Дисертації з теми "International relations theory; complexity theory; order"

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 empireâ 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 â Rationalistâ 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 â constitutive knowledgeâ . 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 â empireâ is that, for better or for worse, Rationalist scholars have tended to explain Americaâ 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 Foucaultâ 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.

This thesis provides a contextualised exegesis and re-evaluation of the anarchist Pierre- Joseph Proudhon's writings on war and peace. The thesis has two claims to originality. The first lies in shedding new light on Proudhon's voluminous writings on international politics. These texts have been relatively marginalised in the broader secondary literature on Proudhon's thinking, and the thesis seeks to correct this important lacuna. In International Relations (IR), the academic discipline to which this thesis will make its most obvious original contribution, Proudhon's writings on war and peace have been almost completely ignored. By providing an anarchist approach to world politics, the thesis will also contribute to IR's historiographical and critical theoretical literature. The second claim to originality lies in using these writings and the context from which they emerged to tell a story about the evolution of the nineteenth century, the origins of the twentieth century and provide possible ways of thinking beyond the twenty first. The thesis employs a contextualist methodology that works in four ways. First, I have contextualised Proudhon's thought geo-politically, in relation to the dynamics of the balance of power in nineteenth-century Europe. Secondly, I have sought to understand Proudhon's ideas against the backdrop of the evolution of the French nation state in the mid to late nineteenth century. Third, I have shown how Proudhon's thought emerges out of the dominant intellectual currents of his day – ideas that range from the inspiration for the activism of Fourierist and Saint-Simonian feminists, to the epochal influence of Rousseau and Kant. Finally, I argue that Proudhon's thinking on world politics needs to be understood in relation to the evolution of his own thinking after Napoleon III's coup d'état of the 2nd of December 1851. I will show that Proudhon's mature anarchism, his mutualist federalism, was an engaged response to each of these social and intellectual contexts. I will argue that his critiques of these processes, and their intellectual champions, have been given an added poignancy given that he campaigned in large part against those very processes that culminated in two world wars.

In this dissertation I develop a theory that seeks to account for the variation in stability and conflict proneness we observe across regions. I propose that the observed variation in regional order in the international system is fundamentally rooted in the polar arrangements of the different regions. Specifically, I argue that regions that do not have clearly recognized regional powers are more prone to conflict, that their conflicts are more severe, and that these regions are more vulnerable to outside influence than those that do have such powers. Using an opportunity and willingness framework, I define regions as stable geographic spaces of interacting states behaving uniquely from the broader international system. In order to test these propositions, I make use of novel data defining both regional memberships and that identifies leading regional actors. The results show that not only do regional polarity have a strong explanatory effect, but they also suggest that it is necessary to take regional-level effects into account when analyzing international politics.

In the following chapters, I will examine how three prominent theorists of international relations justify their conception of world order. Bull, Nardin and Beitz have each developed state-centric theories of world order which, they claim, nevertheless protect the common good of individuals within states: Bull argues the interests of individuals are best served by maintaining order among states; Nardin claims human rights considerations are already implicit in customary international law; and Beitz argues it is possible for the system of states to accommodate principles of justice. All three texts under consideration implicitly endorse the realist proposition that promoting order among states will ultimately serve the interests of the individuals within them.

Within the contemporary international order, deep structural inequalities coexist alongside a nominally pluralistic society of states that grants international personality to politically organised communities. Asymmetric interactions between distinct political communities have shaped the development of the international system from the colonial era to the present phase of global economic integration. Rising interdependence, problems of unequal development and the democratic mobilisation of peoples around the world have generated moral claims regarding the injustice of global inequality. In this context the international politics of inequality have taken the format of challenges by the political representatives of the global South to the dominance of the advanced industrialised North. The normative dimensions of this process can be understood through a focus on this process of political argument between unequals. Political argument is contestation over the principles appropriate to govern a sphere of social interaction. The thesis seeks to vindicate the notion that the challenges by the global South have given rise to a dynamic of political argument within a norm-governed international society. Changes in patterns of normative belief, material power and forms of political organisation have historically shaped North-South relations. Therefore, through the analysis of particular episodes of North-South argument, the thesis attempts to provide insights into the moral limits and possibilities of an evolving international society. Analysing the organised attempts to challenge inequality on the part of the representatives of the global South, the thesis seeks to advance the position the tensions generated by claims over inequality might provide the nucleus for the incorporation of egalitarian concerns into the operation of international society. Through participation in common practices of statehood, the peoples of the global South possess at least some ability to challenge structural inequalities and thus the potential to expand the moral limits of international society.

This thesis examines the role of democracy in British, French and American visions of global order in the 1940s. It argues that 'democracy' in a global context did not reflect 'Wilsonian' or 'Cosmopolitan' dreams, nor did it refer to the questions of state representation and institutional accountability that dominate contemporary debates. Instead, it shows that building a 'democratic' global order in the 1940s meant, above all, an attempt to address the challenge of democratic modernity, summarised by Karl Polanyi in 1944 as the search for 'freedom in a complex society', in the new global environment of the mid-century. This challenge was composed of five core concerns, ranging from the protection of the individual from the modern state and the transformation of democratic participation, to the use of expert planning and modern technology to secure economic justice. Achieving a balance between these competing and at times contradictory imperatives was seen as the key to securing a new democratic order that could resist the temptations of nationalism and totalitarianism and secure peace. Crucially, it was only through the structures of a new global order that, internationalists argued, there could be any chance of success. The task was not an easy one, and the historical investigation shows how the choices and trade-offs internationalists made in relation to these imperatives entailed costs in terms of inclusivity, participation and even rights within visions of democratic global order. The thesis has both historical and conceptual goals. First, it recovers important ideas about global order that have been largely written out of the history of this period by taking the language of democracy in world order debates seriously and understanding these visions in context. Conceptually, its aim is to contest and transform how we think about global order and democracy in the history of international thought and in the present day. Instead of Cosmopolitan, Wilsonian, liberal or other normative blueprints for a democratic world order, the conclusion argues that we should, following the example of the 1940s, reconceptualise the relationship between global order and democracy today in relation to the persistent dilemmas of democratic modernity. In a global context, these continue to have interlocking domestic and international dimensions and, more importantly, continue to require choices that entail normatively contestable costs in the construction of a democratic global order. Only then, it argues, will it be possible to think about how these shortcomings can be mitigated and whether and what kind of democratic order we want to pursue at all.

Conservative international thought in Victorian Britain is a prominent landmark in the landscape of international thought which has up to now gone unmapped. In illuminating this body of thought, the thesis addresses weaknesses present in three different historiographies. As the first detailed study of conservative international thought in Victorian Britain, the thesis rectifies a marked bias in Victorian intellectual history towards the study of liberal and radical thought. Furthermore, by analysing the political thought of major representatives of the conservative educated classes, this thesis provides context for the history of conservative high politics, thereby leading us to view these in a different light. Finally, this study, by providing a historically nuanced account of the evolution of major themes of international relations theory in mid-Victorian Britain, functions as a corrective to the self-history of the academic field of International Relations. The thesis makes its argument by analysing conservative contributions in periodicals, pamphlets, and newspapers to British public debates on international affairs, from the Crimean War (1854-56) until the Eastern Question crisis of 1876-80. The general claim of this thesis is that there existed a distinctly conservative perspective on the international sphere. The core elements of this conservative perspective were the primacy of statesmen in setting foreign policy; of interests, military force, and stature in determining the course of international politics; and of order and equilibrium as its normative content. Conservative authors used this constellation of ideas in the major debates of the mid-Victorian era on international affairs, both as a means to make sense of events, and as a counterpoint to liberal narratives - with which Victorian international thought is all too often identified. In recovering the international political thought of Victorian conservatives, this thesis illuminates an important but neglected aspect of how international relations were understood and conceptualised in mid-Victorian Britain.

This thesis examines processes of peace-promotion in the Balkans since the end of the Cold War. It is conducted from the perspective of International Relations theory and as such identifies peace as a pattern of order defined by the analytical framework of security communities. In this respect, the thesis argues that the initiation of a security community in the Balkans is a result of the post- 1999 international socialisation of regional decision-making by the EU and NATO. It, therefore, advances the concept of an elite security community as the embryonic stage of securitycommunity- building. The focus on state-elites is an outcome of the procedural dynamics of socialisation, where it is the decision-making behaviour that signifies compliance with externallypromoted standards. The conjecture is that the promotion of peace in the Balkans is the result of the extension of the Euro-Atlantic security community. The inference is that both the EU and NATO tend to be more convincing agents of socialisation as a result of their association/partnership and accession programmes. Being a complex and context specific process, the conditioning of Balkan states into a security-community-pattern of relations is underwritten by the Euro-Atlantic exercise of socialising power. This notion of power, however, is not defined as the control of policy-outcomes, but instead emphasises the ability of external actors to cause change in decision-making behaviour. The thesis also argues that the process of international socialisation has different effects depending on the nature of statehood in the target entities - in integrated states the external agency is both more immediate to discern and implement, while in awkward states the process tends to be longer and more intricate. Yet, as the case of the Balkans attests, the extension of the Euro-Atlantic security community to the region depends on the viable (even if distant) prospect of membership in the EU and NATO. In this way the thesis contributes to understanding the early stages of initiating a security community, as well as the role played by international actors in its promotion.

How can political science account for the decision of African states to strengthen their ties with China, often at the expense of other alliances and often in the face of economic risks? This thesis explores this question in the context of relations between Ethiopia and China, especially in the context of investments made by Chinese sovereign wealth funds in the Ethiopian economy. To begin to answer this question this thesis recasts the China-Africa debate to focus on African, i.e. Ethiopian, agency. The focus is on how Ethiopia's political leaders make foreign policy decisions and on the factors that shape their preferences. This focus reveals the influence of cognitive variables on their foreign policy decisions; the influence of their guiding ideology, 'revolutionary democracy,' is especially key. An analysis of Ethiopia's formal institutions demonstrates they are inadequate to explain the policy choices of Ethiopian leaders; they have been designed to reflect the concepts of revolutionary democracy. Using the language of prospect theory, a descriptive theory of decision-making under risk, this thesis contends that Ethiopian leaders select foreign policy options by weighing their possible outcomes as gains or losses relative to revolutionary democracy as their reference frame. Ethiopian leaders sanctioned China's finance of the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation despite the monopoly it gave to China and its impact on Ethiopia's debt. They formed a front company between Ethiopia and China's military industrial complexes despite its negative effects on economic development. They opened Ethiopia’s regions to Chinese capital although capital flows only to state-owned enterprises. Yet in each case, ideological objectives were advanced. This examination demonstrates how non-structural factors play a critical role in a bureaucratized state. Theoretical frameworks that account for these factors, like prospect theory, are therefore valuable to more robust understandings of Ethiopia, and Africa's, deepening relations with China.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Changes in world order have caused major shifts in the global positioning of states at the international level. The end of the Cold War ushered in a new power structure that shifted from a bipolar arrangement to a multipolar disposition. The emergence of this new world order allowed for emerging and developing states, such as Turkey, the opportunity to fill gaps left by the power vacuum created by the new multipolar power arrangement. This led the Turkish state on its path to become a middle power within the new world order. To assess the impact of changing world orders in the promotion of Turkey as a middle power in the new order, this study uses Coxian Critical Theory and the social relations of forces framework to account for Turkey’s middle power ascent. The framework developed by Robert Cox consists of three aspects, namely world orders, forms of state and the social relations of production. The change in world order both in the post-Cold War and post-2001 era has caused fundamental shifts within the Turkish state, both in terms of forms of state and in the social relations of production. Changes in the forms of state of the Turkish Republic following the end of the Cold War allowed for the creation of more robust civil society organizations, and a state that was transformed by the spread of international norms that originated at the world order level. International norms at the world order level not only affected the forms of state, but also the social relations of production and the political economy of Turkey. As a result changes in the forms of state and social relations of production informed by changes at the world order level, influenced the creation and execution of a proactive autonomous and internationally geared Turkish foreign policy, which is indicative of a middle power.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Aanpassings in die wêreld orde het grootskaalse verskuiwings op internasionale vlak in die globale positionering van state te weeg gebring. Die einde van die Koue Oorlog het ontwikkel in ‘n nuwe mag struktuur wat beweeg het van bipolêre magskikking tot multi-polêre ingesteldheid. Die opkoms van hierdie nuwe wêreld orde het vir opkomende en ontwikkelende state, soos Turkye, die geleentheid gebied om in rolle in te tree wat ontstaan het as gevolg van die magsleemte wat veroorsaak is deur die nuwe multi-polêre orde. Die faktore het daartoe bygedra dat Turkye ‘n nuwe rol as ‘n intermedïere moondheid (‘middle power’) begin aanneem het. Hierdie studie het die Kritiese Teorie van Robert Cox gebruik om te bepaal wat die impak is van die veranderende wêreld orde op die ontwikkeling van Turkye as ‘n intermedïere moondheid in die nuwe wêreld orde, asook die mag van sosiale verwantskappe (‘social relations of forces’) raamwerk om rekenskap te gee and Turkye se rol as intermedïere moondheid. Die raamwerk wat deur Robert Cox ontwikkel is bestaan uit drie aspekte; die wêreld ordes, staatsvorme, en die sosiale verwantskappe van produksie. In beide die post- Koue Oorlog en die post-2001 era het die verandering in wêreld orde merkwaardige verskuiwings in die Turkse staat veroorsaak; beide in terme van die aard van die staat asook die sosiale verwantskappe van produksie. Teen die einde van die Koue Oorlog het die veranderinge in die aard van die staat van die Turkse Republiek toegelaat dat meer kragtige burgerlike samelewingsorganisasies kon bestaan, sowel as ‘n staat wat omskep was deur die verspreiding van internasionale norme, wat ontstaan het op wêreld orde vlak. Hierdie internasionale norme het nie net die forms of state vorm of aard van die staat beïnvloed nie, maar ook die sosiale verwantskappe van produksie en die politieke ekonomie van Turkye. Uit die aard van die saak het veranderinge in die vorm van die staat en sosiale verwantskappe van produksie wat veroorsaak was deur die verandering op wêreld orde vlak, gelei tot die ontstaan en ontwikkeling van ‘n pro-aktiewe, selfstandige en internationaal gerigte Turkse buitelandse beleid. Die laasgenoemde dui aan op Turkye se ewolusie as ʼn intermedïere moondheid.

Why has the United States, given its status as the sole remaining superpower following its Cold War victory, been unable to translate its preponderance of power into the outcomes it desires? The system established by the United States over the course of the Cold War does not effectively translate its power into influence in the post-Cold War world. In fact, the way US-Soviet competition shaped global affairs created systemic problems, weak and failing states, terrorism, autocracy and human rights abuse, that cannot be solved by the mechanisms of influence the US relied upon to win the Cold War. However, precisely these issues now dominate the American foreign policy agenda as its strategic objective shifted from defeating communism to maintaining the stability of the liberal world order that resulted from communism’s defeat. The United States, reliant on Cold War era mechanisms of influence, lacks the tools to accomplish these new objectives because these mechanisms were designed to exploit or accept the problems of statehood that now plague the liberal world order. Therefore, for the United States to make effective use of its abundance of power, it must either change its tools or its objectives.

Excerpt: Boaz Ganor’s Global Alert: The Rationality of Modern Islamist Terrorism and the Challenge to the Liberal Democratic Order provides in its eleven brief chapters an analysis of and prescription for liberal democratic vulnerabilities to present-day Islamist-inspired terrorism.

How order is understood has been a central preoccupation of international relations theory. Within the Western imagination, order, banishing chaos, emerged from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment as a knowable and calculable concept. Order became a known entity; it is the rational world. The irrational, that which didn’t fit into neat delineations, was to be shunned. The resultant scientific method came to represent a reductionist, linear, and predictable outlook. Although it subsequently stepped down from its positivist heights, this Newtonian paradigm continues to inform (whether in opposition or in support) theory construction within social sciences, and, by extension, international relations theory. However, for over a century the sciences, divorced from the social sciences, have moved beyond this paradigm, with considerable attention being directed to the non-linear sciences. From this family of new sciences, complexity theory, drawing on and displacing chaos theory, has emerged over the last two decades as a genuine paradigmatic alternative. This thesis argues that the incorporation of complexity theory at the meta-theoretical levels offers the opportunity to reconsider ontological and epistemological assumptions within the study of global politics. In detailing the presuppositions that best capture a complexity worldview, it is argued that complex adaptive systems, like the international system, exhibit emergent properties. Irreducibility, sensitivity to initial conditions, and self-organisation are shown to be central to comprehending how complex systems evolve, adapt and maintain highenergy far-from-equilibrium processes. Conversely, it is argued that dominant rationalist-based theories of international relations continue to seek out theories of natural equilibrium, which often reflect a transference of the Newtonian paradigm via a neoclassical economic ontology. Instead, it is argued that the international system should be viewed as a series of nested and overlapping complex adaptive systems that contains significant points of attraction, the most recognisable being the state. Moving towards an acceptance of the impact of the non-linear sciences at the meta-theoretical level will press the importance of intuition and interpretation to theories of international relations. Moreover, theories that absorb this commitment will more easily escape accusations of either irrelevancy for lacking a scientific base or of suffering from ‘physics envy’, in its traditional guise, because of its scientific base.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, 2010

On 23 June 1988 climate change entered mainstream debate when James Hansen, a NASA scientist in atmospheric physics, appeared before the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. He testified that NASA was 99% confident that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was the cause. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Britain, and in 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. Both were committed to the implementation of neoliberalism as the central guiding principle of economic policy, a movement that had been gathering force since the 1970s. This thesis argues a fateful coincidence in timing. Neoliberalism was firmly established as a ruling orthodoxy by the time climate change science began to assert political influence. But, this thesis argues, the ideology and practices of neoliberalism were and are incommensurate with efficacious climate change policy. This, it is argued, is because the role of the state fundamentally changed from that of a moderator of market forces to a facilitator of them. Opportunities and motivation for climate-appropriate interventions in the economy, together with political leadership, were compromised. As well there has been a re-fashioning of economic, political, legal and social life that reinforces an image of the individual citizen as self-interested, acquisitive and competitive, an ‘entrepreneur’ of the self. At risk is the possibility of cooperation, consensus and collective action which is the sine qua non of plausible climate change reform. Similarly I will argue that in the global order of states possibilities of collective action have always been vulnerable to the relentless pursuit of self-interest in what the International Relations literature characterise as a largely anarchic international order, now as well reinforced by neoliberalism in state actors and international institutions. Potential ethical concerns for present and future publics threatened by climate change impacts appear marginalised as drivers of the regime. As a consequence of historical forces and now a counter-intuitive neoliberal ideology framing debate on climate change the global legal regime for regulating greenhouse gases is proving dangerously inadequate even in terms of its own modest ambitions. Irreversible impacts are already evident and non-negligible risks of future catastrophes are contemplated. Drawing in particular on the work of Wendy Brown and David Harvey, this thesis makes the argument that neoliberalism as a governing ideology is fundamentally incommensurate with a plausible and robust climate change regime. Its entrenchment as economic orthodoxy has unfortunately occurred at just that point in history when its incommensurable ‘other’ in climate change has become manifest but, as the final chapter suggests, there is at present little cause for optimism that the dilemma will soon be resolved under present conditions. It is in fact likely already too late to avoid unhappy outcomes which were, in 1988, still preventable.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Law School, 2022

Although United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO) are said to protect humanitarian rights, peacekeepers are found to commit sexual assault, war crimes, and gross negligence. International legal immunities exempt peacekeepers and the UN from criminal liability and civil litigation. Whereas the literature on peacekeeper abuses conceptualizes the problem to be one of implementation of immunities, this thesis contends that such views are uncritical towards peacekeeping, immunity itself, and international society that organizes UNPKO. I theorize that the legal structures permitting such abuses (e.g. the UN Charter) render individuals expendable and hence objectified for the sake of international order. The argument presents a case study of the Srebrenica Massacre and ensuing legal cases to illustrate how immunities objectify individuals. Drawing on Agamben's theory of homo sacer, I introduce the term civis sacer to describe individuals excluded from international law with UNPKO immunities that objectifies them for the sake of maintaining international order.
Graduate
0616

Tese no âmbito do Programa de Doutoramento em Relações Internacionais – Política Internacional e Resolução de Conflitos, apresentada à Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra.
Esta tese aborda o problema da relativa estabilidade autoritária da ordem regional pós-soviética e a primazia da Rússia neste espaço, desde o fim da União Soviética. A queda da União Soviética, em dezembro de 1991, inspirou argumentos como o do “fim da História”, antecipando que seria inevitável uma transformação democrática liberal no antigo espaço regional Soviético totalitário. Essa transformação poderia ter redefinido a ordem regional e as dinâmicas de poder no espaço pós-Soviético, integrando-o na sociedade internacional liberal ocidental. O colapso económico da Rússia e a derrota ideológica do comunismo no início da década de 1990 poderia, em teoria, permitir uma mudança das dinâmicas de poder regionais em benefício de novos atores globais e regionais. Contudo, quase três décadas após o colapso da União Soviética, uma transformação profunda parece não ter tido lugar na região, quer em termos de desenvolvimentos democráticos fundamentais, quer em termos de dinâmicas de poder, incluindo a primazia da Rússia na região. Ao invés, com algumas exceções como a Geórgia, a Moldova e a Ucrânia, a região reapareceu como uma fronteira ideológica entre a democracia e o autoritarismo, em que a Rússia assume a liderança regional. Porque é que, após o colapso da União Soviética, não mudaram, nem a ordem regional pós-Soviética autoritária, nem a primazia da Rússia nela? Esta tese aborda este problema com o objetivo de desenvolver uma nova explicação teórica para a primazia da Rússia e a relativa estabilidade autoritária da região, num contexto de fracasso da expansão da sociedade internacional liberal europeia para o espaço pós-Soviético, após o colapso da União Soviética. Com base na bibliografia teórica da Escola Inglesa das Relações Internacionais e, em particular, no conceito de sociedades internacionais regionais de Flockhart (2016), o estudo analisa a ordem regional pós-Soviética como uma sociedade internacional regional, identificando as normas constitutivas e os valores que definem a região, facilitam o reconhecimento social da Rússia enquanto potência e moldam a identidade da região vis-à-vis os elementos fundamentais da sociedade internacional global.
This thesis addresses a puzzle concerning the relative authoritarian stability of the post-Soviet regional order and Russia’s primacy in it after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991 inspired arguments such as the ‘End of History’, anticipating that a liberal democratic transformation in the former totalitarian Soviet regional space would become inevitable. Such a transformation could have redefined the regional order and the power dynamics in the former Soviet space by integrating it into the Western liberal international society. Russia’s economic collapse and the ideological defeat of communism in the early 1990s could in theory enable a shift in the region’s power dynamics in favour of new global and regional actors. However, almost three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, no profound transformation seems to have taken place in the region neither in terms of fundamental democratic developments nor in terms of power dynamics, namely Russia’s primacy in the region. Instead, with a few exceptions like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, the region has re-appeared as an ideological frontline between democracy and authoritarianism, in which Russia assumes regional leadership. Why did the post-Soviet authoritarian regional order and Russia’s primacy in it not change after the collapse of the Soviet Union? This thesis tackles this puzzle by aiming to offer a new theoretical explanation for Russia’s primacy and the region’s relative authoritarian stability against the backdrop of the failure of expansion of the liberal European international society into the post-Soviet space following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Building on the literature from the English School theory of International Relations on the concept of regional international societies, specially Flockhart (2016), the study investigates the post-Soviet regional order in terms of a regional international society, identifying the constitutive norms and values that define the region, facilitate social recognition of Russia as a power, and shape the region’s identity vis-à-vis the global core international society.

碩士
銘傳大學
公共事務學系碩士在職專班
100
This thesis is focused on investigating whether the diplomatic and foreign relations staff of R.O.C acknowledges that the chance of R.O.C. joining international organizations and events has been affected by the rising power and status of the P.R.C. The research also includes whether R.O.C.’s representation rights of China as a sovereign state, its status of pragmatic diplomacy, and whether the priority of joining international organizations and activities has also been affected by P.R.C’s increasing international influence. Taking R.O.C.’s joining of APEC and WHO as examples, the research explains logically the concept of the Name-Status Order Theory and how the priority of joining such organizations concerns both countries in their current cross-strait relations. This thesis is the first to investigate whether the diplomatic and foreign relations personnels’ perception of ‘Name-Status Order Theory’ influences their attitude in joining international organizations and activities.. The result of the research was obtained by sending out surveys that were created by integrating influence patterns and various concepts from literary references. From the surveys sent to those affiliated with foreign affairs and international organizational work, there were 314 samples that are deemed effective and valid by implementing the regression equation. Based on the results of the research, it is shown that the Name-Status Order Theory and a “who joins first” mentality has a positive effect on R.O.C.’s representation rights of “China”, its diplomacy status, and its probability of joining international organizations as a whole. From these results, it is proven that China Rising has been negatively interfering with R.O.C.’s diplomacy and international affairs and has greatly affected the mentality and how they proceed and conduct themselves internationally.