This thesis springs from the following research question: how could the diplomatic performance
of the Brazilian Foreign Affairs Ministry in the area of technological promotion be evaluated?
Based on the assumption that there is no specific method for measuring these types of actions,
which are essentially derived from public diplomacy, the main objective of the thesis was to
bridge this gap, with the development of an original model for evaluation. The main elements
to understand what should be taken into consideration when assessing the performance of public
servants as regards technological promotion abroad were extracted from the Brazilian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs' Innovation Diplomacy Program (PDI), which brings together actions to
disseminate the image of Brazil as an innovative country abroad. Using the instrumental case
study methodology, the annual reports of the program and diplomatic cables launching the
2017-2022 PDI calls were coded to identify elements of the concept of innovation diplomacy
and the program's logical framework approach. Once the purpose of the PDI actions have been
understood, to develop the framework to evaluate its performance, challenges were
investigated, as well as methods, set forth in the reviewed literature, as well as international
experiences from Australia, Canada, Denmark, the United States, the Netherlands, United
Kingdom, Sweden and Spain's Autonomous Community of Catalonia, with the aim of
identifying good practices that could guide evaluations of public diplomacy initiatives. The
hierarchy of evaluation questions model was used to verify the feasibility of evaluating the
specific PDI case. The result was the development of a model, whose data must be collected in
a certain period of time (“Δ time”), in a set of countries or individual country (“∧{country(s)}”),
which is derived from the analysis of the combination of the differences (“Δ”) of the following
aspects: (i) opinion poll among qualified audiences; (ii) exports of the technology sector; (iii)
investments in the technology sector; (iv) establishment of institutional partnerships; (v)
attraction of labor force to the technology sector; and (vi) number of scientific articles and joint
patents with counterparts from the country(ies) analyzed. The model is a tool to help the public
manager to select the data that must still be subjected to a process of qualitative analysis, as the
individual reading of quantitative information and metrics can lead to wrong conclusions.

Colombia faces a historical struggle related to crime and conflict. The country has endured a
long history of internal power disputes, in which the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
Colombia - Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) and other violent non-state groups (VNSGs) have
controlled significant parts of the territory and were wise enough to withstand, over time,
government efforts to crush them. In addition to - and often because of - such threats, Colombia
stands as the top cocaine production country, the most produced and consumed drug in the
world. In 2016, the comprehensive Peace Deal signed between the Colombian government and
FARC-EP aimed primarily to end the cycle of violence and numerous violations of human rights
the guerrilla and the state security forces have perpetrated. The document, a result of four years
of intense negotiations, is divided into six parts: (i) Comprehensive rural reform; (ii) Political
participation; (iii) End of conflict; (iv) Solution to the Illicit Drugs Problem; (v) Victims; and (vi)
Implementation and verification mechanisms. Inserted in Point 4’s overall goal of undermining
criminal and violent dynamics derived from the drug problem, the Programa Nacional Integral
de Sustitución de Cultivos Ilícitos (PNIS) promotes voluntary substitution of crops for illicit use
through programs and projects dedicated to overcoming conditions of violence, poverty,
inequality, and marginalization of families. The Program is an immediate response to national
and transnational problems, such as the chronic weak institutional presence and the financing
of drug-related VNSGs. Nonetheless, the clear purpose and the coordination tools available
were not enough to boost PNIS early implementation in Colombia: part of this insufficiency
derives from top-down governance challenges, but local security dynamics have proven
themselves a considerable obstacle as well. Since the armed conflict is known to have affected
differently the regions, leading to major security concerns for rural and border areas in
comparison to urban centers, my focus rests on the Colombia-Ecuador borderland: in order to
address the magnifying effect on security dynamics the transnational character of borderlands
adds to the case study. Therefore, this research investigates how local security dynamics
derived from VNSGs action can spoil the implementation of PNIS in Nariño and Putumayo,
Colombian departments located in the Colombia-Ecuador borderland. I argue that VNSGs
undermine the PNIS implementation by fueling high-profiting illegal economies, fomenting state-
crime collusion and keeping communities under a rule of fear, insecurity, and uncertainty. As a
consequence of these actions, VNSGs affect the core aspects of PNIS of territorial ownership
and socioeconomic empowerment of communities, hence undermining the Program’s
implementation. VNSGs illegal actions challenge the state monopoly of violence and, in contrast
with state governance based on the rule of law, creates a parallel standard of governance,
based on violence. To understand such complex phenomena within their context, my “how”
research question is best answered with an in-depth qualitative case study. The case study
analysis focus on building the causal paths of PNIS in Nariño and Putumayo in the first five
years of peacebuilding in Colombia (2017-2021), identifying occurrences in which VNSGs’
action spoiled the Program’s implementation in both departments. To achieve the intended
results, I rely on a bottom-up epistemological perspective which considers the agency of

VNSGs in marginalized regions. Through the critical approach, I remain attentive to invisible
power dynamics that affect borderland communities and, therefore, adequate methodological
choices and methods of data collection and analysis to shed light on security dynamics that
transcend the traditional conflict-peace binary.

After years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), legal-political
institutions and MONUSCO aimed to strengthen state structures of power, control, and
justice. However, except for limited progress in the trial of ex-combatants by the
International Criminal Court, the Congolese judicial system remains unable to deal with
war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a result, thousands of victims remain
vulnerable, and the conflict persists. Our research aims to investigate the legal paradigm
guiding legal-political institutions in the transitional justice and peacebuilding process in
the DRC since 2010, based on the principle of legal pluralism. To achieve this purpose,
we use an instrumental case study, including a literature review and interviews with
experts in the field. We assume that this paradigm is characterized by practices aimed at
strengthening state institutions of justice and peace, in accordance with international
justice system resolutions, and is implemented by the United Nations peace operation.
Our hypothesis is that the centralized legal paradigm in the DRC leads to contestation and
illegitimacy in the reintegration of ex-combatants and reparation of victims due to a lack
of local legitimacy and belonging. On the other hand, collective jurisdiction and
reconciliation methods, such as mobile courts and Barza Intercommunitaire, offer an
alternative. To ensure reparation for victims and reintegration for ex-combatants, judicial
and non-judicial mechanisms for transitional justice must be interconnected.

At the end of the 19th century, in an international context marked by conflicts between imperial powers, Brazil also faced internal challenges. To demonstrate international prestige and seek to “civilize” the country, political elites sought to emulate practices of the United States and European nations. In this scenario, international law was used as a tool to demonstrate prestige. This study analyzes the use of arbitration as an instrument for this objective, focusing on the Question of Palmas, a border dispute between Brazil and Argentina. This dissertation seeks to understand how the Brazilian victory in the arbitration of the Question of Palmas contributed to the construction of the official narrative that Brazil became civilized based on its adaptation to the international law at the time. The work methodology involved analysis from the perspective of role theory, theoretical framework that involves the analysis of roles attributed to countries, such as way of understanding the construction of Brazil's role as a civilized country. The research involved the analysis of primary sources in official archives and four periodicals. It is concluded that the newspapers analyzed reproduced the vision on the Question of Palmas in accordance with the evolutionary logic predominant in mentalities of the intellectual and political elites of the time. The outcome of the arbitration in favor of Brazil was, in this sense, interpreted as a natural result of the country's evolution, which he had a “role” to fulfill before humanity. It is expected that this work contributes to studies that link civilization and foreign policy in the late 19th century.

Marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (marine BBNJ) is threatened. Growing demand and technological development make the exploration and exploitation of environmental resources in previously inaccessible areas economically viable. Since 2004, the United Nations has been negotiating an agreement to regulate the conservation and sustainable use of marine BBNJ. However, these negotiations do not take place in a vacuum. Aspects related to the global distribution of power, the current institutional architecture and the agency of the ocean powers manifest themselves also in these negotiations. This research applies elements of the research framework proposed in 2018 by the Earth System Governance Project (ESG) to investigate how power, architecture and agency articulate in BBNJ negotiations. Powerful geopolitical and geoeconomic interests prevail over environmental protection, resulting in a treaty that could be more innovative and ambitious, with more precise language and clearer rules. In any case, the treaty fills an important gap in public international law. Its effectiveness will depend on how the international community implements it.

Dealing with the pre-history of disciplinary International Relations, the research elucidates the constitutive entanglements between the invention and reception of the concept of “Realpolitik” in the second half of nineteenth-century Germany and the foundational debate on “political realism” in the e mid-twentieth century global/American discipline of IR and even current debates on American foreign policy. In more specific terms, the problematization is two-fold. Historically, it identifies meanings, situational usages, and performative functions of the central concepts of this debate in IR as they first manifested in what appears to be their cradle: the effervescent German society of the half of the eighteen hundreds up until the early twentieth century. More specifically, as this begriffsgeschichte (history of concepts) merges with a Cambridge contextualist intellectual history, it gets centered around the figure and books of Ludwig von Rochau, a liberal nationalist trying to avoid the depoliticization of his partisans after the failed March Revolution of 1848. It reveals the linguistic-semantic context surrounding the appearance of central concepts and their label-words. The subsequent distortions of the concept will be carried to the United States in very recognizable forms to the later realist-idealist debate, while the original proposal was mostly forgotten. Intentions, personal and ideological, and performative effects of these concepts, are connected in the interpretation of this historical process. From these historical findings, the secondary work deals with theory-building. It draws a set of the most important themes developed in the polysemy of historical interpretations that may form an internally consistent and externally relevant approach to serve better descriptions, explanations, and prescriptions in the theorization of the present. As it deconstructs the conditions of possibility of the contemporary, pervasive self-image of IR, particularly the kind of scientist and materialist development the realist tradition has enjoyed in the global/ American discipline, it assembles the elements of what is to be called the “‘real’ realpolitik,” a set of assumptions that may advance the development of an adequate theoretical approach to foreign policy-making to effectively offer solutions for the most urgent themes of the day.

This Thesis investigates the how climate migration is discursively constituted in the global
governance of climate adaptation. So far, scholars have scantly investigated how climate
migration is discursively constituted at the global scale, with studies often focusing on empirical
phenomena (e.g., Global Migration Data Analysis Centre 2018; Kelman et al. 2019; Obokata,
Veronis, and McLeman 2014; Piguet 2010; 2022), normative prescriptions and analysis (e.g.,
Atapattu 2020; Biermann and Boas 2010; Cantor 2020), or the issue’s entanglement with
modernity and humanity (e.g., Amo-Agyemang 2022; Boas et al. 2019; Baldwin 2013; Baldwin
and Bettini 2017). There are few investigations of how climate migration is disseminated in
multilateral negotiations (c.f. Mayer 2013; Warner 2012; 2018) and even fewer on what the
current frames and discourses entail for its governance (c.f. Baldwin 2017b; Baldwin and
Fornalé 2017; Methmann and Oels 2015). International negotiations are often understood as
epiphenomena (that is, as secondary to multilateral agreements in the form of final documents)
and thus not investigated in-depth. As for migration and its relation to climate adaptation,

despite the rise of a critical scholarship denouncing negative traits of the migration-as-
adaptation thesis (e.g., Bettini and Gioli 2016; Felli and Castree 2012), so far researchers have

not taken up the task of analyzing how these discourses are constituted in governance
architectures, focusing instead on expert discussions or final documents (e.g., Methmann and
Oels 2015; Ransan-Cooper et al. 2015). Despite the plethora of existing studies on formal
aspects of treaties and international regimes related to climate displacement, few scholars are
investigating climate adaptation and human mobility through a critical governance lens. Thus,
the climate migration scholarship is still short in comprehensively reviewing how international
actors interact, negotiate, and frame the issue at multilateral negotiations – especially in
exploring the novel framing of migration-as-adaptation. There is thus a need for inquiring
whose interests are reproduced in the institutional settings, which organizations are most active
and which institutions matter the most, what is the influence of international norms, and who
are the leading actors addressing climate migration within the Global Climate Adaptation
Governance architecture – and the governance implications thereof. This can be investigated, I
argue, by critically1

analyzing discourses on climate mobility within and as a result of

multilateral negotiations.

Recently, business firms have come to see climate action as an opportunity rather than a threat.
Global coalitions of multinational corporations have emerged in order to advance commitments
to cope with climate change. These business coalitions challenge previous scholarship that has
criticized Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for being greenwash, raising important
research questions. Do we have any indicatives that multinational corporations have become
more committed to cope with climate change? The goal of this doctoral dissertation is to present
a mapping of climate impacts and commitments of four Big Tech firms (Alphabet Inc.,
Amazon.com, Apple Inc., Meta Platforms) in order to understand their historical and current
emissions profiles, carbon footprints, climate-smart technologies and innovations, as well as
their low-carbon vested interests. Although Big Tech firms do not contribute much to climate
change (i.e., their direct and indirect emissions are far below those from heavy-polluting firms),
they have nonetheless engaged in climate initiatives, aiming to tackle global warming, thus
contributing to a low-carbon techno economy. I employ a multiple case study method through
which these firms were analyzed individually and comparatively. Data collection was performed
in two stages. Firstly, I conducted seven months of field research in Silicon Valley, California,
participant observation in online workshops of Citizens Climate Lobby, visited these firms’
headquarters, and performed semi-structured interviews with local data scientists, software
engineers, and energy and sustainability analysists. Secondly, I collected primary documents
from these firms (Diversity & Inclusion Reports and Sustainability Reports) covering the period
from 2016 to 2020. Data analysis involved a content analysis technique. My findings revealed
that these firms’ sustainability executives’ personal traits and histories have much to do with
their climate strategies. All of them have worked for the U.S. government or have degrees in
politics, thus are able to help these firms avoid financial and reputational losses as regards
climate change. All these firms, except for Amazon, have been reducing their emissions in
recent years. Additionally, these firms (particularly Alphabet) have been developing climate
smart technologies, repositioning some of their businesses in order to profit from climate
change. Their climate action occurs mainly because of three vested interests: to attract climate-
aware employees; because of business opportunities related to climate products, services, and
climate-smart technologies; and to influence society as regards the beneficent role of the
corporation.

Since the United Nations Security Council started, in the late 90s, authorising peacekeeping operations (PKOs) to use "all necessary means" to accomplish their mandates, the legitimacy of using force to keep peace has become a critical issue. Concurrently, some military units have been performing poorly in these so-called "robust" PKOs, mainly when the tasks imply confronting armed spoilers. Albeit there are indications that, in several cases, such below-average performances are linked to motivational deficiencies, the overall circumstances of this phenomenon remain poorly understood. In such a context, the present dissertation carries out a theoretical and empirical examination of the relationship between the legitimacy to use force to keep peace, military motivation and performance in United Nations (UN) robust PKOs. Initially, it analyses the aspects that grant the UN the legitimacy to use force to keep peace and operationalises such a concept. Then, the study ascertains the relevance of military tasks for the success of robust PKOs, discusses the impacts of military units' underperformance in risky tasks on the efficiency of UN military components, and considers the need to fight in robust PKOs in light of the combat motivation theory. Following, the theoretical approach is complemented by the survey of five peacekeeping units to verify the relevance of individual legitimacy perceptions for the units' performance. The thesis concludes that the blue helmets' perceptions of the UN mission legitimacy in using force are relevant to the performance of peacekeeping units in risky tasks. The findings help prevent the problem of military underperformance and increase the prospects of success of robust PKOs.