The international development cooperation landscape that has been largely dominated by the OECD-DAC members since the 1960s began to change in recent years with the ‘emergence’ and growing prominence of a group of ‘new’ development partners, many of which come from the Global South. Heated debate has since been going on around the socalled ‘emerging donors’ but much of that is flawed by its DACorientation, an almost exclusive focus on the ODA form of cooperation, as well as a lack of empirical evidence. Against this context, with an intent to further the current research on the Southern development partners, this thesis selects China, one of the most representative among them, and aims to investigate the Chinese ‘development package model’ through the case of its agricultural development cooperation policy and practice in Africa. Specifically, this thesis tries to explain how China’s current ‘package model’ of development cooperation has been shaped by its own decades-long history of aid-giving and reforms. At the same time, it attempts to explore how exactly the ‘package model’ has been played out on the ground, and especially how the innovative commercial elements have been incorporated and utilized in China’s agricultural development cooperation with Africa. Lastly, the thesis examines results of this new ‘package model’ of Chinese development cooperation so far provides a systematic explanation to why the ‘implementation gap’ exists in this specific policy issue. Based on a detailed historical review, the thesis argues that China’s own identity and experiences over the past decades have played a significant role in shaping its current model, and thus balances, to certain extent, the oft-seen ‘DAC/Northern-centric’ tendency of many in observing, judging and sometimes trying to assimilate the Chinese/Southern development cooperation model(s). The thesis also gives an in-depth treatment to the ‘development package’ model through the case of Chinese agricultural cooperation with Africa and compares that with the emerging trend of ‘development PPP’ in the Northern DAC community. It thus enriches the research on Southern development partners and that on development cooperation in general which both tend to focus almost exclusively on ODA. Furthermore, the thesis fills the gap of lack of empirical evidence in the existing literature by incorporating more project-level, fieldwork based case studies on the Chinese/Southern development cooperation model(s). By doing so, the thesis also points out a series of practical problems in the implementation phase that otherwise may not be identified, and more importantly provides a systematic explanation for that ‘implementation gap’. From a theoretical perspective, in order to explain the abovementioned implementation challenges, this thesis adopts the ‘Public Policy Implementation (PPI)’ approach and establishes an analytical framework based on a ‘dialogue’ between the theoretical literature and the empirical data. It thus finds that three aspects – namely the policy per se that structures the implementation process, the policy implementer who are formally or informally mandated to carry out the policy, and the implementation environment wherein the policy is executed – have played a crucial and synergic role in accounting for the observed ‘implementation gap’ of Chinese agricultural cooperation policy in Africa; the ‘implementer’ factor, furthermore, has weighed more strongly in this regard given its potential role in remedying policy imperfections and responding to adverse environment. This ‘policy-implementerenvironment’ framework may also serve as a useful analytical tool for analysing China’s development and foreign policy implementation in other fields in Africa and explaining the implementation results.

This thesis investigates the continuous use of no-fly zones across different US administrations. In doing so it seeks to advance theories of international relations and foreign policy, conceptualizations of foreign policy executive decision-making processes, and the empirical study of US administrations from 1991 to 2016. No-fly zones were ostensibly employed both for the protection of civilians in intra-state conflict and/or for coercive diplomacy. However, based on theoretical accounts as well as empirical observations, the no-fly zone is not in fact suited for these purposes. As the existing literature on coercive diplomacy, air strategy and no-fly zones is frequently grounded in rationalist and (structural) realist thought, it cannot easily account for continuous “sub-optimal” choices. Therefore, this thesis turns to neoclassical realism, and demonstrates the compatibility of ideational variables with realist ontology, epistemology and methodology. It employs ideas as an intervening variable in the transmission belt from systemic conditions to foreign policy choice to explain no-fly zone use in US foreign policy. In a permissive international environment, decision-makers use ideas to guide their interpretation of systemic conditions, and to wield them as tools of persuasion in foreign policy deliberations. Decision-making in the US foreign policy executive is then conceptualized as a competition between diverging ideas about systemic incentives and constraints, as well as about appropriate strategies to mobilize state power. Absent agreement or presidential leadership and under pressure to act quickly, decision-makers use the no-fly zone to patch over ideational divides in the foreign policy executive and “do something”. This suggested causal mechanism is investigated in three detailed case studies on US foreign policy towards northern Iraq, Bosnia, and Libya. Three deviant case studies on decision-making vis-à-vis Kosovo, South Sudan/Darfur, and Syria delineate scope conditions and illustrate the causal primacy of systemic factors in determining US foreign policy.

How do we explain the outcome of the EU banking union negotiations? Still in 2011, a majority of governments opposed the banking union. They suddenly reversed policies and agreed the creation of a joint supervisor at the Euro Summit in June 2012. This thesis invokes liberal intergovernmentalism to explain the creation of the banking union. Yet, the negotiations pose two major puzzles. First, no clear predictions can be derived from liberal intergovernmentalism for the preferences of arguably the most powerful member state: the German government. Interest groups were divided, public opinion contradictory, and macro-economic preferences unclear. With no clearly most powerful interest, more than one policy was a rational course of action (Folk theorem). To solve this puzzle, the thesis argues that worldviews based on the principles of Ordnungspolitik influenced German policy-makers. In the absence of a unique equilibrium, these worldviews tipped the scale towards a policy of realigning control and liability. The outcome of the interstate negotiations poses the second puzzle for liberal intergovernmentalism. Its power-based theory of interstate bargaining cannot account for German concessions on several issues. Drawing on an account of rhetorical action, the thesis argues that a coalition of Southern European countries used the collectively stated goal to ‘break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns’ to prove German preferences as unsuitable for achieving this goal. While exposing the weaknesses of the German government’s policy responses, the Southern coalition framed their own preferences for risk-sharing as the most effective solution to the problem. The German government was forced to acquiesce in considerably more risk-sharing than it had initially deemed acceptable. The thesis draws on 84 interviews with negotiators from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the EU institutions. The analysis provides several generalisable insights into the role of ideas for domestic preferences and interstate negotiations.

This thesis identifies and analyses the legitimacy claims of regional security organizations in relation to their policies and their existence as relatively new sites of authority. Hence, it explores the normative context underpinning security regionalism between global and national levels. In this regard, it proposes a conceptual and theoretical framework for the study of selflegitimation, which is understood as a dynamic and intersubjective social process of justification of the right to rule. This framework is based on the intersection between the literatures on security, regionalism, and political legitimacy. Its main focus is the identification of the arguments of legitimation that can justify the unequal power relations between rulers and ruled. This thesis’ case studies are the security missions and policies of crisis management of the African Union and the European Union in response to the crisis in Darfur (2003-) and adjacent areas such as Chad and Central African Republic. Building on the framework of self-legitimation and on the analysis of documents produced by both regional organizations, the empirical part identifies fours large patterns of arguments, which are called ‘images of security regionalism’. These images are the beneficial regionalism, the necessary regionalism, the inevitable regionalism, and the multilateral regionalism. The images of security regionalism show that the legitimation of policies and actions, on the one hand, and the legitimation of regional organizations and their positions within security governance, on the other, are indissociable. Moreover, they also reveal that, more than the legitimation of actions, it is often the legitimation of the perceived inaction that is crucial to the organizations’ role as security actors. Finally, the patterns of arguments referring to the inter-organizational relations and to the multilateral and collective character of the organizations’ policies point to a trend of mutual recognition and, by consequence, mutual legitimation among regional organizations.

Using the US-Japan alliance as its institutional setting and the political conflict over the relocation of Marines Air Base Futenma from Ginowan City to Nago, Okinawa as its case study, this research seeks to examine how alliances are discursively reproduced by analysing – through interviews, public speeches, and government publications – how they are publicly framed and deliberated not only by ‘elite’ actors (e.g. those in the US and Japanese governments) who seek to maintain the US-Japan alliance in its current form, but also by those within Okinawan local government and civil society who contest the alliance’s sustainability. This research sits in contrast to the prevailing arguments in the existing literature on alliance persistence, which tend to have a top-down focus and privilege the cooperative discourses of elite actors with direct access to the inner-workings of the alliance over the lived experience of ‘everyday’ actors excluded from the central policymaking process. Furthermore, these arguments tend to ignore the possibility of internal divisions amongst these 'elite' and 'everyday' actors, representing any debates within an alliance as taking place between the central governments of the member states rather than exploring the many divergences of opinion that exist within their central political parties, military bureaucracies, civil societies, and other groups concerned. By identifying a wide variety in the sites of discourse production both inside and outside of this institutionalised alliance, this research helps to bridge the disconnect between top-down and bottom-up analyses of alliance persistence, illustrate the processes by which discourses from seemingly irreconcilable sources may actually interact, influence, and shape each other in the realm of security policymaking, and broaden the conversation from one focused on 'persistence' to include an understanding of how an alliance is actively reproduced through discourse.

The aim of this research is to investigate the influence of Turkey’s European Union (EU) candidature on its foreign policy towards its non-EU neighbours, namely Iran and Syria. It argues that EU conditionality and adaptation pressure for the convergence and alignment of Turkey’s authoritarian political regime to the EU acquis communautaire have produced unintended outcomes in Turkey’s foreign policy towards its non-EU neighbours, in addition to the intended outcomes in Turkey’s domestic politics. To investigate these phenomena, this study poses the following questions: how, to what extent and in what direction has Turkey’s foreign policy changed towards its non-EU neighbours during the country’s EU candidature, and how has Turkey’s EU candidature to the EU played a role in this? This study utilises Europeanization, and the rational choice and historical versions of the new institutionalist theory as its theoretical framework. Interview and case study methods were employed to answer this research question, and triangulation and the creation of counterfactual scenarios were used to substantiate the validity of the study’s findings and interpretation. The findings indicate that, first, Turkish foreign policy towards its non-EU neighbours has undergone a deep transformation from being merely security-oriented disengagement to politically and economically-oriented engagement. Secondly, although 1) due to the nature of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the literature on Europeanisation in the field of foreign policy primarily addresses socialisation and experimental learning related to the impact of the EU on member and/or non-member states’ foreign policies, and 2) due to the nature of EU-Turkey relations, the literature on the impact of the EU on Turkey’s foreign policy mostly focus on Turkey’s foreign policy towards Turkey’s EU neighbours and primarily addresses EU conditionality and adaptation pressure in the field of foreign policy as it is related to the impact of the EU on Turkey’s foreign policy, the findings of this research show that, in fact, EU conditionality and adaptation pressure in the fields of democracy and the rule of law, and in the economic realm, has unintentionally left a very visible influence on Turkish foreign policy towards Turkey’s non-EU neighbours by: (a) changing the institutions, institutional structures and institutional power relations, (b) empowering the governmentand civil society against the military–bureaucratic elites in political decision making, (c) accomplishing political and economic stability and growth, (d) increasing respect for and protection of religious and minority rights, and transferring domestic religious and minority issues into the realm of normal politics, and thus (e) changing the institutions, interests, preferences and demands that are involved in foreign policy-making towards Turkey’s non-EU neighbours.

Decades-long debates over the quality, quantity and purpose of development aid have led to a renewed emphasis on whether, and under what circumstances, aid is effective in achieving development outcomes. There is significant policy consensus that aid is most effective in environments with “good” governance, which the United Nations defines as processes of decision making and implementation that are effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive, and accountable and transparent. Aid donors fund numerous projects aimed at strengthening good governance in recipient countries, often through reforms of political institutions. Yet many aid donors fail to theorize about the process or mechanism through which good governance aid drives institutional change, and in doing so often ignore the impact that other drivers of change may have on the implicitly assumed direct causal relationship between aid and improved governance in political institutions. This thesis explores the role of aid in shifting institutions toward the ideal of good governance through an analysis that embeds this aid within a larger context that takes into account the role of other drivers of change. It compares good governance-related changes within Peru’s judicial institutions and Comptroller (Auditor) General over a 30-year period, from 1980-2010, examining the main actors and factors that drove or influenced changes in institutional accountability, transparency, effectiveness and efficiency, asking how they drove these changes and overcame resistance to reforms. Building upon this within-case analysis, this thesis then compares across cases to develop conclusions about the necessary and sufficient conditions that resulted in positive good governance-related changes. It concludes with a discussion of the opportunities for, and limitations of, good governance aid as a driver of change in political institutions.

No description available.

The study is about federalism in Iraq. It examines Iraq as a federation not just as a post-conflict state, as much of the existing literature does. The thesis investigates the origin and formation of the Iraqi federation, as one of the new federal models, and analyses how the process of formation impacts on the operation of the Iraqi federal system. It argues that both the process of formation of the federal state and its operation are of crucial theoretical and empirical significance. The originality of this thesis lies in the fact that it is the first study to link this new federal model to classic federal theory as regards the origins and formation of federations, focusing on the new approach in the formation of federations and the deficiency of classic federal theory in general to explain the origins and formation of the new federal models of which Iraq is the most recent. This thesis considers the different approaches that have been taken by various theorists in the past and in particular bargain theory as put forward by William H. Riker. I argue that although in some respects Riker’s bargain theory can be applied to the formation of the Iraqi federation, in others it is deficient to explain it completely. New literature designed to expose the need to revise the classic federal theory, and the bargain theory in light of formation of the new federal models has only just begun to emerge. Therefore, this thesis contributes to the scholarship by updating and refining classic federal theory in general and the bargain theory in particular. Moreover, by drawing on elite interviews with contemporary political players in Iraq this thesis adds to our understanding of how one of the newest federal states operates in a practical sense. It concludes by looking at the empirical significance of the Iraqi federal model in the context of some comparative perspectives.

This thesis explores recent U.S. bilateral aid to Mexico through the Mérida Initiative (MI), a $2.3 billion assistance commitment on the part of the United States (U.S.) officially justified as helping Mexico build its capacity to take on violent drug cartels and thereby improve security in both countries. There has been a good amount of engaging work on the MI. However this extant literature has not undertaken detailed policy analysis of the aid programme, leading to conclusions that it is a fresh approach to the Mexican counternarcotics (CN) challenge, or that CN is a ‘fig leaf’ for the U.S. to pursue other ‘real’ goals. This is a core gap in the literature this project seeks to fill. Through policy analysis, I make an empirically supported argument that Mérida is a component of a far more ambitious policy agenda to regionalise security with Mexico more generally. This involves stabilising Mexico itself, not least in response to serious drug-related violence. However the U.S. also aims to improve its own security by giving greater ‘depth’ to its borders, and seeks protect the political economy of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) from variegated security threats. In this way, recent U.S. policy in Mexico is both derivative of its wider grand strategic traditions in stabilising key political economies in line with its interests, and representative of some distinct developments stemming from the deeply integrated U.S.-Mexican economy as part of NAFTA. To assure U.S. interests accrued to it through the increasingly holistic North American economy, the U.S. has used the MI as the main vehicle in the construction of a nascent ‘NAFTA-land Security’ framework.