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 identity and when the state is involved in an interstate dispute, while the rest of the country increases their likelihood to identify with the nation, discriminated groups cling to their ethnic identity. During and interstate rivalry, ethnic groups face a heightened risk of the state taking away their autonomy over a region. If the rivalry becomes too intense or the ethnic group shares kin with the rival, the ethnic group has lower chance of losing their autonomy during rivalry. Finally, ethnic minority seeking to form a militia are able to form one faster if their ethnic group is well represented in the military's rank and file or if their co-ethnics in the rank and file had combat experience in an interstate dispute were military force was used. Ethnic groups that are well …

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 government behavior. Further, it is important to recognize the role that the previous civil war plays towards shaping a state's governance decisions and the opportunities available.

Post-civil war democratization is a critical element of building sustainable peace in the post-civil war states. At the same time, studies of democratic transition and survival suggest that the post-civil war environment is not hospitable to either the transition to or survival of democracy. The post-civil war environment is contentious. Former protagonists are fearful about their security and at the same time they want to protect their political and economic interests. The central argument of this study is that former rivals can agree to a transition toward democracy to the extent that a stable balance of power exists between the government and rebel groups, a balance that eliminates the sort of security dilemma that would encourage one or both to resume armed conflict. And the balance should ensure access to political power and economic resources. This study identifies factors that contribute to the establishment of such a balance of power between former protagonists and factors that affects its stability. These factors should affect the decision of former protagonists on whether or not they can achieve their political and economic interests if they agree to a transition toward democracy once civil war ends. Factors that are conducive to a transition toward …

In this project a theory of adaptive differential insurgency growth by the mechanism of repression driven contagion is put forth to explain variation in the membership and spatial expansion of insurgencies from 1981 to 1999. As an alternative to the dominant structural approaches in the civil war literature, Part 1 of the study proposes an interactive model of insurgency growth based on Most and Starr's opportunity and willingness framework. The findings suggest that state capacity, via its impact on state repressive behavior, plays an important gatekeeping function in selecting which minor insurgencies can grow into civil war, but contributes little to insurgency growth directly. In Part 2 of the study, I directly examine variation in insurgency membership and geographical expansion as a function of repression driven contagion. I find that repression increases the overall magnitude of insurgency activity within states, while at the same time reducing the density of insurgency activity in any one place. Despite an abundance of low intensity armed struggles against a highly diverse group of regimes around the world, I find an extremely strong and robust regularity: where repression is low - insurgencies don't grow.

This dissertation investigates three questions: First, what conditions make dissident collective action such as protest, revolt, rebellion, or civil war more likely to happen in a country? Second, what conditions make citizens more likely to join in dissident collective action? Third, does Internet use play a role in dissident collective action, and if so, why? I argue that motives and resources are necessary rather than sufficient conditions for dissident collective action. I develop an analytical framework integrating motives and resources. Specifically, I theorize that state repression is an important motive, and that civil society is critical in providing resources. Four statistical analyses are conducted to test the hypotheses. Using aggregate level data on countries over time, I find that civil war is more likely to occur in countries where both state repression and civil society are strong. Moreover, the effect of civil society on civil war onset increases as the repression level rises. at the individual level using 2008 Latin American Public Opinion Project surveys from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries, I find individuals more likely to join in protest when they experience both more repression and greater civic engagement. Moreover, civic engagement’s effect on protest participation increases as …

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 linking group origins and conflict dynamics. I posit that rebel groups emerge from pre-existing organizations and networks that vary along military and civilian dimensions and condition the development of military and mobilization capacity of their successor insurgent groups. Groups with more developed militarization and mobilization mechanisms prior to conflict are likely to enter into civil conflict earlier in their existence and fight in longer and bloodier conflicts. I also find a strong relationship between origins characteristics and the development of military and civilian wartime capacity. Origins exert a strong legacy effect on the type and strength of intra-war capability, indicating that significant rebel adaptation is difficult.

In this study, I examined the Supreme Court's agenda from 1801 to 1993 to determine the composition and dynamics of the issues that have dominated the business of the Court. Specifically, I set out to test empirically Robert G. McCloskey's (now standard) characterization of the Supreme Court's history, which sees it as dominated by nationalism/federalism issues before the Civil War, by economic issues just after the War through the 1930s, and by civil rights and liberties since the 1930s. The question that drove my investigation was "Is McCloskey's interpretation, which appears to be based on the great cases of Supreme Court history, an accurate description of the agenda represented in the Supreme Court's total body of reported decisions?" To test McCloskey's historical theses I employed concepts adapted from Richard Pacelle's (1991) important work on the agenda of post-Roosevelt Court and used the methods of classical historical analysis and of interrupted time-series analysis. Data for my research came from existing datasets and from my own collection (I coded the manifest content of thousands of Supreme Court's decisions from 1887 back to 1801). The most important finding from my analyses is that McCloskey not withstanding, the pre-Civil War Supreme Court's agenda was …

This dissertation examines the impact of FDI on peace in civil conflict-experienced states. While economic grievances have often been pointed out as a major cause of civil war within the literature, scholarship on post-conflict peace has focused mainly on political settlements, such as one-sided victories or power sharing, largely ignoring the importance of economic conditions. Thus, this dissertation aims to examine how FDI can affect sustainable peace in conflict-experienced states in terms of prevention of conflict recurrence and regime stability. FDI can be conducive to peace during/after civil conflicts, as it can bring capital which can be used for economic reconstruction and development in conflict-experienced states. Furthermore, this dissertation focuses on the impact of bilateral FDI. When a third party intervenes in a conflict management process and the third party has a great deal of economic interaction with the conflict experienced state, this economic interdependency will affect the third party's motivation to make the conflict-experienced state stable. It also provides third-party with greater leverage over peace efforts. Eventually, this third-party leverage will affect peace during/after civil conflicts. This dissertation is built around three interrelated empirical chapters: (1) determinants of FDI in conflict-experienced states, (2) the impact of FDI on conflict …

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is recognized as a founder of the modern scientific project and a forerunner of the modern era of political thought. He advocated the development of an active science that would enable human beings to control nature in order to relieve man's estate. To accomplish this, Bacon argues that we must reconstruct all arts and sciences upon a more solid foundation. In reconstructing the arts and sciences, Bacon subtly changes the meaning of foundational religious, political, and scientific notions in order to better suit his project of progress. As the inheritors of his vision, turning to Bacon helps recover foundational considerations that have been forgotten as a result of his success. This dissertation approaches Bacon's thought through an analysis of his New Atlantis, a fable that envisions the completion of his project. I also turn to his other political, scientific, and religious works as appropriate to supply what is omitted in the fable. I find that although his revision of religious, scientific, and political foundations is conducted subtly they are nevertheless revolutionary, and essential for preparing the various outlooks that characterize the modern world.

Since the 1970s, a curious phenomenon has emerged, suggesting that resource rich countries are "cursed" by their resources. Over the last couple of decades, researchers have argued that rentier countries are more likely to have educational underachievement, the Dutch disease, corruption, slower democratization, and conflict. Although current research has proven helpful and productive, some aspects still remain contested in both theoretical and empirical terms. This dissertation aims to fill certain lacunae in this literature. My dissertation examines how ordinary citizens turn into dissidents and then to rebels in rentier states. I build and test an innovative theoretical argument, which focuses on individuals' daily lives, and explains how policies by rentier governments discourage merit-based employment. This, in turn, yields a high level of grievance among segments of the population. I also develop a comprehensive theory that combines macro-level and micro-level explanations of conflict onset in rentier states. Finally, I analyze an important, but previously neglected aspect of civil wars in rentier states: conflict outcomes. I suggest that the existence of abundant natural resources would have a significant impact on conflict outcomes. Accordingly, government victory would be more likely, and negotiated settlement would be less likely in rentier countries compared to non-rentier …

New states are often born in a volatile environment, in which the survival of the new country is uncertain. While analysis of the nationalizing new governments exists, research focuses mainly on domestic politics. I argue that the treatment of minority that remains in the new states is a function of the interaction of the dual threat posed by the minority itself domestically on one hand and the international threat coming from the mother state to protect its kin abroad on the other hand. Specifically, I argue that there is a curvilinear relationship between domestic and international threat and the extent of discrimination against the politically relevant minority. Most discrimination takes place when domestic and international threats are moderate because in this case there is a balance of power between the government, the minority, and the rump state. With time-series-cross-sectional (TSCS) data analysis this dissertation systematically tests the treatment of Russian and Serbian minorities in all post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav states between 1991 and 2006 and finds statistically significant results for the curvilinear hypothesis. Territorial concentration of the minority and the ratio of national capabilities between the mother and the seceded states prove to be especially important predictors of minority treatment. In …

The main objective of this research is to test some of the hypotheses linking economic development, social mobilization, legitimacy, and the coerciveness of the regime with internal political conflict. Each proposed hypothesis is to be tested across sixteen predominantly Islamic Middle Eastern nations for data from two time periods, 1960-66 and 1967-73. To check for the consistency and strength of the hypothesized relationships the test results for each hypothesis for the first period data will be compared with those of the second period.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the voting trends in Mobile, Alabama, which have developed since 1948; particular emphasis is placed upon the role of the Negro vote in Mobile politics before and after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This dissertation attempts to uncover systematic patterns regarding elite management in dictatorships. To do so, it describes how dictators manage their elites and what factors determine the outcomes of their decision. Although considerable literature has examined the various structural features of dictatorships and has identified different elite management strategies to explain the persistence of dictatorships, few, if any, have empirically tested any of the theoretical propositions generated by this increasingly large body of literature. This dissertation is the first empirical attempt to explore the elite management strategies of various dictatorships, ranging from the individual case of the most extreme dictatorship (North Korea) as well as different kinds of military dictatorships (South Korea), and global patterns of autocratic regimes. To address the main research question, "what determines the choice of the dictator's elite management strategies?" this dissertation identifies three key factors - dictator, elites, and structure. The relationship between dictators and elites is basically hostile. Conflicts between actors over power acquisition often emerge in violent ways. Nevertheless, dictators do not always treat elites with repression. They sometimes make efforts to embrace and cooperate with the other elites. The variation of their strategies toward elites is determined by various conditions. The results …

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. Under the ideal of this order, Japanese political organization has valued the structure of Shinto: polytheistic local authority, plus conflated authority of church and state. Buddhism and Confucianism have provided direction and moral force to preserve traditional order.

Understanding how change occurs in lesser developed countries, particularly in Latin America has been the subject of a prolonged theoretical academic debate. That debate has emphasized economics more that politics in general and predictability over unpredictability in the Latin American region. This paper challenges these approaches. Explaining change requires an examination of the politics of public policy as much as its economic dimensions. Second, change in the Latin American region may be less predictable than it appears. Scholars maintain that change in Latin America occurs when contending elites negotiate it. Their power comes from the various resources they possess. Change, therefore, is not expected to occur as a function of regime change per se. This paper considers the treatment of education policy in Nicaragua during the regimes of the dynastic authoritarianism of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1967-1979), the revolutionary governments of the Sandinistas (1979-1990), and the democratic-centrist government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1996). The central research question is: When regimes change, do policies change? The methodology defines the independent variable as the regime and education policy as the dependent variable. It posits three hypotheses. The right-wing regime of Somoza was expected to restrict both the qualitative aspects and the financing …

This research seeks to answer why and which Chinese people go to the street to protest. I argue that different sectors of Chinese society differ from each other regarding their tendencies to participate in protest. In addition to their grievances, the incentives to participate in protest and their capacities to overcome the collective action problem all needed to be taken into account. Using individual level data along with ordinary binary logistic regression and multilevel logistic regression models, I first compare the protest participation of workers and peasants and find that workers are more likely than peasants to participate in protests in the context of contemporary China. I further disaggregate the working class into four subtypes according to the ownership of the enterprises they work for. I find that workers of township and village enterprises are more likely than workers of state-owned enterprises to engage in protest activities, while there is no significant difference between the workers of domestic privately owned enterprises and the workers of foreign-owned enterprises regarding their protest participation. Finally, I find that migrant workers, which refers to peasants who move to urban areas in search of jobs, are less likely than urban registered workers to participate in …

This research seeks to explore the behavior of international and regional organizations within conflict management. Previous research on conflict management primarily examines UN peacekeeping as the primary actor and lumps all non-UN actors into a single category. I disaggregate this category, examining how international and regional organizations interact when deciding to establish a peace mission, coordinate a peace mission with multiple organizations, and finally, how this interaction affects the success of peace missions. I propose a collective action theoretical framework in which organizations would rather another actor undertake the burden and costs of implementing a peace mission. I find the United Nations is motivated to overcome the collective action problem through an increase in the severity of the conflict. Regional organizations are motivated to establish a peace mission as the economic and political salience of the conflict increases, increasing the possibility of the regional organization acquiring club goods for its member states. The presence of a regional hegemon within a regional organization also significantly increases the likelihood of an organization both establishing a peace mission and taking on the primary role when coordinating a joint mission. I argue this is because a regional hegemon allows the organization to more easily …

The Republic of China (ROC) has faced severe foreign policy challenges since its relocation from mainland China to Taiwan, and it has had to modify its position several times as its environment has changed. Its foreign policy since 1949 has gone through three distinct phases of development. A series of diplomatic adversities befell the ROC following its defeat in the United Nations in 1971, which presented the nation with an unprecedented challenge to its survival. These calamitous events for the ROC presented it with a frightening identity crisis: it was isolated in the international community and had become a "pariah" state. This case study examines and analyzes the various changes in the ROC's foreign policy behavior and attempts to determine what has influenced or induced changes in its foreign policy.

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 political development indirectly through greater economic efficiency and growth and directly by reducing poverty, increasing economic equality, strengthening the middle class and increasing political participation. Increased financial market development also produces more efficient institutions and eliminates certain perverse incentives in government that result in corruption. The action mechanisms rest largely on the idea that increasing access to financial services allows the lower and middle- income segments of society to smooth their income and invest in high return activities that can lift people out of poverty. These improvements distribute both economic and intellectual resources throughout society and provide greater opportunities for political entrepreneurship from all societal groups. This, along with greater ability to participate either through monetary means or greater time, increases political participation and democratic development. Using a variety of econometric techniques to …

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-economic and political framework of the labor market, as well as the labor policies during the period were examined in an effort to determine the determinants affecting the labor market in the two periods. The findings of this study reveal that Jordan's labor market and policies over the last three decades have been influenced by changes and events not only in Jordan, but by changes and events in the entire region. The study also indicates that factors influencing the labor market differ under different conditions. The impact of the independent variables tested in this study differ between the two periods, 1961 to 1972 and 1973 to 1987. Policy which may serve the country's best interest during the …

News media consumption is vital to understanding democracy in Latin America. Democracy in the region lacks consolidation that may be encouraged by the ability of news media to shape individuals' political attitudes and behaviors. Yet, we know very little about how citizens of Latin American countries consume news media or how that consumption affects attitudes and behavior. This study offers a region-wide examination of the factors that shape news media consumption and the effects of that consumption on individuals in the region. To explore this topic, I examine survey data from the 2008 Latin American Public Opinion Project in 18 Latin American countries. I argue that news media promote democratic attitudes and political behavior by increasing the symbolic value of democracy and by supplementing those symbols with information that further encourages democratic attitudes and political participation. Additionally, political behavior is not temporally proximate to political behaviors such as voting. This necessitates a mediated path for news media consumption to influence participation through political interest, civil society participation and democratic attitudes. My findings illustrate that each news medium type (TV, radio, newspaper) must be considered separately from each other type. I find that news media consumption has little effect on attitudes. …