This study examines the nature and patterns of Soviet cultural activities in Egypt and Syria, the motivations behind those activities, and the contribution of the Soviet cultural effort toward the attainment of overall Soviet Middle East policies. Chapter I provides background information on Soviet-Arab relations, and in Chapter II Soviet objectives in the Middle East are examined. Chapter III identifies the important components of the Soviet cultural instrument in Egypt and Syria. Chapter IV assesses the contribution made by the cultural tool toward the attainment of Soviet objectives in Egypt and Syria. Finally, Chapter V demonstrates that the Soviet cultural enterprise exerted little impact on overall Soviet policy in the Middle East.

This study analyzes recent developments in U. S.- Iranian relations during the Nixon administration and attempts to portray the principal objectives of the United States and Iran vis-a-vis each other. Complex Interdependence is the model for development of the arguments. Due to the circumstances, however, the study substantially draws on Realism as well. Chapter I discusses methodology. Chapter II focuses on the Nixon Doctrine and its impact on U. S.-Iranian relations. Chapter III discusses the evolution of mutual interests between the two nations in the Gulf area. Chapter IV drawing on the previous chapters, concludes that an interdependent relation between the two nations has developed to the extent that in some areas policy of one nation would have an impact on the other, i.e., increase in the price of oil.

This study documents that external and internal forces were causes of change at VCWTP. External forces caused. Fort Worth to reorganize and introduce new management at VCWTP after 1982. These improvements led to VCWTP being selected best managed wastewater treatment plant in the nation by EPA in 1988. This study first analyzes external and internal forces responsible for changes at VCWTP. A history of plant operations also is reviewed. Personnel interviews were conducted of perceptions of employees. Finally, statistics obtained of the plant operation from 1969 to 1988 are compared with personal interviews. Five forces effect change at VCWTP; population, regulatory requirements, political conflicts, an organizational and managerial factors. Turnaround occurred as external and internal corrections were made.

In a civil war, conflict management practitioners are concerned with bringing the conflict to an end and providing security for civilians. Similarly, human rights advocacy groups are also concerned with minimizing civilian harm. Given the similar intentions of these actors in civil war states, this dissertation explores under what circumstances conflict management practitioners and human rights advocacy groups collaborate. First, I compare to what extent mediation and peacekeeping cases differ with regards to showing signs of interaction; second, I compare how the level of interaction changes depending on whether peacekeeping missions are deployed by the United Nations or regional intergovernmental organizations. I find that human rights groups are more likely to interact with peacekeeping missions, especially when the missions are deployed by the United Nations. Moreover, I analyze to what extent the interaction between human rights groups and peacekeeping operations impacts how human rights groups carry out their advocacy efforts. The findings reveal that the way human rights groups use their advocacy efforts depend on whether the third parties providing peacekeeping operations respond to their requests.

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the planning and budgeting processes in Jordan to determine whether the findings of Caiden and Wildavsky about those processes in other poor countries generally are applicable to Jordan. An attempt is made to answer the research questions by comparing data from national plans, budgets, and expenditures during a fifteen-year period (1970-1984). In Jordan, as in other developing nations, the role of planning and budgeting is highly significant to the success of the country's hopes for development. This research tries to evaluate the role of planning and budgeting as policy instruments in the process of development in Jordan. The second focus of the dissertation concerns the possibilities and problems of assessing the impact of governmental policies on development. Specifically, an assessment is made to determine the impact of governmental expenditures on development as evidenced in Jordan s gross national product during the last fifteen years. The following questions are addressed in order to examine the impact of government action on economic development. First, what are the impact and significance of government expenditures, as a combined measure, on the gross national product in Jordan? Second, which governmental expenditure areas provide the greatest contribution to …

This dissertation is a pooled time series, cross-sectional, quantitative study of the impact of international financial transfer on the level of democracy. The study covers 174 developed and developing countries from 1976 through 1994. Through evaluating the democracy and democratization literature and other studies, the dissertation develops a theory and testable hypotheses about the impact of the international variables foreign aid and foreign direct investment on levels of democracy. This study sought to determine whether these two financial variables promote or nurture democracy and if so, how? A pooled time-series cross-sectional model is developed employing these two variables along with other relevant control variables. Control variables included the presence of the Cold War and existence of formal alliance with the United States, which account for the strategic dimension that might affect the financial transfer - level of democracy linkage. The model also includes an economic development variable (per capita Gross National Product) to account for the powerful impact for economic development on the level of democracy, as well as a control for each country's population size. By addressing and the inclusion of financial, economic, strategic, and population size effects, I consider whether change in these variables affect the level of …

This paper determines relationships between three elements of the American policy process: legislature, agency, and administrative clientele. It concerns interrelationships between these elements and their affect to agency functions. A model is constructed; revealing the policy process, illustrating behavior patterns responsible for normal functioning and failure of policies and programs. The model develops through study of a single policy area. Supplemental data are provided from a survey. The paper concludes that the process is based on legislation-- causing activity in an agency or substantial change in programs; agency actions, seated in its own organizational objectives, and resultant to internal conflicts; and by clientele behavior, determined by agency actions or inactions. This model may help predicting policy outcomes, but only after similar but more comprehensive studies.

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 …

According to Alexis de Tocqueville, humanity is entering a new age of political and social equality, a new epoch in which the human race has no historical example or experience. As a result, he holds humanity's future will be largely determined by the political and moral choices made in this transitional time. For Tocqueville, the new egalitarian era is a forgone conclusion, but for him, the pressing question is whether humanity will choose a future in which it enchains itself to new forms of tyranny, or, whether the human race can establish the political and moral institutions designed to assure human freedom and dignity. In Tocqueville's view, liberty or slavery are the two choices modern men and women have in front of them, and it is the intent of this dissertation to explore Tocqueville's warning in regard to the latter choice. Tocqueville warns us that modern democratic peoples must beware of the moral and political effects of a new type of political philosophy, a political theory he terms democratic pantheism. Democratic pantheism is a philosophic doctrine that treats egalitarianism as a "religion" in which all social and political striving is directed toward realizing a providentially ordained strict equality of conditions. …

This thesis attempts to show that, although it is in the interest of regional common market organizations to regulate foreign direct investment, such regulation will probably be unsuccessful unless the regulations are lenient to business and are not used as instruments of major political goals. The east African Community, the Andean Common Market, and the European Economic Community are examined. Research sources used were United States government publications, documents from the common markets involved, United Nations and International Monetary Fund statistics, articles from major political science and business journals, and books.

Although international human rights declarations exist, violations of human rights are still sad but also common facts around the world. But for repressive regimes, it becomes more and more difficult to hide committed human rights violations, since society entered the "Information Revolution." This study argues that the volume of international information exchanged influences a country's human rights record. A pooled cross sectional time series regression model with a lagged endogenous variable and a standard robust error technique is used to test several hypotheses. The findings of this study indicate that the flow of information can be related to a country's human rights index. The study also suggests that more empirical work on this topic will be necessary.

Social capital research has traditionally been conducted in western and Christian settings as a precursor of changes such as democratization and development. This paper focuses on Islamic religious engagement and its potential to foster social capital. The model presented here is designed to suggest whether the Islam's influence occurs through doctrinal channels, or through Islam's capacity to organize social structures. The analysis conducted is a linear regression model with measures of social capital as dependent variables and measures of religious engagement as independent variables. The analysis is conducted on data from the fourth wave of the World Values Survey. Results suggest that religious engagement and social capital have both belief and behavioral elements that should be treated as separate entities in quantitative research.

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 …

This exploratory case study considers the Czech Republic from 1993 thru 2002 by examining two links: first, between transition and the environment.; second, between the environment and human rights. The study examines data from the Czech Ministry of Environment, the European Union, the World Bank, and Freedom House. The purpose of this study is to better understand the Czech Republic and to generate hypotheses that might be used in future cross-national studies. Chapter III provides the underlying theory linking the environment and human rights. Chapters IV, V, and VI discuss the data and the two links and suggest hypotheses for future research. Chapter VII draws conclusions about states in transition, the environment, and human rights and encourages future integrative research.

Geography has been a central element in shaping conflict through the ages, and is especially important in determining which states fight, why they fight, when they fight, and more importantly, where they fight. Despite this, conflict literature has primarily focused on human geography while largely ignoring the geospatial context of ‘where' conflict occurs, or crucially, doesn't occur. Territorial disputes are highly salient issues that quite often result in militarized disputes. Terrain has been key to mitigating conflict even in the face of major variance in state capability and power projection. In this study I investigate how terrain characteristics interact with power projection, opportunity, and willingness and the impact this has across territorial disputes. Exploring terrain's interaction with these concepts and its effect among different types of conflict furthers our understanding of the questions listed above.

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 …

"The Texas Failure sets forth the thesis that environmental problems are essentially a product of political decisions and that in Texas the political system has failed to respond to environmental problems because it is dominated by polluter-oriented special interests. The argument advanced is that polluter-oriented interests are well protected by state politicians in both the legislature and regulatory agencies of state government. The thesis is organized around an analysis of such political factors as ideology, leadership, decision making and law as they relate to a political consideration of Texas environmental conditions."-- leaf 1.

This study tests a theory detailing the increased likelihood of conflict following an initial resource discovery in the discovering nation and its region. A survey of prior literature shows a multitude of prior research concerning resources and nations' willingness to initiate conflict over those resources, but this prior research lacks any study concerning the effects of the discovery of resources on interstate conflict. The theory discusses the increased likelihood of conflict in the discovering nation as both target and initiator. It further looks at the increased chance of conflict in the discoverer's region due to security dilemmas and proxy wars. The results show strong support for the theory, suggesting nations making new resource discoveries must take extra care to avoid conflict.

This research sought to ascertain how newspaper ownership structures influence the quality of local political news coverage. More specifically, do independently owned newspapers tend to produce larger quantities of quality local political reporting than do corporately owned and publicly traded newspapers? In the thesis, I develop an understanding of "quality" news coverage as being coverage that is thematic, or providing interpretive analysis and supplying contextual information. Additionally, I tackle the question of quality news coverage from three angles: whether or not independently owned newspapers provide more quality local political news stories per edition than corporately owned papers; whether or not the percentage of quality local political news stories of total political news stories within an edition is higher for independently owned or corporately owned newspapers; and whether or not the percentage of total political news stories of total news stories is higher for independently owned or corporately owned newspapers.

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 study examines the possible effect of the president's vote totals in states on Presidents Carter's and Reagan's support among senators. Using senators' Congressional Quarterly (CQ) presidential support scores as the dependent variable, this paper hypothesizes that Carter and Reagan's support is significantly and positively related to their electoral success in that Senator's state for the years 1977 through 1988. Several control variables are included to help explain support. There is qualified corroboration for the hypothesis that senator's presidential support scores are significantly and positively related to the president's electoral success for specific administrations and for specific-party senators, although not for the original hypothesis that aggregated the period 1977 to 1988.

This study investigates factors that can influence leaders to use plebiscites to settle territorial claims. A quick survey of the plebiscite literature shows that the method has been extensively mentioned in the legal, historical, and philosophical fields (mostly through case studies) but less so in political science. This thesis is the first attempt, to my knowledge, to quantitatively investigate the different factors that can influence a leader to use a plebiscite. Using the latest version of the ICOW dataset, I test political and economic theories to try to explain the variation in the decision outcome. This study includes the following variables: identity ties, economic strength, an interaction between identity ties and economic strength, internal constraints (regime type and violent interaction), and external constraints (membership to international organizations). The results suggest that identity ties offer the strongest explanation as to why leaders settle a territorial claim with a plebiscite. Plebiscites have been rarely used to settle territorial claims, but when used they tend to settle cases permanently. This thesis serves as an attempt to revive a method that while difficult to agree upon, can be successful in resolving territorial claims permanently, and more importantly peacefully.

This study develops three models of human rights determinants with the inclusion an untested variable, women in parliaments. The research is conducted on pooled cross-sectional time-series data from 130 countries between 1978 and 1996. For the purpose of analysis the Prais-Winsten Regression method with Panel Corrected Standard Errors was used. The women in power variable is hypothesized to be significantly, positively correlated with a state's propensity toward respect for human rights and is operationalized as percentage of women in parliaments. Three models incorporating as control variables previously identified correlates of human rights abuse were utilized to asses the impact of percentages of women in parliaments on two individual subsets of human rights: personal integrity rights and socio-economic rights. Two models were designed to measure the subset of rights categorized as personal integrity rights using two separate measures: State Department Scores and Amnesty International Scores. Model number three utilized the Physical Quality of Life Index to measure levels of socio-economic rights. Statistical significance was demonstrated by the women in parliament variable in all three models.

This study focuses on the role of the Texas Governor's Office in the development of regional councils of governments in Texas. The study, divided into six chapters, emphasizes three important points: first, that Governor Connally conceived the idea of a "Division of Planning Coordination" due to his desire to be a strong chief executive; second, that the staff he hired largely to fulfill this desire in turn convinced the Governor that regional councils of governments should be an element of the statewide planning and development system and should receive strong financial and policy support from the Governor; and third, that from January 1969 to January 1973, the statewide regional council network was completed and Texas became a recognized national leader in the use of the regional council concept.