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Financial Transfer and Its Impact on the Level of Democracy: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Time Series Model.

Description: This dissertation is a pooled time series, cross-sectional, quantitative study of the impact of international financial transfer on the level of democracy. The study covers 174 developed and developing countries from 1976 through 1994. Through evaluating the democracy and democratization literature and other studies, the dissertation develops a theory and testable hypotheses about the impact of the international variables foreign aid and foreign direct investment on levels of democracy. This st… more
Date: May 2003
Creator: Al-Momani, Mohammad H.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Revisiting Eric Nordlinger: The Dynamics of Russian Civil- Military Relations in the Twentieth Century

Description: This paper examines the role that military has played in the political development of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the modern Russian Federation. By utilizing the theoretical tenets of Eric Nordlinger, this paper endeavors to update and hopefully revise his classic work in civil-military relations, Soldiers in Politics. Chapter one of this paper introduces many of the main theoretical concepts utilized in this analysis. Chapter two considers the Stalinist totalitarian pene… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Ardovino, Michael
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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The Road to Development is Paved With Good Institutions: The Political and Economic Implications of Financial Markets

Description: This research seeks to identify the factors that account for the variation in development levels across nations by focusing on the institutional components of development, especially the effects of financial market development on economic and political development. I argue that financial market institutions are critical to economic and political development, and provide a partial explanation for the variation in development observed across nations. Financial market development affects politic… more
Date: May 2008
Creator: Brown, Chelsea Denise
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

The Undue Burden Standard: The Effects of Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) on State Abortion Laws

Description: This thesis examines the effects of the change from strict scrutiny to the undue burden standard in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). A history of abortion in the United States and the various ways in which government regulates it is explored. Particular attention is focused on the role of the federal judiciary in abortion regulation. Theories of judicial decision making are discussed as means to understand the outcome of cases. Several models are tested to determine which, if any, model exp… more
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Date: August 2006
Creator: Burlage, G. Rachel
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Politics and the American clergy: Sincere shepherds or strategic saints?

Description: Scholars have evaluated the causes of clergy political preferences and behavior for decades. As with party ID in the study of mass behavior, personal ideological preferences have been the relevant clergy literature's dominant behavioral predictor. Yet to the extent that clergy operate in bounded and specialized institutions, it is possible that much of the clergy political puzzle can be more effectively solved by recognizing these elites as institutionally-situated actors, with their preference… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Calfano, Brian Robert
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Is the Road to Hell Paved with Good Intentions? The Effect of U.S. Foreign Assistance and Economic Policy on Human Rights

Description: Theories in the international political economy literature, economic liberalism and dependency, are explored in order to test the effect of U.S. aid, trade, and investment on human rights conditions in recipient states. Two measures of human rights conditions serve as dependent variables: security rights and subsistence rights. The data cover approximately 140 countries from 1976-1996. Pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, utilizing ordinary least squares (OLS) with panel corrected stand… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Callaway, Rhonda L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Suicide Terrorism: A Future Trend?

Description: This thesis reviews the literature on “new terrorism,” to be differentiated from the “old terrorism.” The study tests two hypotheses. First, has an increase in religiously inspired terrorist groups led to an increase in terrorism's lethality? Second, does suicide bombing as a tactic explain the increased lethality of “new terrorism”? The study demonstrates three findings. First, it was found that religiously inspired terrorist groups are more lethal, though not more indiscriminate. Second, th… more
Date: August 2002
Creator: Capell, Matthew B.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Foucault's Foundationless Democratic Theory

Description: I examine a key shift in Michel Foucault's political philosophy from a position in which he was a staunch anti-humanist, to a final position in which he advocated not only the ability of the subject to influence his political condition, but also the individual freedoms assured by a democratic form of government. I begin by summarizing his overall critique of the post-Enlightenment West, and then explain how his observation of the Iranian Revolution served as a key turning point concerning his a… more
Date: December 2006
Creator: Carter, Kelly A.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

State Level Causes of Terrorism: Limits on Political Expression

Description: Expanding on prior research into the state level causes of terrorism, I argue that state repression and limited state capacity reduces opportunities for non-violent political expression and increases the utility of terrorism. I also argue that economic freedom can is a form of political expression that can dissipate political grievances. While previous authors analyzed some of these variables separately using data on transnational attacks, I created a complete model incorporating the three cat… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Case, Erik S.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Unexpected Unexpected Utilities: A Comparative Case-Study Analysis of Women and Revolutions

Description: Women have been part of modern revolutions since the American Revolution against Great Britain. Most descriptions and analyses of revolution relegate women to a supporting role, or make no mention of women's involvement at all. This work differs from prior efforts in that it will explore one possible explanation for the successes of three revolutions based upon the levels of women's support for those revolutions. An analysis of the three cases (Ireland, Russia, and Nicaragua) suggests a series… more
Date: December 2000
Creator: Casey, Walter Thomas
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Saying Sorry: Conflict Atrocity and Political Apology

Description: This study proposes and tests a comprehensive theory detailing the motivations behind political apologies. A brief survey of the literature shows a field rich in case studies but lacking in rigorous scientific analysis. The theory presented proposes a three-level examination of political apology at the state, dyadic, and system levels and incorporates the effects of culture, conflict, and the nature of the international system into analysis. This study makes use of a new dataset recording th… more
Date: August 2009
Creator: Chalkley, Marie Leone
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Rubber Stamps and Litmus Tests: The President, the Senate, and Judicial Voting Behavior in Abortion Cases in the U.S. Federal District Courts

Description: This thesis focuses on how well indicators of judicial ideology and institutional constraints predict whether a judge will vote to increase abortion access. I develop a model that evaluates a judge's decision in an abortion case in light of ideological factors measured at the time of a judge's nomination to the bench and legal and institutional constraints at the time a judge decides a case. I analyze abortion cases from all of the U.S. Federal District Courts from 1973-2004. Unlike previous st… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Craig, McKinzie
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

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
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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Letters, Liberty, and the Democratic Age in the Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville

Description: When Alexis de Tocqueville observed the spread of modern democracy across France, England, and the United States, he saw that democracy would give rise to a new state of letters, and that this new state of letters would influence how democratic citizens and statesmen would understand the new political world. As he reflected on this new intellectual sphere, Tocqueville became concerned that democracy would foster changes in language and thought that would stifle concepts and ideas essential to t… more
Date: December 2009
Creator: Elliot, Natalie J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Towards European Integration: Do the European Union and Its Members Abide by the Same Principles?

Description: In the last few decades the European Union (EU) and its members have emphasized the importance of human rights and the need to improve human rights conditions in Third World countries. In this research project, I attempted to find out whether the European Union and its members practice what they preach by giving precedence to countries that respect human rights through their Official Development Assistance (ODA) program. Furthermore, I tried to analyze whether European integration occurs at the… more
Date: August 2004
Creator: Etienne, Anne
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Human Rights and the Strategic Use of US Foreign Food Aid

Description: How does respect for human rights affect the disbursement of food aid by US foreign policymakers? Scholars analyzing foreign aid generally look at only total economic aid, military aid or a combination of both. However, for a more nuanced understanding of human rights as a determinant of foreign aid, the discrete foreign aid programs must be examined. By disentangling component-programs from total aid, this analysis demonstrates how human rights influence policymakers by allowing them to distri… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Fariss, Christopher J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation

The Destruction of a Society: A Qualitative Examination of the Use of Rape as a Military Tool

Description: This thesis explores the conditions under which mass rapes are more likely to be incorporated into the strategy of military or paramilitary groups during periods of conflict. I examine three societies, Rwanda , the former Yugoslavia , and Cambodia in a comparative analysis. To determine what characteristics make societies more likely to engage in rape as a military tool, I look at the status of women in the society, the religious cultures, the degree of female integration into the milit… more
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Date: December 2004
Creator: Finley, Briana Noelle
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

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.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Solicitor Success: The Continuing Exploration of the Determinants of Governmental Success at the Supreme Court, 1986-2005

Description: Studies of the Supreme Court consistently show that the Office of the Solicitor General enjoys remarkable success before the Supreme Court, both at the certiorari stage and at the merits stage. These studies offer a variety of explanations for Solicitor General success, but fail to portray accurately the Office of the Solicitor General and to account for variations in governmental success. This paper seeks to continue the exploration of governmental success. By looking at the Office of the Soli… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Grubbs, Kevin
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
open access

Wealth and Regime Formation: Social and Economic Origins of the Change Toward Democracy

Description: This study explores the relationship between economic development, social mobility, elites, and regime formation. I argue that the genesis of regime formation, in general, and of democratic regimes, in particular, is determined by the type of economic structure a society possesses, on the one hand, and on the degree the to which demands from disfranchised groups do or do not pose a substantial threat to the interests of elites who occupy the upper strata of the social and economic status hierar… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Gurses, Mehmet
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
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