UNT Theses and Dissertations - 47 Matching Results

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Strategies for Attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): Assessing the Effectiveness of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Mechanisms in the International Capital Markets

Description: Post-civil conflict nations have a strong incentive to attract foreign capital because it is vital for redevelopment and economic growth which in turn reduce the likelihood of conflict resumption. Although foreign investors tend to be risk averse and view states that have recently experienced conflict to be high risk environments, this paper argues that power-sharing mechanisms address the roots of civil dissent and therefore provide a positive signal to potential investors. By focusing on a pa… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Nnoke, Ariella Joan
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Locke and Penal Labor

Description: Interest and concern about penitential labor practices has been growing among scholars recently. The relationship of these practices to the principles of American liberalism, and in particular its Lockean roots, have not been thoroughly studied. The present investigation traces contemporary practices to features of Lockean liberalism, and offers suggestions for how to respond to widely acknowledged deficiencies while remaining within the broadly accepted principles laid out by Locke. The adv… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: McGuffee, Alaina Grace
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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Explanation for the Variation of Women’s Rights Among Moderate Muslim Countries

Description: Due to the actions of radicals and extremists, many in the West have come to view Islam as a religion of gender inequality that perpetuates the severe oppression of women. However, there is actually great variation in women’s rights across Muslim countries. This thesis presents a theoretical framework seeking to explain this variation, by examining differences in family law. The theory supposes that variation can be explained by the strategic actions of political leaders. From this theory, I hy… more
Date: May 2012
Creator: Sortor, Angela E.
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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
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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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The use of democratic institutions as a strategy to legitimize authoritarian rule.

Description: Numerous authoritarian states use institutions usually associated with democratic regimes like a constitution, elections, and a legislature. This seems to be counterintuitive. Authoritarian regimes should rather shrink away from democratic institutions. Elections can be won by the opposition and legislatures can make decisions against the interests of the ruler. So, why do autocratic regimes install institutions which limit their power and threaten their survival in office? Assuming actors beha… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Michalik, Susanne
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Who Benefits? The Effects of Foreign Aid and Foreign Direct Investment on Human Rights

Description: The global emphasis on human rights has generated a surge of studies into what causes regimes to abuse the basic rights of their citizens. Causes of abuse can be internal or external in nature, based on economics, politics or cultures. This study examines the effects of foreign aid and foreign direct investment on three types of human rights: personal integrity, civil and political, and subsistence. I perform ordinary least squares regression analyses with panel-corrected standard errors on a p… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Moses, Misty
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Institutions and Drug Markets

Description: This thesis examines how drug policy and enforcement affect drug manufacturers. The approach taken is a comparative institutional analysis of cannabis and methamphetamine production. I focus on the effects of prohibition, privacy, and clandestine markets on producer behavior for these two drugs and the unintended consequences that result. I demonstrate that cannabis and methamphetamine producers both face substantial transaction costs and that producers alter their behavior to manage these tran… more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Haddock, Billy Dean
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Religious Engagement and Social Capital in the Islamic Context

Description: Social capital research has traditionally been conducted in western and Christian settings as a precursor of changes such as democratization and development. This paper focuses on Islamic religious engagement and its potential to foster social capital. The model presented here is designed to suggest whether the Islam's influence occurs through doctrinal channels, or through Islam's capacity to organize social structures. The analysis conducted is a linear regression model with measures of socia… more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Brigaitis, Peter
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Weak states, human rights violations, and the outbreak of civil war.

Description: In recent years, explanations for the occurrence of civil war have mainly emphasized state weakness as providing an opportunity for greed-based rebellions. Yet, this explanation leaves many questions open, as it cannot distinguish between weak states that do and those that do not experience civil war. In this paper, I argue that abuses of personal integrity rights, committed or sponsored by the government, provide this missing link. The theory is illustrated and formalized in a game-theoretic m… more
Date: May 2005
Creator: Rost, Nicolas
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The Impact of Gender on Domestic Human Rights Abuse

Description: This study develops three models of human rights determinants with the inclusion an untested variable, women in parliaments. The research is conducted on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 130 countries between 1978 and 1996. For the purpose of analysis the Prais-Winsten Regression method with Panel Corrected Standard Errors was used. The women in power variable is hypothesized to be significantly, positively correlated with a state's propensity toward respect for human rights and is … more
Date: May 2004
Creator: Godwin, Donna D.
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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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Extreme Politics: An Analysis of the State Level Conditions Favoring Far Right Parties in the European Union

Description: Three models are developed to analyze the state level conditions fostering the rise of far right parties in the European Union in the last two decades. The political background of these parties is examined. This study offers a definition for far right parties, which combines several previous attempts. The research has focused on the effects of the number of the parties, immigration, and unemployment on support for the far right in Europe. Empirical tests, using a random effects model of fifty e… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Smith, Jason Matthew
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The Political Economy of Organizational Expansion. Finding the Link Between Insider and Outsider in the European Union

Description: Scholars often address the process of enlargement as one-sided argument. This work provides a general theory of organizational expansion by including strategies and actions of both, applicant states and members of international organizations. It is argued that dependent on the domestic characteristics of states an organization strategically implement a set of conditions to avoid the application and admission of states, which are either not able to conform with the rules or not willing to pay th… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Schneider, Christina J.
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Strategic Versus Sincere Behavior: The Impact of Issue Salience and Congress on the Supreme Court Docket

Description: The theory proposed here is that the Supreme Court behaves in a strategic manner at the agenda-setting stage in order to vote sincerely on the merits. To test this, I measure the impact issue salience and ideological distance between Congress and the Supreme Court has on the agenda. The results indicate that whether the Supreme Court behaves either sincerely or strategically depends on the policy area. The strategic nature of the Supreme Court at the agenda-setting phase may be in large part wh… more
Date: May 2002
Creator: Williams, Jeffrey David
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Language Policy, Protest and Rebellion

Description: The hypothesis that language discrimination contributes to protest and/or rebellion is tested. Constitutional language policy regarding administrative/judicial, educational and other matters is measured on three separate scales developed for this study; the status of each minority group's language under its country's policy is measured by another set of scales. Protest and rebellion variables are taken from Gurr's Minorities at Risk study. Findings include an indication that group language sta… more
Date: May 2001
Creator: Lunsford, Sharon
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"Let the End be Legitimate": An Analysis of Federal District Court Decision Making in Voting Rights Cases, 1965-1993.

Description: Integrated process models that combine both legal and extralegal variables provide a more accurate specification of the judicial decision making process and capture the complexity of the factors that shape judicial behavior. Judicial decision making theories borrow heavily from U.S. Supreme Court research, however, such theories may not automatically be applicable to the lower federal bench. The author uses vote dilution cases originating in the federal district courts from the years 1965 to 19… more
Date: May 1998
Creator: Morbitt, Jennifer Marie
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Resource Evaluation and Presidential Decision-making: Predicting the Use of Force by U.S. Presidents, 1976 - 1988

Description: In order to explain presidential decisions to use force, a model is developed that incorporates three distinct decision-making environments. The results indicate the president is responsive not only to domestic and international environments, but also to the resource evaluation environment. The evidence here demonstrates that while these two environments are important the president can't use force arbitrarily; rather, his evaluation of resources available for the use of force can limit his abil… more
Date: May 1997
Creator: Waterman, Peter A. (Peter Alan)
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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