This poster was featured at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science's 'Social Science' exhibit. It discusses land reform and democracy as counterinsurgency.

This presentation is part of the faculty lecture series UNT Speaks Out on Unauthorized Immigration. This presentation discusses immigration in the United States, unauthorized immigration, and policies in place on immigration.

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.

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 by regional organizations than interstate or border disputes; (3) that most of the boundary disputes in Africa are due to the arbitrary colonial boundary demarcations; and (4) that most of the causes of the ineffectiveness in its conflict resolution is as a result of poor administrative set-up, lack of resources, and failure of its commissions to operate effectively; (b) it answered the following questions: (1) Did the O.A.U. stop, help stop, or fail to stop the fighting; (2) Did the O.A.U. settle, help settle, or fail to settle the conflict; and (3) Was there super power intervention, and if so, to what effect? The methodology used is primarily case study method. Most attention is given to the way the O.A.U. handled the conflicts.

The Tigris and Euphrates are international rivers vital to the four countries through which they flow: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The population in the region has more than doubled in less than thirty years, and irrigated agriculture, hydroelectric power generation, industrialization, and urbanization have increased. All of these developments require more water, and the dependence of the riparian nations on the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers has become apparent, as has the need for comprehensive, basin-wide management of water resources. At present the riparians have shown some concern about the management of water in the two rivers, although no consensus exists as to the precise nature of the problem or what should be done to resolve it. This policy-oriented dissertation attempts to help frame the policy issues of managing the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates basin. It also seeks to provide an understanding of the policy process and to meet the intelligence needs of policy-makers with regard to the future management of these international waterways. Finally, it provides strategies for developing and implementing a cooperative water policy for this international basin.

This investigation is concerned with testing a causal model linking changes in a political system's socio-economic environment with alterations in political characteristics. The specific forces of interest are those relating to urbanization and industrialization, the development of that way of life called urbanism, and the effects of these environmental changes on voter participation and, ultimately, inter-party competition. The test model hypothesizes that the processes of urbanization and industrialization together create urbanism, which then affects party competition both indirectly by means of stimulating participation, and directly as well. To illuminate these processes, this study focuses on the American South of the last 30 years because it is in this region that the kinds of changes implicit in the test model have been observed, and thus the region offers the best arena for examining that model.

Studies of political parties in Latin America have often been descriptive and not directed to link a theoretical foundation about political parties with qualitative or quantitative empiricism. This was in part because parties in the region were usually perceived as rather unimportant in the political arena. This study attempts to correct this often unjustified proposition by focusing on the development of political parties in five Central American countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The analysis focuses particularly on the relationship between party fragmentation, party polarization, the level of democracy, and socio-economic modernization. The quantitative analysis uses a cross-national longitudinal research design and tries to overcome shortcomings in prior descriptive approaches based on case studies. The overall findings show that party fragmentation and party polarization are positively related to the level of democracy in Central America.

Presentation for the first Open Data Hackathon at UNT, organized as part of International Open Data Day. This presentation discusses data access and research transparency in political science journals.

This paper explores the relationship between the locations of conflict zones and refugee camps in African nations.

Paper explores the link between types of authoritarian regimes and violent and nonviolent dissent.

Paper examines teen pregnancy rates across states in the United States and proposes a study that correlates the types of sex education utilized in individual counties or independent school districts and teen pregnancy rates across a sufficiently diverse state, such as California.

Paper examines the effects of affiliation, focusing on Al Qaeda, on the behavior of rebel groups.

Paper analyzes the correlation between the size of a peacekeeping force and the likelihood of peacekeeping failures.

Paper explores the relationship between perceptions of legitimacy and the desire for military intervention in politics.

Paper analyzes the effect of societal support on the likelihood of civil conflict.

Paper explores the relationship between decentralization and the onset of civil wars.

Paper explores the relationship between ethnic conflict and ethnic identity using quantitative methods.

Paper analyzes the roles that the White House Chief of Staff plays and how effective they are in said roles.

Paper explores the relationship between national capabilities and the likelihood of conflict, and in particular the impact of gender on this relationship.

This is the presentation for the closing remarks at the Texas Electronic Theses and Dissertations (TxETD) Annual Conference. It discusses how ETDs and open access will revolutionize the academy.

Presentation for the 2015 University of North Texas (UNT) Student and Faculty Research Symposium on African Studies. This presentation discusses characteristics of actors involved in social protest and an extension of the social conflict analysis database (SCAD).

Paper accompanying a presentation for the 2015 University of North Texas (UNT) Student and Faculty Research Symposium on African Studies. This paper discusses characteristics of actors involved in social protest and an extension of the social conflict analysis database.

Chapter I of this study of the Arabian Ba'th Socialist Party discusses the evolution of Arab nationalism and concludes that Ba'th was a natural outcome of this evolution; two intellectuals supporting Arab nationalism were Party co-founders Michael Aflaq and Salah Bitar, Part One of Chapter II summarizes their lives to facilitate understanding of their thought and its impact on Ba'th; Part Two examines the Party's first convention (source of the Ba'th constitution), the reasons for it, and the necessity of establishing Ba'th; and Part Three outlines Ba'th ideology and organization. Chapter III analyzes Ba'th's promotion of Syrian-Egyptian union and that union's resultant adverse effect upon Party cohesiveness, The Conclusion discusses the groups into which Ba'th split after 1961 and their new interpretations of Ba'th ideology.

Data management plan for the grant, "An Ethnic Spring in the Food Desert? How State Policy Affects Food Environments and Business Entrepreneurships." In food system research, the reduced quality of one's food environment (the combination of food security and food access) is a direct symptom of social, political, and economic disparities. Our research has three primary objectives: Aim 1: To determine the role of state policy in the food environment of immigrant communities and communities of color in the United States, Aim 2: To dissect how state and local policies affect the participation of these communities in the U.S. food system, local food environments, and food business ownership, and Aim 3: To explain the current role and the future role of local policy in the food environment of immigrant communities and communities of color in the United States.