UNT Theses and Dissertations - 338 Matching Results

Search Results

prev Results: 31 - 54 next
open access

This Land is My Land: The Dynamic Relationship between Migration and the Far-Right

Description: This dissertation examines the dynamic intersections of the relationship between migration and the far-right through three empirical, stand-alone chapters. The first substantive chapter re-evaluates existing theories of far-right support using a novel theory and comprehensive dataset to assess how immigration opinion and immigration levels interact to shape individual far-right support. The findings suggest that increases in asylum-based migration are associated with increased far-right voting,… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Winn, Meredith
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Ethnic Groups and Institutions: Can Autonomy and Party Bans Reduce Ethnic Conflict?

Description: Can institutions successfully reduce ethnic conflict? Institutions such as autonomy and federalism are often advocated as a means to prevent ethnic conflict, however empirical evidence is largely mixed with regards to their effectiveness. In a similar manner, political parties have begun to receive more scholarly attention in determining their relationship with ethnic conflict, but their evidence is also mixed. In this research I examine autonomy, federalism, and the banning of political partie… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Holloway, Troy
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Interstate Influence Strategies in Border Crises: 1918-2015

Description: Within interstate militarized disputes, states use different kinds of influence strategies, like bullying, reciprocating, and trial-and-error. My dissertation examines state influence strategies within border disputes. This context serves as a hard test which could testify if state behaviors in world politics are mainly driven by the salience of contested issues. Or other factors, like leader militarized backgrounds (e.g., participating in rebellions or military service), may also at work. On t… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Yao, Jiong
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries

Risky Business: A Sub-National Analysis of Violent Organized Crime and Foreign Direct Investment in Mexico

Description: This dissertation examines the relationship between violent organized crime and foreign direct investment (FDI) through sub-national analysis focused on the case of Mexico. The results indicate that FDI decisions vary based on the type of violent organized crime.
Date: August 2020
Creator: Bennett, Amanda White
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Rousseau and the Problem of Censorship: Freedom, Virtue, and the Education of the Citizen

Description: I investigate Rousseau's formulation of how the people and their government act as sources of civic education and censorship. I define censorship broadly to include all institutionally or publicly enforced moral or policy views. Using Rousseau's Letter to M. d'Alembert as a starting point, I examine the way in which public morals and opinions structure political discourse, determining the influence of laws and the limits of institutions. I argue that while law can force the people to tacitly co… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Montagano, Elliot Thomas
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries

Institutionalizing Atrocity: An Analysis of Civil War Legacy, Post-Conflict Governance, and State Behavior

Description: This dissertation examines the behavior of post-civil war governments and explores how the aftermath of civil war not only influences state behavior but how the previous conflict becomes institutionalized through a state's governance decisions. While post-civil war states will each have different governance needs as they endure the post-conflict environment, this dissertation contends that the governance decisions a state chooses are key to understanding, and potentially predicting, future gove… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Yates, Tyler
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Nations at War: How External Threat Affects Ethnic Politics

Description: This dissertation explores the how external threat from militarized interstate disputes and interstate rivalries affect the relationship between the state and the ethnic groups within its borders. Specifically, it finds that national identity, the preservation of ethnic regional autonomy, and the formation of ethnic-based militias are all influenced by states involvement in international conflicts. In Sub Saharan Africa, discriminated groups are less likely to identify with their national ident… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Pace, Christopher Earl
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Rebels, from the Beginning to the End: Rebel Origins and the Dynamics of Civil Conflicts

Description: This dissertation addresses the puzzle of whether rebel group origins have an effect on rebel wartime behavior and the broader dynamics of civil conflict. Using a quantitative approach over three empirical chapters I study the relationship between rebel origins and conflict onset, duration and intensity, and wartime group capacity. Two qualitative cases examine the relationship between rebel origins, wartime group capacity, and adaptation during war, further unpacking the theoretical mechanisms… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Widmeier, Michael W.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Too Important to Democratize: Lessons from the Arab Spring

Description: While the Arab Spring has resulted in numerous different political outcomes across the Arab world, conventional theories of democratization are lacking in explaining these divergent outcomes. Developing a theory of democratization, strategic importance and external intervention, I examine the relationship between national strategic importance and democratization. I argue that strategically important states will be targeted by external actors in attempts to stifle or thwart democracy because dem… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Lookabaugh, Brian Scott
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

State Capacity, Security Forces and Terrorist Group Termination

Description: This dissertation examines how different forms of state capacity affect the decision of terror groups to end their campaign. Building a theoretical framework about the relationship between state capacity and terrorist group termination, I address the following research questions: How do terror groups respond to the changes in non-repressive forms of state's capacity, such as bureaucratic capacity, extractive capacity, and how do those responses of terror groups affect the chance of their demise… more
Date: December 2019
Creator: Kirisci, Mustafa
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Identity Claims and Leader Survival

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to show a yet undiscovered link between identity claims and the survival of political leaders. Diversionary theory posits that starting foreign conflicts during domestic hardship may increase the popular approval ratings of the leader and maintain him in power. I suggest that leaders may resort to initiating identity claims as a diversionary action to stay in power. Indeed, using survival analysis, this study finds a connection between the desire of leaders t… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Krastev, Roman
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Making It Personal: The Psychological Lifecyle of Witnessing before the ICTY

Description: Extant transitional justice literature examining processes and functions of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have traditionally looked at the output and outcomes from an institutional level of analysis and have neglected to examine how the witness feels about his or her own participation in the process. This project provides deeper perspective from the individual level of analysis based on sequential phases of the testimony process lifecycle: the reason the witness … more
Date: August 2019
Creator: McKay, Melissa M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Drug-Related Violence and Party Behavior: The Case of Candidate Selection in Mexico

Description: This dissertation examines how parties respond and adapt their behavior to political violence. Building a theoretical argument about strategic party behavior and party capture, I address the following questions: How do parties select and recruit their candidates in regions with high levels of violence and the pervasive presence of VNAs? Do parties respond to violence by selecting certain types of candidates who are more capable of fighting these organizations? Do parties react differently at di… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Pulido Gomez, Amalia
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Naming and Shaming Non-State Organizations, Coercive State Capacity, and Its Effects on Human Rights Violations

Description: Scholars generally assume that states are shamed for their own behavior, but they can also be shamed for the lack of investigation for violence perpetrated by domestic non-state actors. I engage this previously-unstudied phenomenon and develop a theory to explain how states will respond to being shamed for failing to control domestic violence. I examine two types of outcomes: the governments' change in behavior, and the accountability efforts against state agents that have abused human rights. … more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Martinez, Melissa
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Animal Rights and Human Responsibilities: Towards a Relational Capabilities Approach in Animal Ethics

Description: In this thesis, I analyze some of the most important contributions concerning the inclusion of animals in the moral and political sphere. Moving from these positions, I suggest that a meaningful consideration of animals' sentience demands a profound, radical political theory which considers animals as moral patients endowed with specific capabilities whose actualization needs to be allowed and/or promoted. Such theory would take human-animal different types of relationships into account to deci… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Guerini, Elena
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Rentier States and Conflict: New Concepts, Different Perspectives

Description: Since the 1970s, a curious phenomenon has emerged, suggesting that resource rich countries are "cursed" by their resources. Over the last couple of decades, researchers have argued that rentier countries are more likely to have educational underachievement, the Dutch disease, corruption, slower democratization, and conflict. Although current research has proven helpful and productive, some aspects still remain contested in both theoretical and empirical terms. This dissertation aims to fill cer… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Ozsut, Melda
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Rivers, Mountains, and Everything in Between: How Terrain Affects Interstate Territorial Disputes

Description: Geography has been a central element in shaping conflict through the ages, and is especially important in determining which states fight, why they fight, when they fight, and more importantly, where they fight. Despite this, conflict literature has primarily focused on human geography while largely ignoring the geospatial context of ‘where' conflict occurs, or crucially, doesn't occur. Territorial disputes are highly salient issues that quite often result in militarized disputes. Terrain has… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Burggren, Tyler Matthew Goodman
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

To Intervene or Not to Intervene: How State Capacity Affects State Intervention and Communal Violence

Description: How does state capacity affect the state's ability to intervene in events of communal violence? Communal violence is conflict that occurs between two non-state groups that share a communal identity. The state controls the monopoly on the use of force, so it should be expected that the state will control these violent events. Research on intervention has shown that a state's military is an important indication of their ability to intervene. The study of other elements of state capacity such as t… more
Date: May 2018
Creator: Wilson, Alexander C.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

When Race Matters: The Influence of Race on Case Clearances in Capital vs. Non-Capital Homicides in Texas

Description: Texas leads the nation in the number of executions carried out since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Race was a key factor in the 1972 moratorium, and though the Supreme Court allowed for its return under new statutes, race continues to plague the capital punishment legal system. In this study, I examine the influence of race on case clearances in capital and non-capital homicides in Texas, using the extra-legal and non-discretionary theories from existing clearance literature. I fin… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Samaniego, Rebekah
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Crossing Over: Essays on Ethnic Parties, Electoral Politics, and Ethnic Social Conflict

Description: This dissertation analyzes several topics related to political life in ethnically divided societies. In chapter 2, I study the relationship between ethnic social conflict, such as protests, riots, and armed inter-ethnic violence, and bloc partisan identification. I find that protests have no effect on bloc support for political parties, riots increase bloc partisan identification, and that armed violence reduces this phenomenon. In chapter 3, I analyze the factors that influence the targeting o… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Stewart, Brandon
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Elections and Authoritarian Rule: Causes and Consequences of Adoption of Grassroots Elections in China

Description: This dissertation investigates the relationship between elections and authoritarian rule with a focus on the case of China's adoption of elections at the grassroots level. In this dissertation, I look at the incentives facing Chinese local governments in choosing between holding competitive elections or state-controlled elections, and how the selection of electoral rules shapes the public's preferences over political institutions and influences the citizens' political behaviors, especially voti… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Tzeng, Wei Feng
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The King Arrives: Chinese Government Inspections and Their Effects

Description: This dissertation studies a critical facet of Chinese politics, inspections by higher Chinese government to villages. Principally, it looks at how village economic development determines government inspection decisions and how inspections, once conducted, impact village politics. Specifically, I argue that villages perceived as destabilizing to the Chinese regime, villages with higher levels of economic inequality and villages located at the two extremes of economic development, should see more… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Xi, Jinrui
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
Back to Top of Screen