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This thesis proposes a realist analysis of the contemporary concept of popular sovereignty in its ability to make sense of the EU's legitimacy. Drawing upon Bernard Williams' political thought, a conception of legitimacy should make sense of hierarchical rule as a desirable civic order from within its own historical circumstances at the normative level. In addition, it should offer realistic guidance to political agents, meaning that its political fictions must therefore acquire a certain degree of practical resonance in order to act as heuristic tools. The modern concept of popular sovereignty sets appropriate criteria of legitimacy based upon the bonds created between citizens. Through a genealogical inquiry, I reconstruct conceptions of popular sovereignty which underpin defences of the EU's output, democratic, and identitarian legitimacy from canonical arguments. These justifications of the state consider the people as beneficiaries of security and economic prosperity, as a self-governing demos, and as a cultural nation, respectively. I propose a realist vindication of this multi-faceted conception of popular sovereignty at the normative level, because these different conceptions complement one another in making sense of the sovereign state's legitimacy. The thesis then discusses how the political fictions of the people could simultaneously make sense within the European polity. In short, the citizens of Europe's polities have become part of the normative systems which create judicial-economic, civic-democratic, and socio-cultural relationships within the territorial borders of the European states. In addition, the centralisation of decision-making power and implementation resources has given plausibility to the political fiction of sovereignty. European integration has, however, resulted in a reconfiguration of these normative systems and restructuring of power into a two-tier political order. In this novel context, a realist vindication of the contemporary conception of popular sovereignty is no longer possible. The thesis concludes by suggesting that a demoicratic reconceptualisation of popular sovereignty offers a constructive way to make sense of the EU's legitimacy.

Thesis advisor: Michael J. Himes / Reinhold Niebuhr is among the most politically and theologically influential--and most misunderstood--American thinkers of the twentieth century. This misunderstanding is the product of a tendency among Niebuhr's admirers and critics alike to overlook the elaborate interplay of the theology and politics in Niebuhr's thought. I argue that Niebuhr understood himself as a preacher to religion's "cultured despisers," and that Niebuhr construed this role in fundamentally theological terms. As a consequence, there is a dynamic theology underlying his political engagement with the broader culture. Chief among the "cultured despisers" drawn to Niebuhr's thought were the political realists who dominated early Cold War politics. They were particularly compelled by the political insights of Niebuhr's Christian Realism, and proceeded to incorporate these insights into own realist visions. I argue that in the act of appropriating Niebuhr the political realists unwittingly absorbed much of his theology; and in neglecting to recognize the theological underpinnings to Niebuhr's political insights, they ended up misconstruing Niebuhr in important ways. I seek to demonstrate that fully appreciating Niebuhr's contributions to political discourse requires an awareness of how theology suffuses even his most overtly political writings. This project consists of two parts. Part One examines the theological formation of the concept at the heart of Niebuhr's Christian Realism: namely, the doctrine of original sin. From the outset, Niebuhr maintained that elaborating the full political implications of original sin required a theological structure. Through sustained conversations with theological contemporaries Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Emil Brunner, and his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold elaborated the distinctive theological anthropology, understanding of grace and redemption, and account of the dynamic interplay between faith and history underlying his exploration of original sin and its political implications. Niebuhr's Christian Realism, I suggest, is inextricably theological. Part Two analyses Niebuhr's reception among three of the most prominent midcentury political realists: Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Arthur Schlesinger. Although they were among Niebuhr's most astute interpreters, all three figures wrongly presumed that they could extricate the political elements of Niebuhr's thinking on original sin from the theological structure in which this thinking was embedded, and import only these political elements into their own realist visions. Their uses of the concept of original sin indicate that they both adopt far more of Niebuhr's theology than they ever intended to, and misconstrue some of his most profound insights. I close by considering what a theologically grounded Christian Realism has to offer political discourse. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

The problem driving this research stems from the lack of a systematic and theoretically, informed framework to identify the dynamics of Pakistan is strengthening alignment with China. Pakistan developed close defence and strategic ties with China during the Cold War period as both states balanced against a common adversary i.e. India. However, Pakistan has attempted to bolster and expand its' links with China in the aftermath of U.S. military presence in Afghanistan due to a host of regional and global developments that widened the cracks and increased the mistrust that has existed between Pakistan and U.S. This study hypothesises that Pakistan has maintained a policy of alignment with China prior to 2005 however; from 2005 onwards, Pakistan has attempted to diversify its scope of relations with China as in response to external changes and circumstances in the geopolitical and geo-economic sphere. Therefore, the objective of this research is to analyse why Pakistan has attempted to strengthen its' alignment towards China from 2005 onwards. The existing literature on the subject is outdated, rigorously descriptive and is void of conceptual connections. To address these gaps; this research adopts a theoretical framework of analysis that is informed by neoclassical realist theory of foreign policy analysis to help analyse Pakistan's China policy. This framework offers a two-level analysis of Pakistan's behaviour. The independent variable is the set of system-level drivers such as international power relations, external threat perceptions and international economic interdependencies. The intervening variable, which affects the way Pakistan's decision-makers perceive the system-level developments, is the strategic culture at the unit level. This study suggests that the principle driver of Pakistan's accelerated alignment policy towards China during this period is Pakistan's perceptions of international systemic/structure drivers, which are; the external developments that have occurred in its region. In addition, how Pakistan perceives those external developments is determined by its' strategic culture; which an intervening role. The strategic culture, the author argues, is dominated by Pakistan's distrust of India and, it narrowly confines the idea of Pakistan's national interest to military security whilst neglecting the economic aspect of it. The thesis finds that Pakistan has actively tried to cultivate a broader and robust relationship with China to limit its' dependency on U.S. for strategic, economic and diplomatic support. Pakistan has become increasingly sceptic of the U.S. for its carrots-and-stick approach towards Pakistan. Whereas China has enabled Pakistan to continue in its' revisionist agendas which to some extent are tolerable for China. It finds that growth in China's economic and military power has provided Pakistan with an alternate patron from whom it can procure weapons, conventional and non-conventional and it can seek financial support. This study also finds that although there is evidence of a deeper relationship beyond the traditional security-centric one, however; it is developing into more of a client-patron relationship, given, that Pakistan is increasingly becoming a country highly indebted to China.

<p>My dissertation, Critical Realism: An Ethical Approach to Global Politics, investigates two strands of modern political realism and their divergent ethics, politics, and modes of inquiry: the mid- to late 20th century realism of Hans Morgenthau and E.H. Carr and the scientific realism of contemporary International Relations scholarship. Beginning with the latter, I engage in (1) immanent analysis to show how scientific realism fails to meet its own explanatory protocol and (2) genealogy to recover the normative origins of the conceptual and analytical components of scientific realism. Against the backdrop of scientific realism's empirical and normative shortcomings, I turn to Morgenthau and Carr to appraise what I term their critical realism. I map out the constellation of their political thought by reconstructing the interrelations between (1) the historical crises motivating their writings, (2) their philosophical and methodological criticisms and commitments, (3) their political prescriptions and ethics. My dissertation demonstrates how reading realist texts through the lens of contemporary methodological conventions decisively shapes our theoretical purview, empirical knowledge, and political judgments. Beyond illuminating the underappreciated radical, critical, and historical dimensions of political realism, my dissertation has implications for contemporary debates on international ethics and foreign policy as well as research in political science and political theory.</p> / Dissertation

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:11:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1403615 bytes, checksum: 1929f0ccc73c64acdca43bcfc6b52d86 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This thesis deals with the relationship between republican ethics and political realism in Machiavelli s thought and it develops itself through a historical-conceptual approach, considering, in first place, Machiavelli in the context of his time and republican civic humanism. Despite the continuity with tradition, The Prince represents a radical novelty that Machiavelli introduces regarding the council manuals to the Princes; a tradition that a Machiavelli s contemporary, as Erasmus of Rotterdam, still maintains and cultivates in his work Education of a Christian Prince . If Erasmus gives advice to the prince to behave as a good Christian, Girolamo Savonarola, another contemporary that Machiavelli knows and analyzes closely with a blend of skepticism and admiration - calling him " unarmed prophet " - seeks to demonstrate in practice that it s possible to govern a city with the pater noster and the rosary in hands in opposite to Cosimo de Medici s realistic maxim that was resumed centuries later by Max Weber. The confrontation with Erasmus and Savonarola offers the opportunity to analyze the importance that Machiavelli attributes to religion in its relation to politics, starting from the critics to the christian religion and the praise of ancient roman religion. Then an interpretation of the author's thought is built from the perspective of political realism which offers a new analysis of the conflict, arguing that these clashes of humors are responsible for freedom and balance of the politic body. Finally, the thesis addresses its central theme: the relationship between ethics and politics in Machiavelli s thought considering various and contrasting readings of important specialists on this issue. The conclusion shows that, according to Machiavelli, politics is not merely a technical, cold and calculated praxis, but that it carries a value, and it is committed to a greater good which should be reached even if it would be necessary use means that break away from the traditionally accepted moral norms. Therefore Machiavelli seeks an effective policy to achieve the republican purposes: common good and freedom of citizens. / A presente tese sobre a relação entre ética republicana e realismo político em Maquiavel se desenvolve através de um enfoque histórico-conceitual, situando inicialmente Maquiavel no contexto do seu tempo e do humanismo cívico republicano. Apesar dessa continuidade com a tradição, O Príncipe representa uma novidade radical que Maquiavel introduz em relação aos manuais de Conselho aos Príncipes; tradição que um contemporâneo, como Erasmo de Roterdã, ainda mantém e cultiva na sua Educação de um Príncipe Cristão. Se Erasmo dá conselhos para que o príncipe se comporte como um bom cristão, Girolamo Savonarola, outro contemporâneo que Maquiavel conhece e analisa de perto com um misto de ceticismo e admiração, chamando-o de profeta desarmado - , procura demonstrar na prática que é possível governar uma cidade com os pater noster e o terço em mãos contrariamente à máxima realista de Cosimo de Medici retomada séculos depois por Max Weber. O confronto com Erasmo e Savonarola oferece a oportunidade para analisar a importância que Maquiavel atribui à religião para a política, através da crítica à religião cristã e ao elogio da antiga religião romana. Em seguida, é feita uma interpretação sobre o pensamento do autor na perspectiva do realismo político, que oferece uma nova análise dos conflitos, defendendo que estes choques de umori são os responsáveis pela liberdade e o equilíbrio do corpo político. E, finalmente, a tese aborda o tema central da relação entre ética e política em Maquiavel, apresentando várias e contrastantes leituras de importantes comentaristas sobre esta questão. A conclusão aponta que, para Maquiavel, a política não é meramente uma técnica fria, calculada, mas é portadora de um valor, e tem compromisso com um bem final, que deverá ser realizado mesmo que se utilize de meios que fogem das normas morais tradicionalmente aceitas. Por isso, Maquiavel procura uma política eficaz que consiga resultados para alcançar os fins republicanos do bem comum e das liberdades dos cidadãos: um realismo político a serviço de uma ética republicana.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:11:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Arquivototal.pdf: 985011 bytes, checksum: e8f30bd0db73b890410e6eee96b1c719 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-08-01 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / Objective, in this research work, discuss the proposal cosmopolitan Kantian perpetual peace and its current two hundred years after it was written. During the course of the study identified at least three major models of cosmopolitanism: the Imperial, the messianic, Republican, to which Kant joins. Cosmopolitanism is his first formulations in antiquity, at the time of the Hellenistic and Roman empires, which will be taken up by medieval Christianity, the messianic version. It is however in modern times that the cosmopolitan ideal reappear with strength, especially in the Enlightenment period in the work of thinkers such as Abbé de Saint‐Pierre, Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant, who gave the most complete formulation philosophically. It fell to associate the theme cosmopolitan Kant to the problem of peace and the constitutionalization of international law by proposing a World Federation of Free States, which promoted legal equality between the different peoples who inhabit the earth, under the aegis of a new international law cosmopolitical. The update of this discussion occurred in the twentieth century, as a possible solution to the immense problems of a world traumatized by two world wars and the atomic terror. The proposal is part of the cosmopolitan globalization process of recent decades in the international legal sphere, as an effective mechanism for building a global civil society of peace, and to prepare the way for a World Federation of States, provided by Kant. Philosophers of law and politics as Kelsen, Habermas and Bobbio, seeking to update and reinterpret the Kantian proposal in the light of the new phenomena of war and peace in the era of globalization, they oppose the realist thinkers such as Danilo Zolo, who question the theoretical validity and practical feasibility of this project. The thesis I defend is that cosmopolitanism is not an impossible utopia, but a realizable possibility, at least in a philosophical and legal approach, when faced with political and legal challenges of contemporary international relations, since some conditions are created for its implementation. / Objetiva-se, neste trabalho de pesquisa, discutir a proposta cosmopolita kantiana de paz perpétua e a sua atualidade, duzentos anos depois de ter sido escrita. Durante o percurso da pesquisa identificamos pelo menos três grandes modelos de cosmopolitismo: o imperial, o messiânico, o republicano, ao qual Kant se filia. O cosmopolitismo encontra suas primeiras formulações na Antiguidade, na época dos Impérios helenísticos e romanos, que serão retomadas pelo cristianismo medieval, na versão messiânica. É, porém na época moderna que o ideal cosmopolita reaparece com força, sobretudo no período iluminista, na obra de pensadores como o Abbè de Saint-Pierre, Rousseau, e Immanuel Kant, que lhe deu a formulação filosoficamente mais completa. Coube a Kant associar a temática cosmopolita ao problema da paz e à constitucionalização da legislação internacional através da proposta de uma Federação Mundial de Estados Livres, que promovesse a igualdade jurídica entre os diferentes povos que habitam a Terra, sob a égide de um novo direito internacional cosmopolítico. A atualização dessa discussão ocorreu no século XX, como uma possível solução para os imensos problemas de um mundo traumatizado por duas guerras mundiais e pelo terror atômico. A proposta cosmopolita se insere no processo de globalização das últimas décadas na esfera jurídica internacional, como um mecanismo eficaz para a construção de uma sociedade civil global de paz, bem como para preparar o caminho para uma Federação Mundial de Estados, prevista por Kant. Filósofos do direito e da política como Kelsen, Habermas e Bobbio, procuram atualizar e reinterpretar a proposta kantiana á luz dos novos fenômenos da guerra e da paz na época da globalização; a eles se contrapõem os pensadores realistas, como Danilo Zolo, que questionam a validade teórica e a viabilidade prática deste projeto. A tese que defendemos é que o cosmopolitismo não é uma utopia irrealizável, mas uma possibilidade realizável, pelo menos em uma abordagem filosófico-jurídica, ao nos depararmos com os desafios político-jurídicos da contemporaneidade das relações internacionais, uma vez que sejam criadas alguma condições para a sua implementação.

La question de l’ordre et de la stabilité sociale a occupé la philosophie politique de Platon jusqu’au réalisme politique contemporain. Néanmoins, depuis la publication des travaux de J. Rawls, cette question semble avoir été reléguée à l’arrière-plan au profit d’une interrogation unilatérale portant sur la nature du gouvernement idéal. Les réalistes critiquent cette approche en affirmant que la politique est trop complexe pour être réduite à une branche de l’éthique appliquée. De surcroît, les enjeux concernant l’ordre et la stabilité sociale sont fondamentaux et doivent être résolus avant même qu’il soit possible d’aborder des questions morales sur « ce que doit être » l’État. Il est d’usage de faire remonter la méthode idéaliste à la République de Platon. On pourrait arguer néanmoins que la notion de justice exposée par le philosophe, comme principe d’harmonie entre les classes sociales, est inextricablement liée au problème de la discorde politique dans la cité (stásis). Si cette hypothèse s’avère, est-il envisageable de produire une interprétation réaliste du dialogue ? C’est à cette question que ce mémoire tâchera de répondre. / The question of order and social stability has engaged political philosophy from Plato to contemporary political realism. However, since the publication of Rawls’ Theory of Justice, it seems that this question has been put to the side in order to favour interrogating the nature of an ideal government. Realists attack this approach by arguing that politics is too complex to be reduced to a branch of applied ethics. Moreover, the issues related to social stability are fundamental and must be resolved before it is even possible to tackle ethical questions about "what ought to be” the state. It is customary to trace the idealist method back to Plato's Republic. It could be argued, however, that the notion of justice exposed by the philosopher, as a principle of harmony between social classes, is linked to the problem of stásis (political discord). If this assumption is true, is it possible to produce an interpretation of the dialogue from a realist perspective? This is the question that this thesis will attempt to answer.