This thesis examines what political conditions must be established and what obstacles overcome, nationally and internationally, in order for the five 'official' nuclear weapon states (NWS) under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT)— China, France, Russia, the UK and the US—to abolish their nuclear weapons. In order to assess the explanatory power of existing mainstream and realist perspectives regarding the causes and consequences of NWS nuclear possession and disarmament, a substantial evidence base is utilised. Academic, advocacy and government documents, as well as interviews with a range of practitioners in this field, are drawn on to develop an institutional-historical analysis of nuclear politics in and between NWS. From this assessment of the existing literature, it is argued that whilst mainstream and realist works have some value, there are several gaps in and problems with their analysis that need to be addressed. For example, such works do not provide a full account of nuclear politics because they mainly focus on the international level, so that the role domestic politics plays in nuclear matters is not properly considered. In order to rectify this deficiency, I adopt a critical and normative approach and develop the domestic politics model of nuclear possession to better imagine the political causes and consequences of nuclear disarmament. The approach adopted, which I term institutional democratisation, proposes that if nuclear weapons are to be permanently eliminated then legitimate forms of power, including popular, democratic movements driven by principles of equality and justice, need to be developed in NWS that are capable of controlling and eliminating the bomb. This is necessary because the behaviour of nuclear weapon decision- making elites across NWS—and the institutions they inhabit and maintain—present the principal barrier to meaningful progress on eliminating nuclear weapons. Nuclear disarmament will thus both contribute to reformed domestic, regional and international political orders and benefit from wider, progressive change at each of these levels.

The ‘eastern question' of the 19th century is conventionally understood as the power-vacuum created by the decay of the geostrategically important Ottoman Empire in the context of a highly competitive and expansionary European inter-state system. Conventional approaches to International Relations argue that the eastern question was solved by creating multiple, legitimate, sovereign national states in lieu of Ottoman rule as the outcome of an expanding European modernity, replacing the outdated, illegitimate and despotic rule of Oriental princes. However, this assumption entails a tension between the supposedly universal scope of European modernity and its fractured, multi-national form of transmission. This contradiction, implicit in International Relations theory, is the subject of this thesis. Examining this problem in the light of the eastern question, this thesis offers a historical sociological reconstruction of the social transformations that produced the supposedly ‘modern' geopolitical ‘order' in Southeastern Europe. The critical re-reading and positive reconstruction of the Ottoman trajectory from the end of territorial expansion in 1683 to the Greek secession in 1821, problematizes in how far territorial fragmentation of political rule can be understood as the ‘logical' result of the expansion of ‘modern' social and political relations. It is argued that, instead of understanding these developments as a teleological and predetermined process of Westernization, the key for understanding the emergence of the post-Ottoman state system lies in deciphering the dialectic between a ‘domestic' social struggle among pre-capitalist classes and an intensifying pan-European geopolitical dynamic. Hence, rather than understanding the process of nation-formation as the inevitable result of the expansion of ‘modern' international relations, it is necessary to emphasize the specificity of the Ottoman, like any other transformation. This in turn helps illuminating the unnatural and malleable nature of ‘modern' territorial inter-national ‘orders'. Rather than implementing a just, natural or finite domestic and geopolitical order, ‘national' fragmentations result from specific, materially conditioned social struggles. This raises generic problems with static and ahistorical understandings of social and geopolitical relations. It is suggested that a theoretically open historical materialist sociology of International Relations can provide a remedy. In consequence, it is argued that the ‘eastern question', far from being solved by the formation of national states, still remains open to this day.

Attempts to build a free press are routinely made in countries experiencing violent conflict or the aftermath thereof. A free press, defined as a press that holds governments accountable, is thought of as an important part of an emerging democracy. The role of media development projects is nevertheless under-researched. Most examinations of such projects are done by practitioners active in media development. This thesis contributes to the emerging academic literature on media development and its role in statebuilding. It does so by investigating media development in the new state of South Sudan. Ethnographic observations, a social survey, and unstructured interviews have been applied during a fieldwork spell in Juba, which lasted from November 2014 to August 2015. The application of three methods allowed for an in-depth investigation of the South Sudanese understanding of media, which differed significantly from the aims of western media experts implementing media development projects. Furthermore, the thesis compares the strengths and weaknesses, and the results delivered, by each utilised research method, and thus investigates how these methods perform in a country of the global South. I argue that the various understandings of media in South Sudan differ significantly from the thinking and practices of western media practitioners. In South Sudan, this resulted in a deteriorating relationship between the country’s government and its international donors and led to problems for the newly trained journalists. Furthermore, my results show the limitations of using just one method in a country of the global South; and they provide an argument for bricolage, a research approach that combines perspectives, theories, and methods, when researching policy-relevant questions in environments where the researcher is not a cultural native.

The Malaysian government has recently decided to consider nuclear energy as an option for electricity generation post-2030. In this light, Malaysia needs to develop a National Nuclear Fuel Cycle Policy to ensure the sustainability of its nuclear power programme. Due to the nature of dual use nuclear technology, this policy debate touches a very sensitive political topic in the context of the ongoing ‘war on terror’. To prevent newcomer states from misusing sensitive technology facilities such as the enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear materials, the international system employs multilateral nuclear arrangements (MNA). However, the MNA has come under criticism, especially from the developing countries, since it contradicts their rights for peaceful use of nuclear technology, as stipulated under Article IV of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Without a doubt, the central issue in the implementation of MNA is about trust and trustworthiness. Through a historical analysis and policy study, this thesis identifies the factors that influence nuclear cooperation in the framework of multilateralism. It also explores Malaysia’s participation in the MNA, contributes to the debate on the most appropriate option for its nuclear fuel cycle and provides information for developing Malaysia’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Policy. The arguments made in this thesis are based on consultations and analysis of a range of primary documents (white papers, acts, reports and formal interviews, etc.) and secondary materials (presentations by policy-makers and analysts, a wide-range of secondary literature). These materials have been crosschecked against a limited number of unstructured interviews with policymakers, analysts and Malaysian Government officials. The thesis is also underpinned by information from relevant academic, media and historical literature. The study concludes that the MNA is the best choice through which Malaysia can secure a fuel supply and maintain the sustainability of its national nuclear power program.

This thesis is about Western foreign policy analysis on Turkey as a second-order representation that is narratively constructed. The thesis argues that the scholarly field contains ideological antagonisms related to the West and is influenced by narrative traditions that offer apt metaphors and cultural resources to turn random foreign policy events into meaningful narratives. The thesis examines how Turkey is narrated in Western foreign policy analysis and how these narratives impact on debates over the idea of the West with the use of three theoretical approaches: the aesthetic approach is about representation, the narrative approach about the method of representation, and the interpretative approach about the relationship between representation and reality. There are two methodological foundations upon which the thesis is built: Hayden White’s tropology and the interpretative approach of Mark Bevir and R.A.W. Rhodes that focuses on beliefs, traditions, and dilemmas. The thesis also employs Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical tools as well as George Lakoff’s seminal work on foreign policy metaphors. In the thesis, White’s four master tropes are teased out with the use of three organising metaphors – the ‘losing Turkey’ metaphor, the ‘Turkey at a crossroads’ metaphor, and the ‘Erdogan-for-Turkey’ metaphor – that have been deduced from the data set using qualititative text analysis. Employing a paradigmatic method, the thesis identifies manifestations of the debate on the West in the data set, which includes over one hundred foreign policy analysis articles especially in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest and Foreign Policy but also in other journals, blogs, and books. The thesis follows the debate on Turkey to wherever it is taking place with the condition that the narrator speaks from a Western perspective, is familiar with the scholarly tradition of studying Turkey, and puts forward interpretations that resonate so widely that they have turned foreign policy imagination into facts and common sense.

Political economy research has long argued that regional trade agreements (RTAs) can contribute to domestic reform in developing countries. With the increase in scope and depth of regional trade agreements and the increasingly common practice of including new policy areas like competition policy in RTAs, this argument has gained new traction. However, despite the increased scholarly interest, there is still little knowledge about whether and how provisions in RTAs affect domestic change. This thesis contributes to this line of research by analysing how competition provisions in regional trade agreements between the European Union and Southern countries impact on the development of the Southern competition regimes. By combining different theories and research approaches on how regional trade agreements impact domestic reform, the analytical framework provides a detailed account on the type of change that takes place, the mechanisms through which change occurs, and the different types of actors that participate in this process. The research relies on two case studies: the EU-Morocco Association Agreement on the one hand, and the EU-Cariforum Economic Partnership Agreement on the other. The thesis finds that competition provisions in regional trade agreements were relevant in both cases for the development of competition regimes. However, the findings also suggest that the influence of the competition provisions is contingent on two other factors: the surrounding environment in which the regional trade agreement is embedded, and the presence of domestic actors that are willing to promote reform. The fact that the competition provisions in the EU-Morocco trade agreement were embedded in the European Neighbourhood Policy and, importantly, that a follow-up regional trade agreement with the European Union was envisaged for the future, implied that the EU had a stronger leverage to demand change from the Moroccan government. Moreover, in both Morocco and Cariforum, the interest of governments in advancing competition policy reform was limited. Therefore, domestic actors other than the government played a key role in ensuring that the competition provisions had an impact on the development of the respective competition regimes. In sum, the thesis makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature. First, it empirically adds to the literature that looks at the consequences of competition provisions in regional trade agreements by making in-depths analyses of two trade agreements. Second, it develops the literature on the impact of regional trade agreements on domestic reform by explaining how competition provisions can have an impact on domestic reform, even in situations when the government is not interested. Finally, it also contributes to the literature by showing the importance of serial trade agreements for domestic reform, an aspect that has previously been overlooked.

This thesis examines how the United States reacted to changes in its external environment in the Asia Pacific after the Cold War; in particular, this paper examines the creation of the security trilaterals in what had been a traditionally bilateral alliance system and seeks to explain this through Washington’s complex relationship with the other great power in the region, China. American policy toward China has been marked by its policy complexity, in the sense that the US has seen China both as an important trade partner and a potential peer competitor. While many scholars have covered both alliance theory and US approaches toward China, this thesis seeks to explore both together, seeking to put American strategy in the region writ-large within an overarching neoclassical realist (NCR) framework. As a result, this thesis prioritizes power and the structure of the international system, while also maintaining that external variables alone are insufficient to explain the complex behavior exhibited by the United States at this time. It therefore draws from domestic variables introduced Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), and examines them through the NCR conceptions of ‘threat assessment’. This thesis identifies four intervening variables as crucial to understanding the evolution of US policy in the region from 1993 to 2015. These include policy-coalitions of foreign policy elites (FPEs), their perception of the structure of the international system, the domestic political conditions in which they labored, economic inter-dependency to China, and threat-assessment debates. Applying those five to the independent variable of China’s rise, this thesis argues that American foreign policy elites formed into two broad policy coalitions, who could not agree on whether to balance or to accommodate China’s rise. The quasi-nature of the trilateral, the failed attempt at a quadrilateral, and the off-and-on again nature of US-Japan-Australia alliance dynamics indicate that foreign policy elites inside all three states continue to debate China’s threat-assessmentstatus. Therefore, this thesis finds that at heart, hedging is the product of domestic variables, the inability of policy coalitions to triumph over their opposites.

Different disciplinary lenses condition the views on whether trade is generally seen as an opportunity for or threat to food security. Until now there is no consensus on the (empirical) impact in the literature. First, I analyse the impact of PTAs on food security across 93 low and middle income countries for 1990-2014. To take into account some of the multifaceted heterogeneity across PTAs, a distinction is made between Regional and Bilateral Trade Agreements (RTAs and BTAs, respectively) as these are designed differently in the light of food policy. Findings indicate that having a PTA in force, in contrast to having none, is associated with better food security outcomes. However, an increase in the number of BTAs, which are more competitive, is negatively, and an increase in the number of RTAs, which are more cooperative, is positively associated with food security outcomes in low and middle income countries. Second, I look into how RTAs and food security are associated across the three sub-regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and South East Asia. To take into account heterogeneity across the RTAs I operationalise provisions on food security and related provisions in the agreement texts. I first test the impact of the aggregate provisions on food security for 67 low and middle income countries which are member of at least one of the RTAs in the three sub-regions, 1990-2014. Results indicate that the more food security related provisions a country has across its RTAs, the better it is a for food security outcomes. Then I test whether the state of food security affects the design of a RTA. Estimates indicate that the more severe the state of food insecurity within a country, the more food security related provisions the country has across its RTAs. In conclusion, RTAs are potentially an opportunity for food security - and the more food security and related concepts are addressed in the agreement text, the greater the opportunity. In contrast, BTAs are potentially a threat to food security.

This thesis investigates the origins, development and role of organised crime in Russia’s political economy. The existing academic literature tends to regard the post-1991 era of transition as the hotbed for the emergence and development of organised crime in Russia. This thesis finds such readings problematic and incomplete. I identify and explore three salient periods of political-economic development during the history of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia, and find that each of them was distinct, yet crucial in enabling the growth and functions of organised crime. Moreover, throughout history, the state and organised crime in Russian functioned in close cooperation with each other. This study reveals that the Russian state and organised crime have always been interdependent, and that concentrating solely on the post-1991 era is profoundly misleading.

This thesis is concerned with the intentions and effects of subsidised trade within the Eastern bloc. It argues that the core Soviet objective in Eastern Europe from the Thaw onwards was not exploitation for economic gain; subsidisation in return for political concessions; or an ideologically-driven desire for socialist integration, but instead to secure the dependence of the smaller socialist economies on the USSR. It is argued that advances can be made on existing literature by employing a concept of dependence which is capable of linking-up the primarily political concerns that motivated socialist international economic policy with the economic consequences for development that resulted. In order to accomplish this, a revised version of dependency theory (DT) formed through a critique of classical dependency work is used. DT is proposed as a starting-point for two reasons: firstly it was concerned to look at the interrelation between international processes and national development, a notable absence from the literature on Eastern bloc trade, and secondly the subsidised nature of this trade seems to beg the application of a theory which stresses the significance of international political and economic asymmetries. The type of dependency analysis proposed here differs from classical DT in several ways, most centrally in that an ideal-typical approach is used which allows for open-ended investigation of reciprocal influence between centre/periphery, as well as the recognition of significant differences between Soviet-type and developed market economies by refraining from making positive statements about either the nature of centre/periphery in themselves or their interactions. The impetus for this reformulation comes from the result of the literature review that some concept of dependence could help to fully articulate the consequences for development of Eastern bloc trade relations in the context of East-West antagonism.