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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
open access

Increasing the Players: Expanding the Bilateral Relationship of Conflict Management

Description: This research seeks to explore the behavior of international and regional organizations within conflict management. Previous research on conflict management primarily examines UN peacekeeping as the primary actor and lumps all non-UN actors into a single category. I disaggregate this category, examining how international and regional organizations interact when deciding to establish a peace mission, coordinate a peace mission with multiple organizations, and finally, how this interaction affe… more
Date: May 2014
Creator: Stull, Emily A.
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Inside the Third Sector: a Gongo Level Analysis of Chinese Civil Society

Description: This thesis investigates a new variant of the relationship between society and the states: Government-Owned (or Organized) Non-Governmental Organizations (GONGOs). Past research has typically understood civil society as a means to explain the orientation of groups of citizens towards collective outcomes. For decades, NGOs have been a key component of this relationship between political actors but the systematic study of GONGOs has been widely neglected by research. I used an original dataset co… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Kirby, John Brandon
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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International Learning and the Diffusion of Civil Conflict

Description: Why does civil conflict spread from country to country? Existing research relies primarily on explanations of rebel mobilization tied to geographic proximity to explain this phenomenon. However, this approach is unable to explain why civil conflict appears to spread across great geographic distances, and also neglects the government’s role in conflict. To explain this phenomenon, this dissertation formulates an informational theory in which individuals contemplating rebellion against their gove… more
Date: August 2014
Creator: Linebarger, Christopher
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Issue with Latino Voter Turnout: How Does the Issue of Immigration Affect Latino Voter Turnout?

Description: In this study, I investigate how the issue of immigration affects Latino voter turnout. I hypothesize that U.S. Latino citizens who view immigration as highly important and helpful to the United States will be more likely to turn out to vote in midterm and presidential elections. In addition to a contextual analysis on elections in Arizona and California, I perform a probit regression analysis on survey data from Pew Hispanic's 2004 National Survey of Latinos on Politics and Civic Participati… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Robert, John M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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
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Knowing What is Useful: Rousseau's Education Concerning Being, Science, and Happiness

Description: Is there a relationship between science and happiness and, if so, what is it? Clearly, since the Enlightenment, science has increased life expectancy and bodily comfort. Is this happiness, or do humans long for something more? To examine these questions, I investigate the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Specifically, I focus on the Discourses and the Emile, as he states in the Confessions that these works form a whole statement concerning the natural goodness of man. I agree with the literature… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Gross, Benjamin Isaak
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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
open access

Minority Hiv Rates, Inequality, and the Politics of Aids Funding

Description: Since the 1990s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has increasingly impacted minority groups in the United States, particularly African Americans. Why is this happening? Comparative studies of developing nations have convincingly established a relationship between concentrated poverty, ethnic boundaries, and lack of effective governmental response as contributing to high levels of infection in those countries. To date, however, no study has sought to apply these insights to the American context. This disse… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Miles, Thomas
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Montesquieu, Diversity, and the American Constitutional Debate

Description: It has become something of a cliché for contemporary scholars to assert that Madison turned Montesquieu on his head and thereafter give little thought to the Frenchman’s theory that republics must remain limited in territorial size. Madison did indeed present a formidable challenge to Montesquieu’s theory, but I will demonstrate in this dissertation that the authors of the Federalist Papers arrived at the extended sphere by following a theoretical pathway already cemented by the French philosop… more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Drummond, Nicholas W.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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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
open access

New Rules to an Old Game: Electoral Reforms and Post-Civil War Stability

Description: One of the most common features found within peace agreements are provisions that call for post-civil war elections. Unfortunately, recent research on post-civil war stability has consistently demonstrated that the initial elections held after civil wars significantly increases the risk for renewed fighting. While this research does highlight a danger posed by post-war elections, it focuses only on one element associated with post-civil war democracy. I argue that by implementing electoral refo… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Keels, Eric
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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New Wine in Old Wineskins: Hobbes’s Use and Abuse of Religious Rhetoric

Description: Thomas Hobbes’s knowledge of religious doctrine, typology, and use religious rhetoric in his writings is often glossed over in an over-eager attempt to establish his preeminence as a founder of modern political theory and the social contract tradition. Such action, however is an injustice to Hobbes himself, who recognized that in order to establish a new, and arguably radical, political position founded upon reason and nominalist materialism he had to reform people’s understanding of religious … more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Higgins, Nicholas J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Newspaper Ownership Structure and the Quality of Local Political News Coverage

Description: This research sought to ascertain how newspaper ownership structures influence the quality of local political news coverage. More specifically, do independently owned newspapers tend to produce larger quantities of quality local political reporting than do corporately owned and publicly traded newspapers? In the thesis, I develop an understanding of "quality" news coverage as being coverage that is thematic, or providing interpretive analysis and supplying contextual information. Additionally,… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Clark, Karla Christine Marie
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

No Greater Error: Negotiated Agreements and Their Effects on the Conclusion of Interstate War

Description: Negotiated settlements, formal treaties to unilateral cease-fires, are often accepted to be the preferable method to end war. When negotiated agreements are used in the normal business of international politics they can be potentially helpful devices; however, when they are relied upon for a nation's security or war prevention and conclusion they can prove disastrous. It is the presence of force variables, and not the formality of an agreement which effectively concludes a war. I recategorize … more
Date: December 2012
Creator: Kendall, David F.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Not All Truth Commissions Are Alike: Understanding Their Limitations and Impact

Description: This dissertation project develops a theoretical understanding of how truth commissions achieve legitimacy and thus contribute to peace and stability in the aftermath of major traumatic events (e.g. civil war, mass killings, regime changes). I identify three components of truth commission legitimacy---authority, fairness, and transparency---that facilitate beneficial outcomes for societies emerging from a period of severe human rights repression or civil war. I theorize and test how institution… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Nichols, Angela D.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Organic-Progressive Principle in the Political Thought and Internationalism of Woodrow Wilson

Description: This is an investigation of the intellectual roots of the political thought and internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eightieth president of the United States. Exposed to the influence of Darwin, Wilson believed that politics had to be redefined as an evolutionary process. the older mechanical understanding of politics was to be replaced with an organic understanding of political development. This allowed Wilson to synthesize a concept of politics that included elements from the Chr… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Flanagan, John Patrick
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Plebiscites

Description: This study investigates factors that can influence leaders to use plebiscites to settle territorial claims. A quick survey of the plebiscite literature shows that the method has been extensively mentioned in the legal, historical, and philosophical fields (mostly through case studies) but less so in political science. This thesis is the first attempt, to my knowledge, to quantitatively investigate the different factors that can influence a leader to use a plebiscite. Using the latest version of… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Fonseca Acosta, Rosa
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Political Determinants of Fdi Location in Prchina, 1997-2009: Application of a New Model to Taiwanese Fdi in Mainland China

Description: This research seeks to identify the political determinants that account for the uneven geographical distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) across Chinese counties. I compare the political determinants of Taiwanese FDI (TDI) and non-Taiwanese FDI site selection across counties in China. I focus on the central-local politics in China, especially the effect of county government autonomy on FDI and TDI site selection. I investigate whether the effect of county government autonomy and i… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Lu, Kelan
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

The Political Philosophy of Rabelais’s Pantagruel: Reconciling Thought and Action

Description: Political thinkers of the Renaissance, foremost among them Niccolò Machiavelli and Desiderius Erasmus, authored works commonly referred to as “mirrors of princes.” These writings described how princes should rule, and also often recommended a certain arrangement or relationship between the intellectual class and the political powers. François Rabelais’s five books of Pantagruel also depict and recommend a new relationship between these elements of society. For Rabelais, the tenets of a philosop… more
Date: August 2015
Creator: Haglund, Timothy
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Post-Civil War Democratization: Domestic and International Factors in Movement Toward and Away from Democracy

Description: Post-civil war democratization is a critical element of building sustainable peace in the post-civil war states. At the same time, studies of democratic transition and survival suggest that the post-civil war environment is not hospitable to either the transition to or survival of democracy. The post-civil war environment is contentious. Former protagonists are fearful about their security and at the same time they want to protect their political and economic interests. The central argument of … more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Joshi, Madhav
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Protests in China: Why and Which Chinese People Go to the Street?

Description: This research seeks to answer why and which Chinese people go to the street to protest. I argue that different sectors of Chinese society differ from each other regarding their tendencies to participate in protest. In addition to their grievances, the incentives to participate in protest and their capacities to overcome the collective action problem all needed to be taken into account. Using individual level data along with ordinary binary logistic regression and multilevel logistic regression … more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Chen, Yen-Hsin
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Relationship between Judicial Independence and Ethnic Conflict

Description: The relationship between judicial independence and the levels of ethnic conflicts in developing countries has remained a significant research area due to increased cases of the conflicts with lack of judicial independence in the countries. Judicial independence is seen as an essential element of democracy in that an independent judiciary can act as an arbiter between different groups and institutions. The main aim of this study was to examine the relationship between judicial independence and … more
Date: May 2017
Creator: Laoye, Oluwagbemiso T.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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