Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of South Carolina, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-279).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1989. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [191]-201).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2008. / Adviser: Waltraud Q. Morales. Includes bibliographical references (p. 106-119).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

Programming China: The Communist Party’s Autonomic Approach to Managing State Security, introduces the new analytical framework called China's “Autonomic Nervous System” (ANS). The ANS framework applies complex systems management theory to explain the process the Chinese Communist Party calls “social management”. Through the social management process, the Party-state leadership interacts with both the Party masses and non-Party masses. The process involves shaping, managing and responding and is aimed at ensuring the People’s Republic of China’s systemic stability and legitimacy—i.e. (Party-) state security. Using the ANS framework, this thesis brings cohesion to a complex set of concepts such as “holistic” state security, grid management, social credit and national defence mobilisation. Research carried out for the thesis included integrated archival research and the author’s database of nearly 10,000 social unrest events. Through ANS, the author demonstrates that in the case of the People’s Republic of China we may be witnessing a sideways development, where authoritarianism is stabilised, largely through a way of thinking that both embodies and applies complex systems management and attempts to “automate” that process through technology designed based on the same concepts. The party's rule of China, thus, evolves away from traditional political scales like reform versus retrenchment or hard versus soft authoritarianism. The ANS framework should be seen not as an incremental improvement to current research of China’s political system but as a fundamentally different approach to researching and analysing the nature of Chinese politics.

Since the regime was brought down by coalition forces in 2003, Iraq has been undergoing the process of democratisation through some significant political changes, namely, relatively free and competitive elections, and the freedom to form political and civil organisations. However, it faced crucial challenges that undermined this process such as ethno-sectarian violence/conflict. This thesis examines the impact of ethnic and sectarian conflict on the failure of the power sharing democracy. The thesis covers the period from 2003 until April 2014. The main themes that the thesis analyses are societal security/ethnic and sectarian violence, ethnic and sectarian inclusion, proportionality, and power devolution/federalism. For the purposes of the thesis, the societal security dilemma (SSD) theory, which focuses mainly on the roles of elites and external actors in societies that experience a power vacuum or institutional collapse in divided societies, is adopted. This theory is used for two purposes: firstly, to examine why and how the ethno-sectarian behaviour of elites affects societal security and the failure to establish a stable democracy; and secondly, to examine the viability of consociational design for the Iraqi case with the existence of distrust, fear and uncertainty among identity groups. The thesis argues that, due to fear, distrust and grievance among groups, the implementation of ethnic regions that draw lines between groups and localise the armed and security forces under a locally elected government is one of the mechanisms for reducing identity based violence and ensuring an effective power sharing democracy.

East Asia is both prosperous and dangerous region. This works applies scenarios, as a prominent method of futures on the East Asian region.

This thesis examines the diplomatic strategy adopted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in response to the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent shift in the regional distribution of power with regard to the security of the ASEAN nations. I argue that ASEAN has demonstrated considerable success in preventing a collapse of regional order in Southeast Asia. It is important to understand that ASEAN is a product and tool of its members' foreign policy and should therefore be assessed in the foreign policy, rather than in the regional integrationist, context. This will be examined from the point of view of a group of relatively weak, insignificant states within the international arena, historically plagued by conflict and intervention by external powers, exacerbated by a history of intra-regional enmity rather than cooperation, military weakness, and no collective tradition of diplomatic expertise. Yet, despite these shortcomings and ASEAN's previous inability to come together on issues of economic integration, ASEAN's response to the Third Indochina conflict has allowed its member nations to maintain their independence, preserve their freedom of action, rally international support, and confront the great powers involved in this issue through the use of a regional organization. This thesis will also counter the prevailing view that existing intra-ASEAN differences regarding the primary external threat in the issue (namely Vietnam, China or the Soviet Union) have seriously divided its members to the point of potentially threatening the organization's existence. Instead, I will argue that the combination of ASEAN's curious mode of "conflict resolution" through "conflict avoidance", as well as its diplomatic "division of labour," have effectively incorporated existing intra-ASEAN differences as bargaining assets for the organization's political viability. These internal cleavages have been far from resolved or reconciled, but rather skirted over by a web of unwritten laws, implicit rules and mutual understandings regarding one another's accepted role within the organization. This implicit "regime" has served several purposes: it has allowed ASEAN to sustain its image of unity, boosted its political visability in the international forum, and prevented the "loss of face" of fellow members on points of contention. Research for this thesis was conducted in part at the ASEAN Secretariat and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate