Thesis advisor: Robert S. Ross / Traditional theories of foreign policy that focus on external threats, domestic politics, and ideology explain why a great power exerts pressures or seeks compromises with one weaker neighbor, but they do not adequately address the fact that a great power usually deals with several weaker powers in a region. This dissertation explores new and important questions: Why does a great power sometimes treat multiple weaker neighbors in generally the same way, but sometimes attempts to differentiate among weaker neighbors through selective concessions or targeted coercion? In other words, why does a great power adopt uniform strategies or selective strategies? The dissertation introduces a Regional Competitor Approach, arguing that the number of regional competitors and their respective alignment relationships determine whether a great power deals with weaker powers under a sweeping general strategy or adopts distinctive policies toward them. If there is one regional competitor, a great power adopts uniform strategies towards weaker non-allies to convey a consistent message to the competitor, but selective strategies towards weaker allies to solve collective action problems. If the number of regional competitors increases , a great power adopts selective strategies towards weaker non-allies to maintain its power advantages vis-à-vis the weaker powers, but uniform strategies towards weaker allies to solve commitment problems. The dissertation elaborates new concepts, develops a new approach against competing theories, and challenges existing historical accounts based upon newly available evidence. The dissertation examines four cases: (a) China’s East Asia policy, 1955-1965; (b) China’s South Asia policy, 1955-1963; (c) China’s Indochina policy, 1962-1975; and (d) French, German, and Russian strategies toward Eastern Europe, 1919-1941. In the first three cases, I seek to explain how the United States and the Soviet Union shaped China’s asymmetric statecraft in Cold War Asia. The final case allows me to compare and contrast the approaches of China and European great powers. The above case studies draw upon a wealth of evidence from American, Chinese, German and Russian archives. Unpublished archives include the Chinese Foreign Ministry Archive, provincial or municipal archives in China, Nixon and Ford Presidential Libraries, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Archives, and libraries in China and North America. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Historically, the regional policies have been changed greatly in Mainland China ever since 1949. Since the ¡§Egalitarianism¡¨ in Mao, the ¡§ladder-step doctrine¡¨ in Deng, and the ¡§Western Investment Policy ¡§ in Jiang, each one possessed its own unique regional developing models. However, it is worth to note that the change of the models had deeply influenced the policies to determine the developing priority between coastal and inner regions. This article will focus on three questions. First, how the three different regional developing models had influenced the policies? And how the regional development had been influenced by those policies? Second, how the market system has an impact on the regional development in Mainland China? Finally, what kind of relationship existed between statecraft and market? And how did they interact each other?

abstract: International Relations has traditionally focused on conflict and war, but the effects of violence including dead bodies and memorialization practices have largely been considered beyond the purview of the field. This project seeks to explore the relationship between practices of statecraft at multiple levels and decisions surrounding memorialization. Exploring the role of bodies and bones and the politics of display at memorial sites, as well as the construction of space, I explore how practices of statecraft often rely on an exclusionary logic which renders certain lives politically qualified and others beyond the realm of qualified politics. I draw on the Derridean notion of hauntology to explore how the line between life and death itself is a political construction which sustains particular performances of statecraft. Utilizing ethnographic field work and discourse analysis, I trace the relationship between a logic of haunting and statecraft at sites of memory in three cases. Rwandan genocide memorialization is often centered on bodies and bones, displayed as evidence of the genocide. Yet, this display invokes the specter of genocide in order to legitimate specific policymaking. Memorialization of undocumented immigrants who die crossing the US-Mexico border offers an opportunity to explore practices that grieve ungrievable lives, and how memorialization can posit a resistance to the bordering mechanisms of statecraft. 9/11 memorialization offers an interesting case because of the way in which bodies were vanished and spaces reconfigured. Using the question of vanishing as a frame, this final case explores how statecraft is dependent on vanishing: the making absent of something so as to render something else present. Several main conclusions and implications are drawn from the cases. First, labeling certain lives as politically unqualified can sustain certain conceptualizations of the state. Second, paying attention to the way statecraft is a haunted performance, being haunted by the things we perhaps ethically should be haunted by, can re-conceptualize the way International Relations thinks about concepts such as security, citizenship, and power. Finally, memorialization, while seemingly innocuous, is really a space for political contestation that can, if done in certain ways, really implicate the high politics of security conventional wisdom. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Political Science 2012

With the 2016 election of Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic People’s Party, the number of Mainland Chinese visitors in Taiwan has fallen precipitously. There is much debate as to whether or not this will prove to be a catastrophe for Taiwan’s tourism sector or whether it will even be felt. The purpose of this thesis is to ascertain the impact of the reduction in Mainland Chinese tourist numbers on the economy, and what it may mean for China-Taiwan economic and political relations. Due to the large amount Mainland Chinese tourists spend relative to other visitors, their length of stay, and their propensity for traveling to locations rarely visited by other types of tourists, the decrease in Mainland Chinese visitor numbers will have negative consequences for some parts of the Taiwanese economy. Furthermore, Chinese tourism trends in Taiwan correlate with larger Cross-Strait economic concerns, implying that what happens with tourism may be mirrored in trade. Should this prove to be the case, a cooling of China-Taiwan economic relations may be an indicator of difficult times for the China-Taiwan relationship as a whole. However, there is certainly opportunity for Taiwan’s tourism sector, and there is evidence that by refocusing on a more diverse array of visitors, Taiwan is capable managing without such heavy, and coercive, Chinese influence.

abstract: This dissertation critically examines whether and how the practices involved in the crafting of the European Union may be said to go beyond modern statecraft. European integration should in part be seen as an attempt to transcend the modern state. Among many of the early proponents of European integration, the nation state had become associated with militarism, jingoism and ultimately, at least partly, to the blamed for the many devastating wars on the European continent, and even a normative order that made the Holocaust possible. Most other studies that have dealt with the EU's alleged difference from the modern state have employed an understanding of the state which confers a certain ontological standing and status onto its purported object of study. This dissertation argues that a critical approach to European integration needs to go beyond such a representationalist, ontologizing understanding of a political entity. Instead, in order to start addressing the question of state violence that European integration emerged as a response to, the crafting of the Europe Union needs to be problematized in relation to practices of statecraft. The dissertation also contends that previous engagements of European integration in relation to the modern state have neglected engaging the broader normative horizon in which the modern Westphalian state is inscribed. The first chapter puts forward a way of understanding modern statecraft. The subsequent chapters examine four different legitimation discourses of European integration against such an understanding: EU's failed Constitutional Treaty, EU's foreign policy discourse, European integration theory, and an instance of European migration policy. The dissertation concludes that the crafting of Europe in many ways resembles the crafting of the modern state. In fact, the crafting of the European Union is plagued by similar ethical dilemmas as the modern state, and ultimately animated by a similar desire to either expel or interiorize difference. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Political Science 2012

The thesis analyses Russian economic statecraft in relation to Armenia. The thesis is focused on two areas, namely the Russian response to the foreign policy orientation of Armenia and its significant internal political changes. The aim of the thesis is to compare the extent to which Russia uses economic mechanisms on both levels. The thesis draws on Baldwin's concept of economic statecraft, focusing on the Russian "carrot and stick" policy. In the foreign policy area, the economic tools that Russia used in attempt to influence Armenia's decision in its dilemma between European and Eurasian integration are analysed. In the internal policy area, the thesis is focused on major events from 2015 to 2018, which to some extent also affected the Russian side. Positive incentives and coercive methods applied by Russia during this period are also examined. An analysis of the Russian "carrot and stick" policy has pointed out that Moscow is more strongly involved in foreign policy of Armenia if it feels an immediate threat to its interests. Russia applies positive incentives in situations when it needs to reduce internal tensions in Armenia, which may also be directed against Moscow. If there are major internal political changes in this South Caucasus republic, yet without serious foreign policy implications,...

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This thesis examines how the monarchial regime of the al-Khalifa dynasty of Bahrain has skillfully tailored the tools of statecraft, both in international diplomacy and domestic policy, for one primary objective: to restrain attempts for democratic reform in order to sustain the regime's wealth and power. The al-Khalifa regime has shaped statecraft policies into a unique set in order to limit democratic initiatives. The monarchy blurs the lines between at democratization as contrasted with taking a few steps toward liberalization in order to address the nation's continuing unrest. The regime exacerbates the Sunni-Shi`a divide by hiring Sunni foreigners to serve in the security forces and deliberately stokes sectarian conflict by blaming Iran for inciting the Shi`i population. The regime encourages the hiring of migrant workers, which benefits the monarchy's wealth and fosters competition for jobs between groups of workers; at the same time, the regime denies migrants steps toward citizenship. Through its foreign relations polices, the monarchy prudently balances its relationships with the United States and Saudi Arabia for the primary purpose of maintaining power. Unique circumstances, as revealed by Bahrain's history, have influenced the al-Khalifa's governance of the nation. These factors include: US military base on Bahrain's land, a Sunni minority ruling a Shi`i majority, a well-educated citizenry willing to protest for democratization and labor rights, dwindling oil resources, and a geopolitical position between two rival regional powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran. / History

The chapter “Regulations of a King” 王制 illustrates a new pragmatic form of governance through morality around five issues. First, the chapter practically discusses three modes of statecraft, detailing which mode of statecraft is most effective and why. Next, it discusses the importance of the existence of law fa 法. Third, it transforms the concept of ritual as a tool of governance and an extension of law. Fourth, it describes rewards and punishments as political tools to reinforce an educational and transformational program for moral quality. Finally, it discusses perhaps the most unique tool of governance, definitive judgment lei 類. Through the examination of these five issues in “Regulations of a King”, I intend to show that the chapter “Regulations of a King” illustrates a new pragmatic form of governance through morality by displaying a more practical style of rhetoric and political tools for effective administering of a state.

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