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 parties within ongoing ethnic group self-determination movements. While I do not find evidence for a relationship between autonomy and conflict, I do find that federalism increases the likelihood of ethnic conflict. Additionally, the banning of ethnic political parties indicates a strong increase the likelihood of ethnic conflict, while the banning of regional political parties significantly reduces the likelihood of ethnic conflict.

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 the other hand, focusing on state influence strategies could be a promising direction to investigate the dynamics of border disputes, like border crisis outcomes. My dissertation contains three chapters. The first chapter explores the rationales behind state choices of influence strategies in border crises by focusing on leaders and their militarized experiences. The second chapter focuses on the influence strategy's short-term effect by examining how do hey influence border crisis outcomes? The third chapter examines the influence strategy's long-term impact by investigating how do they affect the durability of border claims? My dissertation has some important findings. First, leader militarized backgrounds influence state choices of influence strategies. Second, bullying strategies create escalations, which make border crises more likely to end in stalemate or decisive outcomes. By contrast, both reciprocating and trial-and-error …