Japan and United Nations peacekeeping : foreign policy formulation in the post-cold war world.

This thesis investigates Japan's contribution to United Nations (UN)-sponsored peacekeeping
operations (UNPKO) by locating sources of activism and passivism in Japan's foreign
policymaking process. In particular, it examines the influence of factors, such as Japan's
traditional post-W.W.II commitment to pacifism, its relationships with the US and its East Asian
neighbours, and the role of the UN.
The introduction provides a broad overview of the remit of the thesis as well as clarifying
its ontological commitments and justifying the topics of focus, Japan and the UN.
Chapter One constructs a detailed theoretical approach to this topic by rejecting traditional
realist, liberal, and Marxist interpretations of international politics and, instead, highlighting the
study of norms in international society.
Chapter Two centres on the topic of UN peacekeeping operations and explains how this
practice has become a norm of international society.
Chapter Three introduces the topic of Japan's foreign policy by examining traditional
approaches and interpretations. It also utilises the approach outlined in Chapter One and
examines Japan's contribution to PKO from the time of admission to the UN in 1956 through to
the eve of the outbreak of the Second Gulf War.
Chapter Four looks at Japan's response to the Second Gulf War from the financial
contribution through to the legislation adopted to facilitate the despatch of the Self-Defence
Forces (SDF). It demonstrates the initial power of traditional norms in shaping policy and how this
changed with the rise of the influence of the UN.
Chapter Five takes the first despatch of the SDF to Cambodia as its case study and
reveals how the traditional norms of domestic-rooted pacifism and the opposition of East Asian
nations to Japanese re-militarisation continued to be eroded.
Chapter Six looks at the most recent of the SDF's despatches to Mozambique, Rwanda
and the Golan Heights and demonstrates the continued influence of the US as well as the
consolidated power of the UN, in contrast to the declining influence of pacifism and Japan's East
Asian neighbours.
Taking this empirical investigation into account, the conclusion reappraises the importance
of norms in Japan's foreign policy making process, and highlights the influence of the UN.