The Iranian nuclear crisis is a proxy arena for competing visions about the functioning of international relations. Yet, no comprehensive analyses have been conducted so far that use the Iranian nuclear case as an illustration to conceptualise the interaction between ‘hegemonic structures’ and those actors resisting them. This doctoral dissertation is a first step to fill this gap in the literature. It analyses the foreign policies of China, Russia and Turkey towards the Iranian nuclear programme and thereby answers the research question to what extent their policies are indicative of a security culture that resists hegemony. Based on 55 semi-structured elite interviews with experts and decision-makers closely involved with the Iranian nuclear file, this research draws on neo-Gramscian scholarship to analyse resistance to hegemony across its ideational, material and institutional framework conditions. The case studies examined show how ‘compliance’ on the part of China, Russia and Turkey with approaches to the Iranian nuclear conflict has been selective, and how US policy preferences in the Iran dossier have been resisted on other occasions. To understand such variation in ‘norm compliance’, this dissertation introduces a two-level model to understand foreign policy discrepancies between a discursive and a behavioural level. Chinese, Russian, and Turkish reluctance to use sanctions as tools in international diplomacy on a discursive level did not prevent the eventual adoption of international sanctions against Iran and Chinese, Russian, and Turkish compliance therewith on a behavioural level. While multilateral Iran sanctions are seen as complying with the rules of the UN system, additional unilateral sanctions are contested on normative grounds and perceived as illegitimate and as an extraterritorialisation of domestic legislation. Besides an ideational resistance to unilateral sanctions, the economic impact of these ‘secondary sanctions’ on third country entities constitutes an additional material reason for Chinese, Russian, and Turkish criticism. Their eventual compliance with sanctions lists, however, indicates a level of receptiveness to the economic leverage of US-dominated international financial mechanisms. In this context, the Iran nuclear case serves as an illustration to shed light on the contemporaneous interaction of the forces of consent and coercion in international politics. This research thus makes a critical contribution to key questions of International Relations at the interstice of security governance, proliferation policies, and debates surrounding the co-existence between hegemonic structures and ‘norm-shapers in the making’.

Statebuilding is widely defined as a comprehensive and external exercise that aims to shape economic, security and administrative structures and institutions in a post-conflict society by promoting liberal internationalist norms. This thesis proposes that the narratives on statebuilding assign limited responsibility to international actors engaged in statebuilding, despite its comprehensive and intrusive nature: a mismatch dubbed as the ¨responsibility gap¨. It continues to propose that the limited attribution of responsibility to actors engaged in external statebuilding is possible through ¨discursive safeguards¨ inherent in the framing of statebuilding. These propositions are tested in four stages: a) conducting a frame and discourse analysis on statebuilding in order to understand the way international responsibilities are framed, b) formulating an alternative framework to attribute responsibility by utilizing perspectives on moral responsibility, c) comparing these two frameworks to identify a responsibility gap in the way the statebuilding frame attributes responsibility to external actors, d) pointing out the discursive safeguards in international narratives that allow sustaining the responsibility gaps. As a last step, the propositions are tested through a case study, on the involvement of the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The objective of this dissertation is to study the practices of mediation of the European Union (EU) in order to explore how the understanding of violent conflicts by EU officials is reflected in their ways of responding to them through practices of mediation. In late 2011 the in-house Mediation Support Team of the Union took office as part of implementing the Concept on Strengthening EU Mediation and Dialogue Capacities, adopted by the Council of the European Union in 2009. The group began to develop new practices of in-house mediation support, thereby engaging with the already existing efforts of the Union. This study sets out to trace the emergence of this loosely knitted web of practices - the assemblage of EU mediation - by drawing on the sociology of translation or Actor-NetworkTheory and on concepts of governmentality studies. It builds on the four moments of translation as developed by Michel Callon and refines them with the notion of political rationality and techne to assess what it is that makes the assemblage relatively durable. This dissertation argues that the seemingly incoherent and to an extent diverging practices of mediation are in fact organized around a reasoning on violent conflict which securitizes conflict. It is challenged by a transformative rationale which is advocated by the Mediation Support Team. However, the common denominator of both concepts is an understanding of how to build peace with sustainable economic development, the eradication of poverty, strong and democratic state institutions and an effective system of multilateralism as its main components. Taken together, this reasoning or political rationality gives rise to a state-centred approach to violent conflict which often plays out at the expense of a detailed conflict assessment as it simplifies the multiple realities and narratives of violent conflict. Two case studies of EU mediation practices in Myanmar and Georgia substantiate this argument. They are assessed through analysing the transcripts of 63 semi-structured interviews and textual artefacts. Moreover, the dissertation discovers an intriguing puzzle pertaining to how the political rationality of the assemblage of mediation is resisting any form of scrutinizing the underlying assumptions of the state-centred understanding of violent conflict. On the one hand, the Mediation Support Team fulfils a supportive role and did not manage to establish itself as an obligatory passage point of the assemblage which would define how to engage in mediation and require all other actors to pass through it. In fact, the codified practices of the Common Foreign and Security Policy authorize the Council of the European Union to determine the Union's foreign policy objectives, including mandating an actor to mediate on behalf of the EU, and calling for all efforts of resolving violent conflicts to be in line with Council policies. Accordingly, European Union Special Representatives or Heads of Delegations engage in those practices that engender a peace process. On the other hand, the study found that the practices of mediation support structure the way of thinking of EU officials on peace and conflict in that they introduce specific concepts such as the transformative approach to violent conflict and blur the boundaries between EU actors and external experts, thereby raising the question whether or not this will challenge the Union's concept of violent conflict in the future.

This thesis critiques the conceptualisation of the state as a rational product of modernity that places importance on institutional capacity and typological criteria. Tied to this history is a distinct set of knowledges and practices that inform international relations and politics, including those of contemporary development and state building. The expansion of these knowledges and practices through colonialism, imperial modernisation, and global governance have established a global standard of civilisation of statehood that fails to give credence to the specific history of the state in the non-West. This thesis argues that in order to better understand the state in the non-West, it is necessary to examine the process of state formation as one that is linked to colonialism, imperial modernisation, and the advent of global governance, which produced a global standard of civilisation, altering the relationship between the domestic social field in the global peripheries and structures of governance. It traces how colonial knowledges and practices were assembled onto and interacted with preexisting knowledges and practices in the political, economic, and social environments and the consequence of these assembled knowledges and practices. Through the use of archival material triangulated with secondary source histories, the thesis examines the history of state formation in the Middle East, focusing on Lebanon and Syria, previously the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, from 1800 to 1944. It examines the social, economic, and political transformations that occurred during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Lebanon and Syria; taking into account Ottoman imperial modernisation, European interference and intervention, and the subsequent French mandate.

In the early 2000s, Korea and Japan competitively initiated their preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in response to the unexpected progress of the China–ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. In contrast with China, Korea and Japan initially preferred to negotiate PTAs with individual Southeast Asian countries, rather than with ASEAN. In 2003, however, Korea redirected its strategy and began the Korea–ASEAN FTA. Japan continued to emphasise a bilateral approach to negotiations but sought harmonisation of the individual PTAs through the ASEAN–Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Sharing common international political and economic challenges, why did Korea and Japan take diverging negotiation paths? This research investigates the factors that shaped Korea and Japan’s respective negotiation methods with ASEAN by focusing on the interplay of domestic interests, institutions and ideas. The research findings suggest that Korea and Japan initially preferred bilateral PTAs because of their efficiency and to minimise the backlash of the agricultural sector. Japan had a greater incentive to promote bilateral strategy than Korea, not only to counter China’s move, but also to utilise its diplomatic leverages against ASEAN. The direct causes of the two countries’ divergence, however, came from ideas and institutions. The influence of ideas became evident when Korea’s and Japan’s initial emphasis on the East Asia-based PTAs began to head toward the different directions. Japan was path-dependent of its initial step-by-step strategy focused in East Asia. In contrast, Korea accommodated the new ideas that aimed at cross-regional PTAs, making the Korea-ASEAN FTA a stepping stone for cross-regional PTAs rather than East Asia-based PTAs. Institutional factors account for the supply side of PTA decision-making processes by demonstrating how the intra-democracy variations, combined by bureaucracy discretion, empowered relevant decision-makers, which led to the reversal of negotiation progresses between Korea and Japan. The empirical research findings significantly contribute to the international political economy literature by testing the applicability of the domestic level analysis. They provide an alternative perspective to the existing debate on the compatibility of bilateralism and regionalism in East Asia and thus to the political economy of trade policy in the region. The findings also shed light on the country-specific factors shaping the economic regionalism of East Asia.

This thesis discusses UN human rights treaty ratification in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Ratification of human rights treaties by most GCC countries, often with extensive reservations concerning the compatibility of certain provisions with Islam, has generated international debate about the applicability of international human rights norms in an Islamic context. With poor compliance records, GCC cases are seen to demonstrate that global human rights norms fail to diffuse and take hold in specific local contexts. This thesis disputes this claim by arguing that normative change can be observed in these cases. It offers a constructivist critique of “norm diffusion” literature by focusing on changes in language and ideas, rather than on legal changes and implementation. Using the cases of the Convention Against Torture, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the thesis identifies when and how language and ideas about Islam and human rights have been shaped by UN conceptualizations of rights as a result of GCC engagement with these treaties. Examining both Arabic and English sources and carrying out analysis of the discourses in UN documents, employing legal analysis of recent constitutional documents and laws, and through interview research, the thesis demonstrates how arguments about Islam and human rights in the GCC have been shaped by treaty engagement since the 1990s. By demonstrating ratification’s impact on GCC actors’ use of UN human rights vocabulary and concepts within an Islamic context, the thesis argues that ratification matters more than the conventional literature suggests. It concludes that, even in cases that human rights treaties have failed to result in improved practices, they have contributed to the framing of interpretations of Islam alongside UN human rights concepts, a process that is worthy of greater scholarly attention.

This study examines the foreign policy of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and its member states, in particular Qatar, towards the peace process in the Middle East between 1991 and 2005. The study aims to identify, and critically engage with, a set of internal and external determinants, which influenced the foreign policy orientations of the GCC states towards the Middle East peace process after the Madrid conference in 1991 and until 2005. This time frame was selected because significant changes took place in the patterns of alliances among leading Arab states after 2005. Moreover, the study focuses on the extent to which Qatar’s foreign policy has been consistent, or inconsistent, with the rest of GCC foreign policy, and the reasons for both consistencies and inconsistencies. The study posits three main questions. First, what are the main determinants, internal and external, facing the GCC states while formulating their foreign policies towards the Middle East peace process, particularly between 1991 and 2005? Second, what was the overall foreign policy agreed between the GCC states towards the Middle East peace process during the same period? Finally, to what extent was Qatari foreign policy convergent with, or divergent from, the foreign policy of the Gulf Cooperation Council with regard to the peace process? To explore these questions, the study adopts a qualitative research methodology and archival document analysis strategy. A wide range of documents was used throughout the study, including UN documents, media data, official statements made by GCC ministers of foreign affairs, closing statements of GCC summits, speeches by the Emir of Qatar, and statements by Qatari diplomats and officials. The data analyses revealed, first, that the foreign policies of the GCC states and Qatar have converged when it ultimately came to supporting Palestinian rights and the US efforts on the peace process, and, second, that the foreign policies of Qatar and the GCC states have diverged on two significant issues: first Qatar’s desire to normalize economic and diplomatic ties with Israel, and, second, US and Qatari initiatives to push political reform agenda (democratization came first, among other objectives) in the region as a possible policy to resolve the Middle East conflict.

This research examines the impact of the WTO accession process on the economic reform process of Vietnam. The WTO accession provided a decisive external force to accelerate and lock-in domestic reforms. Accession acted as a template to inform and structure the reform process. The process was utilised by reformers help rescue Vietnam from economic crisis. With the extensive reform of economic institutions, the opening up to the market economy and the input of foreign capital, the Vietnamese economy showed rapid growth, moving from being the poorest country in the world to a middle ranking economy by 2013. In the first and second chapters the objectives of the thesis are explained and the contextual framework and research design are presented, with the focus being on the economic reform of Vietnam. A literature review is followed by a comparative analysis of China’s accession to the WTO. In the third and fourth chapters, both the Vietnam political and economic systems and processes are presented in the context of Vietnam’s transition from a centrally commanded economy to a market economy. A full examination is made done of the Communist Party and its governance mechanisms. Chapters five, six and seven concentrate on three case studies that evaluate the impact of the WTO on three Vietnam economic sectors; Agriculture, Banking and Textiles. The conclusion demonstrates that the thesis research provides a unique new contribution to the literature as it revealed limits to the reach of WTO accession in accelerating domestic reforms. It identified the structural impediments to the fullfledged transformation of what was an insulated command economy into a globally integrated market economy. Endemic corruption, a growing debt burden and the influence of a powerful and wealthy elite interest group now threaten the Vietnam economy with a severe financial crisis. The reforms have failed to provide the necessary tools to avert the impending crisis. How and why this is the case is explained in the thesis.

This thesis is about the space programmes of China and India, and space as international society. Drawing on key concepts of the English School theory, the argument of the thesis is twofold. First, employing international society as the central analytical idea, it suggests that it is possible to conceptualise space not merely as a system, but as an international space society with a distinct international social structure. This argument is developed by highlighting how the nature of space as a distinctive sectoral interstate society is manifested in the ways in which its primary institutions are differentiated from such institutions at the global level (war, sovereignty, law, diplomacy, balance of power, great power management, the market) in a historical and comparative context. This helps to highlight the constitutive impact of these institutions on China and India as emerging space powers. It also puts forward ‘techno-nationalism’ as a primary institution of international space society. Second, the thesis argues that the pursuit of China and India’s space programmes has been informed by a particular understanding of techno-nationalism in a postcolonial context, what I call ‘postcolonial techno-nationalism’, which is centred on the development of space technology as a normative indicator of the state’s power, status, and modernity. The enduring influence of postcolonial techno-nationalism reflects how technological advancement was seen to function as a sort of an informal ‘standard of civilisation’ during the expansion of the European society of states in the nineteenth century. Essentially, this thesis provides a useful range of innovative analytical tools to consider the relationship between technology and International Relations and how order is constructed, maintained, and contested in space. It also offers a new lens though which to consider the complex dynamics that shape China and India as rising space powers.

This thesis introduces an overlooked perspective on Chinese foreign policy, that of interest groups. I use environmental foreign relations as a vantage point to examine how domestic interest groups exert influence on China’s environmental foreign relations. The proposed theoretical framework, constructivist utilitarianism, provides a bridge between the constructivist school and rationalistic institutionalism in the IR debate to explain the discursive turn of the Chinese government in global environmental governance. The discursive turn refers to the changing attitudes towards environmental governance based on learning, shared experiences, and offering an alternative norm to replace liberal environmentalism. The interest groups under scrutiny are line ministries, state-owned enterprises, environmental non-governmental organisations, local governors, and intellectuals. They each represent a distinct interest, and demonstrate different pathways for influencing foreign relations. The focus on domestic players supplements the traditional focus on international systemic factors to explain the behaviour of China on the global stage and in bilateral relations. The empirical chapters are organised according to three dimensions: international environmental treaty implementation, sharing the Chinese experience, and offering an alternative environmental norm. Each chapter focuses on one factor, in the following order: environmental diplomacy, the Chinese experience, and ecological civilisation. These three dimensions reflect the trend of the discursive turn, which is closely linked to China’s desire to establish a good national image. My findings show that interest groups in China utilise the strategic concepts of environmental diplomacy and the Chinese experience to maximise their interests. The emergence of the discourse of ecological civilisation creates space for different groups to jump onto the bandwagon by interpreting the concept in favour of their interests. In this process, identity politics becomes a mechanism by which to aggregate and rank domestic preferences in such a way that economic interests outweigh environmental ones at the state level. This thesis calls for more future research to examine other foreign relations issues through the lens of interest groups, to better comprehend the complex dynamics of China’s role in the world.