عنوان

The US-Japan alliance and the relocation of Futenma :

Number

TLets701682

Title Proper

The US-Japan alliance and the relocation of Futenma :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Grinberg, Miriam B.

Title Proper by Another Author

sites of discursive exchange in the reproduction of security alliances

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Warwick

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2016

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Warwick

Text preceding or following the note

2016

Text of Note

Using the US-Japan alliance as its institutional setting and the political conflict over the relocation of Marines Air Base Futenma from Ginowan City to Nago, Okinawa as its case study, this research seeks to examine how alliances are discursively reproduced by analysing - through interviews, public speeches, and government publications - how they are publicly framed and deliberated not only by 'elite' actors (e.g. those in the US and Japanese governments) who seek to maintain the US-Japan alliance in its current form, but also by those within Okinawan local government and civil society who contest the alliance's sustainability. This research sits in contrast to the prevailing arguments in the existing literature on alliance persistence, which tend to have a top-down focus and privilege the cooperative discourses of elite actors with direct access to the inner-workings of the alliance over the lived experience of 'everyday' actors excluded from the central policymaking process. Furthermore, these arguments tend to ignore the possibility of internal divisions amongst these 'elite' and 'everyday' actors, representing any debates within an alliance as taking place between the central governments of the member states rather than exploring the many divergences of opinion that exist within their central political parties, military bureaucracies, civil societies, and other groups concerned. By identifying a wide variety in the sites of discourse production both inside and outside of this institutionalised alliance, this research helps to bridge the disconnect between top-down and bottom-up analyses of alliance persistence, illustrate the processes by which discourses from seemingly irreconcilable sources may actually interact, influence, and shape each other in the realm of security policymaking, and broaden the conversation from one focused on 'persistence' to include an understanding of how an alliance is actively reproduced through discourse.

JZ International relations

Grinberg, Miriam B.

University of Warwick

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y