Recently, many authors from various theoretical backgrounds have written books or articles trying to clarify what the role of the sovereign state is within the wider political context of “global politics.” This thesis seeks to critically engage with the way in which this debate has been framed by the vast majority of these authors. Indeed, while most authors frame this debate as an essentially empirical disagreement concerning the objective composition of global politics, we will be arguing that it is really a debate that concerns the problem of political foundation and the possibly changing nature of the dominant ways of answering this problem in contemporary “global politics.” From this perspective, the vast majority of those involved in this debate simply pass over - as somehow analytically uninteresting - most of the questions that would really need to be explained and understood. This thesis seeks to address this crucial oversight

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This thesis investigates the historical relationship between understandings of human emotion, and how they manifest in our understanding of the political. Specifically, this thesis returns to the presentation of individual political psychology in ancient Greece (Thucydides, Aristotle), the 17th and 18th centuries (Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant), and the 20th century (Schmitt, Fukuyama, Lebow) to illuminate how these understandings have shaped our idea of Sovereignty as an idea, institution, and practice. By turning to the rich history in political thought on emotion and affect, this thesis demonstrates a consistent and prolonged constitutive relationship between presentations of individual political psychology and international political order. This thesis also rehabilitates the full scope of affective insights into political phenomena— by turning to literature on rhetoric and aesthetics—in order to open up new space to critique common understandings of Sovereignty. Moreover, given that the institution and concept of Sovereignty is central to research in the disciplines of International Relations and Political Theory, this thesis also argues for a much-needed closure of intellectual space between these two branches of Political Science. In short, this thesis demonstrates the centrality of the politics of affect and the divergent and disparate pictures of individual political psychology that are taken for granted in defenses and critiques of the concept of Sovereignty. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

I create art, not out of a deep understanding of the world around me, but out of a lack of one. Human psychology, motives, behaviors, stressors, intentions and identity are the themes that boggle me the most. Therefore, it is only natural that my work would be fueled by the questions these themes pose. In the past I sought to understand what pushes people to make certain choices and how can the world around us affect the formation of identity. Currently I wonder about identity in terms of what do people use to form and reinforce identity both real and fabricated. In addition to this I am working through the question of what creates worth for an object; it’s function or its fabricated identity. Through the use of photography, video, sculpture and installation I explore the possibilities of questions and also understandings that my work can create.

Empirical investigation of the tenets of Object Relations Theory is recent. This study of the theoretical convergence between Object Relations Theory and Personal Construct Theory brought a new direction to the empirical investigation. It was hypothesized that individuals who displayed a well developed level of object relations, as measured by Object Relations Theory, would also display a highly adaptive blend of cognitive complexity and ordination, as described by Personal Construct Theory, and vice versa. A correlational analysis of personality measures on 136 college students approached but did not attain statistical significance. Results indicated no significant theoretical convergence between Object Relations Theory and Personal Construct Theory. Further research is warranted only if greater variability in sample age, life experience, and psychopathology is assured.

This thesis analyzes how the need for ontological security (OS), the ‘security of being’,impacts the foreign policy decision-making of states. Traditional security studies focus primarily on physical threats to the state. By contrast, an OS framework argues individuals feel secure when they are able to maintain communal narrative. This narrative in turn becomes the lens through which policymakers, and thus states, analyze events, while also becoming a potential source of conflict if challenged. Therefore, while physical security is still important, one is better positioned to account for perceptions of physical (and non physical) threats, and subsequent policies seemingly contradictory to traditional security studies, by employing an OS framework. While this will be explored within the context of the DPRK, the applicability of such a framework is far greater, holding key insights for International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). DPRK narrative formed out of the postcolonial nationalism of Japanese occupation, culminating into the hyper-nationalist ideology of Juche. North Korea’s seemingly ‘abnormal’ behavior might in turn be indicative of its unique national narrative and history of colonization and humiliation, leading to a different set of behavioral expectations than states whose narratives do not encompass such stories or reference points. While not all states are expected to act in the same manner as North Korea, the framework would expect them to defend and promote their respective national narratives. Moreover, while narratives can double as sources of legitimacy, as seen increasingly in the DPRK, this in no way detracts from, and merely compounds, the emphasis on narrative maintenance. Examining the historical record, it is argued the OS framework is consistently better at accounting for DPRK policies than traditional security studies. Therefore, more broadly in FPA, by taking seriously group narrative as a key component of OS, one can better account for perceptions and foreign policy decision-making.

Corporate sustainable development is placed between simplified interpretations and an overabundance of complexity and requirements that hampers implementation. Stakeholder Relations Management is one approach for the operationalization of sustainable development on the corporate level, which enables the inclusion of aspects of sustainability into corporate decision-making in a pragmatic way. However, stakeholder pressure and economic constraints lead companies to adopt only a small segment of the concept of sustainable development. Therefore, a referential framework is needed in order to regard corporate initiatives within the wider context of sustainable development on the theoretical level. The framework of sustainable development presented here, which was developed during a research project funded by the "Austrian Science Fund", takes the wide range of notions of sustainable development into account. Like a map, the framework depicts approaches to sustainable development and provides an overview of the aspects of sustainable development (scope) as well as the different levels of complexity that are associated therewith (depth). This framework is conceived as a tool to classify approaches to sustainable development in a wider context. (author's abstract) / Series: Research Paper Series of the Research Focus Managing Sustainability

This study seeks to examine the main theories and theorists of geopolitical imagining and argue for an intrinsic relation between traditional geopolitics and the development of international relations both in theory and practice. By doing so the study aims to pursue an assessment of the insights of critical geopolitics, as reflected in the works of John Agnew, Gerar&oacute / id &Oacute / Tuathail (Gerard Toal), Simon Dalby, Klaus Dodds and others, for the theory of IR, more specifically its dominant paradigm realism. The aim of this study, in other words, is to identify and describe the geopolitical assumptions that have led IR theory to turn out to be &bdquo / realist

Cholera remains a threat to public health in many developing countries, including Mozambique. Although the disease is easily preventable by practices of hygiene and sanitation, cases are reported in the country every year, as for example in the Lago district in 2015. This qualitative research project set out to explore in what ways the promotion of hygiene and sanitation practices on district level in Mozambique is carried out. Therefore, actors, messages and channels involved in these communication processes were explored via a field study in Lago and a review of relevant literature. Subsequently, the results of the field study and literature review were analysed by applying the concepts of one-way and two-way communication which are part of public relations theory. This analytical framework allowed the researchers to fill a gap identified in the existing literature about hygiene and sanitation promotion, which did not seem to include communication theories linked to public relation practices when it came to hygiene and sanitation promotion in developing countries as a method to prevent cholera. It has been found that the one-way communication approach towards the public was successful in handling the recent cholera outbreak of 2015, however, the approach is not substantial and should be improved into a two-way communication approach, which would allow the local population to express their needs in hygiene and sanitation, as well as their capabilities to implement change in these matters. Simultaneously, a lack of resources within the district authorities involved in hygiene and sanitation promotion seems to encourage one-way communication towards the public from their side, as two-way communication would demand further resources for research into the above mentioned needs and capabilities of communities.

Government / This report aims to broaden the horizon of research questions in international relations by encouraging a greater appreciation for the complexity of individual and collective motivations. More specifically, the report focuses on why the honor motive is ignored in the discipline and why it deserves more attention. / text