The chief purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework which can contribute to a broader theoretical understanding of the actions of the U.N. Security Council and its members. The framework rests upon a rationalistic foundation and it is set up with two different models of explanation; a first with focus on power and security and the second which is an institutional explanation. The framework is then applied on a case study in which the behavior of theUnited Statesand theUnited Kingdomin the Security Council are explained. The outcome of the paper is worth mentioning that the member nations have find the Security Council to be an important institution and that there is an apprehension of the precedential power of the institution. The study also points out that a permanent member is more likely to use its veto when there are strong national reasons of so doing. In general the developed theoretical framework seems to be well appropriate to explain states behavior in the Security Council and may provide a foundation for further theoretical studies on the subject.

Since the end of World War II, through the mandates of Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, the Canadian government has found itself in conflict with the US Administration over the question of Arctic sovereignty. This situation is particularly difficult because of the power imbalance between the two countries. Thus, how Canada deals with the US is critical.<p> John Kirton identifies five ways in which Canada manages its differences with the US on foreign policy issues. The first is the process of ad hoc adjustment and problem-solving on individual issues. A second way is by pursuing solutions that achieve integration and cooperation. The third strategy consists of building defences and taking initiatives to reduce Canadas vulnerability to the US. The fourth strategy involves the deliberate influencing of the US domestic policy process in order to create policy that is more advantageous to Canadians.<p> In the fifth strategy, Canada aligns itself with others in the international community, building coalitions that can match the power and strength of the US; but more importantly, it establishes a place for Canada to lead the discussion and pursue its own interests. John Holmes believed that Canadian foreign policy was best served by multilateralism, as Canada often found it difficult to further its own interests within a bilateral framework. Kirton takes Holmes argument one step further by observing that by playing a leadership role in the multilateral arena on specific issues, Canada can help find global solutions that advance Canadian interests.<p> This thesis uses Kirtons analytical framework to examine the strategies that Canada has employed in dealing with conflicts with the US over the Arctic. It examines the Trudeau, Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin and Harper governments and finds a common thread in their approaches. While showing that each one adopted a number of the strategies identified by Kirton, the thesis draws particular attention to their common utilization of the fifth strategy of working with others to reshape the international or global communitys perspective on Arctic issues in the pursuit of Canadian interests.

Brazil has been one of the most active actors in international environmental negotiations and is an up-and-coming developing country with huge reserves of natural resources, biodiversity, and ecosystems that are of interest to the rest of the world, such as the Amazon rainforest. This pa- per provides an analysis of Brazilian foreign policy in the area of environment. By studying three major, international environmental conferences – Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, and the COP 15 in Copenhagen, in 2009 – from a liberal-constructivist perspective, the objective is to inves- tigate how Brazil has contributed to, as well as has been affected by, the international environ- mental regime over time. With the Rio+20 conference around the corner, this paper can provide important insights to what processes are behind Brazil’s action and position in these issues. The paper takes an eclectic approach and analyzes the national and international contexts and the positions Brazil took at the time of each conference, in the light of a framework that emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between domestic and international structure and agent. The conclu- sion is that there is a clear trend of Brazil going from being defensive and confrontational to being open to cooperation and taking initiatives. The changes in Brazilian attitude at each of the three conferences can be connected to great transformations in national as well as international context. The social and material reality in which Brazil has found itself has affected the way it interprets its capabilities, as well as how it identifies its interests. Furthermore, it is identified that tradition in foreign policy has played an important part in constraining some alternatives and promoting others.

The literature on escalation situations and audience costs suggests that democratic executives tend to increase commitment to a foreign policy in response to negative feedback. However, real-world cases from international politics suggest otherwise. Specifically, executives do not appear to respond uniformly to failing situations. While scholars have begun to unravel the audience cost mechanism, up until know, we know little about reasons for the variation in how executives use policy feedback to update commitment to a foreign policy. In this dissertation, I adopt an integrative approach and present a model of sequential decision-making that explains the conditions under which leaders escalate and de-escalate commitment in response to feedback. I attempt to break down the audience cost mechanism to explain why democratic executives do not respond uniformly to negative feedback. While the literature on the escalation of commitment suggests decision-makers tend to increase investment in the face of negative feedback, my theory suggests that under certain conditions, executives may find it politically advantageous to back down from a failing policy. My theory emphasizes the relationship between citizens, executives, and foreign policy effectiveness. Next, I suggest that the foreign policy tool of military intervention provides a suitable test case for a theory of sequential decision-making. I first test hypotheses derived from the theory regarding the preference formation process of democratic citizens during the course of such an episode. Understanding the response of citizens to feedback is an important first step to understanding the updating decisions of democratic executives. While previous work has relied on aggregate survey data, experimentation provides me with the ability to analyze how an individual citizen?s preference over commitment is impacted by policy feedback. The results of the experimental analyses suggest that citizens act as investors: they favor increasing commitment to military interventions when viewing negative feedback, up to a point. I then test the main hypotheses derived from the theory regarding executive decision-making on a dataset of major power military interventions from 1960-2000. Overall, the results support the hypotheses: public approval conditions the manner in which executives use feedback to update intervention commitments. In the conclusion, I summarize the study by highlighting key results, present the broad implications for the study of democratic foreign policy making, and discuss avenues for future research.

Do nations' allies and trading partners affect their vulnerability to transnational terrorist attacks? Prior research has focused on how the attributes of individual nations, such as regime type, economic stability, and international power, affect their likelihood of being the target of transnational terrorist attacks. However, prior research has not addressed the impact of a nation's economic and foreign policy ties on this phenomenon. Specifically, the question I ask is whether terrorists attempt to indirectly affect the status quo policy stance of a powerful nation by attacking the allies and trading partners of that nation. I develop a theoretical framework to explain why terrorists are likely to target allies of powerful nations in the international arena to force the more powerful nation to change its policy stance. Focusing on the United States, I examine how a nation's economic and foreign policy ties to the U.S. affect its vulnerability to transnational terrorist attacks. I test my expectations using the ITERATE database of transnational terrorist events from 1968 to 2000. The results suggest that a nation's economic and foreign policy ties may have a significant impact on its vulnerability to transnational terrorism.

Since the opening of economic reform in 1978, mainland China's national power as a whole has been greatly enhanced with more than two decades of economic development. Under the impact of such events as the First Persian Gulf War, the Kosovo War, global anti-terrorist attacks following the 9/11/01 Attacks on America, and the Second Persian Gulf War, mainland China has thus reconstructed its viewpoint of international as well as regional security. This thesis aims to inspect, from the perspective of international regime, China's policy towards UN peacekeeping operations and apply the rationale of Neo-liberal Institutionalism ( which is based on international regime theory ) to explaining and analyzing the evolution of China's peacekeeping policy. China's policy has made a drastic impact on current international relations, involving peace and stability not just of Asian-Pacific but of cross-Strait relations. Due to the two-handed strategy adopted in dealing with ongoing cross-Strait issues, China has always shown reluctance to renounce the use of military force on Taiwan up to the present. As a result, cross-Strait security is now being threatened from enormous military stress. Hopefully, both sides of the Taiwan Strait can resolve existing political conflicts by taking peaceful means. However, in the face of such threats from China's abrupt rise as well as having its veto exercised by force in the UN Security Council and then proceeding to play a zero-sum game in which pure competitions in foreign affairs are doomed to become intensified, I'm deeply convinced that, through peacekeeping operations as well as coordination and cooperation between regional/international organizations ( as they are probed into in the thesis ), possible cross-Strait conflicts can be reduced to a great extent.

The purpose of this study is to depict and analyze the foreign policy perspectives of political factions in Iran. The focus will be on the goals of the factions while the mechanics of the factional contention will be discussed only to the extent that it is related to this issue. The argument will be that the views of the factions with regards to foreign policy of Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) are determined by the needs of the domestic agenda of each faction namely its economic and cultural policies. To develop the thesis, firstly the concept of factionalism will be reviewed within the context of Iranian politics. Secondly, the foreign policy perspectives of the factions in the first two and a half decades of the Islamic Republic will be outlined. Next, an account of the most recent factional positions regarding the foreign policy will be provided. To conclude, an analysis will be made to demonstrate the main arguments of the thesis.

This dissertation is an analysis of how presidents make foreign policy decisions. Rather than explaining foreign policy decisions by focusing on individuals or institutions, I stress the role of political pressures and context faced by presidents. It shows that foreign policy decisions are not merely a reaction to stimulus from the international or domestic arenas but involve political considerations that affect policy choice. The dynamic elements in the argument are political resources and risk. The relationship between the risk propensity of the president and presidential political resources provides an important link to understanding foreign policy decisions. Within the realm of good public policy, a politically rational president can choose to act or respond to foreign policy disputes in various ways, including diplomacy, political coercion, economic coercion, covert action, or military intervention, based on his assessment of the political context and his willingness to accept the associated risks. The level of presidential political resources determines the risk propensity of the president. Presidential foreign policy decisions will vary depending on the quantity of available political resources. Thus, understanding the risk propensity of the president increases our ability to explain foreign policy decisions. The contribution of this research is the identification of a mechanism for understanding how the interaction between the domestic and international political environments, and individual decision-makers influence foreign policy decisions. My research bridges the gap between structural theories, “theories that make predictions about foreign policy outcomes without reference to the cognition and actions of the actors themselves,” and decision-making theories that stress the role of the actors (Ikenberry 2002, 5). Although the component parts of the foreign policy decisionmaking system are widely known, we lack theories that tie the pieces together.

The main contention of this thesis is about the development of relations between Thailand and China. Several-thousands of years ago, Thailand and China were having long-term interactions. After World War II, however, why did the two countries fall into what is now known as the Cold War? Why did the policies of both countries change the way they did, and why did the national diplomatic relations between the two countries become affable once again in 1975? It is my belief that due to China¡¦s unique ability as a world superpower on the international stage, and due to the co-operation between both Thailand and China to have in-depth discussions, they have therefore been able to maintain good relations. Even though relations between the two countries are quite good today, however, they still do have some minor problems that may potentially affect their relations. Overcoming these potential problems is the test that both of these countries face in the future.

Alexis de Tocqueville is widely hailed as one of the most insightful students of democracy and as one of the most perceptive observers of America. While this high praise is fully deserved, Tocqueville was more than simply the author of Democracy in America. Indeed, he completed the journey that inspired his seminal work before he was out of his twenties. The remainder of his life was devoted to the practice of politics. Both as an involved citizen and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Tocqueville researched and wrote extensively on French foreign policy. His most notable works are several reports endorsing French colonial projects in Algeria and articles advocating for the emancipation of slavery in the French Caribbean colonies. In this essay I argue that one cannot truly understand Tocqueville the student without analyzing Tocqueville the politician. Approaching his career as a consistent whole, rather than two distinct and incongruous parts, opens new avenues of investigation into his works. First, his incisive examination and critique of the distinct mildness engendered by equality of conditions in America helps fill several theoretical gaps in the democratic peace research program. Second, his arguments in support of both French imperial enterprises as well as the emancipation of slaves reveals that his diplomatic career was animated above all by the desire to forestall the further proliferation of this democratic mildness, which he viewed as one of democracy’s most dangerous vices. Examining his foreign policy positions in light of the lessons he learned in writing Democracy in America is the only way to discover the consistent goal of his life—namely, to educate and guide the future generations of democracy—and thus to understand Tocqueville as he understood himself. / text