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open access

Changing Ideological Boots: Adaptive Legislator Behavior in Changing Districts

Description: Congressional roll-call votes are often used to investigate legislative voting behavior. To depict adaptive roll-call behavior in response to demographic changes that occur during redistricting, I use issue specific interest group scores from the ADA, NFU, and COPE. This exploits the bias in the selection of the issues that interest groups utilize to rate U.S. representatives, by using them to reflect changes in response to significant demographic fluctuations in the constituency population. T… more
Date: August 2002
Creator: Dunaway, Johanna
open access

Child Soldiers and Intrastate Armed Conflicts: An Analysis of the Recruitments of Child Soldiers in Civil Wars Between 2001 and 2003.

Description: This thesis examines why some governments and rebel organizations but not others recruit children to be child soldiers. The theory posits that if a country fights in a civil war of long duration, armed groups are more likely to recruit children as soldiers. I find that the probability of child soldier recruitment increases when a country experiences following conditions: a longer duration of civil war, a large proportion of battle deaths, a large number of refugees, a high infant mortality rate… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Samphansakul, Attaphorn
open access

Clenching the Fists of Dissent: Political Unrest, Repression, and the Evolution to Civil War

Description: Previous scholarship has long concentrated on the behaviors of belligerents during regime-dissident interactions. While much of the progress in the literature concentrated on the micro-level processes of this relationship, little research has focused on providing a theoretical reasoning on why belligerents choose to act in a particular manner. This project attempts to open the black box of decision making for regimes and dissidents during regime-dissident interactions in order to provide a theo… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Backstrom, Jeremy R.
open access

Collaboration among Conflict Management Practitioners and Human Rights Advocacy Groups

Description: In a civil war, conflict management practitioners are concerned with bringing the conflict to an end and providing security for civilians. Similarly, human rights advocacy groups are also concerned with minimizing civilian harm. Given the similar intentions of these actors in civil war states, this dissertation explores under what circumstances conflict management practitioners and human rights advocacy groups collaborate. First, I compare to what extent mediation and peacekeeping cases differ… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Akyol, Seyma N.
open access

The Commander's Sword & the Executive's Pen: Presidential Success in Congress and the Use of Force.

Description: Post-force congressional rally effects are presented as a new incentive behind presidential decisions to use diversionary behavior. Using all key roll call votes in the House and Senate where the president has taken a position for the years 1948 to 1993, presidents are found to receive sharp decreases in both presidential support and success in Congress shortly after employing aggressive policies abroad. Evidence does suggest that presidents are able to capitalize on higher levels of congressio… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Ragland, James Deen
open access

Communication Flow, Information Exchange and Their Impact on Human Rights Violations

Description: Although international human rights declarations exist, violations of human rights are still sad but also common facts around the world. But for repressive regimes, it becomes more and more difficult to hide committed human rights violations, since society entered the "Information Revolution." This study argues that the volume of international information exchanged influences a country's human rights record. A pooled cross sectional time series regression model with a lagged endogenous variable… more
Date: May 1996
Creator: Bonn, Georg
open access

A Comparative Study of Terrorism in Southwest Asia 1968-1982

Description: This study assumes that political terrorism results from conscious decision-making by groups opposing a governing system, policy or process. The kinds of terrorist activity employed depend upon such factors as the philosophy, goals, objectives, and needs of the terrorist group. This presents a comparative analysis of three types of terrorists in southwest Asia: Palestinians, Marxist-Leninists, and Muslims. The first section summarizes and compares the three groups' motivational causes, philosop… more
Date: August 1990
Creator: Zonozy, Nassrullah Y. (Nassrullah Yeganeh)
open access

A Comparison of Thailand's Relations with the United States and China, 1965-1975

Description: This thesis compares Thailand',s relations with the United States and China from 196541975, The realist as-sumes that the structure of power in the internationall system determines overall relations between states' First, this study describes the power situation in southeast Asia in 1965, The next steps are concerned with the study of Thai-U, S. relations and Thai-Chinese relations, The thesis finds that Thailand's relations with the United States and China are determined by the structure of po… more
Date: August 1978
Creator: Charoenratha, Benjavan
open access

A Comparison of the Performance of the Radical and Conservative Models of Economic Development in the Carribean Basin

Description: The present study is an attempt to compare the performance of two competing models of economic development-- the conservative and radical models. The conservative model is represented by the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras; the radical model is represented by Cuba. The following chapters focus on a comparison of these models as they have manifested themselves in the Carribean basin. The analysis of the performance of the models is conducted by comparing socioe… more
Date: December 1987
Creator: Alfaro, Alban Salazar
open access

Concerning Millennials: Exploring Generational Cohort Effects on Racial Linked Fate, Religion and Politics, and Support for American Civil Liberities

Description: This research examines the political implications of the Millennial generation on American politics by exploring the interaction of generational cohort with race, social issues, and civil liberties. Relying on the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey and the 2018 General Social Survey, I examine (1) Millennial attitudes toward race and ethnicity by looking specifically at racial linked fate, (2) how Millennials interact with race and evangelical Christianity and how this interact… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Molinar, J. Antonio
open access

Contemporary Patterns of Democratic Norms and Political Participation in Mexico

Description: Mexico's cultural norms have been the subject of repeated inquiries because democratic and authoritarian patterns appear concomitantly. However, few have focused on the potential demographic and contextual sources of these divergent results. This study attempts to clarify the sources of Mexico's political culture, and then determine the extent to which these factors affect political participation. Statistical analysis of a LAPOP dataset from 2006 makes limited progress to this end. The sour… more
Date: August 2008
Creator: Ramsey, Adam Perry
open access

Context Matters: How Feminist Movements Magnify Feminist Opinion of Progressive Policies in South America

Description: What explains the inconsistency of female empowerment in South America, despite high levels of institutional inclusion? Generally, the social sciences tend to lean on the tenets of liberal feminism in order to measure the development of gender-inclusive policy changes; however, their findings indicate that higher levels of institutional inclusion does not necessarily translate into the empowerment of women as a group. Further, within political science, there is little research addressing the re… more
Date: August 2016
Creator: Ferris, Rachel E.
open access

Contextualizing the Law: Sentencing Decisions of Sexual Assault Cases of Dallas County, 1999-2005

Description: The incidence of sexual assault inundates the courts with many cases each year. Given the unique nature of the crime, judges and juries are faced with an array of different scenarios to which they are required to make fair, justifiable and consistent decisions. I examine child sexual assault cases of Dallas County 1999-2005, I look at both legal and extralegal factors including case characteristics, institutional characteristics and characteristics of the defendants and the victims. First, I ex… more
Date: December 2006
Creator: Greening, Megan
open access

Cost of Issuing Debt: An Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Net Interest Cost of State Bonds

Description: The major purpose of this dissertation is to explore the determinants of interest cost for state bonds. Various kinds of variables pertaining to issue characteristics, market characteristics, economic conditions, and political variables were statistically tested to assess their impact on the interest cost of state bonds. This research examines the variables found to be significant for local bonds, as well as some factors unique to state bonds, e.g., the types state agencies issuing debt and th… more
Date: December 1995
Creator: Chen, Li-Kanz
open access

The Counterinsurgency Dilemma: The Causes and Consequences of State Repression of Human Rights in Civil Wars

Description: In this project a theory of adaptive differential insurgency growth by the mechanism of repression driven contagion is put forth to explain variation in the membership and spatial expansion of insurgencies from 1981 to 1999. As an alternative to the dominant structural approaches in the civil war literature, Part 1 of the study proposes an interactive model of insurgency growth based on Most and Starr's opportunity and willingness framework. The findings suggest that state capacity, via its imp… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Quinn, Jason Michael
open access

A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Samuel P. Huntington on Political Stability and Violence

Description: Samuel P. Huntington has argued that political stability is dependent on the degree of institutionalization of participation in the political system. Critical analysis of hypotheses reveals serious flaws in his logic. His concepts were shown to be very hard to make operational and to test. The main hypothesis of a direct relationship between institutionalization and stability was shown to be influenced most likely by additional intervening variables. This study seeks to survey and analyze some… more
Date: May 1975
Creator: Stansell, Loran Wade
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
open access

The Dallas Morning News' View Towards International Relations

Description: The purpose of this study is to determine, if possible, North Central Texas views or attitudes toward international relations. These attitudes will be compared to studies on Southern attitudes to determine any similarities or dissimilarities. Literature on Southwestern attitudes is sparse; therefore, all data will be compared with that compiled by political scientists on Southern attitudes.
Date: August 1970
Creator: Bradley, James E.
open access

Dangerous Changes? The Effect of Political Regime Changes on Life Integrity Violations, 1977-1993

Description: This study develops a model of different types of political regime changes and their effect on life integrity violations. The data covers 147 countries from 1977-1993. Basic bivariate analyses and multivariate pooled cross-sectional time series analyses employing Ordinary Least Squares regression with panel-corrected standard errors are used. The results show that political regime change in general has no effect on state-sponsored violence. Looking at different types of regime changes, the regr… more
Date: August 1998
Creator: Zanger, Sabine C. (Sabine Carmen)
open access

Dealignment Decades on: Partisanship and Party Support in Great Britain, 1979-1996

Description: This dissertation surveys electoral change in Great Britain during the period between 1979 and 1996. It analyzes the long-term factors and the short-term dynamics underlying the evolution of three aspects of the electorate: party identification, voting intentions and party support in inter-election periods. Drawing on cross-sectional and panel data from the British Election Studies and public opinion polls, I investigate the impacts of long-term socialization and short-term perceptions on voter… more
Date: December 1996
Creator: Ho, Karl Ka-yiu
open access

Decision-Making at the Court of Appeals Level Involving Religious Liberty Cases

Description: Many studies have been completed on factors affecting judicial decisions. Studies have focused on civil rights cases, economic cases, criminal cases, sexual discrimination and obscenity cases, but no work has specifically looked at religious liberty cases. This work examines the factors affecting United States Courts of Appeals judges' decision-making in religious liberty cases. I hypothesize that gender, race, religious background, prior judicial experience, circuit, region and litigant status… more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Reeves, Susan Kay

Democratic Pantheism in the Political Theory of Alexis de Tocqueville

Description: According to Alexis de Tocqueville, humanity is entering a new age of political and social equality, a new epoch in which the human race has no historical example or experience. As a result, he holds humanity's future will be largely determined by the political and moral choices made in this transitional time. For Tocqueville, the new egalitarian era is a forgone conclusion, but for him, the pressing question is whether humanity will choose a future in which it enchains itself to new forms of … more
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Date: May 2006
Creator: Bearry, Brian Anthony
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