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Developing Capacity: The IMF's Impact on State Capacity

Description: The purpose of this thesis is to examine the impact of International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans since the adoption of the governance mandate on overall government capability. The study will explore whether the presence of IMF loans in developing countries enhances state capacity. Administrative capacity is of particular importance because it is a requisite for the integration of state and society in the national political arena and encourages joint involvement of government and citizenry in over… more
Date: December 2006
Creator: Harper, Christine
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Development and Change in International Regimes: the Case of International Lending

Description: The present study is an attempt to better understand change in international relations through utilization of the concept of international regimes. The following chapters focus on creation of the international lending regime and change that has occurred within this regime. The work begins by reviewing the regime literature, noting definitional and conceptual problems of the approach. The review concludes with examples of regime scholarship that are utilized through the rest of the study. Examin… more
Date: May 1987
Creator: Key, James Scott
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The Development and Implementation of Federal Policy Concerning Health Maintenance Organizations

Description: There is some controversy which centers around the question of whether a particular government policy or program may be Judged successful. This dissertation takes the position, with due respect to the difficulties of such a task, that policy success can be evaluated and that it is important that such evaluations be made. Traditionally, health care in the United States has been delivered by the solo medical practitioner on a fee-for-service basis. A relatively new concept in the health care deli… more
Date: August 1980
Creator: Enochs, David H.
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The Dichotomy of Congressional Approval

Description: This thesis seeks to understand how political awareness affects what information one uses to indicate their approval or disapproval of Congress and its members. More concisely, do more and less aware individuals rely on the same pieces of political information to mold their opinions of Congress? The second question of concern is what role does media consumption play in informing survey respondents about Congress. Third, I consider how survey respondents use cues like the condition of the econom… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Moti, Danish Saleem
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A Different Kind of Political Party: The Relationship between Tabletop Role Playing Games and Political Efficacy

Description: Tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) present a unique opportunity to study political behavior. In educational settings, role-playing games (RPGs) of all kinds have proven to be valuable educational tools, and even when played for fun, participating in role playing games has been shown to increase one's level of confidence. Knowing this, I designed an experiment to attempt to increase internal political efficacy through the use of a politically-themed TRPG. I took inspiration from the original TR… more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Plaxco, Sarah Ellen
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Discovery of Resources and Conflict in the Interstate System, 1816-2001

Description: This study tests a theory detailing the increased likelihood of conflict following an initial resource discovery in the discovering nation and its region. A survey of prior literature shows a multitude of prior research concerning resources and nations' willingness to initiate conflict over those resources, but this prior research lacks any study concerning the effects of the discovery of resources on interstate conflict. The theory discusses the increased likelihood of conflict in the discov… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Clark, Bradley
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Do As They Say, and As They Do: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Norm Influence on Truth Commission Initiation, 1976-2003

Description: Truth commissions are bodies established in political transition, and they have the stated purpose of reckoning with human rights abuses committed by members of former regimes. The question driving this research is "Why have truth commissions increased so rapidly in the last 20 years?" This study moves beyond current research, which suggests that particular domestic political circumstances alone determine choice of transitional justice mechanisms. I argue that an international rule of behav… more
Date: August 2006
Creator: Dancy, Geoffrey Thomas
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Do Different Political Regime Types Use Foreign Aid Differently to Improve Human Development?

Description: Existing literature on foreign aid does not indicate what type of political regime is best to achieve human development outcomes or use aid funds more efficiently. I contend that political leaders of different regime types have personal incentives that motivate them to utilize foreign aid to reflect their interests in providing more or less basic social services for their citizens. Using a data set of 126 aid-recipient countries between the years of 1990 and 2007, I employ fixed effects estima… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Phan, Thu Anh
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Does Cultural Heterogeneity Lead to Lower Levels of Regime Respect for Basic Human Rights?

Description: This dissertation is a cross-national investigation of the relationship between cultural heterogeneity and regimes' respect for basic human rights. The quantitative human rights literature has not yet addressed the question of whether high levels of cultural diversity are beneficial or harmful. My research addresses this gap. I address the debate between those who argue that diversity is negatively related to basic human rights protection and those who argue it is likely to improve respect for … more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Walker, Scott
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Does Euroscepticism Matter? the Effect of Public Opinion on Integration

Description: This dissertation seeks to test the proposition that public opinion is a driving force in integration, and thus examines the effect of euroscepticism on EU integration. Utilizing an understanding of integration as the process of European states achieving similar legal, social, cultural, political and economic policy outcomes while ceding greater policy power to European institutions, the relationship between aggregate level euroscepticism in EU member states (the United Kingdom, Germany, Irela… more
Date: December 2012
Creator: Williams, Christopher J.
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Does Gender Representation Matter? Gender, Descriptive and Substantive Representation, and Women-Friendly Districts

Description: This dissertation considers how district-level demographic factors favorable to women congressional candidates facilitate substantive representation of women's interests. I contribute to the existing research by linking the literature on women candidate emergence and electoral success with that on descriptive and substantive representation. Beyond simply asking whether and how women in Congress represent women's interests, I argue that the demographic characteristics of districts in which women… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Friesenhahn, Amy
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Does Natural Resource Wealth Spoil and Corrupt Governments? A New Test of the Resource Curse Thesis

Description: Countries with rich natural resource endowments suffer from lower economic growth and various other ills. This work tests whether the resource curse also extends to the quality of regulation and the level of corruption. A theoretical framework is developed that informs the specification of interactive random effects models. A cross-national panel data set is used to estimate these models. Due to multicollinearity, only an effect of metals and ores exports on corruption can be discerned. Margina… more
Date: August 2004
Creator: Petrovsky, Nicolai
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Does Policy Lead to Progress? An Investigation into the Relationship between Women-Friendly Policies and Women's Descriptive Representation

Description: It is generally accepted among scholars that increases in descriptive representation result in increases in substantive representation. Although women's descriptive representation has increased in recent years, women are still underrepresented in politics. One reason for women's underrepresentation is that female candidates must overcome additional barriers in order to get elected, including on the low number of women in the pipeline to elected office, party gatekeeping, women's lower levels of… more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Lambert, Jessica Rudd
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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Domestic Influences for Interstate Cooperation: Do Domestic Conditions Affect the Occurrence of Cooperative Events in Democratic Regimes?

Description: This research addressed two main issues that have become evident in studies of interstate cooperation. The first issue has to do with the relationship between cooperation and conflict. Can they be represented on a single, uni-dimensional continuum, or are they better represented by two theoretically and empirically separable dimensions? Granger causality tests were able to clarify the nature of cooperative events. The second issue is related to factors that might facilitate or discourage cooper… more
Date: August 2004
Creator: Yi, Seong-Woo
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Domestic Politics of Entering International Communities: An Exploratory Analysis

Description: In the last thirty years, there has been a significant increase in the globalization process, or as other refer to it, the internationalization, free trade, or liberalization. This trend was reflected in the increasing number of newly formed international organization (economic and security) as well as in the increased membership in the already existing ones. The evidence of this trend has been particularly visible since the end of the Cold War, when the race of the Eastern European countries t… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Radin, Dagmar
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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
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Ecological Sustainability and Peace: The Effect of Ecological Sustainability on Interstate and Intrastate Environmental Conflict

Description: This study examines the relationship between ecological sustainability and violent conflict at both the interstate and intrastate level. In particular, this study explores the effect of ecological sustainability of a society on the initiation and the occurrence of violent conflict. By developing a theory, which is named "Eco-peace," this study hypothesizes that the more ecologically sustainable the socioeconomic system of societies, the less likely the society is to initiate interstate conflict… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Yoon, Jong-Han
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Economic Development, Social Dislocation and Political Turmoil in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis and a Test of Causality

Description: This study focuses on economic development and political turmoil in post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa. There has been a resurgence of interest in the region following the end of the Cold War. In 1997 U.S. president Bill Clinton took a 12-day tour of the region. In 1999 the U.S. Congress (106th Congress) passed the Growth and Opportunity Act and the Hope for Africa Act, designed to encourage political stability and economic development in the region. Although most Sub-Saharan African countrie… more
Date: December 2000
Creator: Obi, Zion Ikechukwu
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Effect of American Political Party on Electoral Behavior: an Application of the Voter Decision Rule to the 1952-1988 Presidential Elections

Description: The purpose of this study is to examine two major psychological determinants of the vote in presidential elections - candidate image and party orientation. The central thesis of this study is that candidate image, as measured here, has been a greater determinant of electoral choice in the majority of presidential elections since 1952 than has party orientation. One of the vices as well as virtues of a democratic society is that the people often get what they want. This is especially true in the… more
Date: August 1990
Creator: Lewis, Ted Adam
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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
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Electoral Behavior in Texas from 1944 Through 1972

Description: "This report concludes that the evidence from the analyses seems to support the following propositions in regard to Texas electoral behavior. (1) The 1956 election year was a critical election year in Texas. (2) A pattern indicative of an underlying economic liberalism-conservatism was present in Texas voting patterns from 1944 through 1956, but not after. (3) The Mexican-American and German counties experienced political realignment in 1956 which continued through 1972. (4) The counties afford… more
Date: August 1973
Creator: Dickenson, Martha Kay
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Electoral Rules, Political Parties, and Peace Duration in Post-conflict States

Description: This dissertation examines the following research question: Which types of electoral rules chosen in post-conflict states best promote peace? And are those effects conditional upon other factors? I argue that the effects are conditional upon the types of political parties that exist in the post-conflict environment. Although this explanation is contrary to scholars that speak of political parties as products of the electoral system, political parties often predate the choice of electoral system… more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Kisin, Tatyana Tuba Kelman
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Electoral System Effects On Anti-muslim Sentiments In Western Europe

Description: The purpose of this thesis is to answer the question, why is there a variation in anti-Muslim sentiments across Western Europe? There is existing literature on individual and country-level variable s to explain why prejudice exists, but this research examines the impact of political institutions on anti-Muslim sentiments. Based on new institutionalism theory, electoral systems can shape public attitudes by providing far-right parties a platform to put their concerns on the agenda, and these par… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Saleemi, Asmara
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Elite Management Strategies under Dictatorships and Their Determinants

Description: This dissertation attempts to uncover systematic patterns regarding elite management in dictatorships. To do so, it describes how dictators manage their elites and what factors determine the outcomes of their decision. Although considerable literature has examined the various structural features of dictatorships and has identified different elite management strategies to explain the persistence of dictatorships, few, if any, have empirically tested any of the theoretical propositions generated … more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Kim, Taekbin
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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