United States' policy towards Indonesia (the Netherlands East Indies) during the Truman and Eisenhower Presidencies involved many of the major issues of the time, including decolonisation, access to economic resources, Cold War strategy and Washington's involvement with Asian nationalism. Throughout the period, the emphasis of American policy was on the integration of Indonesia into world capitalism, an objective which became intertwined with Indonesia's growing strategic value to the US, from 1948 onwards, and its subsequent importance as a scene of confrontation with the Soviets and Communist China. By 1961, Washington's policies had failed in all their major aims and it seemed possible that Indonesia would become a communist state. The Eurocentric bias of American policy consistently dominated US relations with Indonesia. During the independence struggle, between 1945 and 1949, Washington's support for The Netherlands ended only when it became a greater threat to stability than the nationalists. However, after independence, its pro-Dutch inclinations were revived over the West Irian question. The militant anti-communism of John Foster Dulles, the Americans' inability to come to terms with Asian nationalism, exemplified by its handling of the Bandung Conference, in 1955, and the deep personal dislike of Sukarno by senior Administration officials combined to cause a deterioration in relations which culminated in a CIA-sponsored rebellion, in 1957/58. The determination and execution of American policy was influenced by Australia, which favoured Indonesian independence, and which, in the 1950's, exerted great influence in Washington, especially over West Irian. Along with the United Kingdom, whose forces had liberated the Netherlands East Indies in 1945, Australia had a central role in the CIA-backed rebellion. American policy minimised the role of the United Nations in the Indonesian independence struggle and over West Irian in order to inhibit the Soviet's ability to intervene.

This dissertation explores the role of nationalism in shaping Japan’s relations with China. Although not discounting the significance of external-structural constraints, it aims to explicate “nationalism” as a domestic (power and ideational) variable, and its interactions with other determinants in re-defining Japanese external policy-orientation that affected the bilateral relationship, during the Koizumi administration (2001-2006). Interpreting from a neoclassical realist (NCR) perspective, it offers a theoretically informed examination about why, how, when, and the extent to which nationalism matters in Japan’s China policy. This is done by operationalising, and systematically assessing nationalism’s salience vis-à-vis other external-domestic dynamics (i.e. alliance commitment/resolve, economic interdependence, domestic political process/actors) that simultaneously affect Japanese state-elites’ policy decision-making. It also establishes whether these factors serve to exacerbate, or mitigate domestic nationalist impulses, and their corresponding impact on Japan’s China policy-options. Two nationalist-flavoured bilateral disputes – Yasukuni Shrine and East China Sea – are utilised as case-studies. This thesis argues that nationalism matters, albeit to a qualified extent. Taking a realistoriented, “middle-ground” position, it hypothesises that nationalism’s salience is dependent on state-elites’ perception/calculation of the conditions related to its interactions with the other aforementioned variables that concurrently influence foreign policy-making, during a given time period. It finds nationalism especially prevalent under perceptively sanguine external conditions, where an advantageous relative power position vis-à-vis China, fostered, in particular, by favourable US-Japan alliance resolve, tends to encourage assertive-nationalistic foreign policy-options, and vice-versa. Given the findings, it concludes that nationalism is an important, but not necessarily the primary driver of Japan’s China policy. Overall, this thesis makes a sustained theoretical contribution to our understanding of the international relations of Japan, and the utility of IR realism. Specifically, the hospitability of NCR to domestic-ideational theorising, can bridge mainstream IR and domestic/Areastudies approaches to advance a more holistic, albeit realist-oriented appreciation of nationalism in Japan’s relations with China.

The media long regarded as a characteristic element of state propaganda in authoritarian regimes have become a key interest for western academic literature. Yet little attention has been paid to the fact that media within an authoritarian country may be influenced by external factors as well. This work addresses this issue and explores the roles external factors like media globalization and transnational media corporations (TNMCs) play in the transition of China's media governance. It argues that transnational forces have increasingly imposed insurmountable politico-economic pressures on the Chinese media regime, leading the state to further embrace the globalised economy and thus promote market-driven policies. As such, the ongoing task of media governance transition has a far-reaching impact upon socio-political systems in the PRC-a pattern of steady institutionalization with Chinese characteristics of media governance is emerging. The socio-political impact of the steady media institutionalization fosters a more relaxed space in both political and social domains. This has also challenged the dominant approaches, i. e., the 'Value-domination', the Nationalist, the Liberal model, and the Trans-cultural model, in the study of media politics in authoritarian states. After examining the changes in media institutions, policy responses, media structure, and media culture, the author conceptualizes these changes as institutional transformation, de-regulation,d e-monopolization, and de-propagandization. This dissertation concludes that China's media governance has continuously progressed from the model of 'leader-determined' model towards a 'consensus-building' model with an increase in media participants.

This thesis aims to understand the 1987-99 food crisis in the DPRK. We begin by establishing the fact that the country faced several previous food shortages, including the 1945-46 urban foods crisis, the 1954-55 rural food crisis and the 1970-73 food shortage, all of which triggered and motivated corresponding institutional changes in agriculture. And we find that in order to overcome repeated food shortages the country has developed several distinctive economic institutions such as administrative/quantitative production control in agriculture, state grain marketing, food rationing, central monopoly of agricultural trade and supplementary food supply institutions. On the basis of this finding, we proceed into the analysis of the food crisis. Specifically, three controversial issues are examined. First, did it escalate into famine? If it did, how severe was the famine? Second, what was the causation of the famine? How did it unfold and what features did it have? Third, did the food crisis change the DPRK agriculture? With respect to the first issue we estimate the number of excess deaths during the food crisis using official population figures. It shows that there existed a famine that claimed 688 thousand excess deaths in 1994-99. For the second issue we argue that the famine had several unique features. First it was ‘absolute food availability decline (FAD) famine’ in which no policies were feasible to prevent it. Second, it was urban famine where industrial population in the north-eastern part of the country suffered most. Third, it was ‘famine-in-slow motion’ that victims persistently weakened for a long period rather than perished in a short space of time, due to the mixed result of massive FAD and systematic national coping strategies. Concerning the final issue we show that it is not necessarily true that the food crisis genuinely changed the DPRK agriculture as generally conceived.

The present thesis re-assesses the utility of the theory of consociational democracy as a prescriptive conflict-regulation mechanism for plural societies, by re-examining the significance of the so-called causative/positive relationship between consociationalism and democratic stability. This re-assessment is based on a twin-fold examination of the internal constructs and logic of consociational theory, their political/economic procedural aspects and their societal manifestations. This examination is undertaken in two complex historical contexts, pre-war and post-war Lebanon. Mainly, the internal weaknesses of the theory have to do with its inherently flawed assumptions and the imprecise definitions of its main components, which make it problematic to analytically and empirically establish a causative link between consociationalism and democratic stability. Thus, to undertake a meaningful discussion of the ability of consociationalism to deliver on the promise of democratic stability, the thesis elaborates on the definitions of the main components and concepts of consociational theory (as they relate to the Lebanese context). It also examines their relations to democratic theory. Equally, starting with the observations that many countries of the world adopt consociational practices and mechanisms of rule and that consociational theory continues to receive significant scholarly attention, the continuous development and elaboration of the consociational model appear to be a way of alleviating the weaknesses of the theory and expanding its prescriptive power. Hence, particular emphasis is placed on an original elaboration of the definition, concept and representative scope of the grand coalition for two major reasons. First, this is so in the light of the centrality of the notion of elites and their role in consociational democracies (consociationalism being an actor-centered model). Second, this is the case in the light of the fact that executive decision-making power effectively lies within the ruling grand coalition. Based on the complex societal stage on which the thesis unfolds, (i. e., the Lebanese context), the findings of the thesis reveal that the consociational model of democracy is at times unable in very many ways to operate as the consociational theory of democracy suggests. Most importantly for the purposes of the present dissertation, the Lebanese experiments with consociationalism reveal that the model is unable at times to prevent the outbreak of communal conflict involving violence. Furthermore, it does not seem to work properly without a heavy dose of internal mediation and external arbitration. Additionally, it prevents the Lebanese state and social systems from reaching the political maturity necessary for stability. In other words, the Lebanese consociational structure of governance appears to work effectively at ensuring relative stability only if it is continuously assisted by additional mechanisms of conflict-regulation (those of mediation and arbitration). Indeed, the Lebanese consociational model functions relatively well when it borrows from the above-mentioned mechanisms provided by the literature on conflict regulation in plural societies. As such, consociationalism's so-called ability to deliver, alone, on the promise of democratic stability for Lebanon's plural society is seriously questioned.

The objective of the research was to explore the development of modern sport in Malaysia and to identify the socio-political and ethnic issues and other problems associated with it. The time period studied is from the year 1800 to the year 2000, which covers the periods of British colonial rule and Malaysia as an independent nation. The extended period of British administration left a paramount effect on the Malaysian society. Eight sport enthusiasts, forty schools, twelve sport associations, the Ministry of Youth and Sport of Malaysia, the Ministry of Education of Malaysia, and the Olympic Council of Malaysia were approached to gather the primary or raw data for the study. In addition, historical facts and sociological perspective on sport and physical education gathered from library research were combined to form the main ingredients and cross-analysed for discussion in the thesis. A chapter was constructed to understand the reason for British global expansion, their sport idealism and eventually the socio-political impact on Malaysia. A subsequent chapter was constructed discussing the independent government's attempt to redress the ethnic groups imbalance in economy, education and sport, as a result of the colonial legacy, in order to develop a just and harmonic society. Sport was found to be both the `enhancing' and `deterring' factors for a genuine national unity to materialise. Issues on power politics, economy, education and sport were found to be very much entangled and intertwined with the ethnic phenomenon. The research concluded that Malaysia's short history as an independent nation with very distinguished multi-ethnic and multicultural society provided an unsettled and unstable platform for a suitable environment for sport to develop successfully. Universal sport sociological theories related to the main issues investigated were compared and tested on the Malaysian sport scene to identify the `grounded theory'. Finally several `grounded theories' were presented as closure of the thesis.

This thesis argues that democratisation affected environmental governance in Indonesia in two aspects: the development of environmental NGOs (ENGOs) and their involvement in policy networks. The former is analysed from three perspectives of social movement theories: `political opportunities', `framing' and `resource mobilisation'. The perspectives on the latter are derived from theories of the policy process: the `policy network' and Kingdon's `multiple streams'. Indonesian ENGOs developed significantly after the late 1980s, together with the democratisation movement. Democratic ideas `re-framed' environmental issues, which stimulated and politicised ENGO activities, while increasing `political opportunities' by shifting the values of government officials. They also enhanced ENGOs' accountability and their embedding in local communities. The democratisation of formal institutions after the late 1990s facilitated ENGO activities, but it was not the decisive factor for their development. Neither was economic growth: the impacts of economic changes were not straightforward. The case studies of the pulp-rayon company Indorayon and the policy-making process of participatory forestry in Wonosobo District show that the spread of democratic ideas resulted in the incorporation of ENGOs in policy networks, which had previously been a `politico-business oligarchy' in the authoritarian Suharto period, by increasing their resources, particularly `legitimacy'. Also, ENGOs significantly facilitated the inclusion of other actors in the networks. On the other hand, conventional informal institutions still remained and they constrained actors. This helped conventionally strong actors (e. g. the state and large businesses) to preserve their political leverage. The spread of democratic ideas influenced agenda-setting and policy formulation. It is suggested that utilitarian arguments for democratisation (i. e. democratisation for better ecological consequences) could produce policies that neglected the social aspect of sustainable development, which in turn negatively influenced their ecological and economic impacts. `Rights-based' arguments (e. g. participation is a right) seem more conducive to the efforts for sustainable development in the South.

No description available.

This thesis addresses the efforts of different states to establish their authority over the Pashtun ethnic group. The Pashtun are at the heart of the conflict in Afghanistan, and provide both an important and current example of why "ungoverned spaces" have become such hot topic among many of the world's countries. People that exist within a sovereign state's borders and outside the state's authority present a dangerous problem to both the state itself and the international community. To address the challenges facing a state engaged in establishing its authority over the Pashtun, this thesis identifies normative and organizational structural factors associated with rural Pashtun tribes and discusses how these factors impede state authority. These factors are applied to three cases which involved a modern government's efforts to establish its authority over the Pashtun. In almost every case, the state failed when it either misunderstood the importance of these structural factors or willfully ignored them to pursue other interests. Looking beyond the Pashtun case, the research in this thesis determines that policies focused purely on suppression, isolation, or accommodation are destined to fail in establishing state authority. The common failing of these three policies occurs when the state fails to understand the difference between establishing order and establishing authority. Finally, the state must seriously consider its capacity to expand its authority-the lower the capacity, the longer it will take and the more accommodating (but not purely accommodating) the state must act. / US Air Force (USAF) author.

In 2014, Professor Scelles and his colleagues ran a test regarding the determinants of professional soccer team values. This thesis will follow a similar model and estimate the determinants of firm values in professional soccer teams from 2007-2016. It will include Asian ownership, percentage of foreign players and Asian sponsorship as new variables. This paper will also test the determinants on market cap and enterprise value in addition to Forbes’ valuation. The results of this study shows that the new variables have a significant impact depending on the valuation that is being tested on.