The thesis studies the development of the ASEAN Charter with the aim to understand its origins, the needs to codify implicit principles to explicit norms, and norm contestation in the process of drafting the Charter with special reference to Chapter VIII Dispute Settlement Mechanism and Article 14 Human Rights Body. Chapter VIII bestows ASEAN officials such as the Secretary-General with increased authority in mediation while Article 14 prescribes the establishment of concrete and binding regional human rights mechanism. Both constitute unprecedented practices since non-involvement of ASEAN in Members’ unresolved disputes and minimal institutionalism used to be adhered to strictly. The thesis explains why some norms are codified and strengthened while some are weakened in the context of ASEAN’s lifeworld, a shared understanding and common cultural background. Moreover, the concept of artificial lifeworld created by non-state actors when the existing lifeworld lacks normative space for newer norm is also explored. ASEAN is treated as a social context where negotiation takes place and the condition inducing to the use of arguments is analyzed. Having access to Records of the HLTF Meetings, the thesis sheds light on the drafting process which used to remain behind the closed door.

The thesis extends VoC theory to both emerging markets (EMs) and firm-level corporate governance by explaining how market structures direct firm level competitiveness. The most competitive firms are those that follow the contours of capitalism in the domestic political economy. The thesis uses a Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) framework, though institutional differences between developed and developing economies require adaptation of VoC theory in an EM context. The thesis identifies a VoC pattern of complement formation based on the typological trajectory of the EM. A typological trajectory is defined as the complement structure negotiated by economic stakeholders as developmental state controls are withdrawn. The thesis will argue that countries follow different paths of capitalist development, which may not converge to a liberal market economy. Empirically, the thesis uses a multi-level comparative case study of India and Brazil to test hypotheses about capitalist formation and firm competitiveness. India and Brazil share many similarities in their econoimic structures and liberalisation patterns yet have different leading seactors. In the first level of the case study, complement structures and stakeholder bargaining preferences are analysed within a comparative framework. In the second level, within country case studies of firm level corporate governance patterns test the link between market structuring and firm level incentives. The firms selected for the case study are from leading sectors in India (IT) and Brazil (banking). The firm level focus on a single sector makes it possible to control for a wide range of variables while analysing comparative differences in corporate governance across three case firms that exhibit varying levels competitiveness. The thesis finds that EMs espouse typological trajectories, or developmental paths, that conform to either a Liberal Market Economy (LME), Mixed Market Economy (MME), or Coordinated Market Economy (CME) equilibrium. Indian complement structures exhibit a LME typological trajectory. In the Indian IT sector, firms converged to liberal corporate governance norms. And amongst the software firms, those with the most liberal corporate governance models performed best. Brazilian complements, in contrast, moved towards a MME structure after liberalisation. The strong influence of banking and its role as a leading sector are tied to the privileged and powerful position of capital in the domestic market. The differentiation between India and Brazil demonstrate the importance of market structures in understanding development trajectories as well as drivers of firm competitiveness.

The separate trilateral cooperation mechanism among Japan, the Republic of Korea (thereafter Korea) and the People’s Republic of China (thereafter China) emerged from a wider framework for cooperation, the ASEAN Plus Three. To the scholarship on that framework, the new development constituted a puzzle, as the scholars considered a scenario for trilateral cooperation mechanism without ASEAN as highly unlikely. Instead, it took seriously prospects for Sino-Japanese competition and divisions running deep throughout all of Northeast Asia. Despite the obstacles that seemed insurmountable, a separate trilateral cooperation mechanism emerged in 2008. My argument to explain this development reaches back to regional sources. I introduce the analytical framework centred on foreign-policy preferences and outcomes to argue that collective outcomes originate neither in strategies of individual states nor in their bilateral relations, but through interaction at the level of a region; I also argue that the Trilateral Cooperation is a shift in regional affairs, but it is far from being a genuine revolution. I argue that ASEAN Plus Three provided a cooperative context for their relations in Asia. This thesis argues that for Asian international relations, the Trilateral Cooperation mechanism is neither a revolution nor an insignificant development, but a sign of shifts in regional affairs. While previous scholarship–as reviewed in chap. 2–focused on obstacles to cooperation, my research emphasised the incentives. Even though a ‘trilateral cooperation’ may seem a vision too distant from the three states’ preferences, through interaction they achieved an outcome of cooperation in International Relations (chap. 1). Intentions of Japan, Korea, and China vis-à-vis Northeast Asian regional cooperation differ (chaps. 3, 4, and 5), but they share a participation in regional initiatives. Through a study of literature, official documents, and interviews, I re-picture foreign-policy profiles of these Northeast Asian states: albeit none of them was reaching for the Trilateral Cooperation in its specific form, this forum emerged as a side-effect of their regional interactions. This research implies that picturing state interests per ‘nation’ state leads to a stalemate in explanations. We can overcome this through allowing for side-effects of state interactions, which explain more effectively how preferences of the states can produce outcomes in International Relations.

Much of the rationalist literature in International Relations explains the nature of the EU-Russia energy relationship by assuming that tensions evident in the relationship are a product of the actors’ distinct interests. In contrast, for conventional constructivists any tension is seen to derive from the essentially different identities of the actors. Conversely, existing discourse-based accounts analyze the construction of competing energy discourses or how the different approaches of the EU and Russia are indicative of a struggle for ‘Europe’. This thesis aims to contribute to the discourse-based literature by adding a focus on how energy discourses between Self and Other are constructed in the first place. This implies an understanding of discourses as socially constructed and ‘sedimented’. Deploying a framework drawn from Wæver the thesis identifies a tripartite and layered discursive structure through which key discourses are both ‘sedimented’ and can be studied. Layer one investigates the historical narratives and representations that Western Europe and Russia have constructed to represent each other; layer two investigates how the EU and Russia have constructed their energy paradigms and how actors have used these paradigms in their mutual energy relations. This layer also examines the extent to which the historical narratives and representations of layer one are reflected in the mutual energy relations between the EU and Russia. Layer three focuses on discursive practices (e.g. statements, written texts or symbolic acts) and examines how the discursive structure made up of layer one (historical narratives and representations) and layer two (energy paradigms) is played out in the debates over the Nabucco / South Stream pipeline competition and in the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue. The study of EU-Russia energy relations through ‘sedimented’ discourses provides the basis for arguing that actors’ positions alternate between cooperation and confrontation, rather than continually interacting in an assumed ever-present tension. The political implications that emerge from conceptualizing EU-Russia energy relations as a Self/Other discursive interaction are that a deeper discursive contest underlies EU-Russia energy relations. Such a contest sheds light on the mutual construction of actors’ identity, and on their construction of ‘Europe’ as a political project.

This thesis examines the achievements and limitation of collective action in the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). With particular focus on two specific issues of ‘aid untying’ and ‘aid effectiveness’ between late 1990s and early 2010s, and two member countries namely the UK and Japan, the thesis first assesses the indicators (existence, forms and level) of collective action. It then explores the conditions (factors that account for the indicators) for collective action in the DAC. As literature on the OECD and the DAC is scarce, this thesis fills knowledge gaps by providing a detailed analysis of the DAC and offering insights into stronger global governance through the lens of collective action. Using primary evidence drawing on extensive interviews as well as OECD archival documents, the thesis advances four main findings. First, the DAC has achieved collective action only to some extent – it has successfully (if sometimes slowly) reached agreements, but implementation processes reveal more shortcomings. Second, successful agreement has resulted largely from leadership of the UK in the DAC together with work by the DAC Secretariat to build trust relationships as well as to nurture feelings of fairness among the members. The DAC’s limited membership and closed, homogenous nature encouraged this atmosphere. Third, DAC members’ motivations and incentives for collective action can be identified both at individual and institutional (government) levels, ranging between rationality and social/global norms, that are often intertwined and complex, making collective action challenging to understand. Fourth, the DAC is now in transition due to the rising influence of emerging countries and the growth of an additional locus of collective action at recipient country level. All this presents increasing challenges if the DAC is to maintain a reputation for collective action in the future.

The difference between Geographical Indication (GI) and generic food terms is an important and highly contentious issue in international negotiations. This distinction is of significant importance to producers, manufacturers, consumers, and policy-makers all over the world because it means the difference between the restricted versus open use of certain popular terms in domestic and global markets. This thesis uses a food studies approach that employs cheese as a lens to understand the contested politics of Generic Geographical Indications (GGIs), which has been under-explored in the literature on GIs. Through case study and an analysis of written policy material and other documents, websites, blogs, artifacts, observations, and semi-structured interviews and discussions, it investigates the complex processes through which European and New World (NW) actors compete over the status – protected or generic - of cheese names, why this struggle is manifested in the case of Parmesan but not of Cheddar, and how we can better understand genericism within the context of GI policy. The thesis argues that actors guided by differing agricultural paradigms compete to secure the use of terms through oppositional discursive strategies of ‘gastro-panic’ where they appeal to a language of security in order to persuade policy-makers to take action against the perceived threatening actions of their opponents. It finds that unlike the contested term Parmesan no such panic has emerged surrounding Cheddar because its widespread use has not been interpreted as a threat to the ‘original.’ As well, genericism emerges as both a dynamic and socially-constructed concept subject to ongoing negotiation and contestation and a strategic discursive device used block the successful registration of proposed product names as GIs. The debate over cheese reveals the inherently political nature of the ways in which genuineness and genericness are constructed in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

This thesis brings the concept of humanitarianism sharply into focus within the discourse of international political theory. Existing literature examines humanitarianism obliquely, via debates on military humanitarian intervention or human rights, resulting in an impoverished account of a vital idea. Meanwhile, a vibrant discussion among professional humanitarians has recently questioned the nature of their endeavour, along lines that clearly fit the remit of international political theory. Bringing together these two discussions in the course of its critical analysis, the thesis argues that humanitarianism should be conceptualised as a political context in which we articulate, negotiate and defend our understandings of common humanity. Central to this politics are the ways in which we react to and conceptualise human suffering, through humanitarian crises that are often "crises of humanity". In sparking concern and mobilising responses to suffering, the affective underpinnings of the humanitarian impulse create a complex and shifting backdrop to extensions of solidarity and humanitarian action. At the heart of this action is the idea of rescue, a crucial "presumptive occasion" of our moral life. But an important part of humanitarian action consists in the efforts to institutionalise the humanitarian impulse. In this sense human rights and projects of global justice represent important crystallisations of humanitarian concern, yet neither can fully capture the more contingent workings of the humanitarian impulse. What emerges is an understanding of humanitarianism as a broad discussion, central to the identity of contemporary liberal international political theory, but with a scope best gleaned not from cosmopolitan accounts, but from a more fluid internationalist tradition of thought. The thesis concludes that the importance of this theoretical approach will be borne out by the complex and far-reaching practical challenges that humanitarianism is set to confront over coming decades, not least the "crisis of humanity" threatened by climate change.

The United States, a great power, and Syria, a small state, have both been at the heart of the politics of the Middle East since the end of World War II. The systemic conditions of the international system and the shifting politics of the region brought these states into contact and, at times, confrontation, but these interactions never produced a sustained period of security cooperation. By the beginning of the 1970s, both states had begun to reconsider and reshape their positions in the region. The period from 1973 to 1977 produced a rare period of cooperation between these two states in the case of two regional conflicts: the Arab–Israeli conflict and the Lebanese Civil War. To understand that shift in relations, this thesis explores the question: What accounts for the security cooperation between Syria and the US during this period? This thesis makes four observations: first, as results of changes in both states’ leaderships, realpolitik, alongside ideational considerations, became more pronounced in both states’ conceptions of their security environment in the Middle East and their relations with one another. Second, while the Cold War was the predominant context for the US’s interactions with Syria at the start of the 1970s, interactions between the US and Syria were also shaped by local conditions that emerged after the October War. Third, both states, distrustful of the other’s intentions, formed temporary alliances based on short-term common interests. Finally, the regional conflicts themselves introduced circumstances that both strengthened and weakened their security cooperation. While their security cooperation achieved limited results, their relations established a framework for these two states’ subsequent relations. The unresolved issues that emerged from this period of their relations served as the main context for their cooperation and conflict in the following decades, even after the death of Hafiz al-Asad in 2000.

A small body of mostly anecdotal evidence suggests that governments have undertaken legal, policy, institutional, and regulatory reforms to enhance their chances of becoming eligible for assistance from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). But we know little about the strength and scope of the so-called "MCC Effect”—in particular, why it seems to exert varying levels of influence across time, space, and policy domains. I collect two novel sources of data on the MCC Effect in order to explain the conditions under which the MCC eligibility standards have influenced the reform efforts of developing country governments. Through formal coding of archival data, I construct a database of more than 14,000 country policy-domain-year observations that measures whether and how governments change their policy behavior in order to achieve or maintain MCC eligibility. I then employ logit, rare event logit, and three-level random intercept modeling techniques as well as propensity score matching methods to explain the policy responses and non-responses of governments to the MCC eligibility criteria. I also draw on data from a first-of-its-kind survey of 640 development policymakers and practitioners in 100 low income and lower-middle income countries to "ground truth" inferences drawn from analysis of the archival data. My findings suggest that a range of factors influence the probability that a government will pursue reform ctivities in response to the MCC eligibility criteria. However, the central contribution of this thesis is the theoretical and empirical argument that the network positions of change management teams shape whether, when, and how externally inspired reforms get adopted and implemented. In this regard, I call attention an underappreciated factor that shapes the adoption and implementation of externally-influenced reforms: the presence of a policymaking team that has sufficient autonomy to introduce disruptive changes to the status quo, but also sufficient embeddednesss to overcome domestic political opposition.

This thesis examines how the concept of 'self-determination' has featured in high-level international discourse at key moments in the 20th and 21st centuries. The exact language of 'self-determination' was internationalised in 1918 by Woodrow Wilson in the political context of the First World War, and in reaction to Lenin’s earlier references to the concept, which he had developed between 1903 and 1917. Subsequently, 'self-determination' has been cited in important international legal settings, as in the League of Nations’ Aaland Islands case (1920–1921), in the UN Charter (1945), during the UN discussions on General Assembly Resolution 1514 (1960) and the International Covenants on Human Rights (1966), and at the International Court of Justice proceedings on Kosovo (2008–2010). Together, these uses of 'self-determination' constitute the 'self-determination moments' of my thesis. Taking a hitherto unexplored approach to 'self-determination', this thesis builds on previous scholarship on the concept – produced primarily within the fields of international law and international relations – and examines it from the perspective of intellectual and international history. Applying the methodology of Quentin Skinner, the thesis shows that the significant international mentions of 'self-determination' have sought legitimation. Specifically, the thesis argues that the central international references to 'self-determination' over the past hundred years have sought legitimation by invoking two different ideas of freedom: a 'radical' idea of freedom, and a 'liberal conservative' one. Based on a wide-ranging analysis of archival materials, published primary sources, original interviews, and relevant secondary works, the thesis finds that the liberal-conservative idea of freedom has dominated the international appearances of 'self-determination' at the selected 'self-determination moments'. However, it is the radical idea of freedom that has repeatedly triggered the re-emergence of ‘self- determination’ as a meaningful concept in international discourse, and kept its potency alive.