Maintaining rapid economic growth and protecting national sovereignty have been immovable national aims expressed in Chinese foreign policy behaviour since economic reforms were introduced in the late 1970s. Climate change, for its part, is a global concern and monetarily expensive issue which necessitates collective action. At face value, encouraging economic expansion and guarding national sovereignty could easily be viewed as conditions which oppose national actions to mitigate climate change and its potential effects. However in recent years, China has adopted a positive foreign policy tone expressing interest in mitigating climate change through the multilateral United Nations (UN) climate regime. Hence, China is a curious and perhaps contradictory participant in the UNFCCC regime’s institutions. This thesis seeks to answer the following research question: “Why is Chinese foreign policy able to balance supporting national economic development objectives and protect its sovereignty while also increasing UNFCCC multilateral cooperation to abate climate change?” In the course of answering this question, China’s foreign policy motivations in the climate regime are scrutinized using economic nationalism. Briefly, economic nationalism is applied here as an economically oriented ideological construct which incorporates sovereignty and national interests together with diverse economic policies, including interdependence. Supporting this thesis’ research is the three-fold argument which remarks that: First, China’s multilateral climate change engagement is consistent with established foreign policy goals to sustain national economic development and preserve national sovereignty. Second, China has redefined its foreign policy to accommodate the ideological construct of economic nationalism, embodied in the course of its international economic and image-status benefits. Third, as a consequence, comprehending Chinese climate foreign policy consistency will contribute to improving general knowledge and understanding of the climate regime and the methods it uses to encourage developing countries to increase their respective participation in mitigating climate change. This thesis studies China’s strategic cooperation with the climate regime using three climate-related cases, as well as a contrast case which compares contemporary climate mitigation with the abatement of ozone depleting substances (ODS), a precursor environmental issue to climate change. The four cases include: the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Multilateral Fund (MLF), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and the Group of 77 (G77). On the first, the GEF is the climate regime’s original redistributive funding mechanism and China receives the largest quantity of GEF funding. Moreover, China’s experience with the GEF on climate change is contrasted with its earlier experience in combating ODS using the MLF financial redistributive mechanism. Second, the CDM is the foremost financial redistributive mechanism to pay for climate mitigation and clean development projects in developing countries. China, for its part, is host for the largest share CDM projects and the economically valuable GHG Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) they issue. Third, China is the de facto leader for developing countries in climate negotiations through the G77 negotiating bloc. The conclusions reached show that while China’s tone has changed through increased openness and participation, fundamentally, Chinese climate policy is based upon maintaining the continuity of its national interests. Modern economic nationalist ideology has deepened China’s foreign policy engagement on climate change by reconceptualising the global environmental issue as an economic development and image-status growth opportunity. Essentially, for China which is a country that prides itself on high rates of economic growth and whose foreign policy staunchly defends its national sovereignty, embracing forces of globalization through the act of multilaterally engaging on climate change is by no means a contradiction and is rather fully consistent with supporting its longstanding foreign policy objectives.

The maritime space of ships is more often developed as a metaphor than critically investigated. Abstract fantasies of global flows and fluid motions ignore the material histories of ships, which often involve the capture of individuals and populations within networks of legal and extra-legal power. Standing as an exception to the bounded geographies of nation-states, ocean space lies beyond any single sovereign’s power; the passengers of ships are subject to multiple forms of biopower, wielded by diverse actors. I examine three ship-spaces—British slave ships, the migrant ship Komagata Maru, and Disney’s cruise ships—to tease out the techniques of biopower at work through them, exposing the ways in which passengers are made to live and rendered dead. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, I argue that the exceptional suspension of law at sea is integral to the rule of law on land.

This thesis offers a critique of the dominant strategy to prevent catastrophic climate change, which I call the market fix, and starting points for developing an alternative strategy, which I call the common transition. To prevent catastrophic climate change GHG emissions must both peak by around 2015 and be reduced to near zero by 2050. I will argue that it is unlikely that the market fix will be able to reduce GHG emissions sufficiently because there is a powerful and resilient drive for destructive kinds of economic growth embedded in the relationship between states and the global economy. For this reason, the market fix relies on unrealistically rapid technological development to reduce GHG emissions sufficiently without threatening general economic growth or powerful economic interests. I will argue that self organizing networks and commons institutions, the two key elements of the common transition, can be woven together to change the relationship between societies and their economies in order to weaken the drive for destructive kinds of economic growth, directly reduce GHG emissions, and create a new context for climate action in which societies have a greater ability to achieve zero GHG emissions by 2050.

In 2006 the Capital Regional District (CRD) initiated an ADR process to resolve a regional dispute that arose from a proposed Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) amendment called Bylaw 3443. The ADR process itself is a provision within the RGS in the Local Government Act, Section 860. Bylaw 3443’s ADR process began with an interest-based facilitation that identified overlapping interests; however, by the end of the facilitation the dispute persisted. Although the facilitated intervention was unable to bring the parties to resolution, the submission chosen by the arbitrator closely resembled the recommendation put forward by the facilitator. The shift in process from facilitation to arbitration, and the content of the resolution itself, led to the central questions of this research. Considering the eventual outcome of arbitration, why did this dispute remain unresolved after facilitation? This qualitative research utilizes an inquiry-based methodology, a narrative interviewing technique and a discursive analysis. These combined methods enabled the examination of talk and text of participants. The analysis uses discursive notions of power, knowledge and agency to deconstruct descriptions and interpretation of events in the ADR process. The discursive analysis of participant’s actions supports the thesis that people’s conflict actions are shaped by discourse. In this instance, the actions of local governments in the dispute were shaped by the discourses of law, politics and facilitation. This research provides two recommendations. First, the ADR procedures outlined in Local Government Act, Section 860, should be revised to place a greater emphasis on a consensus model of ADR, such as mediation, and less emphasis on the command models of ADR, such as arbitration. Second, there is a sense in resolving political disputes through facilitation, however it recommends that those who facilitate and those that dispute need to be aware of the role discourse plays in shaping conflict and suggest incorporating discursive deconstruction as a practical tool to complement a conflict practitioner’s technique.

La politique de coopération au développement représente une part très importante de l'action extérieure de l'Union européenne, ne serait-ce qu'en termes budgétaires. Cette thèse s'interroge sur la manière dont les valeurs inscrites dans les traités européens (démocratie, droits de l'homme et Etat de droit) sont promues par le biais de la coopération au développement. Pour ce faire, le concept de " puissance normative " (Manners, 2002) a été mobilisé comme idéaltype afin d'analyser la façon dont l'Union conduit sa politique de coopération au développement. La politique de coopération au développement est étudiée dans sa dimension globale, à travers l'analyse des méthodes européennes, et dans sa dimension concrète, c'est-à-dire par l'étude des projets de terrain financés par l'UE dans ses pays partenaires. Le cas des projets de soutien à la réforme pénitentiaire a été choisi, afin de comprendre comment se déroule la diffusion des normes sur le terrain, dans un domaine régalien, et dans lequel l'UE ne dispose pas d'une compétence interne. En définitive, l'UE ne dispose pas d'une spécificité normative permettant de la distinguer des autres acteurs du système international en tant que puissance normative. La coopération au développement apparaît subordonnée à la politique extérieure, les préoccupations stratégiques l'emportant alors sur l'objectif de diffusion des normes. Sur le terrain, les projets financés par l'UE répondent à des considérations bureaucratiques portées par les délégations de l'UE. Plus qu'un moyen de diffusion des normes, les projets sont considérés par les agents européens comme un moyen de faire vivre la coopération, quels que soient, au final, leurs résultats. Reste alors l'espace d'échange qu'auront ouvert de tels projets, permettant aux experts étrangers et aux fonctionnaires de l'Etat bénéficiaire de confronter leurs pratiques administratives, et d'envisager, éventuellement, de nouvelles " solutions " d'action publique.

Childhood obesity and chronic disease rates have reached epidemic proportions, but policy responses remain focused on individual health promotion rather than environmental change. This paper reveals the limitations of the current response, the Minimal Public Health (MPH) approach, due to its moral and political foundations. The foundations of the MPH rest upon the problematic liberal public/private divide. Furthermore, the MPH neglects to recognize the legal obligations and implications of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Additionally, children’s entitlements to care extend beyond the provision of basic necessities and demand high standards of nutrition and physical activity to ensure equal and just developmental outcomes. Finally, obesity and chronic disease may limit children’s ability to participate in practices of meaningful citizenship. As a result of its foundations, the MPH is inherently flawed and an alternative public health paradigm must be developed to effectively address childhood obesity and chronic disease.

This thesis contends that from the inception of Zionist ideology until the formation of Israel, the Zionist leadership, through the skillful use of narratives and the process of articulating a specific position and constraining opposing narratives, has been highly effective in creating and molding the historic perspectives and collective memories which have shaped, and continue to shape, Jewish identity and experience in Palestine. This study argues that the Israeli Declaration of Independence of May 1948 formalized core Zionist narratives and national myths within Israeli national self-identity, while simultaneously promoting their acceptance among world Jewry and the international community. This paper also maintains that these key narratives were used to legitimize the attitudes and actions of the early Zionists, and later Israelis, towards the indigenous (and surrounding) Arab populations. The impact of these narratives and national myths on the Palestinian Arabs, the effects of which continue to reverberate, is particularly addressed.

In this thesis, I explore how the logic and mobilization of critique as an emancipatory practice, situated within various historical inheritances of the Enlightenment project, enable/delimit ‘Western’ political imaginations. I therefore question how discourses and practices of critique not only reproduce but become functional to that which they seek to transform. That is, through its conventional fault-finding role, how does critique regulate (un)acceptable ways of thinking? By resituating critique as integrally constitutive of our inheritances, rather than an exceptional instrument of correction or virtue, this methodological reorientation has the potential to foster explorations that are grounded within, as opposed to transcendentally outside, our complex sites of inheritances. In this way, it is an inquiry into the histories and politics of Western projects of emancipation and progress as captured by practices, methods, and subjects of critique within various influential traditions.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) first came into being as a result of border negotiations between Russia and China but evolved shortly thereafter into more than this. A regional organization comprised of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and China the SCO’s mandate now encompasses trade and security. Most secondary literature on this organization tends to detail the interests of its constituent members, while overlooking the historical relationships underlying the SCO’s growth and evolution. This thesis argues that Russia’s long-standing relationships with the states of Central Asia created the conditions making the SCO a necessary tool of Russian foreign policy, while Moscow’s relations with China and the US have driven the development of the group. It concludes that the SCO has become the most viable of Central Asia’s regional organizations because it has effectively resolved contradictions and conflicts in Russia’s relationships with the other SCO members.

This thesis is on John Stuart Mill’s imperialism. Mill’s classic text Considerations on Representative Government is framed as a treatise of a theorem for guiding “civilized” governors in imperially democratizing “non-civilized others” for the ends of historically moving humanity towards “civilizational progress.” This theorem is broken down into an architecture which consists of the first four chapters of Considerations and a conceptual architecture consisting of three notions: imperialism, democracy, and good governance. In outlining this theorem, gaps and shortcomings currently existing in the body of literature that engages Mill’s relationship with imperialism are identified. The theorem and the secondary literature are also used to problematize and argue against the call by some authors for a turn to Mill’s imperialism.