Thesis advisor: Jonathan Laurence / This thesis analyzes the impact of Europeanization on national sovereignty, through a case study examining the French experience between the Maastricht Treaty of the early 1990s and the Treaty of Lisbon in present day. It approaches the study of Europeanization and French national sovereignty from two directions, addressing both political and social sovereignty. While Europeanization and European integration are most identified with the economic realm, examining political and social sovereignty allows for the development of an understanding of how Europeanization operates as a top-down process. Europeanization began on the supranational level, bringing the states together economically. It then developed on the interstate level, bringing together leaders politically. Currently, it is expanding to the subnational level, uniting the people of all member states socially. Because of this progression, Europeanization has had the most impact on economic sovereignty, less on political sovereignty and the least on social sovereignty. Though Europeanization and national sovereignty are traditionally seen as locked in an either/or battle, this study of France’s experience with political and social sovereignty throughout the past twenty years suggests that Europeanization is not destroying national sovereignty, but rather, allowing for a reinterpretation of national sovereignty and the relationship between nation-states and international actors. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies.

The political sovereignty of indigenous Southern Californians has deep history of disenfranchisement and paternalism. A steady decline characterized the political authority and autonomy from the 18th century to 1850 when indigenous tribes of Southern California were in proximity of Spanish Missionaries and later, Mexican ranchers. Following the inclusion of California into the Union, this decline turned into a sharp drop. This paper looks at the history of these people under the three above-mentioned time frames and then analyzes how tribal gaming is effecting the current political sovereignty of Southern Californian Tribes. Special attention is given to the Barona Casino in San Diego to put into context, how tribal gaming is serving as a catalyst for change in the relationship between the California state government and tribal governments.

This thesis seeks to show how the reassessment of Arendt's thought for contemporary international political theory must be grounded in her first major published work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and, more specifically, in the concept of the political she outlines therein. The thesis begins by examining how Arendt interprets the political sui generis. It shows how this concept, which influences much of her scholarship from the 1950s onwards and serves as a critical measure against which she assesses modern-day events, is disclosed for the first time in Part II of Origins through her engagement with particular topics and phenomena related to European colonial imperialism. Using this somewhat neglected text as a point of departure, the main body of the thesis examines Arendt's thoughts on three ‘anti-political' impulses of the contemporary world that have clear international ramifications: sovereignty, nationalism and imperialism. The work is divided into three corresponding sections. Each contains a chapter providing an interpretive study of Arendt's text on the subject, followed by a chapter applying the key themes, insights and dangers previously highlighted to some of the most intractable global situations today such as the international human rights regime, atomic weaponry and war, biopolitical control, genocide studies and neoliberal globalisation. In so doing, the thesis does not aim to ‘find' in Arendt's work determinate answers to the crises of our time, but rather to use her perceptions as critical inspiration to think about them differently.

Sur le rapport de Hobbes au monarchisme, les études hobbesiennes font largement consensus : tout au long de sa vie, le théoricien du Léviathan aurait été, disent-elles, un monarchiste convaincu, fidèle à la dynastie anglaise des Stuart. Or le présent travail cherche à ébranler la rigueur de cette thèse traditionnelle. Acquis aux recherches contextualistes de J. Collins, qui ont déjà montré les affinités hobbesiennes à l’égard des politiques anticléricales de Cromwell, il souhaite montrer que de telles affinités dissimulent une intention politique beaucoup plus profonde, celle de la réalisation politique des principes moraux de la loi naturelle. Dans cette perspective, Hobbes serait, sous l’impulsion de la méthode résolutive-compositive, non seulement l’inventeur du premier droit naturel subjectif dans l’histoire de la philosophie politique, mais aussi le théoricien d’une loi naturelle inédite, édifiée sur la rationalité des volontés individuelles. Ainsi, par la publication du Léviathan en 1651, Hobbes n’aurait pas exprimé ses affinités politiques pour la monarchie anglaise renversée : il aurait plutôt dévoilé son projet politique d’instituer une souveraineté politique qui repose sur le consentement rationnel de tous les sujets. Monarchiste dans sa jeunesse, Hobbes serait alors devenu, en élaborant sa science politique, partisan d’un régime politique que l’on pourrait nommer démocratie de la raison positive. / On Hobbes’s relationship to the monarchy, Hobbes Studies make a general consensus: throughout his life, the theorist of the Leviathan would have been a convinced monarchist, faithful to the English dynasty of the Stuart. This work seeks to undermine the rigor of this traditional thesis. Inspired by the contextualist research of J. Collins, which have already shown the Hobbesian affinities towards the anticlerical policies of Cromwell, it wants to show that such affinities hide a much deeper political intention: the political realization of the moral principles of natural law. In this perspective, Hobbes would be, at the instigation of the resolutive-compositive method, not only the inventor of the first subjective natural right in the history of political philosophy, but also the theorist of a new natural law, built on the rationality of all individual wills. So, with the publication of the Leviathan in 1651, Hobbes would not have expressed his political affection for the overthrown English monarchy: he would rather have revealed his political project to establish a political sovereignty based on the rational consent of all subjects. Monarchist in his youth, Hobbes would then have become, with the elaboration of his political science, a supporter of a political system that could be named democracy of the positive rationality.

Sur le rapport de Hobbes au monarchisme, les études hobbesiennes font largement consensus : tout au long de sa vie, le théoricien du Léviathan aurait été, disent-elles, un monarchiste convaincu, fidèle à la dynastie anglaise des Stuart. Or le présent travail cherche à ébranler la rigueur de cette thèse traditionnelle. Acquis aux recherches contextualistes de J. Collins, qui ont déjà montré les affinités hobbesiennes à l’égard des politiques anticléricales de Cromwell, il souhaite montrer que de telles affinités dissimulent une intention politique beaucoup plus profonde, celle de la réalisation politique des principes moraux de la loi naturelle. Dans cette perspective, Hobbes serait, sous l’impulsion de la méthode résolutive-compositive, non seulement l’inventeur du premier droit naturel subjectif dans l’histoire de la philosophie politique, mais aussi le théoricien d’une loi naturelle inédite, édifiée sur la rationalité des volontés individuelles. Ainsi, par la publication du Léviathan en 1651, Hobbes n’aurait pas exprimé ses affinités politiques pour la monarchie anglaise renversée : il aurait plutôt dévoilé son projet politique d’instituer une souveraineté politique qui repose sur le consentement rationnel de tous les sujets. Monarchiste dans sa jeunesse, Hobbes serait alors devenu, en élaborant sa science politique, partisan d’un régime politique que l’on pourrait nommer démocratie de la raison positive. / On Hobbes’s relationship to the monarchy, Hobbes Studies make a general consensus: throughout his life, the theorist of the Leviathan would have been a convinced monarchist, faithful to the English dynasty of the Stuart. This work seeks to undermine the rigor of this traditional thesis. Inspired by the contextualist research of J. Collins, which have already shown the Hobbesian affinities towards the anticlerical policies of Cromwell, it wants to show that such affinities hide a much deeper political intention: the political realization of the moral principles of natural law. In this perspective, Hobbes would be, at the instigation of the resolutive-compositive method, not only the inventor of the first subjective natural right in the history of political philosophy, but also the theorist of a new natural law, built on the rationality of all individual wills. So, with the publication of the Leviathan in 1651, Hobbes would not have expressed his political affection for the overthrown English monarchy: he would rather have revealed his political project to establish a political sovereignty based on the rational consent of all subjects. Monarchist in his youth, Hobbes would then have become, with the elaboration of his political science, a supporter of a political system that could be named democracy of the positive rationality.