Between 1957 and 1964 the Soviet Union sought to export to West Africa a model of economic and social development. Moscow’s policy was driven by the conviction that socialism was a superior economic system, and could be replicated in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. However, Soviet confidence in the project was undermined by the unreliability of local leaders, and then by the Congo crisis. The setback in West Africa taught the Soviet leadership crucial lessons, including the importance of supporting ideologically reliable leaders, and the necessity of building military strength to bolster intervention. Combining Soviet and Ghanaian sources with those more readily available in the UK and the US, this thesis shows the importance of modernisation of the Third World for Moscow’s foreign policy during the Khrushchev era, and contributes to the new sets of literature on the cold war in the third world, and on the Soviet Union’s foreign policy.

This thesis examines the challenge of coordinating civilian and military efforts within a so-called ‘whole-of-government’ approach to stability operations. The empirical analysis focuses on British and American attempts to implement an integrated civilian-military strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2010. Unlike many existing analyses, the thesis consciously avoids jumping to the search for solutions to fix the problem of coordination and instead offers a nuanced explanation of why it arises in the first instance. Empirical data was gathered through personal interviews with a wide range of civilian and military practitioners between 2007 and 2011. Together with the in-depth study of official documents released by, and on, the defence, diplomatic and development components of the British and American governments, they provide the basis for a fine-grained analysis of obstacles to interagency coordination. The thesis offers a framework for analysis that is grounded in organisation theory and distinguishes between material, bureaucratic and cultural dimensions of obstacles to interagency coordination. It identifies organisational cultures as a crucial force behind government agencies’ reluctance to participate and invest in an integrated approach. The empirical chapters cover interagency dynamics within the government bureaucracy and in operations on the ground, including the role of specialised coordination units and Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the pursuit of coordination. The thesis concludes that stabilisation remains an inherently contested endeavour for all organisations involved and that the roles and expectations implied by contemporary templates for coordination clash with prevailing organisational identities and self-perceptions. These findings caution against the procedural and technocratic approach to interagency coordination that permeates the existing literature on the subject and many proposals for reform. While the thesis examines a specific empirical context, its conclusions have broader implications for civilian-military coordination and the quest for an integrated approach to security in the twenty-first century.

Fisheries straddling or migrating between international maritime boundaries represent a typical case of the tragedy of the commons. Over two dozen Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) have been created to manage these fisheries, which means it also represents a typical case of 'regime complexity' or 'governance architecture'. These literatures recognise that such institutions do not operate independently and therefore institutional functions such as attracting participants, practising their regulatory role, and performing their mandate should be understood as interdependent. This thesis proposes that we study such institutions together with actors and architectures of relations between and among them, which together I term 'governance complexes', by means of a relational approach. This relational approach combines relational theory, which posits the operation of endogenous relational mechanisms alongside exogenous explanations such as institutional design, with network methods that enable structural insights and robust inference that takes into account these interdependencies. The dissertation comprises two main parts that describe and explain the global fisheries governance complex, respectively. The first describes how the governance complex's three main components, states, RFMOs, and states participation in these RFMOs, have evolved. A topological typology utilising key network concepts is proposed and employed to show that the global fisheries governance complex is not fragmenting but becoming more overlapped and nested. The second part explains how this governance complex has evolved in terms of (1) participation, (2) practice, and (3) performance. First, it finds that while states find institutional design features such as an RFMO’s internal organisation attractive, relational mechanisms such as popularity and closure also provide important heuristics for participatory decisions in complex settings. Second, it finds that high levels of organisation also enables higher regulatory activity, but so do relational mechanisms such as coercion or imitation. Third, it proposes the concept of net effectiveness to gauge an institution’s "take-home" performance once its position in the broader governance complex has been taken into account. The result is not only an explanation of the evolution of global fisheries governance but also a developmental step towards an institutional relationalist theory of governance complexes.

Death and dying are emerging as substantial topics for political and social debate in contemporary UK society. The management of end of life, traditionally defined within a medical model of care, is being challenged by a cultural shift that is apparent in the changing trajectory of dying, increasing healthcare consumerism and a rising human rights rhetoric. To a significant extent, liberty to determine one’s own death, and to request assistance to die, has come to be articulated by some as a “right to die”. Human rights discourses grounded in the values of dignity and freedom of choice are important and relevant to dying in the UK. These discourses have the potential to influence law and policy, practices and public opinion on end of life. However, there is no sociological analysis of how or when rights have come to be appropriated in an end of life context and no explanation of in what way, or to what extent, social actors are using rights discourses in relation to death and dying. This research explores the centrality of human rights discourses to end of life policy and debate on assisted death in the UK. A broad social constructionist approach to rights is taken to illuminate the ways in which selected actors understand and articulate rights in an end of life context, and how, as a result of this, a right to die may be conceived. It includes the examination of: current UK law and policy documents; transcripts of the historical and contemporary House of Lords debates; a case study of a highly influential organisation (Dignity in Dying) who campaign to legalise assisted dying, and three focus group discussions with Death Café Hampstead participants. Analysis of the data reveals that rights discourses involving individual liberty, dignity and human vulnerability are central to defining the end of life debate and policy. A notion of rights at the end of life has impacted our perception of dying but in ways that are complex, and arise as a reflection of dying at a specific period in time.

This thesis is an historical account based on primary sources in Australia and Britain. It seeks to explain why Anglo-Australian relations underwent radical change during the 1960s and why the ties of empire which had once bound Australia and Britain, became, for all practical purposes, inconsequential by the early 1970s. It is the main contention of the thesis that this radical change can be broadly attributed to what has been described as Britain's turn to Europe. In the 1960s Britain's foreign, defence and trade policies underwent a profound revision as Britain endeavoured to redefine its emerging post-imperial role. British policy-makers gradually turned away from an imperial and global focus and their orientation became increasingly more European. This process of reorientation can be seen principally in the series of policies implemented by successive British governments during the 1960s and early 1970s: the three applications for EEC membership between 1961 and 1972 and the decision taken in 1967-68 to withdraw from east of Suez. Both the EEC applications and the withdrawal from east of Suez brought about an irreconcilable conflict of interest between the two countries. The relationship suffered under the strains imposed by Britain's reassessment of its imperial policy-making. This thesis explains how Australia perceived these challenges, the manner of its response to them and the policies successive Australian governments implemented to minimise their impact. The thesis argues that, anxious not to antagonise Britain for fear it would drift further away, Australian policy-makers avoided too confrontational a stance. They gradually accepted the developing new realities and sought to diversify their country's trading options away from its traditional markets in Britain towards the Asia-Pacific region, while also cautiously redefining its strategic priorities in Asia.

xi, 112 p. / This thesis explores the effects of: 1) traditional values, 2) parental involvement, and 3) poverty on student performance. Instead of regarding tradition and poverty as obstacles, this paper argues that they can play a positive role in improving the educational quality. This thesis draws on interviews in three communities with administrators, teachers, students, parents, and elders. They show that traditional culture plays an important role in ensuring student motivation, but it is not clear which aspects of tradition will be incorporated into the curriculum, and by whom. My work also shows that parental involvement in schools is largely limited to fund-raising, and there is demand for more engagement. Finally, this project reveals that poverty is a double edge sword: it contributes to the school drop-out problem but also can serve as a tremendous source of personal motivation for students who want to help improve the economic condition of their families. / Committee in charge: Dennis Galvan, Chairperson; Stephen Wooten, Member; Kathie Carpenter, Member

This thesis investigates the impact of international organizations on the making of international law by applying insights on how international organizations work—or fail to work—to the process of institutionalized treaty making. Specifically, I probe the relationship between the World Health Organization (“WHO”) and international infectious disease law, focusing in particular on the 2005 International Health Regulations (“2005 IHR”), which was negotiated, adopted, and is now being implemented under WHO’s auspices. The 2005 IHR is the most recent development in international infectious disease law, the history of which extends back to the beginning of international health cooperation in the mid-nineteenth century, before any international health organization was formed. Relying on secondary sources, WHO documents, archival materials, and personal interviews, I chronologically trace the evolution of international infectious disease law across changing institutional settings. I first examine the incremental growth of the older “barrier” approach to infectious disease regulation, initially developed in the absence of any international health organization and then with the aid of one of WHO’s predecessor organizations. I then analyze the decline of the barrier approach and the rise of the new “epidemiological” approach embodied by the 2005 IHR, with the aid of WHO. Based on my empirical analysis, I conclude that WHO has radically changed the process of making international infectious disease law as well as its content. On its own initiative and without member state demand, WHO’s permanent staff experimented with novel practices that subsequently became the basis for the 2005 IHR. WHO’s work reduced the length of formal negotiation needed to arrive at a new agreement and the uncertainty associated with adopting a novel regulatory system. Its influence also raises normative questions about the proper role of international organizations in making international law—questions that require further exploration.

This thesis examines the effects of cooperation within multilateral counter-terrorist fora on the process of preference formation of a selected group of Western countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy. The analysis focuses on the global counter-terrorist regime, a set of complex and multifaceted institutional arrangements, which were developed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in order to harmonise state counter-terrorist responses worldwide. The study looks at three sets of formal international institutions within the regime: the United Nations, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the European Union. It also selects a sample of three issue areas in multilateral counter-terrorist cooperation: counter-radicalisation policies, the inclusion of human rights safeguards within the main counter-terrorist sanctions provisions, and counter-terrorist financing standards. The thesis identifies as the visible symptom of institutional effects the progressive convergence of policy outputs at member state level, and proceeds with an exploration of the processes of regime creation, evolution, reform, and participation on the part of the three country case studies. The analysis reveals that the instances of pro-institution behaviour displayed by state actors are occasioned by image-related group-pressures, triggered by considerations of the maximisation of status markers and social praise, and the related avoidance of shame and social devaluation. The thesis labels this process social influence. The study further outlines the specific conditions under which interaction within a group can activate the social influence phenomenon and identifies the main triggers of state actors’ particular sensitivity to image and shame.

Today's global environment poses more and more challenges for higher education institutions to provide learning opportunities that enable students to become globally competent and prepared to face the challenges of an increasingly global society. For many universities, internationalizing their campuses can help students acquire knowledge, skills, and experiences to be able to compete in the global economy and become productive members of a diverse world society. The purpose of the study was to explore the extent to which internationalization had been realized in Florida's public universities by determining (1) whether there was a relationship between articulated commitment and the level of internationalization; (2) whether there was a relationship between curriculum and the level of internationalization; (3) whether there was a relationship between organizational infrastructure and the level of internationalization; (4) whether there was a relationship between funding and the level of internationalization; (5) whether there was a relationship between institutional investment in faculty and the level of internationalization; and (6) whether there was a relationship between international students/student programs and the level of internationalization. Data derived from the internationalization survey were used to analyze the six research questions by employing descriptive statistics, Pearson coefficient of correlation, and Chi-Square tests. There were strong positive correlations between the six categories noted above and the level of internationalization efforts in Florida public universities. Implications for practice include the development of various strategies to help internationalize their campuses and the student learning experience.

Analysts have had a long fascination with moments of significant change and discontinuity in political relations. Studies of “exogenous shocks,” “critical junctures,” “historical events,” “policy windows,” and “punctuated equilibria” have occupied a prominent place in qualitative assessments of policy and institutional change. Yet, despite analysts’ interest, these turning points remain poorly understood. Leading theoretical treatments are overwhelmingly descriptive, offering little in the way of explanatory capacity. Introducing the concept of Temporal Focal Points, my thesis provides a temporal extension to Thomas C. Schelling’s focal point hypothesis. Temporal Focal Points—definite, exceptional phases along the temporal continuum—precipitate a convergence of expectations among actors in time that heightens the likelihood of agreement. Convergent expectations are a crucial means of overcoming temporal coordination problems among actors. By facilitating a spike in analytical activity, political entrepreneurship, and bargaining intensity, actors are able realize joint gains opened up by past shifts in key parameters. Prominent temporal signposts allow actors to recognize that existing institutional arrangements are not an equilibrium. I test the plausibility of this theory through an analysis of the record of change at four distinct phases of the history of the United Nations environment regime from 1962-1992, including the 1972 Stockholm conference, the 1982 Nairobi conference, the UN General Assembly’s response to the Brundtland report, and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.