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This thesis explores the relationship between legitimacy and inequality in well-established, embedded democracies by considering inequality as a potential cause of legitimacy crises. In the first chapter, the thesis reviews rival accounts of how to conceptualise political legitimacy and of what poses a threat to it. In subsequent chapters, it syncretises these accounts together. The second chapter argues that legitimacy crises are created by resentment, i.e. inability on the part of the subjects themselves to identify with the state’s actions. It also argues that legitimacy crises need not be acute crises in which the regime’s survival is imminently threatened but can instead be chronic crises in which the political debate increasingly focuses on how the state makes decisions rather than merely what decisions it makes. The third chapter discusses how a state that has entered a chronic legitimacy crisis might get out of it. It proposes that resentment is driven by gaps between perceived conditions and expectations, and therefore states can “solve” legitimacy crises by changing the perception of conditions or “settle” them by adjusting expectations. Finally, it argues that solving and settling strategies can feed off each other in a vicious cycle, producing “sinking”, in which resentment persists or worsens. The fourth chapter then applies the model produced in the second and third chapters to inequality, showing how certain forms of inequality can give rise to a chronic crisis and prove intractable enough that they result in sinking.

Since the end of the Cold War, America has generated a dangerous paradox in global affairs. Every president from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump has entered office with little foreign policy experience. Yet these men were instantly granted vast powers, which impacted global events. This thesis addresses how decisions made during a presidential campaign can influence the subsequent administration's foreign policy and thus affect international relations. Specifically, it develops a structured approach using the political and social science research tools described below. George W. Bush's 2000 campaign and foreign policy provide a case study. The second chapter of this thesis uses interviews and earlier biographical, historical, and psychological research to establish a baseline of Bush's pre-campaign background and decisionmaking. Chapter Three mines a new source of internet data and uses content analysis and both qualitative and quantitative methods to distill the campaign's foreign policy. Chapters Four through Six combine interviews with key Bush advisers (including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten) with other sources to describe how campaign policies were developed and then used to shape the Bush Administration's actions. Chapter Seven analyzes the administration's final policy results and finds that Bush's 2000 campaign set the course for significant modifications and foreign policy shifts. The thesis concludes that three issue areas are of particular importance: (1) the shaping of a candidate's worldview; (2) the choice of core advisers; and (3) the establishment of policy priorities. Their ramifications included edging America towards conflict with Iraq and facilitating China's rise to global power. Overall, the new analytic framework developed in this thesis can be used to explore the decisionmaking of a range of leaders.

'Existential risk research' or 'existential risk studies' is an emerging, interdisciplinary genre that seeks to provide an integrative, scientific framework for the study of existential dangers to humanity. Having been introduced by Oxford Philosopher Nick Bostrom in the early 2000s, existential risk research over the past ca. 15 years has become increasingly popular amongst scientists from a wide variety of academic disciplines and recent years have seen the foundation of research institutes, dedicated exclusively to the study of existential risk, at some of the most prestigious research universities in Europe and the United States. In spite of its interdisciplinary character, neither history nor political theory play a prominent role in existential risk research. This dissertation argues that this is a regrettable state of affairs and presents the first systematic attempt to survey and frame existential risk research from a political thought perspective. Drawing on three authors who wrote about deeply related questions in the post-war decades - Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and Günther Anders - it contextualises existential risk studies in the light of long-standing discussions about the interrelations between modern technology, human value and human agency under existential conditions. At the heart of these discussions the dissertation identifies a range of ontological complications. It demonstrates that, despite the fact that existential risk scholarship tends to side-line the type of ontological problems that have been uncovered by Heidegger, Arendt and Anders, it cannot escape this dimension altogether but instead highlights the imminent relevance of these authors' analyses. One instance in which this becomes particularly salient is in the context of existential fears surrounding artificial intelligence. The dissertation therefore closes with a discussion of the issue of artificial intelligence in existential risk research, bringing together insights from the preceding chapters.

State responsibility is central to modern politics and international relations. States are commonly blamed for wars, called on to apologize, punished with sanctions, admonished to keep their promises, bound by treaties, and held liable for debts and reparations. But why, and under which conditions, does it make sense to assign responsibilities to whole states rather than to individual leaders and officials? The purpose of this thesis is to resurrect and develop a forgotten understanding of state responsibility from the political thought of Thomas Hobbes. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the two dominant theories of state responsibility and propose a Hobbesian alternative. According to the agential theory, states can be held responsible because they are moral agents like human beings, with analogous capacities for deliberation and intentional action. According to the functional theory, states can be held responsible because they act vicariously through their organs, much as principals act vicariously through agents. What makes Hobbes unique is that he considers states to be 'persons'-entities to which actions, rights, and responsibilities can be attributed-even though they are neither agents nor principals. Hobbes' idea of state personality relies on the concepts of authorization and representation, not of agency and intentionality, nor of functions and organs. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 develop the Hobbesian theory of state responsibility and apply it to three sets of problems. Chapter 3 addresses problems of attribution, such as whether the actions of dictators count as acts of state and whether states can commit crimes. Chapter 4 addresses problems of identity, such as whether revolutions and annexations negate the state's identity and hence its responsibilities. Chapter 5 addresses problems of distribution, such as whether the subjects of the state ought to bear the costs of debts and reparations that their state incurred before they were born. I argue that the Hobbesian theory provides better answers to each set of problems than the agential and functional alternatives.