremendous changes. With the advent of total war, nuclear weapons and international terrorism, states no longer have the means to protect their citizens in the way standing armies secured life within the state in the seventeenth century. While Rawls's conception of the state as a self-sufficient entity was already questionable at the time he published A Theory of Justice, it is even more so in the twenty-first century in which entire countries have begun to specialize in certain manufacturing, trading or financing activities. Given these developments, it is rather doubtful that states can thrive in the long run without a degree of cooperation. But if cooperation is becoming as imperative for states as it is for individuals, this would have crucial implications for the possibility of (fully) applying Hobbes's and Rawls's social contract to the internationalleve1. While many realists, communitarians and even some cosmopolitans continue to argue that the institutions that provide for order and justice domestically cannot be reproduced internationally, this work suggests that what Hobbes and Rawls sketch in their theories for the domestic level, and what is yet to materialize at the global level, has been well underway at the regional level. Framing an account of the High Authority and the Cohesion Fund in Hobbesian and Rawlsian terms, respectively, I argue that the two philosophers provide us with insufficiently exploited clues to the understanding and justification of the political and economic integration of Europe. I then examine whether Hobbes's and Rawls's philosophies also hold lessons for the political and economic integration of the world at large. I suggest that the regional and global realms are too dissimilar for Hobbesian and Rawlsian logics to apply globally.

The thesis examines the relationship between the representation of temporality and contingency in political theory and the theorisation of rational and moral norms. In particular, it looks at the supposed opposition between political realism and political moralism; and argues that this dichotomy presents a false picture. Further, the thesis argues that the relevance of political theory to politics cannot be restricted to an account of political realism. It argues that realism provides a parochial and restrictive conception of the practice of reasoning in politics and a partisan account of political theory. Political realism seeks to divorce political theory from ethical and rational norms but in doing so it relies upon contentious views of political norms and the way they should be theorised. Ultimately the thesis overturns the paradigmatic opposition between moralism and realism and looks more closely at the relationship between temporality, contingency and the yielding of rational and moral political norms. The thesis draws on the political philosophy of Michael Oakeshott, Stuart Hampshire and Bernard Williams and examines the way in which their accounts of political norms incorporate due awareness of temporality and contingency.

This thesis employs Critical Rationalism—an inter-subjective theory of rationality originated in Karl Popper’s conjectural theory of knowledge— in order to develop a new macrosociology of globalisation. It describes contemporary globalisation as the formation of a liberal globality through which the centrality of the Hobbesian struggle for political power has been superseded with the Lockean competition for economic interests. But the thesis argues that liberal globalisation suffers from fundamental societal deficits due to a global organisation of people based on economic competition rather than rational dialogue and social cooperation. The central question of thesis therefore is that ‘how emerging utilitarian-based liberal globality can be transformed into a global society of free and equal citizens?’ The thesis argues that people’s potential access to critical rationality enables them to agree upon one set of globally shared values concerning the equality of people and people-centric global institutions, which are required for creating a global society of free and equal citizens. Through its macrosociological analysis the thesis addresses the question of how such a system of globally shared values can operate as the cultural driving force of a radical global institutional change from the Lockean logic of economic competition to the Kantian logic of dialogue and social cooperation. The thesis concludes that intellectuals can employ the ideal-type of an open global society of free and equal persons in order to persuade global social movements to work for realising such a fundamental global institutional change towards a just and free global society.

The purpose of the thesis is to provide a critical analysis of the liberal idea of the decline of the state based on a historical comparison. It takes special note of the implications of state failure for international relations. The author identifies three acknowledged proponents of the theme. They are Richard Cobden (1804-1865), David Mitrany (1888-1975), and Kenichi Ohmae (b. 1943). The dissertation analyses how Cobden, Mitrany, and Ohmae view the state and its role in their respective periods. It elucidates similarities and differences between their conceptions with the aim of shedding light on the status of the state in their systems of political and economic thought. It also puts the three thinkers into context by exposing the influence of their historical and social environments. A supplementary objective is to infuse caution into future prophesies about the state's imminent decline. The text is divided into three sections. The first analyses Cobden, Mitrany, and Ohmae's empirical claims. The second focuses on their normative judgements. Finally, the third directs the attention to their predictive assertions. The discussion is organised according to the distinction between the state as a country in its entirety, and the state as an institution of government separate from the society which it rules. The central question of the dissertation asks what we can learn from a study of the history of the liberal idea of the decline of the state. The thesis emphasises, in particular, five lessons and concludes that Cobden, Mitrany, and Ohmae primarily propose normative arguments for less state involvement in economic and international relations, but conceal them partly in empirical and predictive assertions. The liberal idea of the decline of the state is more of an ideological statement in response to contemporary political, social, and economic trends than an objective observation of an empirically verifiable fact.

This thesis weaves together the themes of complexity, technology, and power. It does so by examining how actors in world politics gain leverage over complex systems through the use of specialised ‘representational technologies’ that make these systems intelligible and amenable to manipulation. In response to the increasing complexity of regional and global systems, political actors are expanding their use of these representational technologies in order to augment limited individual and institutional means for cognition. A first conclusion from this research is that through these technologies, power is being expanded in novel and unique ways. Building upon an insight from actor-network theory (ANT), power is examined here as something that must be constructed via material technologies. Yet unlike previous research which has focused primarily on infrastructural technology, this thesis examines the unique role of representational technologies in constructing power. Following constructivism, this thesis accords a significant role to knowledge, discourse, and representations in how world politics are presented and acted upon. However, a second conclusion of this thesis is that the standard idealist accounts in constructivism must be expanded by examining the increasingly material means through which such ideational representations are constructed. Thirdly, this thesis aims to illuminate a neglected type of technology within International Relations (IR) scholarship - by moving away from the standard analyses of military and communication technology, and instead showing how representational technology contributes to the practices of world politics. Lastly, in emphasising the materiality of power and knowledge, this thesis also aims to revive a moderate version of technological determinism by arguing that technology is a platform which shapes both possible political behaviours and pathways for technological development.

I argue that the resources for political change do not exist as already constituted entities, whether in the form of transcendent values or an already-given consensus. Instead, they must be created; constitutive political action is rooted in creativity, and requires the creation of new movements, new powers, and new values. This creativity, though, does not come from a transcendent outside, as though a bolt from the blue. Instead, political creativity, and the creativity which humans may use to transform politics are themselves rooted in the immanent creativity of the natural and material world. I bring the sciences of Complexity into relation with the philosophies of Spinoza and DeLanda in order to argue that the world is made up of only the one reality of matter-energy, but that this matter-energy is capable of creatively generating novel phenomena. This understanding of the creativity of matter-energy is then used in order to reconceptualise political creativity in materialist terms. Political orders are constituted by a set of capacities or powers in relation, but the field of powers and their possible relations vastly exceeds any one configuration that it enters, and this field of possible relations, and the possible powers that might be formed through these relations, provide boundless resources for constitutive political change.

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The minority rights paradox is articulated at the level of political theory, is deployed by liberal democratic institutions, and can be observed in the political discourse of mass communications. Minority groups, it is argued, are paradoxically claiming purported rights that are unsupported by the values upon which the claimants base their claim. On the one hand, minority claims are made on the basis of rights secured by a liberal democracy; on the other hand, the claims undermine the legitimacy of liberal reasoning—the same reasoning that legitimizes the rights on which the claims are made. The self-referential implications of this paradox are as follows: Either the minority claim negates its own justification or the underlying justification renders the claim moot. In either case, the charge of paradox effectively puts an end to the conversation by dismissing minority rights claims before they are properly understood. My aim is to first, come to terms with political dialogues in which the charge of paradox occurs and second, to overcome the stultifying effects of the minority rights paradox through a deliberative approach to negotiating the concept and content of minority rights claims. Evaluating the claims of minorities, I will argue, requires a dialogue that can adapt to the participants in the dialogue—an inclusive deliberative process that gives formal, procedural and substantive recognition to the worldviews of minority cultures in political decision-making.