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open access

Service Matters: The Influence of Military Service on Political Behavior, Ideology and Attitudes

Description: The objective of this research is to explore the influence of military service on political behaviors and attitudes. Existing studies of the military have long recognized the existence of a predominantly conservative political ideology with a resulting propensity for strong Republican Party support within the military community, but have failed to explain the likely causal mechanism for this. Drawing on multiple sources of data from the 2008 Presidential election cycle, I utilized a descriptive… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Johnson, Catherine L.
open access

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
open access

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
open access

Schoolyard Politics: Ethics and Language at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Description: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been both contentious and successful. By examining the ICTY from a Levinasian ethical standpoint, we might be able to understand how the court uses language to enforce ethical and moral standards upon post-war societies. Using linguistic methods of analysis combined with traditional data about the ICTY, I empirically examine the court using ordinary least squares (OLS) in order to show the impact that language has upon the… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Hatcher, Robert
open access

Community in Japanese Political Organization

Description: The most important long-term political forces operative in the Japanese political system are the interplay of decentralized community authority and the consolidation of that authority toward the top. The mura kyodotai (village community) concept is representative of both types of authority, neither of which has defined boundaries. An examination of the nature of indigenous community authority may provide the broad context for a valid understanding of Japanese decision making. … more
Date: May 1984
Creator: Bradley, James E. (James Earl)
open access

The Senate Apprenticeship Norm: A Longitudinal and Multivariate Investigation

Description: This study has as its central focus an investigation into the existence and nature of the apprenticeship norm in the United States Senate. Over its history, the Senate has been frequently portrayed as a body guided by rather restrictive, informal rules of behavior for its members. The apprenticeship norm has been identified by some as the most important of these rules; contributing to the Senate's centralized and conservative policy orientation. More recently, however, it has been argued that t… more
Date: December 1983
Creator: Carter, James L. (James Lee), 1937-
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
open access

Foreign Policy-Making in Jordan: the Role of King Hussein's Leadership in Decision-Making

Description: The purpose of this study is to identify King Hussein's belief system, or operational code as it is called by George and Holsti, and to test its influence on foreign policymaking in Jordan. The research has three related goals: to identify King Hussein's operational code through analysis of his writings and speeches during the period between 1967 and 1980, to review four major foreign policy decisions in an attempt to understand the factors affecting the decision making process in Jordan, and t… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Rashdan, Abdelfattah A. (Abdelfattah Ali)
open access

International Political Economy of External Economic Dependence and Foreign Investment Policy Outputs as a Component of National Development Strategy: Nigeria 1954-1980

Description: This study examined the effects and expectations of external economic dependence on foreign investment policy outputs with particular reference to the Nigerian experience between 1954 and 1980. Three basic kinds of external economic dependence were studied: foreign investment, the penetration of the Nigerian economy by foreign capital through the agency of the multinational corporations (MNCs); foreign trade, a measure of the Nigerian economy's participation in the world market; and foreign aid… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Ighoavodha, Frederick J. O. (Frederick J. Ofuafo)
open access

The Political and Administrative Role of Planning and Budgeting in Saudi Arabia: Adaptation for Rapid Change

Description: This study examines the political and administrative role of planning and budgeting in Saudi Arabia. It demonstrates how they have contributed to lessening the political crises of distribution, participation, and penetration that confront developing countries. The study also investigates how these two bureaucratic processes have helped adapt rapid changes in a manner acceptable to the cultural milieu. In addition, the study explores the politics of planning and budgeting and identifies the role… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Al-Kahtani, Mohammed S. A. (Mohammed Saeed A.)
open access

Religious Resurgence and Religious Terrorism: a Study of the Actions of the Shiʹa Sectarian Movements in Lebanon

Description: The purpose for undertaking this case study of the Shi'a in Lebanon is threefold. First, as a hypothesis-generating case study, its objective is to formulate relevant hypotheses about religious resurgence and religious terrorism. This study achieves this objective by formulating 14 general and nine special hypotheses, and testing and confirming the latter. Second, the purpose of this study is also to explore the trajectory of the Lebanese Shi'a's sectarian mobilization. This exploration permits… more
Date: December 1988
Creator: Schbley, Ayla Hammond
open access

Agenda-Setting by Minority Political Groups: A Case Study of American Indian Tribes

Description: This study tested theoretical propositions concerning agenda-setting by minority political groups in the United States to see if they had the scope to be applicable to American Indian tribes or if there were alternative explanations for how this group places its agenda items on the formal agenda and resolves them. Indian tribes were chosen as the case study because they are of significantly different legal and political status than other minority groups upon which much of the previous research … more
Date: May 1990
Creator: McCoy, Leila M. (Leila Melanie)
open access

The Politics of Funding State Senior Higher Education in Texas: An Analysis of the Pressure Group-Policy Process

Description: The purpose of this study is to provide research on the funding of state senior higher education in Texas. The focus of this work is on the pressure group-policy process. At the beginning of the study, several questions were raised to assist in establishing boundaries for the research, the collection of data, and the construction of a heuristic model to conceptualize the policy process. The historical and legal factors which affect the funding of higher education were then examined. Attention w… more
Date: May 1980
Creator: Wilson, Samuel Paschal
open access

Comparative Labor Policy in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 1961-1987

Description: It is increasingly recognized that manpower planning and policies are a major component of a country's development efforts. The purpose of this study is to examine the labor market in Jordan and to identify the main determinants of employment (labor force) during the period from 1961 to 1987 in order to advise policy makers as to the best course of action to achieve full employment. This period was divided into two periods: 1961 to 1972 and 1973 to 1987 for comparative purposes. The socio-econo… more
Date: May 1991
Creator: Dwairi, Musa A. (Musa Ayesh)
open access

Respecification of Factors Affecting Vote Turnout: A Test of Three Competing Models

Description: This study tests hypothesized causal relationships between predictor variables and voter turnout. Attention is focused on the psychological and attitudinal dimensions of turnout. Using data from the 1980 National Election Study of the Center for Political Studies, recursive and nonrecursive causal models are constructed to test the effects of election specific factors, social psychological factors, and rational choice based factors on voter turnout. Self-reported turnout is used as the primary … more
Date: December 1983
Creator: McClure, David Lawson
open access

Management of Communal Conflict in the Middle East: The Case of the Kurds

Description: The objective of this study is to describe and analyze the management of communal conflict in the Middle East, focusing on the Kurds. To this end, an effort is made to examine (1) the means that have been used to manage the Kurdish conflict by Middle Eastern countries; (2) the degree of success or failure of applied measures and (3) possible explanations for the first two questions.
Date: December 1983
Creator: Khosrowshahi, Manouchehr Rostamy
open access

The National Defense College of Thailand and Its Alumni in the Context of Thai Politics

Description: This study deals with the National Defense College of Thailand and its alumni, who are senior military and civil service officers of the government of Thailand. The study examines the proposition that the political attitudes of military and civil service officers in developing countries are likely to be similar and negative. The second proposition examined in this study is that the attitudes of government officials toward the people are likely to be similar and negative. The study also attempts… more
Date: December 1986
Creator: Surapong Burusphat
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

Media Agenda-Building Effect: Analysis of American Public Apartheid Activities, Congressional and Presidential Policies on South Africa, 1976-1988

Description: The mass media's role in informing the American public is critical to public support for government policies. The media are said to set the national agenda. This view is based on the assumption of selective coverage they give to news items. Media coverage also influences the salience the public attaches to issues. However, media agenda effect has been challenged by Lang and Lang (1983). These scholars, in their media agenda-building theory, argued that the success of media effect on national ag… more
Date: December 1989
Creator: Agboaye, Ehikioya
open access

The Enemy of My Enemy: International Alliances Against Transnational Terrorist Organizations

Description: A dearth of pre-existing research in the field prompted this thesis on whether traditional econometric analyses of war deterrent alliances are applicable to modern alliances for counter terror purposes. Apparent foundational and contextual differences between the two types of alliances and the costs and benefits member nations derive from each lead the author to theorize that factors contributing to the formation of each alliance are fundamentally similar. Multiple types of statistical models a… more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Berthume, Joshua Guy
open access

Conflict Management of the Organization of African Unity in Intra- African Conflicts, 1963-1980

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to examine and evaluate the role of the Organization of African Unity as an international organization in the solution of intra-African conflicts. For the purpose of this paper, eight conflicts from 1963 to 1980 were investigated. Utilizing these cases, the paper (a) examines four assumptions: (1) that regional actions promote settlements by isolating soluble local conflicts from more complex ones; (2) that intrastate conflicts are more difficult to resolve b… more
Date: August 1982
Creator: Olvo, Samuel L. O.
open access

Factors Affecting the Efficient Performance of the Thai State Railway Authority: a Time-Series Data Analysis

Description: The Thai State Railway Authority (RSR) is a public enterprise in Thailand. As an organization its performance is subject to the argument of contingency theorists that operating efficiency is dependent upon various factors both in the internal and external environments of the enterprise. Most of the internal factors are those that organization theorists in the developed world have identified such as goals and objectives, resources, and organization structures. Meanwhile, external factors such as… more
Date: August 1988
Creator: Chalermpol Waitayangkoon
open access

Planning, Budgeting, and Development in Jordan: An Examination of How These Policy Processes Function in a Poor and Uncertain Environment

Description: The purpose of this dissertation is to study the planning and budgeting processes in Jordan to determine whether the findings of Caiden and Wildavsky about those processes in other poor countries generally are applicable to Jordan. An attempt is made to answer the research questions by comparing data from national plans, budgets, and expenditures during a fifteen-year period (1970-1984). In Jordan, as in other developing nations, the role of planning and budgeting is highly significant to the s… more
Date: May 1987
Creator: Al-Lawzi, Sulieman Ahmed
open access

A Time Series Analysis of the Functional Performance of the United States Supreme Court

Description: The focus of this investigation is the relationship of the United States Supreme Court's functional performance to its environment. Three functions of courts are noted in the literature: conflict resolution, social control and administration. These functions are operationalized for the United States Supreme Court. Hypotheses are developed relative to the general performance of these three functions by all courts. Box-Jenkins time series analysis is then used to test these hypotheses in relation… more
Date: August 1990
Creator: Haynie, Stacia L. (Stacia Lyn)
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