Why a state is perpetually fragile despite being subjected to extensive international state-building efforts is one of the most debated topics in contemporary international relations and development studies. In the literature the Liberian conflict presents an example of how natural resources can play a central role in civil wars. Post-conflict Liberia has been subjected to extensive international state-building, at some point hosting the largest and one of the longest UN peace keeping forces in the world, and inflow of aid that exceeds in multiples the GDP. In order to understand the international state-building efforts in Liberia, it is pertinent to reflect them against the extractive and predatory nature of the Liberian republic, and the central role natural resources exploitation and plantations have played in accommodating transnational interest in the country’s abundant natural resources and fertile land. Benefit sharing of rents from natural resources exploitation is inseparable from the internal legitimatization of the Liberian state. Excessive lending, reforms led by international experts, semi-sovereignty and weak internal legitimacy originate from the inception of the Liberian state. This thesis focuses on the political economy aspect of Liberian state-building, and in particular the question of the governance of natural resources. By combining a historical perspective and ethnographic knowledge the thesis seeks to answer a number of interrelated questions: How was access to the state distributed in Liberian state-building? How are those to be governed and their representation included in political economic decision making and more particularly in decisions over natural resources governance? The thesis describes the empirical state-building practices in Liberia during the first two terms of the post-conflict elected government. The analysis is theoretically grounded on the empirical definition of a state in terms of Mitchell (1991) and the underlying social rules of the Liberian governance systems. The thesis argues that securitisation, debt servicing and revenue collection from extractive industries, were prioritized to create an enabling environment to advance concessionary economic policy. While state-building is apparently technocratic, it is, in fact, inherently political. The identification of domestic actors suggests that access to state institutions, information and thus to decision making was unevenly distributed with preference being given to those proclaimed to be reformist partners in neoliberal state-building. This set of elites has appropriated state-building projects to shape institutional arrangements to its own advantage. Historically, Liberia has been characterized as a ‘quasi-apartheid’ state with a perpetual lack of social development. Through concession agreements the state outsources public service provision to concessionaires. The Liberian state has never extended its institutions, public service provision and rule of law to its entire territory, yet maintains a monopoly over the country’s natural resources. After a decade of international state-building, the constitutional reform process revealed that Liberians value economic rights over political rights. The thesis concludes that low confidence in the state’s authority, including in its right to resources, perpetuates the fragile security situation.

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This study analyses the international environmental relations undertaken by subnational governments, a phenomenon conceptualised as environmental paradiplomacy. Research on paradiplomacy examines subnational governments’ international relations without considering their engagement with environmental issues, while multilevel governance (MLG) theory focuses on the rescaling of governance of environmental problems without addressing subnational engagement in international relations. Combining paradiplomacy studies and MLG theory, the thesis develops an original conceptual framework to investigate a leading example of environmental paradiplomacy. The conceptual framework is applied to the case of the state of São Paulo, a regional government in Brazil that, since the 1970s, has strongly engaged in international environmental activities. In contrast with other findings on paradiplomacy, the state of São Paulo engages in international relations not only as a way of challenging, but also of collaborating with the national government. The major empirical data informing the thesis was gathered through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with key figures involved with environmental governance in the state and at the national level, as well as representatives from NGOs, universities, the private sector and foreign policy-makers. The study furthers the understanding of paradiplomacy offering analytical insight into: (1) how subnational governments engage in transnational relations; (2) the reasons driving them to undertake paradiplomacy; and (3) the outcomes of their actions. It also contributes more generally to research on global environmental governance, offering new theoretical insights on the roles of subnational governments and the changing relationships between different levels of government in national and international policymaking.

Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in funds made available by the international donor community to support local civil society actors in fragile states. Current peacebuilding and development efforts support and strive to recreate an active, vibrant and ―liberal‖ civil society. In the case of Sierra Leone, paradoxically, the growing support has not strengthened civil society actors based on that liberal idea(l). Instead of empowering individuals, enhancing democratic ownership and pro-active participation stemming from the civil sphere, Sierra Leone‘s civil society landscape appears to be neutralised, depoliticised if not instrumentalised to provide social services the state is either too weak or unwilling to deliver. In critically assessing how Sierra Leone‘s civil sphere became depoliticised during the country‘s peacebuilding and development phase, the thesis advances three main arguments. First, it supports the commonly agreed consensus in scholarship that postwar civil societies have become instrumentalised to serve a broader liberal peacebuilding and development agenda in several ways. Second, a deeper inquiry into the history of state formation and political culture of Sierra Leone reveals that Ekeh‘s (1975) bifurcated state is very much alive. In short, Western idea(l)s of participatory approaches and democracy are repeatedly challenged by a persisting urban-rural divide as well as socially entrenched forms of neopatrimonialism, elite-loyalism and tribalism. Sierra Leonean civil society finds itself currently in the midst of renegotiating those various intersections of a primordial and civic sphere. Third, the effects colonialism has had on African societies are still reflected in the current monopolisation of wealth and power among a few (elites) next to a vast majority living in abject poverty. More concretely, how abject poverty, human development and above all the lack of education affect activism and agency from below remains a scarcely addressed aspect in the peacebuilding and development literature.

Since the Second World War, there has been a shift away from interstate warfare to a relative increase in intra-state conflict and insurgencies. In addition, a growing number of these insurgencies can be described as ‘transnational’, in that they are supported by outside state and non-state actors and may also pursue activities beyond their borders. This thesis attempts to analyse and explain the shift from interstate warfare to the emergence of transnational insurgencies. This study proposes and evaluates two possible explanations. First, interstate warfare is thought by many scholars to be declining in value as changing technology, economic systems, and domestic and international politics have raised the costs and constraints of interstate warfare while yielding reduced benefits. Second, there is evidence that transnational insurgencies are more effective and possess wider capabilities than domestic insurgencies by utilising transnational networks for external support, strategic alliances, and illicit activities. The study evaluates whether these factors have deterred interstate warfare while incentivising indirect methods through the initiation or support of transnational insurgencies. This thesis first reviews indirect warfare and the development of insurgencies over history and, in particular, how they have qualitatively changed since 1945 in their transnational relationships and activities. It then provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the changing value of direct interstate warfare and the strategies and calculus by which states outsource to insurgencies as an alternative to interstate warfare. Third, it reviews the transnational networks and the changing effectiveness and capabilities of transnational insurgencies. Finally, it concludes with a case study of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, examining the decision and outcome of state outsourcing to Afghan insurgencies (i.e. the Northern Alliance).

Emotions are gaining an increasingly prominent role in the study of International Relations. As a relatively new frontier, there is still considerable work to be done in streamlining various efforts into a systematic study. These efforts have largely circled on describing the cognitive and action potential of specific emotions, such as anger, fear and trust. This thesis is concerned with an extreme emotion, the emotion of rage. I stress the action potential of revenge, as well as the cognitive elements at play here, most specifically the issue of abrupt changes to morality. I use both Greek and Nietzschean philosophy to construct a binary approach to rage that acknowledges both the violent and bloody manifestation - we still witness today - as well as the silent, non-violent rancour that searches for an opportune moment before exploding into action.

With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set to expire in 2015, focus has turned to a new framework which might replace them. Heavily influenced by the Human Capabilities Approach (HCA), the MDGs reflected a relatively static, liberal understanding of what ‘human development’ is meant to signify (prioritising notions of freedom, individual capability and justice). Not an evaluation of the MDGs per se, this project suggests instead that critical reflection on the ethical underpinnings of any approach is key to articulating a future vision for development. I argue for a contrasting line of ethical thought, the ethics of care (which prioritise notions of context, vulnerability and relationship), suggesting how it could be more fully embodied in development practices. I further suggest that an emphasis on human empathy would serve to strengthen the values of responsibility and responsiveness which care (and development) ethicists champion. To this end, I first describe the ethical context (the HCA) within which the MDGs have operated; I then challenge its rationalistic or agentic biases and highlight the importance of human vulnerability, relationship and trust. I outline key elements of care theory (responsibility to ‘the other’, relational agency and ‘context’) and further argue that empathy should take a more central place in it. I finally describe empathy in practice (i.e. those programmes which foster empathic learning and understanding) and empathy in promise (by combining lessons drawn from the discussions above with deliberative democratic theory). Across these connected arguments, therefore, I describe a collaborative-expressive, praxeological ethics of international development; an ethics based in expressed need over abstract right, in the pluralism of development goals, in empathic deliberation on these needs and goals, and in the fostering of relationships of care and trust; necessary for any meaningful, future vision of human development – of ‘self’ and ‘distant other’ – to take form.

The role of ethics in international politics is highly contested. Despite this contestation, there is a widespread assertion that multilateral aid organisations (MLOs) are more likely to be driven by ethical considerations than bilateral aid organisations (BLOs). However, this claim has not been systematically established or examined. To address this gap, this thesis first develops a framework for analysing the importance of ethical considerations, and, second, applies it to the introduction of a ‘new’ norm – Women/Gender and Development (WID/GAD) – into three organisations with different organisational characteristics: UNDP, EC/EU and ODA/DFID, using the method of comparative heuristic case studies. The analysis aims to establish the extent to which norm integration was driven by ethical considerations, and if this was influenced by organisational characteristics. The thesis finds that ethical considerations played a minor role in all organisations, suggesting that organisations as such are generally not likely to be driven by ethical considerations. However, the analysis also finds that people within the organisations seemed likely to be driven by ethical considerations, and, when given the freedom, power, and resources to act, they could drive norm integration and have their ethical commitments reflected at organisational-level. The level of freedom, power, and resources of these individuals was significantly influenced by organisational characteristics. Specifically, characteristics typical of MLOs are found to provide a restrictive environment, while characteristics typical of BLOs, if combined with a committed decision-maker, provide an enabling environment for committed actors to drive norm integration. However, BLOs are volatile and, without a committed decision-maker, are likely to take no action at all on a new norm. MLOs, due to their high susceptibility to scrutiny, are more likely to always take some action on a new norm – just not action driven by ethical considerations. These findings question MLOs’ claim to substantive moral legitimacy and provide a potential explanation for weak integration of WID/GAD in many development organisations.

This PhD investigates the impacts of taxation on state capacity and accountability through comparative case studies of Angola and Mozambique between 1975 and 2013. Extremes of violence and economic dependency dominate the postcolonial histories of Angola and Mozambique. These cases provide an ideal setting for comparative analysis of how civil war and single resource dependence influence the links between taxation and statebuilding. The thesis demonstrates, in contrast to bellicist notions, that civil war did not strengthen the tax systems or create stronger states. Rather, transitions from the colonial capitalist regimes to socialism and then towards market capitalism, as well as the availability of autonomous income sources, were the central drivers of change in extractive processes. The research establishes taxation as both a critical explanation for development trajectories and a reflection of state capacity and accountability. Existing research on taxation and statebuilding in contemporary developing countries tends to treat tax as a catalyst for democracy, but I find that it provides political regimes with an equally powerful tool to expand power through neopatrimonial networks and consolidate control over the state. Analysis of the case studies concludes that, driven by extraverted elite accumulation strategies, vast oil resources in Angola and large-scale foreign aid in Mozambique worked similarly to disconnect state finances from society and undermine the potential links between revenue collection and redistribution, thereby reducing the possibility of enhanced state capacity or accountability.