During World War II, regionalism was upheld by theorists and practitioners of international relations as a needed modification or alternative to the sovereign state and international system of political organization. Aspects of regionalism relating in particular to security matters were eventually incorporated into the United Nations Charter in 1945. This study draws together ideas and historical data on regionalism and the war-time search for postwar world and European order. Part One of the study identifies three theories, or proto-theories, of regionalism and postwar order - interstate, hegemonial, and autochthonous - based on the degree to which state sovereignty was subordinated to regional criteria. These theories help elucidate the allied debate on regionalism and postwar order. Part Two examines the debate on the future world organization by the three major powers - the United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union - as well as, at the 1945 San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization, among the smaller allied countries. Part Three helps unravel the allied debate on regionalism and the future structure of Europe, including the attempt by eastern European govern-ments-in-exile to form one or more regional federations in that part of Europe. It also discusses the role of nonstate actors. The study concludes with an assessment of regionalism as a concept and principle that alters the classical, state-centric understanding of international relations.

Contemporary analysis has generally accepted that amphibious warfare development in the United States and the United Kingdom was quite similar, if not almost identical, during the Cold War. So-called 'parallel courses' of similar development, which had emerged during the interwar years and continued to evolve during the Second World War, converged even further in the post-war era. This effectively culminated in national approaches (or systems) that most closely reflected the US Naval Service's (i.e., US Navy and Marine Corps) World War II model, which had been used with legendary success in the Pacific through 1945. However, a comparative study of American and British developments from 1945 to 1968 at the strategic, organisational/institutional and tactical/operational levels of analysis reveals that there were significant, if not fundamental, differences. These variances-which had, in fact, materialised during the inter-war years and were consolidated during World War II-continued to evolve along parallel but different courses of development. In essence, they were based on naval versus maritime strategies, single-service versus inter-service (or joint) organizations/institutions, and combined arms versus joint warfare concepts, techniques and doctrine. One could arguably summarise these developmental trends as being amphibious and expeditionary, respectively. Comparing these different courses of development is best accomplished by determining and analysing the similarly divergent evolutionary debates and changes that occurred within each subject country, specifically during the peacetime years when the most significant advances in concepts, tactics, techniques, and doctrine were made. Whilst these activities were particularly divisive in the late 1940s and 1950s (and even in the early 1960s), it was not until the mid-l960s that compromises were reached on both sides of the Atlantic, which made a convergence of amphibious/expeditionary warfare development apparent; but even this did not completely eliminate certain underlying national differences

The thesis seeks to understand why in the post-Cold War era regionalism in Southeastern Europe has been largely ineffective. First, it examines the theoretical preconditions for the emergence of the phenomenon. It finds that two separate levels of analysis exist for explaining its sources, namely the international - divided between rationalist and reflectivist schools - and the domestic. Rationalist schools of thought are arranged along a continuum between those focusing on sources of regionalism external (systemic) and internal to regions. Subsequently, the research project provides a historical perspective of cooperation in Southeastern Europe. It finds that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, regional schemes did not succeed because of the fragmentory role of external factors - namely the intervention in descending order of the Great Powers, Germany and the Superpowers - as well as Balkan nationalisms. The thesis argues that in the post-Cold War era regional cooperation initiatives, such as the SEECP, the Royaumont Proces, SECI and the SPSEE, have also been ineffective due to external and domestic reasons. On the one hand, while promoting regional cooperation initiatives in Southeastern Europe, the EU has at the same time pursued differentiated integration and bilateral policies with Balkan states which further contribute to the region's heterogeneity and generate centrifugal dynamics. On the other hand, intra-national prerequisites for the emergence of regionalism are absent. These include the retarded state and nation-building process of Yugoslav successor states and entities as well as domestic economic conditions related to the delayed transition in the 1990s. The methodology of the study places the thesis within the literature of International Relations. Systemic theories and domestic political and economic reasons are used to explain the failure of regional cooperation in Southeastern Europe. The research project introduces the concept of 'stateness' - generally referred to in the democratisation literature as state and nation-building or 'third transition'- to the domestic explanations for the lack of regionalism as well as a neo-liberal aspect to the traditional state-centric external approach to regional cooperation.

This thesis analyses the place, meaning and significance of large-scale national memorials within what I describe as the contemporary postmodern-neoliberal conjuncture. Developing a distinctive theoretical and methodological approach, I explore the complex interplay between neoliberalism, postmodernism and nationalism in some of the most well-known and most written about national memorials and memorial-museums to have emerged in the US and Germany over the last 35 years. The prevailing consensus in the literature is that the memorials with which I am concerned are ambiguous, pluralistic, non-didactic and non-nationalistic. In contrast, I argue that far from renouncing the traditional ideological role of the monument, contemporary memorials are engaged in rearticulating nationalism in line with the contradictory demands of the current conjuncture. Offering a critical analysis of the relationship between the memorials’ form, the kind of ‘visitor experience’ they’re intended to offer, and the understanding of history and our relation to it which underpins their philosophical, ethical and political stance, I trace a specific trajectory from the ‘postmodern’ memorials of the 1980s through to what I argue are the increasingly authoritarian memorials being constructed today. Commonly invoked in discussions of catastrophic historical events and evoked through various means in contemporary memorials and memorial-museums, the aesthetic concept of the sublime is an important critical category of analysis; not least, I contend, because it goes to the heart of both neoliberalism and postmodernism. While their relationship is complex and dialectical, I argue that, among other things, crucially they both share a profound epistemological scepticism regarding what we can know and represent and that this has far reaching implications. Most significant of these is their rejection of the notion that radical political transformation (of a progressive sort) is either possible or desirable. I explore the various ways in which the sublime is manifest in the case studies under discussion as well as some of its philosophical and political implications, not least when it comes to the question of how we understand the past and our relation to it. Read in these terms, a complex picture begins to emerge. Operating within this conjuncture, today national memorials are required to pack an emotional punch, offering visitors emotionally affective ‘experiences’ whilst boosting the touristic and symbolic economies of the cities in which they are located. They must also fulfil the 3 traditional requirement of representing the nation and interpellating national subjects. My analysis of these memorials, which are commonly praised for their ambiguity as well as affective power, points to their continuing political and ideological role in reaffirming the nation and the neoliberal status quo.

This thesis details the purchase of liberal internationalism on elite and public opinion between 1945 and 1975 by examining two of its bastions, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as Chatham House, and the United Nations Association, the successor organisation to the League of Nations Union. It reveals how liberal internationalism survived the collapse of the League of Nations and the Second World War by exploring the relationships Chatham House and UNA had with the public, media, Whitehall and the main political parties. Chatham House and UNA had a significant impact upon these groups, acting as democratising agents in foreign policy by extending debate over international affairs beyond Whitehall. Nonetheless, although elite and popular liberal internationalism survived past 1945, it struggled to do so and in order to fully appreciate how, it is necessary to simultaneously assess the confines they and their fellow NGOs worked within. Chatham House and UNA’s impact upon the politics of foreign policy must also be understood in connection with the formal and informal political structures that restricted their attempts to democratise foreign policy; structures that promoted the illusory bifurcation of domestic and international affairs.

The UN secretary-general plays an important political role in world politics, yet the UN Charter describes him merely as "the chief administrative officer of the Organization". How did such a development come about? The existing narrative tends to emphasise the contribution made by Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nation's second secretary-general from 1953 to 1961. This thesis argues that there are two problems with this narrative. First, it overlooks the precedents set under the first UN secretary-general, Trygve Lie, who was in office from 1946 to 1953. Second, it places too much emphasis on the personal role played by Hammarskjöld, and fails to adequately consider the importance of institutional factors. The main empirical contribution of this thesis is to highlight the importance of precedents set during the first years of the UN's existence while Lie was secretary-general. Through his active stance on political issues in relation to Iran, Palestine, Berlin, Chinese representation, and Korea, as well as his consistently strong defence of the UN's unity and principles, Trygve Lie succeeded in carving out space for the secretary-general to act autonomously on political issues, which later secretaries-general could build on. The thesis' main theoretical contribution is to emphasise the importance of institutional factors in the development of the UN secretary-general's political role. In a conceptual framework based on institutionalism, the thesis explains how the UN secretary-general should be understood to play a 'role' within the 'institution' of the United Nations, and how this makes change of the role and the institution possible. Furthermore, through an examination of the founding of the United Nations and early expectations for the role of the secretary-general, the thesis shows that the institution of the United Nations had been set up from the start in such a way that it not only allowed for an expansion of the office of UN secretary-general, but also made such an expansion likely. The body of the thesis demonstrates how this process played out over time, by examining Lie's activities as secretary-general, and offering a historical narrative of several episodes where the institution 'pulled' to expand the office, just as much as, or even more than, Lie 'pushed' for the same outcome.