The legal humanitarian regime, set out in the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, strives to alleviate human suffering through the provision of emergency goods and services, such as food supplies, water, temporary shelter, and medical treatment. This thesis examines how international non-government organizations (INGOs) contribute to the contestation of this regime in political emergencies, the effects of this contestation, and the factors driving INGO contestation. The thesis develops an analytical framework for understanding the nature and functioning of the legal humanitarian regime, and argues that INGO contestation occurs through the two processes of regime interpretation and regime implementation. It then goes on to identify the substantive content and effects of contestation, and the factors driving INGO contestation of the regime, through a detailed study of the policies and practices of CARE, Médecins Sans Frontiers, Oxfam, and World Vision, in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, from 1990-2010. The thesis argues that contestation has constitutive effects, as it re-defines the meaning of the formal humanitarian regime, and the underlying rules and norms that specify the regime’s function, scope, and operating principles. Contestation also has causal effects, as it can make INGOs participants in the conflict, eroding thereby the basis on which they negotiate access and their ability to respond to humanitarian needs, and the security of their staff. It has also facilitated the subordination of humanitarian assistance by donor states and combatants to their political and security objectives. INGO identity - expressed in terms of the constituent rules and norms that define INGO membership, their mandate and goals, and the manner in which they distinguish themselves from other actors - is argued to be a necessary factor for explaining INGO contestation. The focus on identity highlights the agency of INGOs in shaping the humanitarian regime and demonstrates that INGOs are not simply at the mercy of more powerful actors or external constraints.

To what extent does China's experience of economic reform since 1989 compel a reconsideration of the ontological foundations of contemporary capitalist development? China's political economy remains characterized by a unique and resilient political structure (the Chinese Communist Party) that penetrates both 'private' (market) and 'public' (state) organizations. The conceptual rootedness of contemporary theories of comparative and international political economy in a distinctly Western historical experience of capitalist development hinders their ability to understand Chinese capitalism on its own terms—as historically, culturally, and globally embedded. To generate greater analytic traction in understanding China's otherwise paradoxical constellation of actors and dynamics, I argue that contemporary capitalism should be studied as a set of mechanisms for managing and exploiting socio-economic uncertainty, rather than according to the binary logics of state regulation and market competition. These mechanisms can be conceptualized as an overarching risk environment. On this basis, I trace how the cognitive frames, social institutions, and relational networks that emerged within the 'socialist market economy' in China's post-Tiananmen financial system have placed the Chinese Communist Party at the nexus of the state and the market. I argue that specific ideas emerged about how to manage the flow of capital, playing a significant role in underpinning expectations of financial growth and stability. During this period the financial system underpinned the CCP's capacity to both manage and exploit socio-economic uncertainty through the path of reform, forming a central explanatory factor in a developmental trajectory marked by a trifecta of rapid economic growth, macroeconomic stability, and deepening socio-economic imbalances. Rather than viewing the path of financial reform in China solely in terms of 'partial' or 'failed' free- market reform, it thus becomes possible to cast China's development in a new light as the product of a more concerted vision of how the financial system would enable a mode of economic development that combined the drive for capital accumulation with the distinctive socio-political circumstances of post-1989 China.

This thesis investigates the nature and impact of Russian influence on Russian-language print and broadcast news in Ukraine and Belarus. TV channels and publications with shareholders or partners in Russia are widely available in both the countries studied; existing literature suggests that such ‘Russian’ media are a source of regional power for the Kremlin. To shed light on how Russian partners and shareholders affect editorial treatment of Russia, the thesis compares content samples from 27 TV news bulletins and newspapers available in Ukraine or Belarus, some of which have Russian partners or shareholders while others do not. It also draws on in-depth interviews with 46 journalists and other media professionals. The thesis then compares the cases of Ukraine and Belarus to explain how political and economic conditions in a ‘target’ state affect the Russian authorities’ scope for communicating messages to mass audiences abroad via pro-Kremlin broadcasters. The findings of the thesis serve as a basis for assessing whether Russian news exports might contribute to Russian foreign policy success in the way envisaged by the literature on soft power. This research reveals complexities which have previously been overlooked in discussions about Russia’s media influence in the post-Soviet region. The news providers in Ukraine and Belarus which have Russian partners or shareholders are diverse and often vulnerable to constraints within their operating environment. Their utility as a source of soft power for the Kremlin is questionable, because the association between media and soft power is premised on public sentiments swaying foreign policy decisions. This premise is problematic, particularly in authoritarian Belarus. Pro-Kremlin Russian news exporters undoubtedly play a role in Moscow’s relations with Minsk and Kiev. However, their significance may lie at least as much in their capacity to provoke as their capacity to ‘softly’ attract and persuade a mass audience.

What causes post-conflict violence to occur in some places emerging from extended violent conflict and not in others? Why does episodic post-conflict violence take different forms? And what causes episodic violence to escalate into larger renewed extended violence? This thesis contributes towards answers to these questions by examining the experience of Indonesia. Six provinces saw civil war or large-scale inter-communal unrest around the turn of the century. In each, war ended. Yet levels and forms of post-conflict violence vary significantly between areas. The Indonesian cases are used to build a theory of the sources of spatial and temporal variance in post-conflict violence. Multiple methods are employed. A new dataset, containing over 158,000 coded incidents, maps patterns of extended and post-conflict violence. Six districts in three provinces are then studied in depth. Comparative analysis of districts and provinces—drawing on over 300 field interviews—identifies the determinants of variations in post-conflict violence levels and forms. Adopting a political economy approach, the thesis develops a novel actor-based theory of post-conflict violence. Violence is not the result of failed elite bargains, dysfunctional inter-group relations, enduring grievances, or weak states. Instead, it flows from the incentives that three sets of actors—local elites, local violence specialists, and national elites—have to use violence for accumulation. Violence is used when it is beneficial, non-costly, and when other opportunities for getting ahead do not exist. How post-conflict resources are deployed, the degree to which those who use violence face sanctions, and the availability of peaceful means to achieve goals shape incentives and hence patterns of violence. Where only violence specialists support violence, post-conflict violence will take small-scale forms. Where local elites also support violence, escalation to frequent large episodic violence occurs. Extended violence only occurs where national elites also have reason to use violence for purposes of accumulation.

This thesis seeks to explain the outcomes of trade negotiations between the European Union (EU) and seventy-six of the world’s smallest developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific (ACP). Puzzlingly, in spite of its vastly greater economic size, the EU was, for the main, unable to realise its objective of concluding six broad and deep free trade agreements with these countries. Deploying first historical institutional analysis then statistical modelling and finally by scrutinising a wealth of primary documents and transcripts of interviews with negotiators, the thesis reveals three factors that influenced outcomes. First, coercive pressure applied by the EU on countries dependent on EU for trade preferences and aid. Second, tactics within the negotiating process, with some ACP countries and regions manoeuvring more effectively than others. Third, differences in the underlying preferences of ACP governments, with most opposing major aspects of the EU’s proposals, but a minority embracing the EPA approach. Probing the underlying reasons, the thesis finds that, contrary to the prevailing literature, lobbying by domestic economic interest groups only provides part of the answer – the analytical and ideational processes within ACP government institutions also exerted an influence. The analysis shows that structural factors, particularly the depth of economic and political dependence on the larger state, establish the range of likely outcomes from a given negotiation. However the preferences of small states and the way in which they interact strategically with the larger state can definitively shape the final outcome. In particular, small states can exercise a degree of resistance and blocking power that is often underestimated. It also sheds light on the formation of trade preferences in small developing countries and shows that in addition to lobbying by external groups, information and ideas within government bureaucracies appear to play an important role.

Environmental governance is a challenging topic in development contexts. On the one hand, the traditional development paradigm is based on economic growth through environmental exploitation; on the other, environmental degradation reduces vulnerable populations’ options for development. In the last thirty years numerous attempts to integrate environmental concerns in development policies have proved unsuccessful, raising questions as to whether the current governance system can address the challenge. The literature on environmental management has focused on identifying rules for successful governance, leaving little space to explore the complexities of the interactions between actors and their environments, wherein the reasons for sustained degradation might lie. The questions that this thesis asks are: How do diverse groups of actors rationalize and interact with degraded ecosystems? And what role does the governance system play in codifying these interactions? To answer these questions, the thesis engages in an institutional study of Lake Titicaca, between Peru and Bolivia. The lake has witnessed a degradation of its bay in the last thirty years, as a result of urban and mining development in the region. A complex web of organizations that go from the bi-national to the community level manages Lake Titicaca. The investigation of the questions asked is particularly relevant in the current context, as the countries to which the lake belongs put forward significantly different visions of the environment. By drawing on the strengths of social-ecological systems frameworks proposed by the two mains schools – the Resilience Alliance and Bloomington Workshop – and filling some of their deficiencies using insights from the sociological literatures on negotiation and justification, I hope to have created a composite framework with which to give an insightful account of the complexity and diversity at play in the field. The thesis adopts a broad range of qualitative methods (observation, interviews, document analysis) completed with descriptive statistics for budget analysis. The thesis argues that the actors’ approaches to the ecosystem are complex, diverse and constitutive of social-ecological systems wherein relationships are negotiated between actors, between actors and the ecosystem and ‘within’ actors as they hold competing visions and strategies. Some of the variables shaping these negotiations are crafted through the interaction between social and ecological elements, which also influence the actors’ understanding of the system. Others are determined by parameters crafted in the social sphere, and the ways in which social-ecological interactions fit with those. Policy interventions to improve the condition of Lake Titicaca need a more sophisticated understanding of these social-ecological systems.

Within the contemporary international order, deep structural inequalities coexist alongside a nominally pluralistic society of states that grants international personality to politically organised communities. Asymmetric interactions between distinct political communities have shaped the development of the international system from the colonial era to the present phase of global economic integration. Rising interdependence, problems of unequal development and the democratic mobilisation of peoples around the world have generated moral claims regarding the injustice of global inequality. In this context the international politics of inequality have taken the format of challenges by the political representatives of the global South to the dominance of the advanced industrialised North. The normative dimensions of this process can be understood through a focus on this process of political argument between unequals. Political argument is contestation over the principles appropriate to govern a sphere of social interaction. The thesis seeks to vindicate the notion that the challenges by the global South have given rise to a dynamic of political argument within a norm-governed international society. Changes in patterns of normative belief, material power and forms of political organisation have historically shaped North-South relations. Therefore, through the analysis of particular episodes of North-South argument, the thesis attempts to provide insights into the moral limits and possibilities of an evolving international society. Analysing the organised attempts to challenge inequality on the part of the representatives of the global South, the thesis seeks to advance the position the tensions generated by claims over inequality might provide the nucleus for the incorporation of egalitarian concerns into the operation of international society. Through participation in common practices of statehood, the peoples of the global South possess at least some ability to challenge structural inequalities and thus the potential to expand the moral limits of international society.

New methods of conflict and coercion can prompt tectonic shifts in the international system, reconfiguring power, institutions, and norms of state behavior. Cyberattacks, coercive acts that disrupt or destroy the digital infrastructure on which states increasingly rely, have the potential to be such a tool — but only if put into practice. This study examines which forces in the international system might restrain state use of cyberattacks, even when they are militarily advantageous. To do so I place this novel technology in the context of existing international regimes, employing an analogical approach that identifies the salient aspects of cyberattacks, and compares them to prior weapons and tactics that share those attributes. Specifically, this study considers three possible restraints on state behavior: rationalist deterrence, the jus ad bellum regime governing the resort to force, and incompatibility with the jus in bello canon of law defining just conduct in war. First, I demonstrate that cyberattacks frustrate conventional deterrence models, and invite, instead, a novel form of proto-competition I call ‘structural deterrence.’ Recognizing that states have not yet grounded their sweeping claims about the acceptability of cyberattacks in any formal analysis, I consider evidence from other prohibited uses of force or types of weaponry to defining whether cyberattacks are ‘legal’ in peacetime or ‘usable’ in wartime. Whereas previous studies of cyberattacks have focused primarily on policy guidance for a single state or limited analysis of the letter of international law, this study explicitly relates international law to state decision-making and precedent. It draws together previously disparate literature across strategic studies, international law, and diplomatic history to offer conclusions applicable beyond any single technology, and of increasing importance as states’ dependence on technology grows.

Inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) are given mandates by states to perform particular tasks: from refugee protection to the management of migration to promoting development. As new global challenges arise, such as climate change, these organisations must decide whether to ignore them or change in response. But what drives inter-governmental organisations to move beyond their mandates, if it is not their member states? International Relations offers a limited account of if and how they will respond to new issue areas. Principal-agent theory treats IGOs as units with fixed preferences to expand and maximise their tasks and scope (Hawkins et al. 2006; Nielson and Tierney 2003; Pollack 2003). Meanwhile, sociological institutionalism argues that IOs are driven by a logic of appropriateness and staff will only support expansion if it fits coherently with their organisational identity and culture (Barnett and Coleman 2005). I build on these two theories and propose that IGO behaviour should be explained by organisational type. IGOs exist along a spectrum from normative to functional ideal-types. Normative IGOs have supervisory status over a body of international law, seek moral legitimacy and follow a logic of appropriateness. Functional IGOs are projectised organisations which seek pragmatic legitimacy and adopt a logic of consequences. I illustrate how IGO type interacts with the status of the new issue area to determine the timing, nature and extent of organisational change. I focus on the responses to climate change of three inter-governmental organisations: the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, a normative organisation; the International Organisation for Migration, a functional organisation; and the United Nations Development Programme, a hybrid organisation. IGO type has important implications for IR scholars and policy-makers as we look to these institutions to provide global solutions to global issues such as climate change, migration, refugees and development.

In 2001 the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) was created by some of the world’s leading natural gas producing and exporting countries in order to promote their mutual interests through cooperation, in particular with regard to extracting the maximum value from their natural gas exports. My core research question is: Does cooperation among GECF member countries explain those exporters’ market power in highly import-dependent natural gas consuming countries? To determine the influence of the GECF’s cooperative actions and policies, I study the GECF’s cooperative behaviour and measure the role of (collusive) producer conduct in terms of its contribution to achieving the main GECF objective: attaining gas prices that are measurably above the cost of production and hence help producers earn significant economic rents. I employ a variety of methods from the international relations literature on cooperation and cartelisation, collective action theory and an economic measurement model in three case studies. I find that cooperation among GECF members partly explains their market power in a number of import-dependent gas markets. This is so despite the GECF’s weak degree of institutionalisation. The reasons for the GECF’s influence on effective cooperative results are: first, conducive structural conditions in many gas importing markets favouring cartelisation; second, GECF members use methods such as artificial market entry barriers (e.g. long-term term contracts negotiated in a non-transparent way) to secure their market power and third, the GECF faces less severe internal procedural challenges that plague other cartels such as collective action problems, especially cheating. Cooperation among GECF exporters hence contributes to high(er) prices of natural gas. This causes economic inefficiencies and a transfer of wealth—and political power—from gas consumers to producers. It also hinders climate change mitigation as cleanerburning gas remains too expensive to replace ‘dirty’ coal in power generation.