The existing studies on determinants of alliance reliability focus exclusively on alliance types and alliance attributes. One big weakness of this approach is that it depicts the decision making of upholding or disregarding alliance commitments as largely externally determined, and thus downplays the role of individual states. The present study assumes that states are rational utility maximiers and contends that the decision of whether or not to uphold alliance commitments is determined by the utility calculations at the time when an alliance is formed and the time when an ally is called upon. An ally will assist its defense pact partner under attack only when the expected costs of upholding commitment are lower than the expectations held at the time of alliance formation. Empirical testing, however, fails to lend strong support for the expectation. A discussion of the performance of the model leads to some interesting conclusions about the existing literature and possible future studies.

The occurrence of third-party intervention is a hallmark of many of the most devastating conflicts in world history, because the entrance of third parties into a conflict expands the scope of the violence, amplifies the severity and duration of the fighting, and increases the overall amount of death and destruction. Even in international conflicts in which intervention does not occur, the possibility that third parties may intervene can affect the behavior of disputants and therefore shape the way disputes evolve and are eventually resolved. This dissertation develops a theory of intervention by laying out a story about how strategic third parties and disputants make interdependent decisions in the context of an ongoing militarized dispute, and then formalizing this story into a simple-game theoretic model. The theory produces a general, causal explanation for third-party intervention that specifies the precise conditions under which it does and does not occur. Overall, the theory predicts approximately two-thirds of cases correctly when subjected to rigorous empirical tests. In addition, the theory produces theoretically-interesting, empirically-supported insights about the relationships between the resources of the actors involved in a militarized dispute and the likelihood that intervention occurs. The dissertation concludes with an application of the theory to the debate in the international relations literature over whether balancing or bandwagoning is the more common form of intervention. The application shows that the theory produces a more powerful explanation for the occurrence of balancing and bandwagoning than the existing literature offers, and suggests that the debate is misspecified.

Traditional approaches to the study of international disputes and war have generally aimed at providing very simple and broad explanations. Dominant among theories has been the explanation that war is a result of power politics between states competing in the international system. This type of explanation though, overlooks the study of how states make choices and how the resulting actions influence international relations. In this dissertation, I take a different theoretical approach by considering the influence of domestic factors as an important component for understanding international relations. I contend it is important to understand how the domestic political process influence foreign policy choices to best understand international affairs. In particular, I focus on the influence of institutional relationships and the role of the stakeholders as they relate to foreign policy decision-making. I present a general theory of foreign policy development that addresses the specific role of domestic political institutions and selectoral constraints. I treat the foreign policy process as a modified principal-agent model where three important actors have an influence on the development of policy: the chief policy maker, the primary oversight institution, and the relevant stakeholders of a state. I consider policies to be the result of the interaction between these three actors. In empirical examinations, I find moderate support for the expectations drawn from the theory. I find that domestic institutional relationships have an influence on foreign policy behavior, however the scope and strength of the influence still warrant further investigation. My primary theoretical contribution is the notion that the key domestic political factors that affect policy are institutional relationships combined with leadership selection factors. The theory presented in this research fully specifies this relationship and sheds light on how domestic political relationships affect policy development, and how the resulting policies influence international dispute behavior.

This thesis extends the existing research on alliance disintegration by more fully specifying the values which motivate states' foreign policy behaviors. Previous research held that security is the foremost good which states pursue. An implication of this assumption is that states forge alliance commitments solely in an effort to gain this good. I contend that not only do states desire security, they also desire proaction, defined as the ability to implement changes in those aspects of the status quo which are less than satisfactory. Furthermore, states may pursue one or both of these goods through their alliance activity. From this altered set of assumptions, more precice predictions are made with respect to the timing of alliance disintegration. I find that asymmetric alliances have the greatest probability of terminating when both parties are losing power while symmetric alliances are more likely to break up when only one state is decreasing in strength.

According to the requirements stated within their charters, the IMF and the IBRD are prohibited from including non-economic criteria in their decisions to lend to members. Despite this restriction, political criteria such as regime type and foreign policy orientation with respect to the East-West conflict have entered into Bank and Fund lending behavior. Political criteria do not, however, dominate decisions to lend in either organization; rather, the appearance of political criteria depends on circumstances in the environment of both the Bank and Fund and the particular relationship of a member to that environment. Using the Communist members of the Bank and the Fund as examples, it appears that foreign policy orientation is the most frequent political input into decisions to lend by the IMF and the IBRD. Due to the pro-capitalist bias of both organizations, only five Communist states have ventured to join the Bank and the Fund, and by 1980 that number had dwindled to two, Yugoslavia and Romania. Mutual suspicion and hostility, coupled with the reluctance of the Bank and Fund to accommodate the special needs of their Communist members, eventually led to the withdrawal of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Cuba from the organizations. Conversely, Yugoslavia and Romania have received levels of IMF and IBRD funding which exceed the average level of members which are non-Communist, developing nations. The uneasy relationship of Yugoslavia and Romania with the Soviet Union and the need of the Bank and Fund to achieve the goal of universal membership in order to control the increasingly volatile nature of the international economy explains this seemingly preferential treatment.

Article 22 of the Warsaw Convention, 1929 limits the liability of the air carrier in the event of death or wounding of a passenger to 125,000 Francs-Poincare based on a defined gold value. In 1955, the limitation has been raised to 250,000 Francs-Poincare. / As gold has lost its special position in the monetary system the value of the limitation of liability has decreased and some plaintiffs have argued that the limitation of liability is unconstitutional. / The Warsaw System is presented, the grounds for a limitation of liability, and Article 22 are analyzed. The relationship between municipal law and international law is described. The constitutionality of Article 22 is examined for the jurisdictions of Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America. Those lines of argumentation that could be used to challenge Article 22 in all constitutional systems similar to those of the abovementioned States are presented.

This paper constructs a graphical and mathematical model of dyadic interstate security competition. It does so by integrating arms racing and war initiation in to a single rational choice framework. The model is constructed from rigorously-defined concepts and all assumptions are made explicit. Equilibrium values for security-based arms racing are derived under the model and compared to conquest-seeking arms races. Comparative static results are provided for several shocks to the basic system. The model is informally extended in to probabilistic war scenarios. Finally, a number of testable predictions generated by the model are presented. / Ce mémoire présente un modèle graphique et mathématique du conflit dyadique dans le domaine de la sécurité internationale. Le modèle permet d'interpréter la course aux armements et le déclenchement des guerres dans un cadre formel. Le modèle est construit a partir de concepts rigoureusement définies et nos postulats ont été présenté de manières explicites. Les valeurs d'équilibre pour une course aux armements voulant assurer la sécurité nationale sont prédits à partir du modèle et comparé aux valeurs produites pour une course aux armements avec des objectifs de conquête. Différents résultats d'analyse statique sont comparés pour différentes perturbations du modèle de base. Le modèle est étendu intuitivement pour présenter des scénarios probabilistes de guerre. Finalement, de nombreuses propositions réfutables sont dérivées du modèle.

In recent years, American foreign policy has been much more attuned to the dangers of rogue states than rising peer-competitors. Perhaps what is more puzzling is why weak states would challenge not only their regional neighborhoods but also a disproportionately powerful United States. This project addresses and explores the phenomena of weak revisionists. The question under investigation here has received comparatively little attention in the scholarly literature: why do weak states adopt expansive foreign policy aims? Existing literature affirms the importance of relative power in determining state behavior and it implies that that only the great powers are afforded the luxury of pursuing other goals beyond their immediate, territorial security. For weak powers to even contemplate goals beyond survival would be a foolhardy endeavor. The underlying motivations behind the formation of foreign policy goals for smaller powers remain unclear and understudied. I present a neoclassical realist approach, which argues that the level of threat faced by a regime and domestic strategic culture determine a state's foreign policy goals. Specifically, I argue that high levels of threat, which heighten a sense of vulnerability, create domestic opportunities for hawkish strategic subcultures to promote a forceful response to those threats. In short, unfavorable geopolitical circumstances, legacies of external and internal challenges, and historical grievances have entrenched cultures of insecurity giving motivation to weak revisionists to pursue expansive goals. Towards this end, I will examine foreign policy-making in Iran, North Korea, and Libya. / Ces dernières années, les dangers potentiels présentés par les soi-disant « états voyous » ont inquiété davantage les Etats-Unis que leurs alliés et concurrents. Un des aspects paraissant inexplicable est le fait que ces prétendus états voyous, perçus comme étant plus faibles à tous les niveaux, osent confronter à la fois leurs voisins régionaux mais aussi les Etats-Unis qui apparaissent comme infiniment plus puissants. Ce projet étudie donc la question des « faibles états révisionnistes ». La question à laquelle nous tenterons de répondre est ainsi : pourquoi se fait-il que des états dits relativement « faibles » poursuivent des objectifs politiques internationaux perçus comme agressifs ? La littérature existante affirme que la notion de pouvoir relatif est essentielle pour déterminer le comportement international d'un état, suggérant ainsi que seules les grandes puissances peuvent se permettre d'aspirer à des objectifs internationaux qui vont au-delà de leur sécurité territoriale immédiate. L'idée que des états perçus comme relativement faibles puissent poursuivre des objectifs mettant en danger leur survie paraît inconcevable. Les raisons pour de tels comportements restent à ce jour elles aussi peu étudiées. À travers ce projet, je propose une approche réaliste néo-classique qui suggère que le niveau de menace auquel un état doit faire face ainsi que la culture stratégique de l'état en question déterminent la politique extérieure de cet état. Ainsi, il est démontré qu'un niveau élevé de menace sécuritaire mène à un sentiment de vulnérabilité chez un état, créant ainsi des opportunités pour des sous-cultures stratégiques belliqueuses de promouvoir une réponse agressive à ces menaces. Concrètement, l'association de circonstances géopolitiques défavorables à la présence d'une culture nationale pour la confrontation ainsi qu'à un passé national douloureux a engendré la création de cultures nationales d'insécurité menant des états relativement faibles et révisionnistes à poursuivre des objectifs internationaux agressifs. L'analyse proposée sera complétée par une étude de cas comparée des politiques extérieures de la Libye, de la Corée du Nord, et de l'Iran.

Threats are key elements in international relations but very few studies are exclusively devoted to them. In this thesis, we present an explanation of threat perception which rests on two main factors. The first one is the level of compatibility between the current preferences of two states. The more two countries have incompatible preferences, the more they will see each other as threatening. The second factor is the historical predispositions that two states hold towards each other. Negative historical predispositions tend to exacerbate the effects of conflicting preferences whereas positive ones tend to minimize their effects. In addition, we claim that state preferences are shaped by the government's evaluation of the country's material situation and by its view of the national identity and not by the influence of domestic interest groups as some theorists claim. Concerning historical predispositions, we believe that they are influenced by the first interactions between two states following a regime change in one or both of them. Those first interactions are themselves shaped by the level of compatibility between state preferences that existed at that crucial time. We test this explanation along with rival ones derived from different International Relations theories by comparing American and British perceptions of China since 1949 and more particularly between 2006 and 2010. In the end, we are able to conclude that our explanation of threat perception is confirmed by the evidence gathered while rival ones tend to be disproved. / Les menaces sont un aspect important des relations internationales mais peu d'études leur sont entièrement dédiées. Dans ce mémoire, nous présentons une explication de la perception des menaces qui repose sur deux facteurs principaux. Le premier est le niveau de compatibilité entre les préférences actuelles de deux États. Plus les préférences de deux pays sont incompatibles, plus ils se sentiront mutuellement menacés. Les prédispositions historiques qu'un État a vis-à-vis d'un autre constituent le deuxième facteur. Des prédispositions négatives tendent à exacerber les effets des incompatibilités de préférences alors que des prédispositions positives tendent à les minimiser. De plus, nous considérons que les préférences étatiques sont façonnées par l'évaluation que fait le gouvernement de la situation matérielle du pays et par sa vision de l'identité nationale. Nous écartons donc l'explication de la formation des préférences étatiques basée sur l'influence des groupes d'intérêts avancée par certains théoriciens. En ce qui concerne les prédispositions historiques, nous croyons qu'elles sont influencées par les premières interactions entre deux États suite à un changement de régime chez au moins l'un d'entre eux. Ces premières interactions sont elles-mêmes façonnées par le niveau de compatibilité entre les préférences étatiques qui existait à ce moment crucial. Nous testons cette explication ainsi qu'un certain nombre d'explications rivales découlant de différentes théories des relations internationales en comparant les perceptions américaines et britanniques de la Chine depuis 1949 et, plus particulièrement, entre 2006 et 2010. Cela nous permet de conclure que notre explication de la perception des menaces est confirmée par les faits alors que les explications rivales semblent pour leur part infirmées.

International investment has become one of the most important issues on the Post-Uruguay Round Agenda of trade negotiations. The rapid growth of and the critical role in today's global economy played by international investment, as well as its essential link to trade flow necessitates a comprehensive study of the possibility of inserting broad investment provisions in the framework of an organization with trade liberalization objectives, the World Trade Organization. The inclusion of such rules requires: (1) an extensive examination of the existing investment-related provisions of the World Trade Organization Agreements, and the evaluation of their utility, followed by the examination of the recent practices of this Organization with respect to investment; (2) tracing the development of international negotiations on investment measures, from the Uruguay Round to the recent movement to launch a Multilateral Agreement on Investment. / This thesis attempts to assess the ground upon which a proposal for a new agreement on investment in the framework of the World trade Organization could be achieved.