The thesis explores the concept of grand strategy and applies it to the development of Taiwan’s grand strategy between 1949 and 2008, from Presidents Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui to Chen Shui-bian. The thesis first examines the debates between the ‘classical’ war-centred and ‘neo-classical’ peace-centred perspectives in the realm of strategic studies and argues that these need not be mutually exclusive, but can in fact supplement one another. The thesis then adopts a stance of theoretical pluralism, whereby grand strategy is regarded as a process of power practice across periods of war and peace; it defines grand strategy as a cognitive state agent taking action to create and manipulate power in furthering its desired ends in a dynamic international society. This convergent perspective of grand strategy is designed to embrace these two schools of thought, since it is equally important for those who seek a better understanding of grand strategy in general and the evolution of Taiwan’s grand strategy in particular to focus both on how best to wage war and how best to preserve peace. To make sense of and to apply the concept of grand strategy, as an operational term, this thesis proposes four strategic analytical dimensions, namely, capability, choice, environment and posture, which are informed by the duality of four analytical pairs: ideational and material factors, ends and means, agency and structure, and defence and offence. Building upon this strategic analytical framework, the thesis moves to explore the perspective of leadership in Taipei against the backdrop of the politicalmilitary confrontation between the ROC on Taiwan and the PRC. The thesis investigates how and how far Taiwan’s grand strategy had been conditioned and developed by the influence of the Taipei-Beijing competition for sovereignty, changes in the international context, the unique strategic perspective of the successive presidents, domestic political developments and the asymmetry of national power between Taiwan and China. Through its investigation, the thesis argues that Taiwan’s grand strategy over the past six decades has been fundamentally driven by one prime factor: to secure the perspective of the ROC’s sovereign status as understood by Taipei’s leaders, not only across the Strait but also in international society.

How do norms guiding peacekeeping change, and who are the important actors in this process? Using sociology of professions and practice theory, this thesis seeks to advance constructivist theorizing of norm change in international organizations by a closer look at UN peacekeeping. The thesis argues that ambiguity is deep-seated in UN peacekeeping and that basic norms (grundnorms) and norms guiding peacekeeping operations are often in conflict. The thesis highlights the role of practices in two ways. First, special envoys and representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs) can act as norm arbitrators through actions in the field and have bottom–up influence on norm change in the organization. Second, various ‘ecologies’ such as think tanks and academia have, together with member states and UN officials, formed informal policy alliances to establish new norms, principles, and concepts such as ‘responsibility to protect’ and ‘integrated missions,’ effectively constituting and driving norm change in the international system. This thesis sees these processes as social practices that advance change in the organization. With this contribution, the study further expands the understanding of which actors have agency and what sources of authority they draw on in norm change processes in international organizations. The UN can be seen as a competitive arena where informal policy alliances, or ‘linked ecologies,’ put forward ideas on how to solve policy issues. In a broad sense, the UN is an arena where informal alliances are formed around issues of common concern; and, with the financial support of donor states and knowledge production of think tanks, academia and the working level of the UN, ownership among member states is built in consultative processes.

Since 9/11, intelligence liaison has increased exponentially. Yet, both in international affairs and within the academic fields of international relations (IR) and intelligence studies, the phenomenon of intelligence liaison remains under-researched and under-theorised. Moreover, intelligence studies remain remarkably disconnected from IR. Accordingly, this study attempts to advance a timely understanding of both international intelligence liaison generally, and UK-US intelligence liaison specifically, in a contemporary context. Methodologically, this is accomplished through conducting a qualitative analysis of UK-US intelligence liaison focussed on two ‘critical’ and ‘intensive’ case studies. These represent the key issues over which the UK and US have liaised, namely counter-terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) non-/counter-proliferation. In practical terms, the ‘rise’ of intelligence liaison can be substantially explained. However, the phenomenon itself can only be ‘theorised’ so far. Intelligence is, by its very nature, a fragmented subject. Accordingly, cascades of complexities increasingly enter, especially at the lower/micro levels of analysis - where the details and specifics concerning particular sources and operations matter further. Therefore, intelligence liaison effectively represents the concept of ‘complex co-existence plurality’ in action. This is both at and across all its different, yet closely interrelated, levels of analysis, and also when broken down into eight systemic variables or attributes. Notwithstanding this complexity, wider conclusions can be drawn, allowing this thesis to advance the proposition that we are now witnessing the globalisation of intelligence. Overall, this trend is facilitated through the developments occurring in a web of overlapping international intelligence liaison arrangements, which collectively span the globe. Reflective of a continuously evolving attempt for ‘optimum outreach’, these intraliaison developments include: firstly, the establishing of frameworks and defining of operational parameters for the intelligence liaison arrangements, and then their subsequent consolidation (or normalisation) and optimisation over time. These wider trends are simultaneously observable in the microcosm of UK-US intelligence liaison relations, which are also on ‘a continuum with expansion’ as the UK and US remain broadly exemplary ‘friends and allies’.

This study problematises two theoretical propositions that have prevailed in the mainstream International Relations (IR) literature: the first concerns the negative understanding of the role of entities in the margins; and the second is the attention paid to material resources and physical capabilities in comparison to the politics of norms or identities. Building on insights from Constructivism, this thesis advances the idea of ‘norm competition’, which international norms compete with each other to gain initiative, and it explores this with reference to nuclear norm entrepreneurship in the Western Alliance in the early Cold War. In so doing, the study traces the historical paths towards the creation of EURATOM between 1955 and 1957 at two levels. First, the external relations of EURATOM are examined in the framework of norm competition; that is, between the emerging norms of EURATOM, and existing norms in the form of US nuclear regulations developed after the end of World War II. I argue that favourable temporal and spatial conditions, as well as an ‘agree-and-deepen policy’, a communication skill carefully designed to increase one’s political leverage by exploiting one’s own identification, helped the creation of EURATOM and the emergence of alternative norms in the nuclear field. Second, the inner-dynamics of EURATOM with regard to its member states, specifically Belgium and France, is explored in terms of their motivation for joining EURATOM and its influence on them with respect to their post-war foreign policy identity—namely, the ‘hyphen role’ of Belgium and the ‘exceptionalism’ of France. It is argued that EURATOM played a key role in creating room for its own autonomy and its member states in relation to nuclear norms. In turn, Belgium and France contributed to the creation of EURATOM by exploiting their unique identities. Finally, it concludes that norm entrepreneurship can increase the political leverage of margins in relation to centres, and therefore being marginal does not necessarily mean being powerless.

Why do states behave as they do in world politics? Put differently, how can analysts develop a more precise and complete explanation of the causation of foreign policy behaviour? Drawing upon the insights of actor-specific Foreign Policy Analysis scholarship, this thesis argues that we need an approach which posits a human agent as an important analytical category in its own right. However, this thesis also emphasises that the state‘s foreign policy behaviour cannot be fully explained solely in terms of the actions and intentions of individual human agents. While it is indeed conscious human agents who make foreign policies, the parameters of their capacity to do so are constrained and/or facilitated by the structural conditions with which their nations are confronted. The key point here is that structural and agential sources of the state‘s foreign policy behaviour should neither be deemed exclusive nor be granted explanatory priority a priori. In this regard, this thesis presents rationales and guidelines for why and how one should pursue a multicausal approach to the study of foreign policy behaviour. Relatedly, it explores the structure-agent problem in international relations and rethinks currently dominant conceptions of causation in the field of IR. Then this thesis establishes a multicausal framework for the analysis of foreign policy behaviour. The framework consists of three factors associated with human (agential) elements and international structural conditions. With the aim of discerning the fruitfulness of the multicausal approach advocated here and of producing the empirical evidence that shows causation of complex foreign policy actions, this thesis undertakes intensive and comparative case study. The specific question that the case study aims to answer is why South Korea and Australia reacted to the US-led war in Iraq as they did: these two cases have neither received appropriate empirical attention nor been provided with any satisfactory theoretical explanation. The empirical findings gained from the case study leads to a testing and refinement of existing leading IR theories. Also, based on the case study findings and on the multicausal analytical framework built, this thesis creates an integrated theory of a particular type of foreign policy behaviour (i.e. weaker state behaviour vis-à-vis a dominant power) which encompasses both structural and agential perspectives. In a related vein, it discusses the role of theory for IR scholarship and modes of construction of IR. Ultimately it is suggested that a multicausal approach can contribute to the cumulative development and refinement of predictions and generalisations about why states behave as they do on the world stage.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences / Department of Government and Public Administration

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Kuwait's leaders from 1961-77 maintained a foreign policy that reflected the country's territorial vulnerabilities. They sought to discretely cultivate an Anglo-American defence relationship without fatally compromising an ideological fealty to at least the slogans of Arabism. The thesis emphasises Kuwait's essential need to offset its international "hard" security component with, as far as practicable, a regional non-alignment posture and adherence to Arab policy norrns. In the process neo-realist and constructivist theory are used to bring out the duality at the heart of the amirate's foreign policy. Differences between key Al-Sabah over foreign policy were differences of emphasis, while domestic security concerns did not so much determine policy as emphasise Kuwait's regional challenges, against which the amirate chose to deploy ideology. Arabism inevitably had contradictions as a tool of Kuwait foreign policy, and was often more about the cash subventions that accompanied policy stances, than the value of the stances themselves. However deploying ideology was indicative of the ruling Al-Sabah's desire to strike the right tone for external and domestic consumption; a desire to accommodate or befriend key regional players without, it hoped, alienating others. The inherent contradictions of Kuwait's foreign policy were born of the country's relative weakness, save its one precious asset, oil. In the 1980s Kuwait's strategically vital location and key resource would see the amirate forced to abandon its sometimes illusory regional nonalignment; after 1990 it maintained an overt US alliance. Events post- 1977 therefore emphasised what had been the fragility of Kuwait's foreign policy since independence. The country's limited ability to act to prevent these crises only underscored what had been the limits of the amirate's policy options.

Debate about how populations can be protected from mass atrocities is well-established in international affairs. Beset with a raft of ethical, legal, political and normative questions, the rapid development of the ‘responsibility to protect’ has been held up as evidence of emerging, and even settled, consensus in this area. Indeed, from the perspective of well-established models of norm construction, notably the “Norm Life Cycle”, R2P’s institutionalization in the 2005 World Summit Outcome may signify momentum towards full acceptance. However, based upon a detailed tracing of R2P’s path into the Summit Outcome, this thesis questions how R2P is increasingly characterized as well as the theoretical explanatory frames used by scholars to describe the development and impact of international norms. It challenges the twin problems of linearity and norm exogenization which distort our understanding, and which are evident in overly optimistic portrayals of R2P’s development. With these in mind, the thesis adopts a framework constituted by a constructivist-inspired hypothesis and a process-tracing methodology defined by elite-level interviews and extensive documentary analysis. It shows how tracing the micro-processes of R2P’s development generates a very different story to those derived from broader theoretical frames. Indeed, the empirical findings show how and why the agreement was possible, and – through an analysis of the complex political negotiations – in what form R2P was collectively defined. This leads to the introduction of the concept of the ‘structured outcome’ to describe how R2P was propelled towards agreement more by a series of factors relating to the design and effect of the negotiation process than by the progressive acceptance of states. Accordingly, R2P’s formulation was purposefully limited to navigate pronounced dividing-lines and as a political agreement was more cosmetic than transformational. Resultantly its normative foundations were far shallower and far less significant than oft-rendered in mainstream perception.