The central thesis is classical Marxian views concerning the peasant masses have been adopted regarding India; two causal factors are the Hindu Caste system and parliamentary democracy. Descriptive and analytical methodology is utilized to study classical and Indian Marxian theory and its relationship to "Marxist" practice in India. Four major elements involved are: wealthy landowners, poor and landless peasants, the Indian government, and Indian communists. Nonimplemented land reforms and recent capitalist farming compounded the problem. Attacks were launched on the Congress government by three communist parties. Government coalition has included the CPI, and has implemented agrarian reforms advocated by the CPI(M), thereby postponing possible militant communist success.

Using data for 93 countries from 1972 through 2001 in cross-national analysis, this study compares the relative economic strength of a country's middle-class with its civil liberties performance and its history of domestic and external conflict. For purposes of this analysis, the relative strength of a country's middle-class is determined by multiplying the square root of a country's gross domestic product per capita by the percentage of income distributed to the middle 60 % of the population (middle class income share). Comparisons between this measure of per capita income distributed (PCID) and several other indicators show the strength of the relationship between PCID and civil liberties performance and domestic and external conflict. In the same manner, comparisons are made for the middle class income share (MCIS) alone. The countries are also divided by level of PCID into 3 world classes of 31 countries each for additional comparisons. In tests using bivariate correlations, the relationships between PCID and MCIS are statistically significant with better civil liberties performance and fewer internal conflicts. With multivariate regression the relationship between PCID and civil liberties performance is statistically significant but not for PCID and internal conflict. As expected, in both correlations and regression between PCID …

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 agenda is dependent on group support. In order to test this theory, time-related data on South Africa crises, media coverage"of South Africa, American public reactions, congressional, and presidential apartheid-related activities, between 1976 and 1988, were analyzed. Congressional anti-apartheid policies were the dependent and others, the independent variables. The theory made analysis of the data amenable to the additive adopted to test for the significance of the interactive variables, indicated that these variables were negatively related to congressional anti-apartheid policies. The additive model was subsequently analyzed. The time series multiple regression analysis was used in analyzing the relationships. Given autocorrelation and multicollinearity problems associated with time series analysis, the Arima (p, d, q) model was used to model the relationships. This …

The present study is an attempt to compare the performance of two competing models of economic development-- the conservative and radical models. The conservative model is represented by the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras; the radical model is represented by Cuba. The following chapters focus on a comparison of these models as they have manifested themselves in the Carribean basin. The analysis of the performance of the models is conducted by comparing socioeconomic variables of the countries representing the models. The study looks at the time period 1960 - 1980 which coincides with the adoption of the two models in the respective countries.

Existing literature on foreign aid does not indicate what type of political regime is best to achieve human development outcomes or use aid funds more efficiently. I contend that political leaders of different regime types have personal incentives that motivate them to utilize foreign aid to reflect their interests in providing more or less basic social services for their citizens. Using a data set of 126 aid-recipient countries between the years of 1990 and 2007, I employ fixed effects estimation to test the model. The overall results of this research indicate that foreign aid and democratic institutionalization have a positive effect on total enrollment in primary education, while political regime types show little difference from one another in providing public health and education for their citizens.

Terrorism has become a focus of much political thought over the past few years, and with good reason, yet most quantitative studies of terrorism investigate the likelihood of a terrorist incident while ignoring the precursors to terrorist group formation. I examine cases of new terrorist group formations between the years 1968 and 1999 as a function of domestic demographic, geographic, governmental and societal factors. This is done by Poisson regression analysis, which determines the significance of the independent variables on a count of new international terrorist group formations per country year. The results indicate that higher levels of material government capability, high levels of political freedom, the availability of low-cost refuge, and a cultural tradition of terrorism all have a positive impact on the number of new terrorist group formations, while a higher degree of governmental durability has a negative impact.

This study is an attempt to contribute to the emerging theoretical literature on state repression. A time-series model was developed to test the hypothesis that state violence in Argentina and Chile is largely a function of four internal political factors and their interactions: 1) the inertial influence of past restrictive policies on the formulation of current policies, 2) the annual incidence of political protest demonstrations, 3) the perceived effectiveness of repressive measures on unrest, 4) and the institutionalization of military rule.

The problem undertaken is a study of the political philosophy of Fyodor Dostoevsky to determine to what extent Dostoevsky was a political thinker.

This study is concerned with describing and analyzing the factors that led to the election and subsequent defeat of Salvador Allende. The research information was selected from leading books, periodicals, government documents, archives, and newspapers. The thesis presents the political history of Allende's rise to power, the social structure that made his victory possible, the development of major programs that facilitated his ascension and that made his decision inevitable, and, finally, an analysis of his administration with observations as to why he failed. The importance of the lower class, the middle class, the military, and the United States are presented as factors contributing to Allende's victory and later accelerating Allende's fall from power.

The purpose of this study is to point out how, if in any way, the United Nations mission for observing a cease-fire between the indigenous Palestine Arab population and the growing number of Zionist immigrants in Palestine affected the conflict, or, more specifically, how the powers or limitations of this observation structure either favorably or adversely affected its performance.

It has become something of a cliché for contemporary scholars to assert that Madison turned Montesquieu on his head and thereafter give little thought to the Frenchman’s theory that republics must remain limited in territorial size. Madison did indeed present a formidable challenge to Montesquieu’s theory, but I will demonstrate in this dissertation that the authors of the Federalist Papers arrived at the extended sphere by following a theoretical pathway already cemented by the French philosopher. I will also show that Madison’s “practical sphere” ultimately concedes to Montesquieu that excessive territorial size and high levels of heterogeneity will overwhelm the citizens of a republic and enable the few to oppress the many. The importance of this dissertation is its finding that the principal mechanism devised by the Federalists for dealing with factions—the enlargement of the sphere—was crafted specifically for the purpose of moderating interests, classes, and sects within an otherwise relatively homogeneous nation. Consequently, the diverse republic that is America today may be exposed to the existential threat anticipated by Montesquieu’s theory of size—the plutocratic oppression of society by an elite class that employs the strategy of divide et impera.

The major purpose of this dissertation is to explore the determinants of interest cost for state bonds. Various kinds of variables pertaining to issue characteristics, market characteristics, economic conditions, and political variables were statistically tested to assess their impact on the interest cost of state bonds. This research examines the variables found to be significant for local bonds, as well as some factors unique to state bonds, e.g., the types state agencies issuing debt and the effect of different state income tax policies.

This investigation is concerned with determining what influence, if any, results from the dependence upon foreign sources of petroleum by the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The influence that petroleum plays upon the changing attitudes of these four nations towards Israel and the Arab nations is ascertained by the utilization of primary and secondary sources. The study analyzes all the resolutions that have been adopted by the United Nations Security Council in the years between 1948 and 1976 dealing specifically with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Other chapters analyze each of the four nations to which attention is being directed. This study concludes that the growing and continuing dependence upon Arab oil has influenced the foreign policies the four nations have assumed toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In this study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Measure for Measure I argue that the surface plots of these comedies point us to a philosophic understanding seldom discussed in either contemporary public discourse or in Shakespearean scholarship. The comedies usually involve questions arising from the conflict between the enforcement of law (whether just or not) and the private longings (whether noble or base) of citizens whose yearnings for happiness tend to be sub- or even supra-political. No regime, it appears, is able to respond to the whole variety of circumstances that it may be called upon to judge. Even the best written laws meet with occasional exceptions and these ulterior instances must be judged by something other than a legal code. When these extra-legal instances do arise, political communities become aware of their reliance on a kind of political judgment that is usually unnoticed in the day-to-day affairs of public life. Further, it is evident that the characters who are able to exercise this political judgment, are the very characters whose presence averts a potentially tragic situation and makes a comedy possible. By presenting examples of how moral and political problems are dealt with by …

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 the conceptualization of geocultural immobility and its effect upon a religious minority. It deduces that the Lebanese Shiga's geo-cultural immobility is directly related to their active religious resurgence. The third purpose is to study the changes in the objectives and tactics of a religious minority, that of the Muslim Shi'a in Lebanon. This research is able, via its primary and secondary data, to show a relationship between the Lebanese Shiga's religious resurgence and their use of religious terrorism. This study introduces the concept of geo-cultural immobility. A minority's geo-cultural immobility is identified as an imposed low geographic mobility within a nation with low cultural pluralism. It establishes the Lebanese Shi'a's geo-cultural immobility, to which it attributes their religious resurgence. This Lebanese Shi'a religious resurgence is proven in …

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, but that this is effect is mainly observed in those with negative or neutral opinions toward immigration. The second substantive chapter examines the other side of this relationship by analyzing the impact of far-right electoral and legislative success on asylum-recognition rates in EU member states. The results of empirical analyses show that when far-right parties gain legislative seats, the expected rate of asylum approvals decreases. This suggests that far-right parties in legislatures have measurable effects on migration outcomes. Finally, the third substantive chapter uses original field research to assess how far-right politics impacts the lived experiences of immigrants in France and Switzerland, relying on a small survey and interviews conducted in the field. The results show that immigrants are generally aware of far-right parties and distrustful toward them. However, undocumented migrants and asylees are among the …

This is an investigation of the intellectual roots of the political thought and internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eightieth president of the United States. Exposed to the influence of Darwin, Wilson believed that politics had to be redefined as an evolutionary process. the older mechanical understanding of politics was to be replaced with an organic understanding of political development. This allowed Wilson to synthesize a concept of politics that included elements from the Christian tradition; the English Historical School, particularly Edmund Burke; and German idealism, including G.W.F. Hegel. However, because he placed a heavy emphasis on Burke and Hegel, Wilson moved away from a natural rights based theory of politics and more towards a politics based on relativism and a transhistorical notion of rights. Wilson had important theoretical reserves about Hegel, as a result, Wilson modified Hegel’s philosophy. This modification took the form of Wilson’s organic-progressive principle. This would greatly affect Wilson’s ideas about how nations formed, developed, and related to one another. This study focuses on Wilson’s concept of spirit, his theory of history, and his idea of political leadership. the organic-progressive principle is key to understanding Wilson’s attempts to reform on both the domestic and international levels.

The importance of party-military relations in the People's Republic of China was succinctly stated by Mao in his dictum that "political power comes from the gun" and "the Party should command the gun." Party-military relations in the PRC have never fully conformed to Mao's warning. This study seeks to analyze the nature and types of party-military relations in the PRC during the post-Mao period and the factors affecting change in these relations.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is valued for his contribution to literary arts, culture and his discussion of the American Dream. I argue that his discussion of the American Dream was a lens through which he gave readers access to political insights and an education about political philosophy, American politics, virtue, and reasoning. The American Dream, at its greatest, for Fitzgerald is a nation building myth but at its lowest is a dull materialistic construct. Throughout his works Fitzgerald connects philosophic ideas to the American Dream in attempts to educate and ennoble his readers. The ability to judge well is a critical piece of self-government that was a focus of Fitzgerald's throughout his body of work. In The Beautiful and Damned, by giving weight to Platonic ideals of beauty and goodness, and Platonic heuristics like the allegory of the cave he attempted to negate the detrimental effects of nihilism in America at his time and after. In The Great Gatsby, by presenting virtue of the contemplative life that could be cultivated by his readers, in his time, and including esoteric teachings on those virtues and values he attempted to negate the detrimental effects of materialism on the American dream. Finally, in The …

Human trafficking is a growing illegal crime, both in terms of numbers and profits. Thus, important to consider, as it is a human rights, political, criminal justice, national security, and economic issue. Previous studies have these examined these human trafficking factors independently, yet none have really taken into account how they work simultaneously. This study examines why human trafficker continues to occur, particularly at the domestic and transnational level, and also why some countries are better able to effectively deal with this problem in terms of criminalizing human traffickers. It is argued that at the domestic level, traffickers first must take into account the operating costs, illegal risks, bribery, and profits of the business. After considering these basic elements, they then need to consider the world, including economic, political, geographic, and cultural factors that may help facilitate human trafficking. However, human trafficking can occur across large geographic distances, though rare. This is more likely to happen based on the type of human trafficking group, available expatriate or immigrant networks, the origin-transit-destination country connection, or strength of the bilateral economic relationship between origin and destination countries. Finally, looking at why some countries are better able to criminalize traffickers helps us to …