Transatlantic relations have a long tradition but their current state has recently come into question. This thesis is concerned with the contemporary foreign policy of the United States of America towards the European Union, focusing mainly on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which has been under negotiation since July 2013. The first chapter provides the theoretical and methodological framework, explaining how the American political system and foreign policy construction work and suggesting how these can be analyzed. The following chapters deal with the TTIP itself, using mainly the sub-state level of analysis. Chapter 2 explains the overall agenda of the TTIP, analysing America's goals in the negotiations and the TTIP's possible impact on transatlantic relations. Chapter 3 investigates the role and goals of state actors in the ongoing negotiations, namely of the president of the United States; Congress and the United States Trade Representative and State Department. Chapter 4 is based on analysis of non-state actors involved in or affected by the TTIP negotiations.

Scholars have long since identified a quixotic mode in fiction, acknowledging the widespread influence of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605-15) on subsequent texts. In most cases, “quixotic” signifies a preponderance of allusions to Don Quixote in a given text, such that most studies of “quixotic fictions” or “quixotic influence” are primarily taxonomic in purpose and in outcome: they name and catalogue a text or group of texts as “quixotic,” then argue that, by virtue of the vast and protean influence of Don Quixote, the quixotic mode in fiction is always divided, lacking any semblance of ideological consistency. I argue, however, that the very characteristics of Don Quixote that make him such an attractive literary model for such a broad range of narratives—his bookish idealism, his fixation on the upper-classed grandiosity of the lives of noble knights—also form the consistent, ideological groundwork of quixotism: the exceptionalist substitution of fictive idealism for material reality. By tracing the ways in which quixotes become mouthpieces for various exceptionalist arguments in eighteenth-century British and American texts, like Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742), Tobias Smollett's Launcelot Greaves (1760), Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752), Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry (1792-1815), and Royall Tyler's The Algerine Captive (1797), among others, I demonstrate the link between quixotism and exceptionalism, or between fictive idealism and the belief that one (or one's worldview) is an exception to the scrutiny of the surrounding world.

For a decade, the EU and NATO have both claimed to have a relationship purported to be a Strategic Partnership. However, this relationship is widely understood by both academics and practitioners to be problematic. Although not denying that the relationship is problematic, it is claimed here that the argument, whereby the EU and NATO simply do not cooperate, is very limited in its value. In fact, it is argued that the two organisations cooperate far more, albeit less efficiently, outside of the formal Agreed Framework for cooperation. According to the formal rules of Berlin Plus/Agreed Framework (BP/AF), the EU and NATO should not cooperate at all outside of the Bosnia Herzegovina (ALTHEA) context. This is clearly not the case. The fundamental aim of this thesis is to investigate how this cooperation - beyond the BP/AF has emerged. Above all, it asks, within a context where formal EU-NATO cooperation is ruled out, what type of cooperation is emerging? This thesis attempts to explain the creation and performance of the informal EU-NATO institutional relationship beyond Berlin Plus. This thesis, drawing on insights from historical institutionalist theory and by investigating EU-NATO cooperation in counter-piracy, Kosovo and Afghanistan, puts forward three general arguments. First, in order for informal EU-NATO cooperation to take place outside of the BP/AF, cooperation is driven spatially away from the central political tools of Brussels, towards the common operational areas and hierarchically downwards to the international staffs and, in particular, towards the operational personnel. Second, although the key assumptions of historical institutionalism (path dependency, punctuated equilibrium and critical junctures) help to explain the stasis of the EU-NATO relationship at the broad political and strategic level, a more complete understanding of the relationship is warranted. Including theoretical assumptions of incremental change helps to explain the informal cooperation that is now driving EU-NATO relations beyond Berlin Plus. Finally, this thesis makes the fundamental claim that the processes of incremental change through informal cooperation reinforce the current static formal political and strategic relationship. Events and operational necessity are driving incremental change far more than any theoretical debates about where the EU ends and NATO begins. Until events force a situation whereby both organisations must revisit the formal structures of cooperation, the static relationship will continue to exist, reinforced by sporadically releasing the political pressure valve expedited through the processes of informal cooperation. If the EU and NATO are to truly achieve a Strategic Partnership , it will stem from an existential security critical juncture and not from internal evolutionary processes.

This thesis traces the migration of Irish Presbyterian clerics to the Thirteen Colonies and the United States over the course of the years 1683 to 1901. Further, it demonstrates that this clerical migration can be used in conjunction with what is already known about Irish Presbyterian migration to America in the eighteenth century to sketch the general shape and parameters of general Irish Presbyterian migration to the United States in the nineteenth century—something which seemed a near impossibility due to factors such as an absence of useable demographic data. In so doing, it posits a solution to a problem that has bedeviled specialists in Irish-American immigration for thirty years: how to find and study Irish Protestant immigrants in the nineteenth century in a way which gives some idea of the overall shape and frequency of the phenomenon. The following thesis is interdisciplinary and broad in the techniques employed, questions asked, and the literature it has consulted, incorporating much developed by historians of religion, ethnicity, culture, Colonial America, the United States, the Atlantic world, Ireland, and Britain in this study of emigration from Ireland and immigration to America. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2012-10-31 16:08:27.855

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a critical evaluation of the neorealist theory of international relations and its soft balancing variant through the use of case studies referring to transatlantic relations in the post-Cold War era. Each case study indicates a specific category of power. These are: i) Military - the European attempt to create a common military arm from 1991 to 2003. ii) Diplomatic - the EU's involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1991 to 2003. iii) Economic the EU-USA steel dispute in 2002/03. In particular, the thesis undertakes to analyse whether the EU balanced the USA in the post-Cold War period either as a result of the altered structural distribution of capabilities within the international system (unipolarity) or of a set of deliberate plans to do so. After introducing the concepts of unipolarity, hard and soft balancing, the thesis outlines three comprehensive answers that neorealist scholars have generated as to whether the USA can or cannot be balanced in the post-Cold War international system, namely the structural, the soft balancing, and the alternative structural options. Then, drawing on a defensive realist perspective, this research goes on to consider the creation of the EU as a great power in the post-Cold War era. In light of this, the thesis aims to find out whether the rise of the EU as a great power has had an impact upon unipolarity either because of structural incentives or because of a predetermination to frustrate the aggressive policies of the unipolar state. The thesis then proceeds to investigate whether throughout the case studies series the EU has balanced the USA. The case studies highlight that the EU, freed from the rigid bipolar stalemate it had been locked into during the Cold War, undertook to exert greater influence on the world stage in the post-Cold War period. To some extent the EU has accomplished this in all of the power dimensions analysed in this thesis. Nevertheless, the EU's efforts to hold sway within the international system were not aimed at addressing the relative power imbalance created by unipolarity, and there were no deliberate plans harboured by the EU to frustrate the influence of any aggressive unipolar state. Overall, this thesis found the causal logic outlined by neorealism to be convincing to the extent that the EU emerged as a great power in the post-Cold War era and had greater freedom of action under unipolarity. However, with the partial exception of the economic dimension of power, there was no persuasive evidence uncovered to support the anticipated outcome of the neorealist theoretical slant, namely that great powers tend to balance each other. Moreover, while the soft balancing claim is considered to have promise as an attempt to understand how the EU can respond to US power under unipolarity, this study did not find sufficient evidence of the EU's deliberate intentions of doing so.

<p>“War Worlds” reads twentieth-century British and Anglophone literature to examine the social practices of marginal groups (pacifists, strangers, traitors, anticolonial rebels, queer soldiers) during the world wars. This dissertation shows that these diverse “enemies within” England and its colonies—those often deemed expendable for, but nonetheless threatening to, British state and imperial projects—provided writers with alternative visions of collective life in periods of escalated violence and social control. By focusing on the social and political activities of those who were not loyal citizens or productive laborers within the British Empire, “War Worlds” foregrounds the small group, a form of collectivity frequently portrayed in the literature of the war years but typically overlooked in literary critical studies. I argue that this shift of focus from grand politics to small groups not only illuminates surprising social fissures within England and its colonies but provides a new vantage from which to view twentieth-century experiments in literary form.</p> / Dissertation

In their negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between 2011 and 2016, the European Union and the United States of America (U.S.) aimed to not only reduce tariffs but to also establish regulatory coherence. For the U.S. federal states, the proposed comprehensive deal could offer both possibilities to expand transatlantic trade as well as threats to their legislative authority. This study investigates why and how some states represent their transatlantic trade promotion and trade policy interests despite constitutional limitations, why there is variation regarding these two topics of states’ interest representation and what intergovernmental conflicts arise. Based on original qualitative expert interviews, the analysis shows that U.S. states as noncentral governments are viable actors in transatlantic trade and investment relations. It is evident that a small number of mostly progressive state legislators actively engage U.S. federal and European officials to prevent the loss of state regulatory authority. Regarding the proposed trade deal, interest representation is centered around issues of federalism and sovereignty rather than economic growth opportunities. While trade promotion remains the key driver of states’ overall transatlantic activities, these findings expand our view on states’ international affairs beyond economic development.

The thesis focuses on changes in economic policy in the United States and on their external economic relations, with emphasis on transatlantic relations in the end of 20th and early 21st century. Against the backdrop of the most important domestic policy and foreign affairs in last two decades, it monitors and compares the economic and political realities of U.S. society while trying to capture significant changes in U.S. economic policy. It does so not only with basic macroeconomic indicators, fiscal and monetary policies, but also in conjunction with the traditionally problematic systems of social and health care. Internal developments are then put into the context of changes in the external relations of the United States with an emphasis on the economic side. On this count, the thesis focuses on transatlantic relations and the emerging strategic partnership between the U.S. and China. Hand, it does not leave even the processes of globalization, the economic crisis of 2007 - 2009, or the position of the U.S. dollar in the global economy.

In this issue, we continue and complete the debate on the future of the transatlantic relationship and of world order after the Iraq war. The debate was initiated by an article by Thomas Risse (Freie Universität Berlin) in WeltTrends 39, which has provoked a remarkable reaction within the German academic community, as documented in WeltTrends 40. This issue features additional comments and the rebuttal by Thomas Risse. <br>Most authors believe that the transatlantic partnership is in a serious crisis, but claim that it remains without an alternative for both sides of the Atlantic.

In this issue, we continue and complete the debate on the future of the transatlantic relationship and of world order after the Iraq war. The debate was initiated by an article by Thomas Risse (Freie Universität Berlin) in WeltTrends 39, which has provoked a remarkable reaction within the German academic community, as documented in WeltTrends 40. This issue features additional comments and the rebuttal by Thomas Risse. <br>Most authors believe that the transatlantic partnership is in a serious crisis, but claim that it remains without an alternative for both sides of the Atlantic.