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The precautionary principle has emerged as one of the most contentious international norms within international environmental law. Yet, despite the vexing conceptual uncertainties confronting the precautionary principle, it is repeatedly invoked by policy makers and incorporated within international and domestic environmental law and agreements. This thesis explores how the international norm of precaution comes to be translated from the international sphere to domestic public policy. The research utilizes the pathways framework, which suggests that there are three additional pathways in additional to the direct implementation of international rules in national law and policy - international norms and discourse, markets and direct access - through which actors, institutions and interests can influence domestic and firm-level policy change. The findings propose an explanation of why Canada came to adopt a particular version of the precautionary principle, also revealing the complex nature of norm transfer, the significance of multiple causal pathways of influence and the interactions arising along these pathways.

In a surprising turn of events Chen Shui-bien won the 2000 presidential election in Taiwan, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) became the ruling party of Taiwan. This marked a dramatic change in Taiwan's China policy, in that the DPP's China policy was quickly characterized by Taiwan’s objection to the one China principle, the DPP’s insistence on cross-Strait relations is a two-state’s relationship and emphasize Taiwan independence. However, Chen's actions prompted China to pass the Anti-Secession Law in March of 2005 and to force Chen and the DPP to moderate Taiwan’s China Policy. Part of the reasons for Chen's provocative actions toward China and China's response are Taiwan's domestic politics where elections control what the political parties do. The electoral factor in Taiwan has had a critical effect of the establishment of the DPP’s China policy. Therefore, the electoral factor in Taiwan’s domestic politics influences the DPP’s China policy because the DPP is primarily motivated by maintaining their power through vote maximization in elections and uses Taiwan’s China policy as a tool to increase their vote totals. This thesis explores how such domestic political issues have affected Chen and the DPP's China policy and China's response. It also explores how these domestic factors will affect Taiwan's China policy in the future under the DPP. Keywords: Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Taiwan domestic politics, DPP’s China policy, elections in Taiwan.

Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo discutir o Paraguai contemporâneo. Tratará de sua política interna e externa a partir do governo do Gal. Alfredo Stroessner, pondo em relevo suas características essenciais, bem como sua relação com a Argentina, Brasil e Estados Unidos. Apresentar-se-á um país moderno e complexo que, apesar de suas vicissitudes, é de singular importância geoestratégica na região. Também será discutida sua transição de um tipo de regime autoritário para a democracia com características e dinâmicas próprias e marcadamente distinta daquelas de seus vizinhos mais influentes. Pretende-se por último debater a possível relação entre suas políticas interna e externa. Com relação ao referencial teórico, não houve opção por uma corrente específica, mas antes optou-se por uma literatura mais tipicamente dos autores paraguaios cuja ênfase esteve mais próxima do campo geopolítico e da teoria da interdependência em razão das particularidades desse país. / This research aims at discussing contemporary Paraguay, with its domestic and international politics, from the government of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, emphasizing its essential characteristics, as well as the relationship with Argentina, Brazil, and United States. Paraguay is a modern and complex country which, in spite of its vicissitudes, has a singular geostrategic importance in Latin America. Its transition from an authoritarian regime to democracy, with peculiar characteristics and dynamics which are notably diverse from its more influential neighbors, will be discussed. It is also objective of this study to debate the possible relation between its internal and external politics. As for the theoretical referential, there was not a choice for a specific current, but rather a choice for literature which is more typically from Paraguayan authors with emphasis closer to the geopolitical field and to the independence theory, due to the peculiarities of the country.

This dissertation explores the interactive effects of domestic audience costs and strategic interests on state behavior in international crises. I argue that the magnitude of a leader’s audience costs is influenced by the level of strategic interests, which leads to several predictions of crisis behavior in terms of (1) decisions to issue threats, including bluffs, (2) the credibility of these threats and the willingness of opponents to resist, and (3) crisis outcomes, including war. In the theoretical chapters, a formal model of crisis bargaining is stylized under conditions of complete and incomplete information. Based on this model, several novel predictions are derived regarding crisis behavior. These predictions are quantitatively tested through a series of monadic and dyadic probit and multinomial logit models using a dataset of deterrence crises for the period 1895-1985. The results lend strong validity to the approach advanced here that does not consider endogenous and exogenous factors in isolation, but rather models their interplay to predict the dynamics of crisis behavior. With respect to dispute initiation, the results show that strategic interests have a much stronger influence on authoritarian leaders’ willingness to initiate disputes than they do for democracies. Moreover, the formal stylization and empirical analyses show that democracies can and do bluff, which is in contrast to the conventional expectations from audience cost research. Relatedly, this study specifies if and when democratic threats are credible and how the interplay between variable domestic costs and strategic interests can lead to deterrence success, failure, or war. While there is little difference between the credibility of democratic and authoritarian threats at the lower level of interests, democratic threats become more credible and less likely to be resisted as the interests at stake increase. As for crisis outcomes, among others, war is more likely between opponents with vital interests involved; yet even here, the predictions are not straightforward but rather the probability of war is increasing at a differential rate for democratic and authoritarian initiators. Whereas the formal models in this study provide the logical rationale for these and other expectations, the quantitative findings demonstrate their empirical validity as well.

Which grand strategies do Great Powers adopt towards rising challengers? When do Great Powers conciliate their potential rivals, and when do they opt for strategies of containment? In this master’s report, I outline an argument to answer these and related questions. I add to the existing literatures on grand strategy and power transitions in several key respects. First, I model power shifts between Great Powers as contests over access to externally located benefits rather than as contests over power for its own sake. Second, I emphasize the weight of domestic politics in shaping states’ preferences over the apportionment of these benefits. Third, I highlight the role of diplomacy in determining whether established Great Powers choose to conciliate or else contain potential rivals. Empirically, I provide four vignettes of Great Power responses to rising states: the United States’ strategy towards Japan during the Cold War; Britain’s appeasement of the United States, 1890-1914; the United States’ containment of the Soviet Union under Ronald Reagan; and Britain’s containment of Wilhelmine Germany. / text

Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo discutir o Paraguai contemporâneo. Tratará de sua política interna e externa a partir do governo do Gal. Alfredo Stroessner, pondo em relevo suas características essenciais, bem como sua relação com a Argentina, Brasil e Estados Unidos. Apresentar-se-á um país moderno e complexo que, apesar de suas vicissitudes, é de singular importância geoestratégica na região. Também será discutida sua transição de um tipo de regime autoritário para a democracia com características e dinâmicas próprias e marcadamente distinta daquelas de seus vizinhos mais influentes. Pretende-se por último debater a possível relação entre suas políticas interna e externa. Com relação ao referencial teórico, não houve opção por uma corrente específica, mas antes optou-se por uma literatura mais tipicamente dos autores paraguaios cuja ênfase esteve mais próxima do campo geopolítico e da teoria da interdependência em razão das particularidades desse país. / This research aims at discussing contemporary Paraguay, with its domestic and international politics, from the government of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, emphasizing its essential characteristics, as well as the relationship with Argentina, Brazil, and United States. Paraguay is a modern and complex country which, in spite of its vicissitudes, has a singular geostrategic importance in Latin America. Its transition from an authoritarian regime to democracy, with peculiar characteristics and dynamics which are notably diverse from its more influential neighbors, will be discussed. It is also objective of this study to debate the possible relation between its internal and external politics. As for the theoretical referential, there was not a choice for a specific current, but rather a choice for literature which is more typically from Paraguayan authors with emphasis closer to the geopolitical field and to the independence theory, due to the peculiarities of the country.

The purpose of my dissertation was to examine the competition between the U.S.-led Western bloc and the Soviet bloc in the less developed world during Détente. I assessed whether or not the Soviet bloc pushed for strategic gains in the less developed world in the middle-to-late 1970’s and whether this contributed to the U.S. decision to abandon Détente in 1979. I made the attempt to test the international relations theory of balance of threat realism (Walt, 1992). I accomplished the test in two ways. First, I measured the foreign aid allocations (military and economic) made by each respective bloc towards the Third World by using a quantitative approach. Second, I examined U.S. archives using the process-tracing/historical method. The U.S. archives gave me the ability to evaluate how U.S. decision-makers and U.S. intelligence agencies interpreted the actions of the Soviet bloc. They also gave me the chance to examine the U.S. response as we evaluated the policies that were pushed by key U.S. decision-makers and intelligence agencies. On the question of whether or not the Soviet bloc was aggressive, the quantitative evidence suggested that it was not. Instead, the evidence found the Western-bloc to have been more aggressive in the less developed world. The U.S. archives also showed Soviet actions to have been defensive. Key U.S. decision-makers and intelligence agencies attested to this. Finally, the archives show that U.S. officials pushed for aggressive actions against the Third World during the final years of Détente. Thus, balance of threat realism produced an incorrect assessment that U.S. aggression in the late 1970’s was a response to Soviet aggression during Détente. The evidence suggests structural Marxism and domestic politics can better explain U.S./Western actions. The aggressive foreign aid allocations of the West, coupled with evidence of U.S. decision-makers/agencies vehemently concerned about the long-term prospects of the West, strengthened structural Marxism. Domestic politics can also claim to explain the actions of U.S. decision-makers. I found extensive archival evidence of bureaucratic inter-agency conflict between the State Department and other intelligence agencies in areas of strategic concern to the U.S.

There have has been instances when a powerful neighboring countries are observed as being difficulty for the smaller ones. Moreover, the phenomena of subjugation roots back to imperialism era and its loitered notion of superiority is still practiced by most of the developed and sturdy countries. But the most vital thing here to be considered is the other nations’ (or smaller nations’) action against the dominance, which sometimes is demonstrated either in a resilient fashion or completely in submissive manner. In the era of globalization where nations’ relationship is intricate in a complex web of dependency, the nations with limited resources, weak diplomacy and instable politics are mostly compelled to succumb itself in front of relatively huge powers. And if the powerful states happens to be the immediate neighbors than the things might get more complex. In addition to this, the situation can be worse if the nation is a Least Developed Country (LDC hereafter) and also Land Locked States like Nepal and Bhutan. This research paper intends to analyze situation of such two nations, namely Nepal and Bhutan that are squeezed between China– a rising global power and India- an aspiring regional power. The interfering and controlling nature of these giants, at times, through diplomatic and coercive tactics has been evident in both the nation. But, despite the similarities these two small countries are seen to have adopted different strategies while dealing with their neighbors. If we look at Nepal we can see that it has developed bilateral relation with its both neighbors. And Bhutan has bilateral relation only with India and still has not welcomed China in its friendship zone, and this puzzle drives the research paper. The paper attempts to understand the situation from the lens of realism, as the theory implies that the nation is the nucleus and whatever action it undertakes is based on the advantage and mostly concerned in their individual power growth. It believes that any nation’s behavior does not involve the utopian notion but functions solely on the self-indulgence manner. Furthermore, the paper has tried to make an analysis with the help of inductive theory. The research finds that realism along is to sufficient to understand the small country’s perspective. There are many other factors that have contributed in making the strategic choices that these small countries have opted in order to establish a certain kind of relationship with their neighbors. Along with this the area of study needs to be broadened in order to comprehend the situation completely.

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