| This thesis examines how states escalate from economic sanctions to military intervention. By examining the three most valuable lines of theory in security studies---neorealist and neoclassical realist, institutionalist, and culturalist---this study will not only reveal examples of conjunctural interaction in each of the three theories, but it will also highlight and illuminate the existence of patterns of change across the three cases. First, structural considerations played the dominant role in setting the French, German, and Italian foreign agenda. Second, France, Germany, and Italy were not rational utility maximizers with given interests. Rather, the argument of this thesis is that strategic policies were built on a foundation of cultural considerations, understood above all in terms of culturally developed and limited lines of action. Finally, the process of assembling lines of action was an institutionally constrained activity. The thesis identifies of cultural causality, depending on whether the government was two patterns institutionally autonomous (strong executives) or, alternatively, institutionally constrained (weak executives). In order to explain the escalation from economic to military coercion, this thesis examines the French, German, and Italian participation during the Yugoslav crisis (1990-1995).;Keywords. International Relations, Foreign Policy, Security Culture, France, Germany, Italy. |
