ABSTRACT Subnational foreign activities are a new and relatively unexplored aspect of the international system. The absence of clear and universal rules creates an ambiguous political playground that can be misused by both states and their subnational governmental units for reaching their foreign policy and foreign trade goals. Worldwide, different patterns for subnational foreign activities in federal states have emerged. For example, in the United States, member states of the federation are fighting over foreign investments mainly. In Germany, on the other hand, members of the federation have delegated their rights in terms of foreign activities to the federal government. In general, federations with long democratic traditions have managed to introduce the formulas for containing subnational foreign activities. In Russia, in contrast, the breakdown of the Soviet Union confronted both the federal centre and members of federation with a fundamentally new situation. In Soviet times, the territorial units of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), were of administrative nature only, i.e. they lacked the political dimension. Some of the Russian regions were using their newly-gained freedom for the purpose of challenging the federal centre. Pskov region of Russia has been one of the most active subnational actors.

This study investigates the effect of the application of Sharia law in Saudi Arabia on the finality of arbitral awards on the basis of questions of law and public policy. International arbitration laws tend to circumvent the two issues by limiting the scope of their applicability. Based on the need to retain a degree of authority over enforcement of arbitral awards and other internationally issued legal determinations, this study finds that the Saudi Arbitration Law 2012 Act has some positive features and moves closer to international law in comparison to the Old Saudi Law, specifically on the issue of finality. The study finds that although not on a par with international law, it is a step in the right direction for Saudi Law to work more flexibly in the international sphere with issues involving finality. Where in the past, issues would not have been resolved due to the refusal to enforce arbitral awards, a more facilitating scenario comes about and the scope of enforcement of finality is set to rise due to the New Saudi Law. In addition, this study finds that the Saudi 2012 Act demonstrates the willingness of the Kingdom to cooperate with international laws. Although this is a breakthrough in dealing with finality, a fundamental principle of Saudi law is that the new Saudi law Act conforms to Sharia and the Kingdom’s public policy. However, with a lack of empirical cases specifically involving the New Saudi Law, it is yet to be established that it has achieved the positive impact intended. This study supports continued efforts and ultimately recommends the decision to work towards the amendment of Saudi law to better aid the achievement of finality without undue subjection to unnecessary scrutiny based on public policy requirements and also to realign Saudi public policy with international standards while maintaining fidelity to the values and principles of Sharia law.

In the contemporary world, wars, violence and injustice never seem to end. In an attempt to replace this culture of violence with a culture of peace, peace education attempts to raise awareness of non-violent and constructive means of dealing with conflicts, and to promote necessary skills, knowledge, attitudes and values. This research aims to gain insight into the reality of the current practice of peace education in schools in relatively stable countries. While a school is one of the places where children learn values, attitudes and behaviour, schooling is often criticised for maintaining and reinforcing different forms of violence, including physical violence and inequality. This study explores theoretical and practical aspects of peace education and key issues relevant to these aspects, including its place in schooling. The empirical study investigates a peace education organisation in the UK, West Midlands Quaker Peace Education Project (WMQPEP) and one of its projects in a primary school. WMQPEP particularly focuses on interpersonal skills to build peaceful relationships and raise self-esteem. The overall research provides understanding of the principles and practice of peace education as well as its impact, and identifies some factors which can either promote or undermine effective peace education in schools.

This thesis analyzes public and private international efforts towards sustainable development to date in the mining industry. Specifically, this thesis analyzes the roles of the United Nations, WTO, IMF and World Bank, and other institutions promoting sustainable development in the mining industry. This thesis also considers private company and NGO efforts towards sustainable development in the mining industry. The thesis concludes by recommending a public-private partnership for shared value in the mining industry with respect to sustainable development, meaning a partnership between industry, NGOs and public international institutions that generates economic value while simultaneously producing value to society by addressing societal and environmental problems.

This thesis argues that the Chinese political economy is best understood as a hybrid form of governance in the context of a differentiated developmental state. This argument is developed through an analysis of China’s central state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and in particular the complex relationship between central SOEs and the ministerial institution created by the Chinese state to oversee them, the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). Central SOEs have experienced a significant rise and expansion under the SASAC’s leadership since 2003. However, the state’s role in the promotion of this institutionalisation process is rarely explored. This research starts with a theoretical investigation of the developmental state. It then explores principal-agent relations among the central SOEs, the SASAC and the market. After this, the research moves to an empirical analysis that provides a detailed examination of the SASAC, a competitive central SOE – the China National Building Material Group Corporation (CNBM) – and a monopolistic central SOE – the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). Based on government policy papers, company annual reports, financial disclosures, and semi-structured interviews with more than 30 SASAC officials, SOE senior managers and government research staff, the conclusion reached is that the SASAC’s management of central SOEs follows a developmental state path, partially adopting market forces and market competition while rejecting neoliberal ideology. Ultimately, this research suggests that the Chinese central state’s practice of “governing through the market” is a strategy that benefits both the state and the central SOEs: the state can strengthen its principal’s control more effectively, whilst the enterprises can function as market actors to increase their competitiveness and profitability.

States may avoid categorising responses to terrorism as armed conflict and yet still use lethal force, administrative detention and other tactics or procedures more usually associated with armed conflict. States are then potentially able to derogate from certain liberty and fair trial norms under the human rights treaties that some suggest are irreducible if international humanitarian law is applicable. States may also interpret the requirement of humane treatment in line with what may appear to be a lower standard of treatment required by certain of the human rights treaties. This thesis examines whether the fundamental rights to liberty, fair trial and humane treatment differ during responses to contemporary terrorism above or below the armed conflict threshold. The thesis concludes that there is little difference between the two regimes of international humanitarian law and human rights law in relation to the irreducible core of these fundamental rights and so it may not be important, in these respects at least, to be clear whether or not an armed conflict exists in legal terms. However, for these fundamental rights, States parties to any of the regional human rights treaties are increasingly unlikely to be able to claim a lack of jurisdiction and so a rights vacuum for those they would call terrorists during extra-territorial operations.

The Supreme Court of the United States consented in its Empagran decision that the foreign antitrust injury that is in a dependency relationship with anticompetitive effects (antitrust injury) in the U.S. is to be litigated before the U.S. courts. Since this decision antitrust law litigation in an international context does not depend merely on anticompetitive effects in the U.S., but also on the relationship between anticompetitive effect and (foreign) private antitrust injury. This is something that was not present in pre-Empagran cases. The Supreme Court did not provide conditions on the basis of which the relationship between anticompetitive effects and private antitrust injury could be classified as one of dependency. This means that the Supreme Court left the determination of these conditions to lower U.S. courts. The lower U.S. courts, instead of attempting to determine these conditions, have made foreign private antitrust injury even more difficult to litigate before the U.S. courts. There are three factors that contributed to this development in U.S. case law: the understanding of the Empagran litigation; the understanding of the nature of the international context, and U.S. courts taking a pro-active role in delivering their decisions for which the reasoning is difficult to understand. The greatest obstacle that post-Empagran U.S. courts have placed in front of private antitrust litigants is the requirement that instead of ‘dependency connection’ there should be ‘direct causation’ between anticompetitive effects in the U.S. and litigated (foreign) private antitrust injury. This thesis considers the existing theoretical and practical problems of the current analytical framework under which antitrust violation is analysed in an international context. The thesis introduces the new legal concept of a ‘transborder standard’. This is necessitated by the starting position of this thesis that a factual situation under adjudication cannot be only either ‘domestic’ or ‘foreign’, but can also be ‘transborder’. The introduction of the transborder standard to the existing theoretical framework enables (and requires) the analysis of the factual situation under adjudication in its integrity, bearing in mind also the purpose of private antitrust law enforcement and the right of private parties to be compensated for suffered antitrust injury. The transborder standard provides a framework to analyse antitrust claims brought before the U.S. courts by those private parties who satisfy their private antitrust injury outside the U.S. At the same time, the transborder standard does not enable private litigants to take advantage of simultaneous antitrust litigation before U.S. courts and the courts of non-U.S. countries. ‘Transborder standard’ is a new legal concept. Nevertheless, the existing system of U.S. antitrust law enforcement does support it and, consequently, the transborder standard can be directly applied.

The Olympic Movement has a constantly expanding mandate which has seen it venture into many fields other than simple staging of the Olympic Games. For example, it has extended its mandate into the equal representation of women in sport, but more importantly, this thesis examines its new mandate of building peace through sport, which is contained in the Olympic Charter’s 2nd Fundamental Principle of Olympism. It has also indirectly influenced the production of the UNGA Olympic Truce Resolutions, by calling on the UN to revive the ‘concept of ekecheiria’. However, the Olympic Truce Resolutions are frequently flouted, and more often than not, by the Host Nation itself, including the UK and the USA in recent years. This thesis examines a possible solution to this failing, which is the Olympic Truce Resolutions codification into a binding Treaty where states and the entire Movement are party to it. This thesis recognises that there is the inherent problem in this, in that the Olympic Movement is not comprised of states. Its core actors are the International Olympic Committee, National Olympic Committees, and International Sporting Federations (and to a lesser extent OCOGs). Hence this thesis submits the novel concept of Olympic Singularity, eight unusual features that amplify the EU doctrine of the specificity of sport on the Olympic playing field. These eight cumulative features unite to allow the Movement to be co-signatories to the Truce Treaty, alongside states. It also enables the Movement to govern the Truce Treaty and any sanctions thereof. Again, this is because of the features of Olympic Singularity, the most notable of which is that the Movement is unusual because of its universal singular webbed framework which necessitates its consideration as a single powerful organ capable of action on the international stage equivalent to states. Olympic Singularity justifies the Movement’s special treatment before law, in the form of an atypical international law subject, in that it unites independent actors into one organ, enabling them to have capacity on a par with those reserved to states and international governmental organisations. This would only take the form of governing and sanctioning a Truce Treaty. This thesis examines precedent for this in that the ancient Olympic Games were governed by a single state who dispensed real sanctions for the breach of ekecheiria. It also examines in a case study, South Africa which shows that the end of apartheid was assisted by the UN and the Movement uniting and using sport by way of a binding international Treaty, ICAAS 1985. Hence the capacity of the state system was required alongside the recognition of all involved that it was a Treaty.

This thesis analyses the role of international organizations in the West Bank and Gaza. The role of international organizations is discussed within the larger framework of global governance. In light of the theories on global transformation, the renewed role for international organizations as the agents of global governance is introduced within the Palestinian context. With a focus on the complex relationship between domestic and international actors, the role of international organizations as the promoters of good governance is examined in terms of Palestinian state building process. Several international organizations are introduced in terms of their objectives, projects and activities in Palestine.

The effects of expansion of cities on the fringe area are still the common problems of several countries as well as Turkey. The main problem stemming from rapid urban growth was described as urban sprawl that has been used as waste of land, time, and natural resources. Although sprawl becomes usually unplanned, uncontrolled, and uncoordinated, it can be claimed that some local and national government policies triggers the urban sprawl by creating planned areas more than required. The growth management policies are utilized to provide a responsible balance between development and the infrastructure needed to manage the impacts of development and to control urban sprawl. Four types of urban containment techniques have been used in several countries to control urban sprawl according to fundamental purposes of where to grow and where not to grow. These are greenbelt, urban growth boundary, urban service area and adjacent area. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the impacts of urban growth on physical development of metropolitan cities and to critically evaluate the raison d&#039 / &ecirc / tre and changing meaning of adjacent areas concept in Turkish urban planning experience in a historical context. Ankara planning experiences are examined as a case study to what extent adjacent area is a functional and effective tool to control sprawl.