The New Zealand Labour Party's election victory on 14 July 1984 resulted in an official rejection of the global strategy of nuclear deterrence. This action was the most fundamental challenge to the defence relationship between New Zealand and the United States since the signing of the ANZUS Treaty on 1 September 1951. This thesis is concerned with the effect of Prime Minister David Lange's personality on the resulting dispute between the two nations. This qualitative study utilises a theoretical framework articulated by Margaret G. Hermann which seeks to demonstrate the relationship between the idiosyncratic characteristics of leaders and the foreign policy behaviour of their respective nations. In order to effectively conduct this study, a number of key individuals involved in various aspects of the ANZUS dispute were interviewed by this author. It should be noted that David Lange was seriously ill throughout the course of this study and was unable to be interviewed by the author. Sir Geoffrey Palmer declined to be interviewed for this study. Following the introductory chapter of this study, a review of the literature concerned with the analysis of leadership and personality is undertaken. The powers of the Prime Minister in the New Zealand political system are examined as are the events surrounding the execution of New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy and the ANZUS dispute. This thesis then assesses the effect of Lange's personality on the dispute through an examination of situational factors, and a variety of aspects of his personality. This thesis finds that Lange's personality was instrumental in determining the course of events in the ANZUS crisis. Furthermore, this study concludes that Hermann's theoretical framework is a useful tool in determining the effect of a leader's personality on a particular foreign policy outcome.

Following the publication of the European Union Global Strategy in 2016 where the EU officially announced its quest for European Strategic Autonomy (ESA), a policy initiative toenable EU’s capacity to act autonomously in the realm of security and defence, this study poses the following research question: What type of foreign policy behaviour does the EU exhibit in security and defence through its quest for strategic autonomy? Broadly based in realism, the study is designed as a single case-study of EU foreign policy behaviour in relation to Russia and analyses whether the pursuit of ESA entails a balancing or hedging EU foreign policy behaviour. By doing so, the study contributes theoretically, by disentangling and operationalising these two concepts analytically, and empirically, by applying them to an EU context and investigating their presence. The results show that the EU does not exhibit a hedging behaviour towards Russia, and whether the EU exhibits a balancing behaviour remains inconclusive as the empirical material provided insufficient evidence to conclude so.

British accession to the European Union (EU) had far reaching economic, political and social consequences for New Zealand, forcing New Zealand to transform itself from a dependent subsidiary of Britain to acting as an independent small state for the first time. Although still in its infancy, the contemporary relationship New Zealand has formed with the EU is quite different to that it first established in the 1970s. It has increasing become more institutionalised, with a slowly developing structural framework that facilitates the narrow areas of cooperation. Dominated by the important economic relationship, the main challenges faced are of an economic nature. But the relationship also encompasses areas of political and social cooperation including people-to-people links, the environment, educational linkages, mutual support for multilateral institutions and development in the Pacific. As a small state, New Zealand is expected to display certain foreign policy behaviours in its interaction with bilateral partners. Small state theory forms the theoretical framework that explains New Zealand's behaviour in its foreign policy interaction with the EU. The theory was chosen for both its perceived usefulness in explaining and understanding the foreign policy behaviour of small states and for the apparent weaknesses of the theory, which is revealed in the case study of New Zealand-EU relations. This demonstrates how the theory is useful for its explanation of small state foreign policy behaviour, but also providing an insightful revelation of the theories flaws. This thesis proposes modifications to small state theory in order to strengthen it, and make it more encompassing of the contemporary realities of small state foreign policy, demonstrating that size does matter when exercising a foreign policy.