This dissertation examines the interaction between a particular type of global governance mechanism – social standardisation – and national political economic structures in two countries of the global South: Argentina and Brazil. In doing so it provides a greater understanding of the emergence of new governance structures and the growing role of actors from emerging countries. The dissertation develops three lines of analysis. First, it studies the evolution of the institutional attempts to establish global social standards since the onset of the twentieth century, with specific attention to three global governance initiatives emerging around the 2000s: the UN Global Compact, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the ISO 26000 Guidance Standard on Social Responsibility. Second, it investigates the participation in these latest initiatives of actors from Argentina and Brazil, detailing institutional connections, central players, clusters and overall participation patterns. Third, it analyses and contrasts national participation patterns in light of the trajectory of social standardisation and the political economic environment of these two countries. As a result, the dissertation offers a distinct contribution to the governance and standardisation literature by highlighting the relevance of national political variables in structuring engagement with global governance projects. The dissertation uses a combination of methodologies, sources and analytical techniques including historical analysis, network analysis, interviews with local actors, and direct observation of one instance of global standard-setting. The main line of argument is that local participation in global initiatives of social standard-setting depends on two main elements: the pre-existence of compatible cleavages of social standardisation, and the local resonance of governance frames. Moreover, the thesis reveals that these elements are strongly connected with ‘Southern’ political variables regarding the pattern of political, social and economic development, the model of state-society relations, and the political discourse promoted by the government. On this basis, this thesis can explain the divergent participation patterns found in Brazil and Argentina regarding the three global case study initiatives and their overall acceptance of social standardisation programmes. The dissertation provides two main contributions: 1) it emphasises the relevance of communicative dynamics in the diffusion of global governance, relativising economistic and power-led approaches, and 2) demonstrates the relevance of Southern political institutions, traditions, and discourses in structuring global/local communications.

This thesis investigates Sino-Japanese relations and the post-Cold War security order in Northeast Asia. In particular, it asks whether a ‘security regime’ now exists in the region. Security analysis of Northeast Asia has often focussed upon the likely effects of changes in material power. This has led to predictions of a ‘Back to the future’ scenario of rivalry and possible war. While acknowledging the value of this approach, I question whether it is sufficient; other approaches, notably an investigation of normative changes, are required. In considering both material and non-material factors, I follow the precepts of RSCT – which view RSCs as essentially social constructions. Thus, I employ RSCT’s eclectic posture, exploring three distinctive approaches to the possibility of structural change – Waltz and neorealism, Wendt and social constructivism, and Buzan and the English school. Thus, while not ignoring the impact of shifts in the balance of power on security practices, I also investigate ideational variables – that is the kinds of values, norms and institutions that are shared by the members of the East Asian RSC. I go on to ask why they are shared, how their identities and interests evolve over time and how these changes influence securitisation and desecuritisation practices. By examining these variables through societal, economic and military-political sectors, and locating them at domestic, regional, interregional and global levels, I conclude that, together with Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia has formed a single ‘East Asian security regime’. This conclusion is based upon my interpretation of domestic normative constructions in Japan and in China; the growing regional identity/society in East Asia (especially after the Asian financial crisis); and the increased willingness and ability of regional actors to deal with security challenges. But challenges remain, with recurrent tensions and crises as well as continuing historical mistrust. I believe that, as yet, ideational factors, the shared norms and institutions in the East Asian RSC, are still associated with acceptance of a pluralist Westphalian international society, and these are shared largely instrumentally rather than by genuine belief. Thus, despite enthusiasm for community building, progress has been limited in collective identity formation; and balancing behaviour is still common. This means that, while East Asia has reached at least the lower or middle stages of a ‘security regime’, it is still far away from becoming a ‘security community’.

John Rawls’s international theory, The Law of Peoples, has been read and criticized as “A Theory of International Justice”. His major objective, however, is not the establishment of a just (liberal) world order, but to guide liberal societies towards a reasonable peaceful, stable and just international system. From this starting point, the thesis assesses whether Rawls’s international theory can meet its task to function as a guideline for the promotion of international peace, stability and justice and how that peace might be conceived. The author argues that Rawls sketches the path to a “decent peace”. The scrutiny of the issue takes the form of an in-depth analysis and discussion of The Law of Peoples and a systematic investigation of a number of cases. The dissertation examines the possible contribution of Rawls’s ideas, primarily the Society of Peoples and the principles of the Law of Peoples, to international peace, stability and justice. As the focus lies on decent regimes and a decent peace, three actual decent societies are identified (Oman, Qatar and Singapore), in order to highlight the applicability of the notion to the international system, as well as to ensure that decent regimes are not mere constructions serving to justify imposing liberal principles of non-liberal regimes. The dissertation finally investigates the enlargement of the democratic peace thesis towards a decent peace; it discusses the arguments for a democratic peace and applies them to Rawls’s conception of decent peoples as well as to the identified regimes. It concludes asserting that the decent peace thesis is theoretically wellfounded, whereas the empirical evidence is – due to only three identified regimes – rather weak. As a guideline for the foreign policy of liberal (and decent) societies The Law of Peoples can contribute to more stability and justice in the international realm and promote a decent peace.

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the genesis of Plan Colombia, the aid programme that transferred US$1.3 billion to Colombia during fiscal year 2000/2001 alone. It was found that President Andres Pastrana invited the intervention of the US in many aspects of Colombia’s internal affairs, from his peace process with guerrilla insurgents to his project to reassert the authority of the state over Colombia’s ‘internal periphery’. A complex, three-way negotiation between the two core Executives and the US Congress ensued, which yielded a more limited intervention than the Colombians desired. It was also found that, the vast power asymmetry notwithstanding, it was the small state that took the initiative and managed to exert influence over the great power. These findings conclusively refute the paradigmatic presumption in the IR literature that Plan Colombia was hegemonically imposed. To the contrary, the protracted (two years long) negotiation of terms showed the ‘hegemon’ decidedly reluctant to be drawn too far into its internal affairs of its ‘victim’. Plan Colombia follows a characteristic pattern in US foreign relations, which has been noted before; a unique form of ‘imperialism’ whereby subject states actually invite the intervention of the great power, in some cases even to the point of occupation. Unlike the approach typical of the IR field, which is predominantly a priori in method, the treatment herein is essentially inductive. For my fieldwork I interviewed the gamut of elite participants in the making of the Plan, from ex-President Pastrana himself to Thomas Pickering, the third-ranking officer in the US State Department. Letting the facts from all sources speak for themselves, I have arrived at counterintuitive results of interest to theorists and practitioners of international relations.

The military has been a symbol of nationhood and state control for the past two hundred years. As representatives of a society’s cultural values and political ambitions, the armed forces have traditionally been held within the confines of the modern state. Today, however, soldiers are expected to operate in the shadows of conflicts, drawing little attention to themselves and to their actions; they are physically and emotionally secluded from a civilian population whose governments, especially in the ‘West’, are proceeding to an unprecedented wave of demilitarisation and military budget cuts. Simultaneously, these same governments are increasingly opening their armies to foreign nationals and outsourcing military operations to private military and security companies. These experiments with the hybridisation of the armed forces have effectively changed the face of national security. This thesis explores the impact of hybridisation on the values, cohesion and effectiveness of the armed forces by comparing and contrasting the experiences of the French Foreign Legion, the private military companies in Angola, and the merging of private contractors and American troops in Iraq. Mercenaries have been used as a foreign policy tool to improve the strategic impact of national armies. As non-state actors, however, they are unaccountable to the hiring state and beyond the control of the military establishment. It is both timely and important to understand the experiences of soldiers and mercenaries fighting together in modern battlefields as this appears to be the trend for the future, and has a direct impact on civil-military relations, military effectiveness, and consequently on the overall security of the state. The study concludes that, although mercenaries and private security companies can contribute to the military effort and may be a useful foreign policy tool, the impact that these non-state actors have on the national army must be taken into consideration to avoid weakening the state’s armed forces. Furthermore, the differences between warriors of various nationalities and allegiances, and the difficulties in coordinating public-private partnerships in joint military operations undermine the legitimacy of the state – and by default its policies – by weakening the cohesiveness and morale of the national armed forces and by alienating the citizen iv and the soldier. Results can be used to inform national governments and the armed forces in their inevitable process of hybridising their troops with foreigners and private contractors in the quest to answer the budgetary and moral concerns of their country.

A limited process of integration has been occurring amongst the countries of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. From the mid-1990s to 2008, integration amongst the three countries has occurred in the energy and transport sectors, but not in other sectors, such as security, politics or trade beyond energy and transport. In the energy sector, this integration can be explained through neo-liberal institutionalist theory. Integration in the transport sector occurs due to a mixture of elements from the neo-liberal institutionalist, security communities and neo-functionalist theories of integration. In both sectors, transnational extra-regional actors (TERAs) are the explanatory variable in the integration.

My thesis consists of three chapters. The aim of the first two chapters is to investigate the linkages between trade and the cross-country comovement and volatility of GDP growth, while the last chapter is an independent study on how the optimal design of monetary policy depends on the share of labour- and capital-intensive sectors. The first chapter develops a framework to study the effects of international trade on GDP comovement. Using a standard trade-theoretical approach, I first show how the comovement between any pair of countries is linked to shocks affecting both the two countries bilaterally and all other countries. Secondly, I use a calibrated version of the model to assess the importance of the bilateral channel relative to the role of linkages with all other countries. The second chapter investigates whether and how openness to trade may affect macroeconomic volatility. While greater openness provides a powerful channel for transmission of foreign disturbances, it also lowers the exposure to domestic shocks. My co-authors and I show that as long as the volatility of trading partners and covariance of shocks across countries are not too large, trade can act as a channel for the diversification of country-specific shocks and in that way contribute to lower volatility. The third chapter examines what is the optimal measure of inflation in a two-sector economy with nominal frictions, where sectors differ in labour intensity. I find that a welfare-oriented central bank should follow more closely the developments in the less labour-intensive sector. The source of this bias is traced back to a greater sensitivity of the marginal product of labour in that sector, so that output dispersion caused by nominal rigidities generates higher efficiency losses where labour is relatively less abundant.

Hitherto, the relationships between political institutions and ethnopolitical (in)stability typically have been analysed by investigating the effects of single, formal political institutions such as electoral systems or state structures (see e.g. Reynolds 2002; Roeder and Rothchild 2005). My doctoral thesis criticises this research focus on two different yet equally relevant accounts: First, the tendency to single out the effects of individual institutions is based on the implicit – and as I claim: wrong – assumption that political institutions can be treated as separate entities and that it is only of secondary relevance of which broader set of institutions they form part. Second, despite studies which highlight the relevance of informal political institutions (see e.g. Sisk and Stefes 2005; Varshney 2002), they have received far less attention in the academic debate so far. ‘Ethno-Embedded Institutionalism’ describes a new approach to the study of institutional incentives for ethnic violence which goes beyond the mere focus on single, formal political institutions by highlighting the effects of both institutional combinations and informal political institutions on the risk of ethnic civil war. To test the relevance of ‘Ethno-Embedded Institutionalism’, I use a grievance-based explanation of intrastate violence and binary time-series-cross-section analysis based on a personally designed dataset that covers 174 countries between 1955 and 2007. I present statistical evidence that high levels of corruption on the one hand, and institutional combinations of presidentialism, a majoritarian electoral system for the legislature and a unitary state structure on the other increase the risk of large-scale ethnic violence. Overall, my thesis contributes to the academic debate in three relevant regards: i) by conceptualising and testing Ethno-Embedded Institutionalism; ii) by describing a grievance-based explanation of large-scale ethnic violence which clearly identifies the key values of political representation; and iii) by presenting the EEI Dataset as the first comprehensive data source for the systematic statistical analysis of institutional incentives for ethnic civil war.

This research project investigates the governing of Europe’s external border. It analyses how the common Schengen short-stay visa policy has been applied in practice by member states in the period from 2005 to 2010. So far, little systematic theoretical and empirical research has been carried out on the implementation of Schengen. The contributions of the thesis are two-fold. Firstly, it makes available a comprehensive and easily accessible database on the visa requirements, issuing-practices and consular representation of EU states in all third countries. It enables researchers to map out and compare how restrictively the visa policy is implemented by different member states and across sending countries. Secondly, the project provides three separate papers that in different ways make use of the database to explore and explain the varying openness of Europe’s border and dynamics of cooperation among member states. The three papers are tied together by a framework conceptualising Schengen as a border regime with two key dimensions: restrictiveness and integration. The first paper asks to what extent, and why, Europe’s border is more open to visitors of some nationalities rather than others. The second paper investigates to what extent, and why, EU states cooperate on sharing consular facilities in the visa-issuing process. The third paper examines to what extent, and why, Schengen participation has a restrictive impact on the visa-issuing practices of member countries. The analyses test existing theories and develop new concepts and models. The three papers engage with rationalist and constructivist theories and seek to assess their relative explanatory power. In doing so, the project makes use of different quantitative comparative approaches. It employs regression analysis, social network analytical tools and quasi-experimental design. Overall, the thesis concludes that Schengen is characterized by extensive cooperation and restrictive practices towards especially visitors from poor, Muslim-majority and refugeeproducing countries.

It may be a case unique to the World Trade Organization(WTO) that an aspect of accession to the organization became an issue in itself. Since the WTO came into being in 1995, the process of accession has been a subject of intensive debate. It has been like this because of the extremely complicated nature of the process. The reason for such complexity is dual. On the one hand, an accession issue under consideration will be scrutinised in a manner that exceeds traditional trade concerns such as customs law, tariff schedule and related regulations on imports and exports to include items that might penetrate domestic legal and social boundaries. Such scrutiny, on the other hand, must satisfy all interested incumbent WTO members before accession is granted. This is normally done through an extensive and lengthy bilateral negotiation between the acceding country and the members with an interest in its application. Thus, the question of the WTO accession has become of attention grapping nature. In fact, following the establishment of the organization, the question of accession emerged as one of the various pressing WTO-related issues that attracted attention at both academic and practical levels. In this thesis, the WTO accession question will be examined with regard to the accession of Saudi Arabia. This was one of the most difficult and protracted accession processes and the thesis will concentrate on the factors that determined the WTO accession of this case. The literature on the WTO argues that the decision on any country’s accession is based on a set of generic factors. These include, for instance, integration in the world economy, locking in domestic reforms, opening new markets and attracting foreign investment. Although very important, the attempt to investigate the factors that shape a country’s desire to accede to the WTO– as examined in this study with respect to Saudi Arabia (seeking an accession in the face of the inherent complexities, liabilities and potential penetration of internal affairs) – requires answers that go further than these factors introduced in the literature. It is not the case that a country decides to join the WTO for particular reasons and the actual accession follows immediately. Accession is a process that takes a very long time and the issue of a country’s accession cannot possibly remain static throughout the time until its application is officially approved. This should be taken into account because it can produce some important questions. For example, will the internal perception and position of the parties involved remain the same during the period in which accession is being negotiated? Will the accession factors change over time to become more or less important? What are the politics involved? The answers to such questions will necessarily lead to a realisation that more elements than the aforementioned direct factors indicated in the literature need to be considered in order to understand WTO accession. However, examining questions of this nature, such as the politics involved in an accession case, would conceivably lead to some considerable particularities attached to a specific accession case and this applies to Saudi Arabia. The main question, then, that the study aims to answer is: what were the specific factors that shaped this accession case? In fact, the importance of the Saudi accession case is generally due to four factors: (a) the periods of varying intensity with respect to the negotiations themselves; (b) the protracted length of time taken to complete the accession process; (c) Saudi Arabia’s unique characteristics as a country; and (d) the fact that not much has been written about this accession process. Since the decision to join the WTO is intrinsically linked to trade policy, and as this normally involves a great deal of internal politics, the thesis supposes that studying the domestic interaction that was at play during the years of the accession process can best explain the accession of Saudi Arabia to the WTO. With regard to the importance of internal politics to the case, the thesis will focus on the domestic institutions and interests that the affected Saudi Arabia’s accession. In the process of doing this, external factors will also be taken into account.