This dissertation focuses on post-conflict Bosnia, one of Europe's most divided post-conflict societies, and where the external leadership of the state building process has been pronounced. The specific goal is to delineate a framework of analysis that accounts for the elite dynamics involved in the state building process in Bosnia in the context of the EU accession process. The main research question is: how and under what circumstances can external actors shape domestic change in deeply divided societies. How may external actors affect the interests, goals, and strategies of domestic actors in post-conflict, divided societies. Can local actors resist external pressure. In order to explore these issues empirically, this dissertation examines the process of constitutional reform in Bosnia in 2005-2006, and draws from 80 personal interviews with the key players and other actors involved. The thesis brings a large body of evidence into a process that was, heretofore, largely unknown and shrouded in secrecy. The dissertation is framed within the paradigms of state building and international conditionality; which I argue do not adequately capture the nuances and complexities of post-conflict Bosnia. Drawing from the literature on conflict regulation and other plural society theories, I propose a unique three-tiered framework, and argue that this approach represents a more comprehensive construct for analyzing post-conflict Bosnia. More specifically, this approach dissects the process of constitutional reform from an inter-ethnic, intra-ethnic, and what I term 'supra-national' level (the latter referring to the interactions between domestic and external actors). The study of these interactions is likely to help us define better policies in post-conflict state building processes. I conclude that the international push in Bosnia, and the transformative power of the EU were blunted by an ethnic power game. While external actors did play a substantive role, the neglect of intra-ethnic dynamics rendered external actors' efforts at shaping the process of constitutional reform in Bosnia ineffective.

This thesis is a critical theory based investigation into communicative and normative preconditions for peace. It is a theoretical inquiry into questions of argumentative truth, justice and authenticity and their relevance for conflict resolution and transformative peace-building. Following Habermas, it explores the formal argumentative requirements for peace and examines corresponding cognitive and societal/perceptual prerequisites for its intra- and interpersonal realisation. In this context, it identifies conceptual spaces of violence that impair peaceful interaction. It scrutinizes the communicative dynamics of transformative change and moral actor-hood from a critical theory perspective. It raises questions of communicative and moral learning, reasoning and structural change. It seeks to identify and explain formal-argumentative procedural correlations in the dialogical set-up of truth-seeking, norm-setting and norm-enforcing entities and argues for institutional complementarity and coherence. It calls for a conscious transition of normative and communicative barriers between conflict transformation efforts at community, national and international level and specifies theoretical alternatives to the present functionalist peace-building discourse in the form of a critical theory based model to conflict transformation. Some of these theoretical assumptions will be illustrated by the example of Rwanda.

Armed groups are becoming increasingly significant international actors. International Relations as a discipline must analyze and integrate these actors if it is to effectively explain international politics. This thesis begins this process through examining the international relations of warlords. Specifically, this thesis asks: how do warlords relate with states and other international actors. The thesis moves away from the greed-grievance debate, instead a Neorealist approach is used to analyze the relations of warlords. The conclusion reached is that warlords relate with states and other international actors in essentially the same way as states - they seek to ensure their survival through the balance of power. Specifically, they relate in terms of internal power cultivation, alliances, and war. The argument for this conclusion begins with a conceptual analysis of warlords, in which it is determined that warlords are non-state actors that use military power and economic exploitation to maintain fiefdoms which are autonomous and independent from the state and society. It is then demonstrated that the traditionally state-centric Neorealist approach can be used to analyze warlords, by arguing that warlords can be seen as empirically sovereign, 'functionally undifferentiated', 'like units', which are motivated by survival, and exist in an anarchic system. Neorealist theory and its notions of self help, internal power cultivation, alliances, security dilemma, and war are examined and it is demonstrated how these concepts describe and explain warbrd international relations. The validity of using the Neorealist approach is tested throughout the thesis in vignette case studies on warlords including the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPLF), the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and Afghan warlords as well as in two major case studies on Somali warlord relations with the UN and Ethiopia and the Lord's Resistance Army's (LRA) relations with Uganda, Sudan, and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

This thesis examines the theoretical implications of private security for International Relations (IR) theory and global politics from the perspective of a security governance model. It draws upon multi-disciplinary theoretical research on private security to both map the way security governance has been de-linked from the state, as well as to map the public-private hybrids and security networks that constitute private security's continued connection to the state. On one level, this thesis engages in a direct theoretical critique of Realist theory and its Weberian inspired understanding of the state's monopoly of security governance. Thus, the security governance framework used within this thesis is understood in terms of a theoretical response to the inability of Realist theory to conceptualize the political content of private security. Against this backdrop of a critique of Realist theory-and its idea of the state's monopoly relationship to authority, territory and coercion-this thesis re-articulates each of these concepts with reference to a security governance approach to the study of private security. This thesis then provides a positive application of this security governance theoretical framework to a series of original case studies of hybrid public-private and private- private security networks.

This thesis examines the American anti-colonial tradition's role in establishing the principle of international accountability for administering dependent peoples in the League of Nations mandates and the United Nations trusteeship systems. Where relevant, British ideas and schemes are compared with American ones in so far as this helps to understand the latter and where the final outcomes were based on Anglo-American compromises. It contributes to the literature on international relations in two main areas. First, it analyses the formulation, development and inter-relation of the American anticolonial tradition and international accountability. Second, it is the first study of the interplay of those two concepts within the context of differing Anglo-American views on creating the mandates and trusteeship systems. There are eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the main objectives and themes. Chapters 2 and 3, the conceptual heart of the thesis, examine imperial and colonial relationships, the American anti-colonial tradition, and international accountability for dependent peoples. Chapter 4 focuses on the interplay of those concepts and the American role in establishing the League mandates system. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 do the same regarding the United Nations trusteeship system. Chapter 7 also contains a postscript on trusteeship developments since 1945. Chapter 8 summarises the thesis' conclusions. Throughout, the methodological approach is analytical and historical rather than theoretical. The overall conclusion is that so long as the national interests of the United States were protected, the American anti-colonial tradition did play the major role in establishing the principle of international accountability within both the mandates and the trusteeship systems. The determination and anti-colonial sentiments of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were especially important. American policy was usually based on the right of all peoples to freedom; the practical application of this precept hastened the demise of Western European-style colonialism.

The research explores the impact of various forms of time pressure on the outcomes of negotiation processes in territorial conflicts in the post-Cold War period. Deadlines are used increasingly often by mediators to spur deadlocked negotiation processes, under the assumption that fixed time limits tend to favour pragmatism. Yet, little attention is typically paid to the durability of agreements concluded in these conditions; moreover, research in experimental psychology suggests that time pressure may impact negatively on individual and collective decision-making by reducing each side's ability to deal with complex issues, complex inter-group dynamics and inter-cultural relations. The comparative section of the research assesses the impact of natural and artificial deadlines on negotiation outcomes through a fuzzy-set comparison of 68 episodes of negotiation in territorial conflicts between 1990 and 2005. The results reveal that high levels of time pressure can be associated with both 'broad' and 'limited' agreements, but that low levels of time pressure or its absence are consistently associated with more durable ones. Other exploratory models also confirm the findings of experimental psychology and show that 'complex' negotiations are more likely to result in durable agreements when they take place under no or low time pressure. These results are explored and discussed in detail in two pairs of case studies: the Bougainville and Casamance peace processes, and the Dayton and Camp David proximity talks. These cases confirm the intuitions of the comparative section; they provide evidence of the negative impact of time pressure on the cognitive processes of the actors involved and highlight, in particular, how in certain conditions the absence or low levels of time pressure can impact on the durability of agreements by making possible effective intra-rebel agreements before official negotiations, and that time pressure works in proximity talks only when applied to solving circumscribed deadlocks.

This thesis focuses on the importance of the concepts of political power, structure and agency in the study of International Relations. It argues that mainstream IR theory has yet to incorporate the main findings of critical theories, such as post-modernism and feminism, into its analytical toolbox. It will offer the author's own theory of world power, which combines a Foucaultian with a structurationist approach to argue for the existence of four-faced power relationships across twelve interdependent sites of material and cognitive power: i) the site of time; ii) the site of space; iii) the site of knowledge and aesthetics; iv) the site of morality and emotion; v) the site of identities; vi) the site of the body; vii) the site of welfare; viii) the site of culture/cultural life; ix) the site of civic associations; x) the site of the economy; xi) the site of the organisation of violence and coercive relations; and xii) the site of regulatory and legal institutions. These power relations operate at multiple levels of agency across world society, from the individual through to world polities, as well as across the twelve sites of power interdependently. The case of HIV/AIDS is then used to illustrate the necessity of broadening mainstream conceptions of power in International Relations.

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This thesis is a critical investigation into the practices of intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo and their practical and theoretical implications. Whereas the military intervention in Kosovo and the Dayton Peace Accords for Bosnia represent two distinct practices of intervention they were legitimised by reference to the discourses on humanitarianism and have further highlighted a number of contradictions between sovereignty/humanity, men/citizens, inside/outside, self/other. The thesis explores the historical and structural negotiations of these contradictions while making a claim about the re-assertion of the principle of sovereignty through the negotiation between the sovereignty of the state and sovereignty of the system of states. A critical enquiry of the practices of intervention at hand involves a close examination of the practices which seek to situate the stories about particular events within the global discourse on rights and normalise the persistence of discourses on sovereignty within a specific territory. On this basis, it argues that the disciplinary practices of the discourses of sovereignty have ultimately failed to respond to particular claims to sovereignty and citizenship.

This thesis investigates conflict early warning and early response through the lens of Critical Theory. It argues that the field of conflict early warning has exclusively taken problem-solving approaches by focusing on developing early warning and response instruments such as the indicators for prediction and how to connect warnings with effective responses. On the other hand, it has been unaware of its own theoretical and epistemological foundations. As a result, the studies of conflict early warning have been conducted in a particular manner that works for the interests of liberal western states rather than for those at risk. The thesis argues that the emergence of conflict early warning and response was only possible in the post-Westphalian global order, where the equity of state sovereignty is no longer absolute but conditional, and interventions in internal affairs are justified by appealing for human security. In this global context, unlike the popular belief that conflict early warning is motivated by humanitarianism, conflict early warning emerged as a liberal technique of government that makes those to be governed visible, calculable, comparable and interventionable through data collection and analysis. In other words, conflict early warning systems have been used for the protection and expansion of the western community's security and economic interests. In addition, this particular theory/ideology has marginalized small scale collective violence and local capacity for early warning and response. The thesis regards community-based early warning and response systems as a more emancipatory form of practice in this particular historical moment because they see local actors as the active subject of conflict early warning and early response rather than the mere object of western rescue. Then, this research examines two cases from Kyrgyzstan and Sri Lanka, and identifies their limitations and prospects.