This thesis examines the regulation of naval competition between the major naval powers, and especially between Britain and the United States, under the regime of the Washington and London naval treaties, and the attempts to extend and maintain naval limitation in the period 1927 to 1936 in the face of Anglo-American rivalry and, later, the threats from Japan and Germany. Based upon British and American public and private sources, it traces the interaction of the two nations, and their relationships with other naval powers, from 1927 - when Anglo-American relations reached a nadir after the failed 'Coolidge Conference' in Geneva and the subsequen abortive 'Anglo-French Compromise' - to 1936, when naval limitation ende but by which time Anglo-American antipathy was fading in the face of mut external threats. The naval conferences of Geneva (1927) and London (19 and 1935-36), and the parallel naval side of the long-running Disarmamen Conference and its Preparatory Commission are reviewed with their attend preparations in London and Washington, and the influence of domestic factors - public opinion, financial stringency, and personal and politic prejudice - are examined. The central role of the naval balance in the relationship between the interward Great Powers is stressed, and the importance of the naval negotiations to both governments and public opinion echoes our contemporary concern for the preservation and management of the strategic balance. While the Washington-London naval system failed to halt naval rival it achieved the unforeseen consequences of permitting Britain to gracefu cede naval supremacy to the United States, under the guise of conceding 'parity', with a minimum of friction or indeed recognition of the fact. Additionally, it demonstrated by its breakdown the vulnerability of an arms limitation system that was neither geographically nor technically comprehensive.

International relations are heralding a new era with the expectation of a new world order. However, the international community is facing a crisis of perception. They are trying to apply the concepts of outdated perspectives, such as realism, idealism, and Marxism, to an international political reality that can no longer be understood in terms of these concepts. The emergence of non-state nations, which are threatening the existence of the state system, are not integrated into the international system by the perspectives. The problem is "perspective effect" - one uses perspectives to perceive, understand, judge, and manipulate, the world order. Any international political issue that does not match conditional perception, is ignored and distorted. The result is "perspective paralysis" - the perspectives are unable to adjust to changed circumstances in the world order. "Perspective paralysis" can be overcome if there is a "perspective shift" - perspectives employ alternative criteria for evaluating world order. / World order / New world order / M.A (International Politics)

Reinhold Niebuhr remains at the center of a national conversation about America's role in the world, and commentators with divergent political and religious positions look to his 1952 work, The Irony of American History, in support of their views. In this study, Scott R. Erwin argues that an appreciation of Niebuhr's theological vision is necessary for understanding the full measure of Irony and his perspective on life more broadly. Such a study is important because many individuals reading Irony today fail to acknowledge the central role that his Christian beliefs played in his writings. Niebuhr described his theological vision as being 'in the battle and above it,' and, it was this perspective that led Niebuhr, in Irony, to assert that America must both take 'morally hazardous action' in combating the aggression of the Soviet Union and engage in critical self-evaluation to prevent the country from assuming the most odious traits of its Cold War foe. Niebuhr developed his theological vision over the course of the 1930s and 1940s through engagement with Christian doctrine, as most readily seen in his academic works such as The Nature and Destiny of Man, and engagement with current events, as seen in his many journalistic writings during this period. By focusing primarily on Niebuhr's writings between 1931 and 1951, Erwin traces the development of his Christian interpretation of human nature and history, establishes how it informed his theological vision, and reveals how that theological vision underlay his writings on current affairs.

This research analyses the role of multi-stakeholder partnerships in enhancing governance to promote sustainable peace and security. It uses a case study of coltan exploitation and armed conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the two wars between 1996 and 2003 and the ongoing conflict have led to the ‘world’s worst humanitarian crisis’. The current body of knowledge on conflict analyses, particularly ‘resource curse’ theory, emphasises the natural resource endowment and weak governance as the main factors contributing to the DRC conflict, and has been influential in policy formulation. The case study is supported by the collection and analysis of qualitative data from multiple sources using different methods including literature reviews, interviews and observations. In so doing, the research seeks to examine how multi-stakeholder partnerships can help to enhance governance and promote sustainable peace and security, with a focus on the role of the multi-stakeholder partnerships in curtailing revenues for the belligerents from coltan production and trade in the eastern DRC. The analysis of the conflicts and coltan exploitation revealed the intricate multi-layered nature of the conflicts in the DRC and their complex causalities. The examination of the multi-stakeholder partnerships relevant to coltan exploitation in the DRC identified a number of constraints for their implementation and concerns about adverse effects from the implementation, largely owing to the externally driven agenda of the partnerships, which neglects the local perspectives. Through the arguments presented in this thesis, the research contributes to knowledge in three broad areas: it contributes to ongoing academic discussions on conflict analyses, in particular the resource curse hypothesis and the economic agendas of civil war; it provides empirical analysis and data on the coltan industry and partnership initiatives in relation to armed conflicts in the eastern DRC; and it highlights the need to re-assess the concept of participatory governance as one of the key approaches to improving governance.

This thesis examines grassroots peace building in Kosovo during the period 2001 - 2008 and seeks to understand how international actors have best supported, or otherwise, a process of deepening peace at this level. The research centres on analysis of thirty-three in-depth interviews with the main actors from this field. Through analysing interpretations of peace and peace building in Kosovo, I identify a contradiction between on the one hand, the dominant approach of building peace through relationships (favoured by international actors); and on the other, the need for peace to address personal needs. This means helping individuals come to terms with the past, and affecting a broader normalization of people’s everyday lives. I assert that a ‘deepening’ of peace in Kosovo will ultimately come about through offering young people more opportunities to ‘open up their hearts and minds’ - to broaden their horizons in ways that they feel empowered to view themselves and the world around them through a critical lens. This research identifies negative attitudes and behaviours amongst external actors in Kosovo, and illustrates how our personal qualities and conduct are of primary importance when it comes to peace building. In doing so, I identify a need for a higher level of self-awareness, commitment and empathy amongst external actors. Whilst reports have emerged which seek to evaluate the impact of peace building in Kosovo, this research examines the experiences of those engaged in such endeavours and encompasses a strong story-telling element. It also seeks to ground the issues at stake within a broader understanding of Kosovo’s social and historical landscape.

This thesis aims to expand scholarship on civil society and peace-building through exploration of civil society’s experiences, perspectives, and practices in relation to the politics of peace-building and human (in)security in instances of victor’s peace, using post-war Sri Lanka as case study. It adopts Human Security as an analytical approach calling attention to insecurities operating on and through Sri Lankans but also the nature of power dynamics underlying these insecurities based on the subjective and political nature of ‘peace’ itself. The thesis contributes conceptually and empirically to knowledge of the operation of victor’s peace and its implications for civil society in peace-building. This thesis’s central contention is that acts of securitization and governmentality carried out by Sri Lanka’s central governmental elite within and enabled by the victor’s peace have constricted spaces for civil society to articulate alternatives or engage in critical dialogue within the political process fostered under the victor’s peace. This study, thus, questions romanticized notions of the potentiality of ‘local’ resistances to shift structural inequalities and power asymmetries in victor’s peace. At a disciplinary level, the thesis also deepens knowledge, first, on civil society as complex and contested sphere. It argues that to conceptualize civil society as homogenous or inherently altruistic risks drastically oversimplifying its highly diffuse nature and politics within the sector in which certain actors may benefit within the victor’s peace and engage in ‘peace’-building activities in order to both capitalise on those benefits and sustain the victor’s peace. Second, the thesis addresses the nexus between civil society and peace-building, and specifically the politics of peace-building, in the victor’s peace. In not being constrained by negotiated peace settlement it asserts that, as in Sri Lanka, instances of victor’s peace can quickly transition into repressive environments. Here it is unlikely that civil society, despite innovative methods of exercising agency, can significantly alter the trajectories of the ‘peace’, and further that those civil society actors that support the victor’s peace may seek to exploit the benefits they gain from it at the expense of the human security of others. Finally, the thesis asserts that, ultimately, Human Security’s utility may lie not as political agenda that validates external intervention based on a ‘responsibility’ to intervene, but as a conceptual framework for developing deeper understandings of the nature of (in)security and factors driving (in)security at multiple levels of analysis within different articulations or ‘types’ of peace.

In the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US, States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention started to discuss the potential malign application of biological research and technology. This thesis examines how this issue of dual-use has been developed, discussed, and how solutions have been proposed. In order to do so, the thesis follows a neopragmatist approach. As a neopragmatist methodology is largely underdeveloped, the thesis explores some of the key aspects of neopragmatism, specifically its openness to various methods and theories, by directly applying it to the topic. As a result of this approach, the thesis starts with exploratory empirical research, which follows Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory. This research reviews how the problem of dual-use has been discussed in three communities: politics and security, ethics, and science. One of the results is that dual-use has primarily been discussed in the security community while the other two were only marginally involved. The proposed solution to the problem by the security community is to place the burden of responsibility on the scientific community. The second part of the thesis then uses theory, Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory and Martin Heidegger’s work on questioning technology, to critically challenge this solution developed in the security community. The thesis concludes by identifying approaches to help deal with the dual-use issue. It also examines how the adoption of a neopragmatist methodology has influenced and guided the thesis.

This research develops a new concept for people-to-people contacts, formulates a theoretical model to assess the impact of people-to-people contacts on peacebuilding, and draws theoretical modifications and explanations in the model on the basis of its empirical application on India-Pakistan conflict and Northern Ireland conflict. The new concept of interactive people-to-people contacts (IPPC) is developed and it is differentiated from the similar concepts in peace theory. Then ontological and epistemological foundations of IPPC are determined and the roots of IPPC in peace and conflict theories are traced. To empirically assess the role played by IPPC in building peace, the web approach model is developed from Lederach’s “pyramid” of peacebuilding as formulated in Building Peace (1997) and later improved in The Moral Imagination (2005). The web approach model is applied on Northern Ireland conflict to empirically test the web approach model and make improvements in the model learning from the practice of IPPC in Northern Ireland conflcit. Then web approach model is applied on two selected case studies of PIPFPD and Aman ki Asha to empirically asses the role played by IPPC in building peace between India and Pakistan. The web approach model is used to determine the stage/frame of the web process where IPPC based peacebuilding have reached so far in India-Pakistan conflict. Moreover, theoretical modifications in web approach model are drawn learning from the selected case studies and an attempt is made to find out a way forward for IPPC based peacebuilding in India-Pakistan conflict.

The purpose of this research project is to analyse the opportunities and challenges that the foreign and security policy research institutes face in transnational cooperation across wider Europe. By specifically examining the capacities of non- and quasi-governmental actors to operate and cooperate at transnational level, the research informs the choices presented by the ongoing restructuring of the foreign and security policy sphere. The increasing deterritorialisation of foreign and security policy issues calls for transnational or multinational approaches to resolve them. As nation states fall short of the appropriate capacities, it is of interest to investigate how non- and quasi-governmental actors can contribute to transnational interaction. Therefore, their tools and capacities to operate and cooperate in the transnational sphere need to be established in the first place. In this context a broader geographical focus is chosen in order to study a more differentiated situation, instead of the already relatively integrated case of the European Union. The thesis first studies cooperation among research institutes in broader terms under consideration of their socio-political environment. It outlines differences in their organic development dependent on the geographic affiliation of the institutes, and identifies their tools as well as several defining characteristics. This is followed by an analysis of the fieldwork, discussing processes, opportunities and challenges in transnational cooperation as perceived by staff in research institutes. Subsequently, the thesis takes a more detailed look at applied cooperation among research institutes. Here it traces patterns and formats of interaction, and then delves into a case study on project- based cooperation that provides functional insights regarding research institutes cooperation across borders. In studying cooperation among research institutes from various perspectives, the research enables to investigate the integration among the different narratives. The study integrates a range of issues and concepts in an original manner, therefore it contributes to several significant debates. On the face of it, the thesis adds to the identification of a role for non- and quasi-governmental actors in an increasingly deterritorialised foreign and security policy sphere, using the example of research institutes. To address this aspect, the study considers both the broader implications of socio-political and economic interrelations for cooperation, as well as the detailed functional level of interaction. Moreover, based on the choice of geographical focus, the research project contributes to the literature on EU-Russia relations. Herein it adds to the extant literature by offering a perspective which acknowledges the implications of high politics but emphasises the role of non- and quasi-governmental actors. Beyond that, the thesis contributes to the theoretical debate on foreign and security policy in choosing a non-traditional approach to examine a non-traditional issue. Post-structuralism serves to facilitate a critical review of the construction of cooperation among Russian and EU-based public policy research institutes.

Les transformations profondes qui ont eu lieu dans la dernière décennie du XXème siècle - l'effondrement du communisme en Europe de l'Est et ses conséquences, la reconfiguration institutionnelle du continent européen - poussait la Roumanie ainsi que d'autres pays ayant fait partie du bloc communiste à revoir leurs positions sur la scène internationale, tout en acquérant la possibilité de choisir leur propre voie de développement. L'un des principaux leviers dont disposait la Roumanie pour faire face à ce défi était sa politique étrangère et cette dernière devait être revue et adaptée aux nouvelles réalités internationales. Notre recherche est une analyse sur près de 25 ans de la politique étrangère de la Roumanie afin de déceler la manière dont cette politique étrangère a évolué et de comprendre le comportement international de la Roumanie après l'adhésion à l'Union européenne. Le concept de l’européanisation nous a aidé à établir le sens de l’évolution de la politique étrangère roumaine. / The profound changes occurred in the last decade of the twentieth century - the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and its consequences, the institutional reconfiguration of the European continent - urged Romania and other former communist countries to review their positions on the international stage, while gaining the opportunity to choose their own path of development. One of the main levers Romania had to respond to this challenge was its foreign policy. But first of all its foreign policy should be reviewed and adapted to new international realities. Our research is an analysis of nearly 25 years of Romanian foreign policy aiming to observe its evolution and to understand the international behavior of Romania after the accession to the European Union. The concept of Europeanization was a useful tool for establishing the direction of the evolution of the Romanian foreign policy.