This thesis presents a foreign policy decision-making analysis of Kazakhstan's foreign relations in the initial post-independence period. The study applies a neoclassical realist theoretical framework in order to provide the understanding of Kazakhstan's external behaviour. The thesis conceptually assumes that the integration of the presidential decision-making element in the analysis of the republic's foreign policy is essential to account for Kazakhstan's foreign strategies, which would otherwise appear to be anomalous from the deterministic perspective of the structural theories of international relations. The set objective of the work is to produce a theoretically informed historical narratives of Almaty's policymaking during three episodes in the republic's diplomatic history – the elaboration of a distinct balancing strategy; the relinquishment of the nuclear arsenal; and the Nagorno-Karabakh peace mission. The reconstruction of events behind the decisions made by president Nursultan Nazarbayev and his key advisors through the assessment of primary materials sourced from the archives of Kazakhstani foreign policy demonstrates that foreign decision-making process played a crucial role in the identification of national interests and development of appropriate policy responses in each of the episodes under examination. Chapter IV illustrates how the nation's policymakers developed a unique balancing strategy to ascertain the country's sovereignty and eliminate security risks under overwhelming geopolitical pressures that emanated from Russia and China. Chapter V discusses the episode when Nazarbayev was subjected to direct international pressure to surrender the inherited Soviet nuclear arsenal on the terms imposed by the USA, in response to which Nazarbayev devised a deliberately ambivalent and protracted strategy in regard to the republic's nuclear status. Chapter VI reveals the adaptability of the republic's policymaking to the changing international context as the regression of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace initiative demonstrates. The exposition of intricate policy planning and profound diplomatic endeavours reflected in archival documents reinforces the thesis's premise about the non-deterministic nature of Kazakhstan's foreign policy.

This thesis explores the dynamics involved in shaping the Anglo-Syrian relationship. It argues that to understand UK relations towards Syria over the past century, they have to be viewed in the broader context of British policy on Middle East regional issues, and wider foreign policy priorities. With no direct interests invested in Syria, it is both Britain's continued involvement in Middle East affairs and Syria's standing as a key regional power that assures a continuing relationship. Consequently, the stance of leading UK politicians on the issues of post-World War regional order, international terrorism, military interventionism, arms sales, dictatorship and democratisation have circumscribed UK policy options in relation to Syria. Using the tools of Neoclassical realism this study considers British foreign policy behaviour, in terms of Britain's attempt to mobilize the power to protect its interests. It reviews Britain's international behaviour in part by how it is affected by changes in the international system, as Britain has declined from being a great imperial power, to a European power. Alliances are a key tool Britain has used to manage its decline, and this study identifies the impact that this has had on Anglo-Syrian relations with particular reference to the US and EU. Finally, it demonstrates that understanding how the foreign policy process works in Britain is key to understanding its international behaviour. In this it takes into account elite perceptions both of what these interests are and how best Britain can achieve them. This adds a layer of understanding as to why foreign policy outcomes do not always conform with what would be predicted purely in terms of the pursuit of the national interest.

When faced with an emergency situation, politicians are often forced to sacrifice their core moral principles in order to better serve the immediate public interest. This is commonly described as the Dirty Hands dilemma. Dirty Hands theorists conditionally defend politicians, but they leave the dilemma under-defined. Realists think that politicians do not even need defence, but their approach is overly relativistic and fails to distinguish between moral and immoral exercises of political authority. The present study critically engages with both sides of the debate in two parts. First, I use the method of conceptual analysis — and specifically conceptual disambiguation — to find out how each side conceives of the nature of the Dirty Hands dilemma. I find that (1) the dilemma emerges when a politician is forced to disregard the core human rights of certain individuals or groups to safeguard similar rights of others, and (2) the Realists fail to distinguish the concept of Dirty Hands from the concept of Political Compromise and Dirty Hands dilemmas from ordinary moral dilemmas. Second, using the method of reflective equilibrium, I advance the normative judgement that, instead of expressing guilt and paying the price, politicians should commit to not making their actions easy precedents when they confront a Dirty Hands dilemma. This study offers a better theoretical understanding of the Dirty Hands dilemma and a practical approach to distinguishing between moral and immoral exercises of political authority.

This essay argues that Bernard Williams’s political realism presupposes a moral constraint on the political principle of legitimacy, and that Williams’s realism does not articulate a distinctive political normativity. To critically engage with the ethical idea of a moral constraint on political principles, Williams’s ethics is contrasted with Rosalind Hursthouse’s neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. Williams’s critique of objectivity in Aristotelian virtue ethics says that we have no reason to believe that an individual can harmonise personal needs with capacities to achieve an objectively virtuous character. This is an idea which has not received much attention from neither the political realists themselves nor their critics, and it can be called Williams’s empirical premise. The thesis first criticises the empirical premise from Hursthouse’s neo-Aristotelian perspective which defends the idea that it is not irrational to believe in the harmony of needs and capacities and avoid the empirical premise. The thesis also defends a broader critique of the premise. The broad critique focuses on that even if the empirical premise cannot be refuted, it should be questioned for pragmatic reasons, since specific negative consequences follow from embracing it. Both counterarguments provide good reasons to question Williams’s ethics, and in extension, his political realism.

This research will analyze the impact of bipartisan politics and the media's conflicting role in influencing public perceptions regarding national security issues. The central focus is on popular media narratives, critically examined as an impediment to fostering unified public solidarity or opposition regarding the enactment of controversial legislation. In light of the increase in geopolitical conflict and the pervasive nature of terrorism, this study attempts to analyze the media's public role versus the privacy of clandestine agencies whose policies, albeit controversial address critical national security concerns. As a result, the conflict inherent between institutional and public spheres provides the groundwork for discursive and objective analysis.Empirical data collection and critical analysis of relevant materials; academic journals, online archives and published works by individuals active in media and national security, provide the primary source of qualitative data. Research was primarily inductive. Analysis effectively combined data from various qualitative sources in an effort to justify the central hypothesis. Contemporary tragic events also provided a supplemental source of relevant content. It is important to note, such events resonate with the rationalization arrived at in the conclusion.The principle aim of this research was to address the question: Does the media's promotion of the bipartisan political agenda impede or enhance national security policies? In addition, is the role of the media reflective of state subservience or does the media actively challenge national security initiatives, e.g. curtailing of civil liberties, human rights violations and loss of constitutional freedoms? The analysis further subjected by cross-disciplinary inquiry and academic theories pertinent to achieving the principle aims of this research.The theoretical framework and methodology utilized was consistent with political discourse analysis (PDA), specifically textual, as all discursive elements were present within the collected source materials. Additional analysis utilizing mediatization and audience theories provides the proper contextualization within communicative and media studies. Contemporary events surrounding geopolitical conflict, race relations and terrorism in relation to the institutional and international response, provides further demonstrable results, which is commensurate with the overall conclusions of this study.The outcome and results of this research indicate that mainstream media provides both a support role, emphasizing status quo narratives concerning national and international political perspectives and policy, and also a contradictory role impeding domestic solidarity by exacerbating political division along the usual bipartisan lines. The specific focus on legislation that results in expanding judicial powers surrounding national security concerns. Such policies often interpreted as contrary to the preservation of domestic freedoms. These findings correlate with Couldry and Hepp's notions of institutionalist mediatization theory regarding the media as innately powerful agents of change, imparting influence on audiences and non-media actors.

The knowledge base of empirical psychology is more expansive than ever before. So too is the impulse to integrate this factual knowledge into political theory. But how should this psychological turn be undertaken? What would a political psychology for political theorists look like? How could psychology credibly tackle the questions that political theorists characteristically ask, especially regarding the nature and consequences of prescriptive political judgment? In this thesis, I explore this issue through the framework of recent debates between political moralists—specifically, John Rawls, G. A. Cohen, and Peter Singer—and political realists—largely Bernard Williams. Deploying the insights of political realists, I argue that moralists cannot quarantine the relevance of psychological facts through the ideal of a 'pure' normative judgment. To explore what this empirical engagement might look like, I contrast these moralist ideals of judgment with Jonathan Haidt’s social intuitionism, which proposes a more affectively laden and pluralistic model of judgment. I then redeploy the insights of political realism to critique social intuitionism, to uncover its weaknesses from the perspective of existing political theory. Finally, to stabilize this critique, I lay out the framework for a reflexive political psychology, which acknowledges the co-constitutive relationship between the discipline of psychology and its subject matter: human psychology. This reflexive political psychology offers an agenda by which we can investigate the political usefulness of psychological and political theories.

當今現實主義理論學派正面臨著一種淺碟化的危機，伴隨而來的是現實主義深遠的傳統根基遭受簡化以及忽視。本文企圖藉由重新檢驗現實主義傳統的古典文獻，提出在現實主義中的許多被忽略的問題。本文重新定位與評析現實主義之主要理論傳統，包括修昔底德傳統、奧古斯丁傳統、馬基維利傳統、以及霍布斯傳統等四大傳統。此外，本文亦將討論上述四項傳統理論的遺緒。吾人以為，當今現實主義學派的主流理論途徑，存在著嚴重的內在邏輯問題，同時這些問題影響著當代的國關研究。主流學者過度關注於特定版本的霍布斯傳統，因而輕視其它於此理論學派中同等重要的途徑之可能性。同時，透過本文對於現實主義理論傳統多元性與豐富性之展現，本文也指出部分擁簇常識現實主義(commonsense Realism)的學者們，事實上已模糊化現實主義的理論本質。針對上述各種內在的理論問題，作者冀望以本文採一種重新詮釋、重新定位現實主義理論根基的途徑來展現並反省。 / Political Realism is suffering from a crisis of superficialization. The profound traditional roots of Political Realism are being simplified or ignored. This thesis attempts to re-examine the classical texts of Political Realism’s traditions and thus raise questions about some problems in this theoretical programme. Four major traditions which are the Thucydidesian, the Augustinian, the Machiavellian, and the Hobbesian tradition will be re-envisioned and re-appreciated, and their legacies to modern Realists will also be expounded. As this thesis would show, serious inherent logical problems exist in the dominant theoretical approach to Political Realism, which has become pertinent to international relations theory study. Mainstream scholars put too much undue attention on a certain version of the Hobbesian tradition and thus overlook other possibilities which are equally important in formatting this vast theoretical school. By showing the richness and diversity of Political Realism’s tradition, this thesis also suggests that the nature of this theoretical programme is being obfuscated by commonsense scholars. All these inherent theoretical problems will be exhibited in this thesis with an approach to re-appreciate and re-envision the traditional roots of Political Realism.

Iran's foreign policy is consistent and is fundamentally realist with a revolutionist vision while the means are rationalist is the central argument of this dissertation. I make use of the English Schools three traditions of realism, rationalism and revolutionism in analyzing the speeches of Iranian statesmen to identify the ways in which the dynamics of the three traditions have evolved since 1997 and what it means for interpreting the developments of Iran's foreign policy ventures. I utilize both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis in examining the speeches of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, the presidents since 1997. The quantitative method employs a customized software generating figures that represent the recurrence of realist, rationalist and revolutionist terminologies in all the documents downloaded from the official websites of the Iranian statesmen as well as the United Nations and select news agencies and affiliates. The quantitative phase of the analysis, meanwhile, carefully examined selected statements of the supreme leader and the presidents uncovering the foreign policy argumentations and justifications, which were studied alongside foreign policy actions and classified under the three traditions. The findings suggest that Iran's foreign policy is the same as in the other states of international society – it is consistent and dynamic. It is simultaneously realist, rationalist and revolutionist with each tradition serving a specific purpose, which cannot be disentangled from the other two.