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Institutionalizing Atrocity: An Analysis of Civil War Legacy, Post-Conflict Governance, and State Behavior

Description: This dissertation examines the behavior of post-civil war governments and explores how the aftermath of civil war not only influences state behavior but how the previous conflict becomes institutionalized through a state's governance decisions. While post-civil war states will each have different governance needs as they endure the post-conflict environment, this dissertation contends that the governance decisions a state chooses are key to understanding, and potentially predicting, future gove… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Yates, Tyler
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Interstate Influence Strategies in Border Crises: 1918-2015

Description: Within interstate militarized disputes, states use different kinds of influence strategies, like bullying, reciprocating, and trial-and-error. My dissertation examines state influence strategies within border disputes. This context serves as a hard test which could testify if state behaviors in world politics are mainly driven by the salience of contested issues. Or other factors, like leader militarized backgrounds (e.g., participating in rebellions or military service), may also at work. On t… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Yao, Jiong
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Ethnic Groups and Institutions: Can Autonomy and Party Bans Reduce Ethnic Conflict?

Description: Can institutions successfully reduce ethnic conflict? Institutions such as autonomy and federalism are often advocated as a means to prevent ethnic conflict, however empirical evidence is largely mixed with regards to their effectiveness. In a similar manner, political parties have begun to receive more scholarly attention in determining their relationship with ethnic conflict, but their evidence is also mixed. In this research I examine autonomy, federalism, and the banning of political partie… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Holloway, Troy
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Nations at War: How External Threat Affects Ethnic Politics

Description: This dissertation explores the how external threat from militarized interstate disputes and interstate rivalries affect the relationship between the state and the ethnic groups within its borders. Specifically, it finds that national identity, the preservation of ethnic regional autonomy, and the formation of ethnic-based militias are all influenced by states involvement in international conflicts. In Sub Saharan Africa, discriminated groups are less likely to identify with their national ident… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Pace, Christopher Earl
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

This Land is My Land: The Dynamic Relationship between Migration and the Far-Right

Description: This dissertation examines the dynamic intersections of the relationship between migration and the far-right through three empirical, stand-alone chapters. The first substantive chapter re-evaluates existing theories of far-right support using a novel theory and comprehensive dataset to assess how immigration opinion and immigration levels interact to shape individual far-right support. The findings suggest that increases in asylum-based migration are associated with increased far-right voting,… more
Date: December 2020
Creator: Winn, Meredith
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Rousseau and the Problem of Censorship: Freedom, Virtue, and the Education of the Citizen

Description: I investigate Rousseau's formulation of how the people and their government act as sources of civic education and censorship. I define censorship broadly to include all institutionally or publicly enforced moral or policy views. Using Rousseau's Letter to M. d'Alembert as a starting point, I examine the way in which public morals and opinions structure political discourse, determining the influence of laws and the limits of institutions. I argue that while law can force the people to tacitly co… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Montagano, Elliot Thomas
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Rebels, from the Beginning to the End: Rebel Origins and the Dynamics of Civil Conflicts

Description: This dissertation addresses the puzzle of whether rebel group origins have an effect on rebel wartime behavior and the broader dynamics of civil conflict. Using a quantitative approach over three empirical chapters I study the relationship between rebel origins and conflict onset, duration and intensity, and wartime group capacity. Two qualitative cases examine the relationship between rebel origins, wartime group capacity, and adaptation during war, further unpacking the theoretical mechanisms… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Widmeier, Michael W.
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

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
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Political Stability in Xenophon's Cyropaedia

Description: While there have been several rich studies that have provided insight into the teachings of Xenophon that emerge from a careful reading of the Cyropaedia, the problem of reconciling the apparent good rule of Cyrus with the ruin of his empire persists. I argue that this problem can be reconciled by focusing on the problem that Xenophon initially informs us he is interested in, political stability.
Date: December 2020
Creator: Zitar, Brandon P
Partner: UNT Libraries
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