This thesis investigates the origins, development and role of organised crime in Russia’s political economy. The existing academic literature tends to regard the post-1991 era of transition as the hotbed for the emergence and development of organised crime in Russia. This thesis finds such readings problematic and incomplete. I identify and explore three salient periods of political-economic development during the history of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia, and find that each of them was distinct, yet crucial in enabling the growth and functions of organised crime. Moreover, throughout history, the state and organised crime in Russian functioned in close cooperation with each other. This study reveals that the Russian state and organised crime have always been interdependent, and that concentrating solely on the post-1991 era is profoundly misleading.

This thesis is concerned with the intentions and effects of subsidised trade within the Eastern bloc. It argues that the core Soviet objective in Eastern Europe from the Thaw onwards was not exploitation for economic gain; subsidisation in return for political concessions; or an ideologically-driven desire for socialist integration, but instead to secure the dependence of the smaller socialist economies on the USSR. It is argued that advances can be made on existing literature by employing a concept of dependence which is capable of linking-up the primarily political concerns that motivated socialist international economic policy with the economic consequences for development that resulted. In order to accomplish this, a revised version of dependency theory (DT) formed through a critique of classical dependency work is used. DT is proposed as a starting-point for two reasons: firstly it was concerned to look at the interrelation between international processes and national development, a notable absence from the literature on Eastern bloc trade, and secondly the subsidised nature of this trade seems to beg the application of a theory which stresses the significance of international political and economic asymmetries. The type of dependency analysis proposed here differs from classical DT in several ways, most centrally in that an ideal-typical approach is used which allows for open-ended investigation of reciprocal influence between centre/periphery, as well as the recognition of significant differences between Soviet-type and developed market economies by refraining from making positive statements about either the nature of centre/periphery in themselves or their interactions. The impetus for this reformulation comes from the result of the literature review that some concept of dependence could help to fully articulate the consequences for development of Eastern bloc trade relations in the context of East-West antagonism.

This thesis problematizes the disciplinary gap between the related fields of International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). It claims that this gap is generated as a consequence of the deeper ontological and epistemological assumptions of these disciplines. While IR theories are more concerned with macrolevel phenomena and reduce foreign policies of states to structural imperatives, FPA theories are inclined to focus on micro-level determinations and reduce relational phenomena to non-relational and singular behaviours of states and policy makers. This meta-theoretical gap, the thesis argues, can be bridged by a dialectical ontoepistemology that reconstitutes IR and FPA as the aspects of the same disciplinary undertaking by offering an inter-subjective and praxis-oriented view of international politics. Through this onto-epistemology, the thesis contributes to wider debates in social scientific discourse on the so-called agent-structure problem in favour of an agent-based approach by conceptualising macro-level social phenomena not as structures, but as inter-subjective consequences of diverse and contradictory praxes of a multiplicity of diachronically-situated individual and collective agents. The more specific contribution of this thesis to the fields of FPA and IR is that it establishes international relations as the cumulative and contradictory results of the intersubjective praxes of states in making foreign policies and devising foreign policy strategies. To illustrate these onto-epistemological arguments empirically, the thesis demonstrates that the 2003 Iraq War as a major international relations development was the long-term result of the dialectical interplay of the reproductive strategies of a series of states and other agents. Similarly, how the individual states discussed in the empirical chapters contributed to the transformation of the so-called international system through their foreign policy strategies also illustrate the practical bridging of FPA and IR by individual and collective agents.

European intellectual production on international relations is central to the renovation of Western hegemony in the post-Cold War, ‘post-American' world. This includes both policy and academic discourses and a focus of this work is an account of the fields in which these discourses are generated that relates them at a deep level. Working within ‘Amsterdam School' accounts of European integration, I develop the focus on class formation and the internal relation between class and the international for the post-Cold War era. The ‘shift to Europe' within the previously Anglo-centric Atlantic transnational capitalist class alongside developments in the EU's ability to cohesively project power means that a developing bi-polar West must be considered within any understanding of attempts to maintain and reformulate Western hegemony. I consider the EU policy field in this context, focusing on the EU think tank field, as it relates to the ‘global power Europe' discourse; this discourse concerned with harnessing the international legitimacy of the concept of ‘civilian power Europe' for military interventions. I map the ‘global power Europe' think tank network, and assess its position within the formation of a hegemonic bloc. Turning to the field of IR I give a novel reading of the principal salient features of the field's development, as well as allowing an exploration of the field's limitations and possibilities through tracing the trajectories of European approaches to security, seen as the operationalization of European difference within IR. This methodology, focusing on trajectories rather than paradigms, allows an understanding of the effects of IR theories, as well as the limits and possibilities inherent from their conditions of production, beyond that which can be gleaned from the surface of theoretical debates and configurations. Approached from these two different directions – through policy institutes as a capital-policy nexus, and academic discourse as related to its social conditions of production – and exploring the homologies across them gives a non-reductive grasp on the interaction of the ideational and material in the renovation of Western hegemony.

A number of influential early International Relations (IR) theorists explicitly theorised politics in terms of ‘tragedy’ and their discourse was revived at the beginning of the 21st century. This thesis engages with this ‘tragic’ tradition of international political theory and pushes the debate in directions that have previously been hinted at but which have nonetheless remained largely unexplored. It is argued here that from the late archaic to the end of the classical period in ancient Athens, eros (‘sexual love’, ‘passionate yearning’) and its cognates came to form the conceptual basis of a political discourse that fused elements of sex, power, and gender into what we might call a kind of ‘erotic politics’. This discourse is clearly reflected in tragedy; many dramas take eros as a central theme and explore the role that the emotion could (and should) play in the community. Although it is usually transgressive and destructive, tragic eros is nevertheless redeemable in terms of the benefits it can bestow on the city when handled wisely. Using this contextualised reading of tragedy as a reference point, the dissertation critically analyses the texts of two influential commentators on international politics, namely, Thucydides and Hans Morgenthau. It is argued that both of these authors were heavily influenced by the Athenian discourse of erotic politics, especially as it appears in tragedy; love, power, and tragedy were central to both men’s understanding of international politics. This analysis will provide an original perspective on Thucydides’ and Morgenthau’s political philosophies and will open up new ways at looking at some of the ‘tragic’ situations that recent scholars have identified in contemporary politics.

The thesis seeks to explain the emergence of the EU’s international investment policy since the 1980s. Building on theories of European Integration, it tests two ex ante hypotheses. Hypothesis H1 builds on supranational thinking and stipulates that the Commission acted as policy entrepreneur and pushed for the communitarisation of international investment policy-making. Hypothesis H2 builds on liberal intergovernmental thinking and stipulates that European business successfully lobbied the Member States for a communitarisation of international investment policy-making in order to ensure access to competitive state-of-the-art international investment agreements. To assess the validity of these hypotheses, the thesis traces throughout history and examines policy-making instances, which decisively shaped the EU’s de facto and legal competences in international investment policy since the 1980s. It examines the EU’s involvement in investment-related negotiations during the Uruguay Round, on the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Mexico and Chile. It, moreover, analyses EU-internal debates on the EU’s legal competences in international investment regulation in the context of intergovernmental conferences on Treaty revisions and legal proceedings before the European Court of Justice. The joined analysis of international and EU-internal negotiations suggests that supranational thinking and Commission entrepreneurship best describe the integration process leading to the emergence of the EU’s international investment policy. The Commission acted as resourceful policy entrepreneur and used agenda setting, invoked the evolving trade agenda, fringe, implied and de facto competences, strategically used different international negotiating fora and legal review in order to consolidate the EU’s role in international investment policy. Functional and power considerations fuelled the Commission’s policy entrepreneurship. European business, on the other hand, was hardly informed, organised and interested in international investment policy-making. It did not seek to influence European or national policy-makers. The Member States, finally, occasionally favoured cooperating in certain international negotiating fora in order to maximise their bargaining power and to reach for the best possible deals with third countries. More often, however, they sought to contain the EU’s involvement and competences in international investment policy. The thesis makes an important empirical contribution to our knowledge of EU foreign economic policy. It is the first study to comprehensively document and to explain the EU’s role in the global investment regime. It, moreover, contributes to the long-standing debate between supranational and intergovernmental accounts of European Integration. It challenges mainstream assumptions on the role of business in the international investment regime and global political economy and finally contributes to historical institutionalist research on endogenous agency-driven institutional change.

This thesis explores the discrepancies and apparent contradictions between Scientific Man Versus Power Politics and Politics Among Nations, two of Hans Morgenthau’s seminal works, published in 1946 and 1948 respectively. Despite the large amount of material published on Morgenthau this discrepancy has been overlooked. Analysing these two works is achieved through the use of the Skinnerian method. To understand the purpose of the books the thesis compares each book with similar books that Morgenthau read during this period, as well as utilizing his personal correspondence to understand his motivation. The thesis argues that the tension between the works is a result of their contrasting purposes and the shift in Morgenthau’s thinking wrought by changes in the external context. This external context is Morgenthau’s acclimatization to US academia, the growth of the discipline of International Relations (IR) within it, and the onset of the Cold War. As well as throwing light on the cogency of Morgenthau’s IR contribution, the thesis illuminates the general IR literature of this period, much of which has languished under the shade of Politics Among Nations in particular.

This thesis proposes to remedy some of the theoretical lacunae surrounding the topic of strategic culture by reconceptualising it in a way that is compatible with existing expected utility models of executive choice. Current theorising regarding strategic culture has been paralysed by an ongoing debate between the first and third generations of strategic culture theorists and by the persistent inability of scholars to provide a predictive framework based on the concept - meaning that it is unable to operate as anything other than a residual variable. The hypothesis of this thesis is that conceptualising strategic culture using Thomas Schelling's concept of a focal point permits us to sidestep some of the theoretical debates that have divided rationalists and theorists of strategic culture by allowing culture to be grafted on to a rational actor model of executive choice in a way that is progressive rather than degenerative. In order to test this theory, the thesis develops and subsequently tests the idea of a liberal strategic culture, utilising both the congruence method and within case process tracing to demonstrate the external validity of the theory being developed. The cases chosen span American administrations from the Cold War to the contemporary era and demonstrate the utility of a re conceptualised model of strategic culture across a range of geopolitical and domestic contexts.

This thesis interrogates the absence of questions of race, colonialism, and their contemporary legacies in the philosophical literature on global justice and cosmopolitan ethics. What are the ethical, political, and material consequences of these "unspeakable things unspoken", and what would it mean for cosmopolitanism to take seriously the problem of the global colour line? The thesis provides a tentative answer to these questions through a close engagement with contemporary debates about the meaning and purpose of international solidarity. It demonstrates that critical and liberal approaches often help reproduce and legitimise, rather than challenge and transcend, the current unjust and unequal racialized global order. Drawing on Cedric Robinson and the literature on racial capitalism, it interrogates how solidarity can be decolonised and reconceived so as to better attend to the materiality of the global colour line. Through a close reading of the European migrant crisis, recent forms of Black-Palestinian solidarity, and the ongoing struggle for decolonisation in South Africa, it identifies an alternative internationalist imaginary that grows out of the solidarities forged in the struggle against imperialism, patriarchy, and racial capitalism. This is a radicalised and decolonised emancipatory project which retrieves the idea of universal history and total critique, but does so without invoking Eurocentric ideas of progress and teleology. In an era of Trump, Brexit, and global fascist resurgence-where the "white working class" frequently is juxtaposed with "immigrants", and identity politics blamed for the demise of the organised Left-such an internationalist vision is urgently needed.

How do ideologies and cities shape each other? This work offers a theoretical strategy for explaining how urban forms and political projects have afforded each other's development historically, while avoiding a deterministic account of how political aims are realised in particular urban forms. To do this it focuses on the emergence of nationalism in the context of the modernisation of European cities in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. As background, the development of the concept of citizenship in the context of the medieval city is explored and an understanding of the exceptional political space of the city in political philosophy is outlined. The political philosophy of nationalism is seen to engender an urban-rural tension and the works of Rousseau and Herder are read to understand further the relationship between nationalist thought and the modern city. Then in order to structure an investigation of how urban form and ideology interact, an analytical framework is developed using JJ Gibson's theory of affordances. The framework is applied to European urban forms which developed during the rise of nationalism, specifically in three historical city cases: Budapest, Vienna and Venice. The cases share in common an experience of Habsburg administration and the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century but have quite different formal contexts. Urban forms and affordances are discussed more generally using the phenomenon and concept of Haussmannisation and the usefulness of that concept is discussed. More general conclusions are drawn in which political ideas, ideologies and urban forms are understood to afford each other ranges of such possibilities without determining them.