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This dissertation explores how different understandings of power in IR theory lead to different understandings of world order. In particular, I examine how notions of power have informed recent 'debate about empire' and what the term empire might usefully mean in the context of contemporary international relations. I start by investigating how power is understood in relation to the role of shared understandings. Mainstream or "Rationalist" scholars of IR have argued that shared norms and principles are epiphenomenal, existing only to the extent that sovereign states find utility in them. 'Reflectivist' scholars, on the other hand, have suggested that we attribute a much greater degree of autonomy to what they call "constitutive knowledge". That is, the intersubjective and historically contingent truths about world politics that inform the values and norms of state behavior. What is noteworthy about the recent debates about "empire" is that, for better or for worse, Rationalist scholars have tended to explain America's recent unilateralism in terms of a return to the logic of political realism which gives primacy to state power. However, following the Reflectivist argument, I argue that it is a mistake to limit the analytic scope of unilateralism to the egoistic agency of any one state. Instead, it may be more precise to situate American unilateralism in the context of an emerging regime or formation of shared understandings which is more global in scope. To explore this possibility, I turn to Foucault's theory of power which explores how liberal governments both direct their populations and rationalize the use of certain forms of violence. I turn also to Hardt and Negri who, taking their lead from Foucault, offer a novel definition of the term empire as a quality or condition of the practice of global governance particular to late modernity. Hardt and Negri define empire as a new form of global sovereignty that has emerged along with the global market and global circuits of production. My research explores how this definition can be used to refine such key concepts and categories of IR theory research as sovereignty, political economy and security. Through the reinterpretation of these key categories, I show how theories based on constitutive knowledge are capable of recognizing that there is in fact a great deal more going on in contemporary global power relations than American unilateralism. / Ph. D.

There is a lively academic debate concerning US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era and especially after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Neoconservatism has become a cause celebre in the literature of international relations with a variety of scholars disagreeing as to its supposed impact on Washington's world affairs approach and the Bush administration's decision to remove Saddam Hussein, from power manu militari. This thesis is an analysis of the way this political ideology was interpreted in the European elite media. It will be demonstrated how a significant section of key opinion-forming newspapers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy framed neoconservatism during the administration of Bill Clinton and partly that of George W. Bush. There will be an exploration of whether and how newspapers vary in their coverage. The thesis will outline that the influence of the neoconservatives in US foreign policy can be disputed and will suggest that their ideas can be hardly considered as revolutionary ones. It will then focus on the media coverage and will show that the prominence devoted to neoconservatism by the accessed print sources is a relatively recent phenomenon. The findings indicate that the newspapers differed in their representation of the political ideology only in the period before 9/11 when they mainly discussed it in the context of domestic affairs. By contrast, after the terrorist atrocities and especially since 2003 they linked neoconservatism to US foreign policy and largely focused on it - as opposed to competing international relations theories -, representing it in a remarkably similar way. With the exception of The Times, which followed a comparatively balanced approach, they constructed it as a driving force behind George W. Bush's international politics approach and the war on Iraq. The media emphasis on neoconservatism will be attributed to different factors - such the scapegoat theory - which maybe influenced the journalistic work. The general consensus as to their understanding of neoconservatism and its supposed impact will not support the claim of a European public sphere but will be considered as a positive step towards its possible creation.

This thesis examines characteristics of the economic governance, its levels and changes that were made in response to events in Southeast Asia in 1997/1998. it describes in detail the role of levels of the economic governance during the solution of the asian financial crisis, that exposed its vulnerabilities. In response to the crisis many changes took place. In the region of Southeast Asia these changes were designed to reform the International Monetary Fund, the origin of regional cooperation in the area and reforms in particular countries of the region. The thesis also contains the evaluation of the development of the economic governance in particilar states of Southeast Asia regarding world governance indicators WGI.

Le 12 septembre 2002, George Bush profitait d'un discours devant l'Assemblée Générale de l'ONU pour saisir le Conseil de Sécurité et exposer à la communauté internationale ses griefs à l'encontre de Saddam Hussein et de ses armes de destruction massive. Dictée par des impératifs électoraux, cette saisine de l'ONU s'était imposée à la Maison Blanche en raison de l'échec de la propagande néo-conservatrice à convaincre l'opinion publique de la nécessité d'une guerre en Iraq. Celle-ci devant donner corps au concept de « guerre contre le terrorisme » de la future campagne présidentielle, la Maison Blanche avait décidé de s'appuyer sur la crédibilité et la légitimité de l'ONU, pour relancer la propagande et travestir une guerre illégale en un acte de légitime défense, en tenant secret la décision de la guerre.La communauté internationale ne fut ni dupe ni complice de cette supercherie, mais le poids de la relation transatlantique interdit au Royaume-Uni de se désolidariser de l'Amérique et à la France d'user de son droit de veto contre ses alliés. Ces contradictions expliqueront la crise du Conseil de Sécurité de 2003, où, en désaccord, les gouvernants du bloc occidental s’affrontèrent sur la nécessité d’une seconde résolution autorisant la guerre. Cette crise ne fut sans conséquence, ni pour l'administration Bush, ni pour la communauté internationale, et encore moins pour l'ONU, puisqu'une fois enlisés en Iraq, les États-Unis obtiendront du Conseil de Sécurité plusieurs résolutions, sans reconsidérer leur unilatéralisme. Mise en porte à faux, l'Organisation internationale sera prise pour cible et son quartier général en Iraq détruit. Le chaos succédant à la guerre, l'administration néo-conservatrice sera finalement contrainte, sous la pression électorale, d'abandonner son unilatéralisme et de céder à l'ONU la résolution politique du conflit. / On September 12, 2002, George Bush during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly seized the opportunity to submit the Security Council and expose to the International Community his worries concerning Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Dictated by election requirements, referring to the United Nations was imposed on the White House because of failing neo-conservative propaganda convincing the public opinion of need for war in Iraq. This was supposed to give body to the upcoming presidential campaign’s concept of “war against terrorism”, the White House had decided to lean on the United Nations credibility and legitimacy to re-launch propaganda and disguise an illegal war into an act of self defence, by keeping the decision of war secret.The International Community was not fooled by or accomplice of this trick, but the weight of the trans-Atlantic relationship forbade the United Kingdom to set itself apart from the United States and for France to use its right to veto against its allies. These contradictions explain the 2003 Security Council crisis, where, by disagreeing the western governments faced one another on the necessity of a second resolution authorizing war.This crisis was not without consequences, for Bush’s administration or for the International Community and even so for the United Nations, since being stuck in Iraq, the United States obtained several resolutions from the Security Council without questioning their unilateralism. Being in an awkward position, the International Organisation was targeted and its headquarters in Iraq destroyed. In the chaos in the aftermath of the war, the neo-conservative administration was obliged, under electoral pressure, to give up its unilateral attitude, and let the Unieted Nations politically resolve the conflict.

En droit colombien, face à une inexécution contractuelle, règne la règle, issue du droit français, de la résolution judiciaire. Ses conditions d’exercice ont été précisées par la doctrine et la jurisprudence, non sans de nombreuses ambiguïtés qui résultent de la difficulté de comprendre et de mettre en pratique ce procédé. Face à cette vision traditionnelle, l’unilatéralisme a fait irruption dans le monde contractuel contemporain et, plus concrètement, la possibilité de mettre fin à un contrat de manière unilatérale en cas d’inexécution. Cette tendance, qui trouve ses origines dans le droit anglo-saxon avant d’avoir pénétré le droit des pays de tradition romano-germanique, prétend revitaliser cette phase critique du contrat en évitant le recours au juge, au moins dans un premier moment, permettant que le créancier remédie à l’inexécution en mettant rapidement fin au contrat afin de rechercher sur le marché des solutions efficaces. Cette règle pourrait-elle être retenue en droit colombien ? En dépit de l’apparent monopole qu’y détient la résolution judiciaire, tant le Code civil que le Code de commerce colombiens, prévoient des hypothèses qui reconnaissent cette possibilité. Par ailleurs, plus récemment, a été acceptée la possibilité de convenir de clauses résolutoires. Ainsi, nous considérons qu’il est possible d’accepter la généralisation d’une règle de rupture unilatérale pour inexécution. À cet égard, l’étude du droit comparé s’agissant de l’inexécution ouvrant la voie à une rupture du contrat, d’une part, et de la manière dont elle s’exerce une rupture en cas d’inexécution, d’autre part, est d’un grand intérêt. Une telle analyse nourrit une proposition qui non seulement fournit des éléments en vue de l’admission de la rupture unilatérale du contrat pour inexécution en droit colombien, mais aussi cherche à éclairer la lecture qui a, jusqu’à présent, prévalu en matière d’inexécution résolutoire. / Under the Colombian law, the general rule in case of breach of contract is that of termination as a consequence of a court order. Its conditions of exercise have been the object of development by the doctrine and case law, not without several issues that make difficult to understand and put into practice such category. In contrast with this traditional vision, unilateralism breaks in the contemporary contractual world and more specifically, the possibility of termination of contract in such a unilateral way in case of a breach. This trend has its roots in Common law and has been permeating the countries of Roman-Germanic law tradition; and it aims to grant vitality to that critical contractual phase, thus avoiding the intervention of the judge, at least as a first measure, allowing the creditor to remedy the consequences of the breach of contract by an early termination in order to seek effective solutions in the marketplace. Could this rule have a place in Colombian law? Despite the seemingly apparent monopoly of judicial termination of contract, both the civil code and the code of commerce acknowledge this as a possibility. Similarly, more recently the possibility of including termination clauses has been accepted. However, we hold that it is possible to accept a generalization of the rule of unilateral termination of contract in case of breach. A study of comparative law regarding the breach that results in contract termination and the analysis on the way this prerogative should be exercised are of great importance; it does not only enriches a proposal providing the parameters for the unilateral termination of a contract when a breach arises in Colombian Law, but also clarifies the understanding that until now exists in the matter of termination for non-performance.

Denna undersökning kommer analysera Kinas handelspolitiska strategier med finanskrisen och handelskriget som tidpunkt samt även påpeka hur dess strategier förändrades underrespektive tillfälle. Undersökningen redogör för vilka likheter och skillnader det finns i handelspolitiken mellan perioderna med syfte att förklara förändringen i handelspolitiska preferenser. Den handelspolitiska förändringen som Kina genomgick mellan perioderna är viktig att undersöka då Kina fortsatt växer sig starka på den globala marknaden. Metoden i studien utgörs av en teorikonsumerande fallstudie där rational actor model används för att undersöka och förklara den rationella aktörens beslutsfattande i respektive situation. Spelteori används som en komplimenterande teori för att förklara Kinas vägval under handelskriget. Slutsatsen i undersökningen är att Kinas främsta mål och rationella val i krissituationer är att främja sin egen ekonomiska tillväxt oavsett vilka långsiktiga konsekvenserna detta kan innebära. Mot den bakgrunden återfinns även den främsta skillnaden mellan kriserna som var hanteringen av protektionism. Kina förebyggde mycket protektionism under finanskrisen men utövade det själva under handelskriget. Förändringen av agerandet mellan kriserna berodde likaväl på USA som på Kina och kan förklaras som det mest rationella valet för Kina för att främja sitt främsta mål med handelspolitiken, ekonomisk tillväxt. Förändringen förklaras som en tillfällig avvikelse från deras handelspolitik givet att det var det mest rationella beslutet givet omständigheterna och rådande situation.