Since the reformation of the Chinese economy, two notable trends have developed. First, the growing prominence of multilateral economic regimes (MERs) on the political agenda of Beijing has propelled deepened engagements between Chinese policy actors and institutions, and the agencies of MERs. This development is accompanied by a second trend, which is a growing dynamism in China’s economic diplomacy within the multilateral arenas. This dynamism is reflected in the evolving national preferences and approaches for multilateral economic negotiations, from outright resistance to gradual flexibility, and in some cases, acceptance. The simultaneous and parallel developments of these two trends stem a curiosity on whether a causal relationship exist between the deepened China-MER engagements and the dynamism of China’s economic diplomacy. Has Beijing’s open-door policy to global economic integration opened new windows of opportunity for the MER agencies to influence China’s economic diplomacy and its preference formation? In what way(s) and/or in which capacities can the agencies of MERs assert influence on China’s economic diplomacy preference formation? Under what conditions is this form of external influence successful? What are the long-run implications of the deepened China-MER engagements on Beijing’s economic diplomacy preference formation structure? What does the China-MER relationship tell us about China’s economic diplomacy preference formation in the 21st century? Although China’s partake in the international political economy has received much scholarly attention, few studies have attempted to decode China’s economic diplomacy preference formation, and even fewer have investigated the important nexus between the China-MER relationship and the behaviours of Chinese economic diplomacy. This thesis is a response to the knowledge deficit in these regards. By examining China’s participation in the multilateral climate change, and trade 4 negotiations, the thesis addresses the primary research question, how do multilateral economic regimes and their agencies influence China’s economic diplomacy preference formation? The study finds that the MER agencies do affect Chinese economic diplomacy preference formation. However, their influence peaks at an absorption level whereby Chinese preferences adapt to external preferences but not to the extent of reforming traditional principles and beliefs. The comparatively more effective ways of asserting influence for the MER agencies is through a costs-and-benefits calculus, information dissemination, shuttle diplomacy proximity talks, and informal negotiation practices. In general, Chinese policy actors do not refute the influence of the MER agencies; rather they absorb and adapt to it. In addition, the MER agencies assert influence at different stages of the preference formation, and over time, implicitly establish themselves as integrated policy actors in Beijing. On the whole, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding about how, why, and when international linkages matter in China’s economic diplomacy, and to the extent of driving preference transformation. The study provides useful analytic lenses that flesh out the variety of functions the MER agencies have in shaping and informing China’s national preferences and negotiation approaches. At the same time, it offers a fuller description of how the Chinese policy actors and institutions respond to (implicit) external interventions in its policy processes. Consequently, this thesis is a significant contribution that adds value to the scholarly debates and knowledge-building about one of the most important political and economic phenomenon of our time.

This project interrogates how the biopolitical rationale conditions our contemporary subjectivities, politics and ethics, in order to critique the ethical justifications of technology driven practices of political violence put forth in present counter-terrorism struggles. Employing the work of Hannah Arendt, and her insights into life-politics and technology to construct a biopolitical lens that adds to traditional Foucaultian analyses of biopolitics, my original contribution to knowledge is thus twofold in a) elaborating core aspects of an Arendtian theory of biopolitics, with which then to b) identify the theoretical underpinnings of biopolitically informed forms of ethics in emerging practices of technology-driven political violence. While a number of scholars have drawn on Arendt for the analysis of the biopolitical dimensions of contemporary violence, a systematic independent account of her work on biopolitical trajectories and technologies remains under-developed in current scholarship. In this work, I suggest that the Arendtian life-politics account allows us to recognise a duality at work in the biopolitical shaping of subjectivities: the politicisation and technologisation of zoe, on one hand, and the ‘zoeficiation’ of politics on the other. It is this duality that conditions the human, politics, and the role and justifcations of violence in modernity. Within these two umbrella categories, the project addresses the equally under-examined but pressing question of the ethics of technology-driven modalities of political violence in a contemporary context and argues that a biopolitically informed rationale of ethics occludes the possibility to engage with ethics as a perpetual and ever-anew arising and political demand that must be taken responsibility for. The analysis in this work unfolds in two parts to draw out and critically address the biopolitically informed ethical rationales of political violence. The first part engages closely with Arendt’s work to establish the theoretical framework of biopolitics for the project’s central analysis. The second part then departs from an exposition of Arendt’s work and draws on this framework to highlight and critique the implications of biopolitically infused subjectivities, politics, violence and ethics.

This thesis considers two interrelated themes: the emergence of aggregate volatility from idiosyncratic shocks and optimisation under incomplete information when, for reasons of strategic complementarity, agents are interested in both simple and weighted averages of their competitors' actions. I first develop a model of Bayesian social learning over a network. Unlike earlier literature that abandons one of the assumptions that agents (a) act repeatedly; (b) are rational; and (c) face strategic complementarities, I obtain tractability for arbitrarily large networks by also assuming that agents do not know the full structure of the network, but do know its link distribution. An AR(1) process for the underlying state induces an ARMA(1,1) process for the hierarchy of expectations, with current and lagged weighted averages of agents' idiosyncratic shocks entering at an aggregate level. For sufficiently irregular networks, these shocks do not wash out, thus causing persistent aggregate effects. I next apply this to firms' price-setting problem, demonstrating that even when firms possess complete price exibility, network learning induces considerable persistence in aggregate variables following monetary and real shocks and that network shocks plausibly represent a source of aggregate economic volatility. Finally, I explore price setting under monopolistic competition when facing TransLog preferences. I solve explicitly for a firm's best-response pricing rule under full information and show that in partial equilibrium under incomplete information, larer firms will focus on their marginal costs while smaller firms will place more weight on changes in consumer preferences and competitors' prices. In general equilibrium, I estimate the effect of two distinct sources of real rigidity that emerge from TransLog preferences: the well-known curvature in demand and the dramatic increase in complexity of firms' signal-extraction problems. With non-uniform preferences, the model represents another channel through which idiosyncratic shocks can cause aggregate volatility.

This thesis examines the contribution of Truth Commissions (TCs) to national reconciliation and peace-building in post-conflict societies, via the case studies of Sierra Leone and Peru. While TCs have become a rapidly proliferating form of transitional justice, the thesis argues that there is still insufficient understanding of the functions and impact of TCs and the contexts within which they are established. In contrast to earlier Cold War TCs, which were established during regime transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy, recent hybrid Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), as in Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Peru, were established in contexts of protracted social conflict and civil war. Whereas earlier Cold War TCs, were set up by domestic civil society as instruments of human rights against strong states, hybrid TRCs focused on democratization and peace-building in fragile states and often with global support. This thesis offers a typology of TCs, distinguishing participatory TRCs and didactic TCs from recent hybrid TRCs. It that hybrid TRCs integrate rigorous fact-finding and public testimony, focusing their work on the civic sphere. The thesis offers a theoretical conception of national reconciliation. Utilizing extensive qualitative research carried out in Sierra Leone and Peru, the thesis argues that hybrid TRCs in Sierra Leone and Peru had an important normative and discursive impact on procedural reconciliation. In both contexts, hybrid TRCs mobilized civil society, raised awareness, and altered norms of engagement. At the same time, the thesis argues that mechanisms of transitional justice are endogenous to their contexts. The nature of the conflicts, particularly a long backdrop of political and economic marginalization, the legacies of violence in remote areas, and the lack of implementation of hybrid TRCs’ recommendations, undermined their contributions. The thesis concludes that durable reconciliation requires a deeper level of public commitment and social justice. It raises implications for future research and practice, specifically the risk of institutional overstretch in current holistic transitional justice and the importance of a long-term transformative approach.

The study has been conducted in order to gain an understanding on t he causes of the complexities of sustainable peace in the D.R.C. What is the ro le of the main actors in the DRC peace process? Secondly factors leading to the elusive search for peace in DRC. Finally we will look at the DRC history from 1960 to 2002 from the socio-economic and political aspect to the government by thieves and dictatorial leadership. Series of violent conflict started with the rise into power from Laurent Kabila till the succession of his son Joseph Kabila. They are various causes that led to the conflicts in the DRC, which were caused by unlawful succession of its leaders, lack of political will of its leaders to serve the people of Congo, ethnicity and another big problem it is the size of the country causing a problem to central government in exercising its autonomy fully. Fina lly t he DRC mineral riches have been attracting external forces that came and exploited illegally the resources of the country. This further fueled the conflict. The persistence of the war brought about threat to political, economical and social stability to the Congolese government. This study focuses on factors leading to the elusive search for peace in DRC. The study further found that solid minerals have been linked to recent African conflicts. The center of our argument here will be, to analyze the impact of natural resources on the DRC conflict and to analyze the role of MNC's in the DRC conflict: peace broken or encouraging or sustaining the conflict. / Thesis (M.A.(Politics and International Relations) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2012

This thesis is an exploration of China’s bilateral foreign economic policy (FEP) towards Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia in the open era. It expects to answer the central question that what motivated China’s bilateral economic cooperation with small partners? Is it for political domination, or is it for national prosperity? Drawing upon the evidence from primary materials, this thesis challenges the hypothesis that China, as a rising economic power, intends to generate political gains from the creation of trade asymmetry of small partners. In contrast, this thesis argues that China’s bilateral economic cooperation with individual ASEAN members is for the pursuit of prosperity; in this process, the shared concerns of Beijing’s management of bilateral economic relations with individual ASEAN members are to raise the national income and to sharpen the national competitiveness in exports. In other words, Beijing’s FEP at bilateral level has the very strong implication for national economic development in general. Contrary to the realist expectations about foreign trade, this thesis shows that China did not take initiatives in bilateral economic cooperation to ensure the advantageous political gains; in addition, this thesis also finds that different political relations did not seem to affect the implementation of China’s bilateral FEP towards individual partners. By revealing China’s preference order of foreign economic cooperation at different levels, this thesis also argues that the calculations of welfare effects, rather than the consideration of relative gains, is more likely to be the determinant of China’s foreign economic behaviors.

This thesis seeks to analyse and explain the role of the African Union (AU) in managing intra-state conflicts in Africa. It first identifies the key reasons for the establishment of the African Peace and Security Architecture, namely the failure of the UN and the international community to intervene in remote conflicts in Africa throughout the 1990s and the reluctance of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. Then, it points to the gap between the optimism of the AU’s founders and its implementation record: in fact, the AU’s capability to stop conflicts in Africa has produced mixed results at best. Focusing on three different case studies – Burundi, Darfur, and Somalia – this thesis unravels the key factors behind the AU’s performance in promoting peace and security. More specifically, it argues that the AU’s effectiveness to achieve its goals is contingent upon four conditions: the internal process, the mandate of the mission, the commitment of AU member states, and external support. By developing this argument, this thesis highlights the importance of both organisational processes and external factors with the view to contributing to the general literature on effectiveness of international and regional organisations in managing intra-state conflicts.

China’s rise has put it on a trajectory to overtake the international system’s dominant powers – the United States of America (US) and the European Union (EU) – at some point this century. Some observers conclude that the historical pattern of such transitions catalysing great power conflict is likely to continue with China’s ascendancy. Power-transition theory (PTT) anticipates that the established powers will strive to maintain the status quo by extending their relative power advantage over the rising challenger and curtailing its power where possible. Yet the actual responses of the US and the EU have not conformed to these expectations; instead, they have both largely welcomed China’s rise and sought to integrate it into the international system. We can see that policymakers continually express interpretations of China’s rise which we would not expect to find if the logic of PTT prevailed. This raises a question: How have different interpretations of the ‘rise of China’ influenced the foreign policies of the US and the EU towards China? I argue that varied perceptions of the implications of China’s rise have shaped policy preferences in ways that are inconsistent with concerns over the threat of an impending power-transition. Policy discourse at key junctures in bilateral relations revealed that ‘China’s rise’ is actually a contested notion and that the different interpretations in play at that point in time affect the policymaking process in ways that cannot be accounted for from state-centric perspectives. While China’s growing power and relations with these actors have been widely studied, little attention is paid to how competing interpretations of China’s rise impact upon policymakers’ preferences and the eventual responses. Despite the growing prevalence of threat rhetoric (at least in the US), China’s rise is often conceptualised by key policymakers as presenting considerable economic and political opportunities. In the EU, perceptions of economic and political opportunities have not been challenged by threat interpretations and thus its overall approach has been informed by the former with little substantive debate amongst key actors.

Indonesia’s cooperation in maritime security initiatives is vitally important because half of the world’s trading goods and oil pass through Indonesian waters including the Straits of Malacca, the Strait of Sunda and the Strait of Lombok. Consequently, Indonesia’s active engagement in maritime cooperation is a matter of some import for the international community. However, Indonesia’s varying participation across maritime cooperation arrangements is puzzling. Indonesia has joined some of these cooperation initiatives and opted out of others despite the presence of United States leadership. This thesis addresses this puzzle by carrying out a comparative analysis of 26 cooperation arrangements using government documents and elite interviews in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and New York. In addition to addressing an empirical puzzle, this thesis also contributes to the theoretical debate on international cooperation. The International Relations literature on cooperation tends to focus on great power bargaining. Whether, why and how middle powers decide to join international initiatives over which they have little influence has been overlooked. The implication of this study suggests that neither the calculation of relative gains as argued by neorealists, the constructivist expectation regarding the importance of shared identity, the neorealist or the neoliberal argument on the role of hegemonic leadership nor the bureaucratic politics approach emphasis on competing government actors’ preferences can explain the variation in Indonesia’s engagement with cooperation initiatives. I argue that Indonesia’s decision to cooperate is formed by the calculation of absolute gains. Indonesia cooperated as long as the benefits of cooperation exceeded the costs.

The thesis analyses the development of the concept of flexible integration in the 1996-97 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) of the European Union (EU) and outlines an array of ideas, interests and issues at stake for the actors in the negotiations. The thesis has two objectives: (1) to explain the 1996-97 IGC process of negotiation which led to the institutionalisation of flexible integration in the Amsterdam Treaty and (2) to analyse the substance of the flexibility debate from the early 1970s to the present day. The research aims to show that flexibility comes to the fore whenever at least one of the following five issues is debated on the European level: (1) economic and monetary union, (2) free movement, (3) defence, (4) enlargement and (5) the exclusion of recalcitrant member states. The 1996-97 IGC was exceptional in that it met all the five criteria which have a tendency to trigger the flexibility debate. The thesis has three basic lines of argumentation. The first relates to the ICC process, the argument being that the 1996-97 IGC negotiations on flexibility were m incremental learning process where the basic positions of the member governments illustrated some continuity, but the specific positions of the negotiators fluctuated with the dynamics of the negotiations. The second line of argumentation relates to the concept of flexibility itself (substance), the argument being that one of the main difficulties with the flexibility negotiations was that flexibility meant different things to different people. Member governments did not necessarily agree about its purpose. The final strand of argumentation relates to the key players in the flexibility debate. Although all member states, large and small, played an important role in the IGC process, the most influential actors in the 1996-97 IGC were the civil servants of the respective Presidencies and the Council Secretariat.