The hypothesis that language discrimination contributes to protest and/or rebellion is tested. Constitutional language policy regarding administrative/judicial, educational and other matters is measured on three separate scales developed for this study; the status of each minority group's language under its country's policy is measured by another set of scales. Protest and rebellion variables are taken from Gurr's Minorities at Risk study. Findings include an indication that group language status contributes positively to protest and rebellion until a language attains moderate recognition by the government, at which point status develops a negative relationship with protest and rebellion, and an indication that countries with wider internal variations in their treatment of language groups experience higher levels of protest and rebellion on the part of minority groups.

The theory proposed here is that the Supreme Court behaves in a strategic manner at the agenda-setting stage in order to vote sincerely on the merits. To test this, I measure the impact issue salience and ideological distance between Congress and the Supreme Court has on the agenda. The results indicate that whether the Supreme Court behaves either sincerely or strategically depends on the policy area. The strategic nature of the Supreme Court at the agenda-setting phase may be in large part why some research shows that the Court behaves sincerely when voting on the merits. By behaving strategically at the agenda-setting phase, the Court is free to vote sincerely in later parts of the judicial process.

Numerous authoritarian states use institutions usually associated with democratic regimes like a constitution, elections, and a legislature. This seems to be counterintuitive. Authoritarian regimes should rather shrink away from democratic institutions. Elections can be won by the opposition and legislatures can make decisions against the interests of the ruler. So, why do autocratic regimes install institutions which limit their power and threaten their survival in office? Assuming actors behave rationally, one should expect authoritarian rulers only to introduce procedures working in their favor. This study looks at the effect of institutions in authoritarian regimes. The findings suggest that legislatures significantly lower the chances of regime breakdown in the long run. However, particularly in election years, authoritarian regimes are facing a higher likelihood of failure.

The global emphasis on human rights has generated a surge of studies into what causes regimes to abuse the basic rights of their citizens. Causes of abuse can be internal or external in nature, based on economics, politics or cultures. This study examines the effects of foreign aid and foreign direct investment on three types of human rights: personal integrity, civil and political, and subsistence. I perform ordinary least squares regression analyses with panel-corrected standard errors on a pooled cross-sectional time series design incorporating 127 countries from 1976 to 1996. While my results are not significant, it is important to observe that there is a tendency toward negative relationships for the majority of the analyses.

In the last thirty years, there has been a significant increase in the globalization process, or as other refer to it, the internationalization, free trade, or liberalization. This trend was reflected in the increasing number of newly formed international organization (economic and security) as well as in the increased membership in the already existing ones. The evidence of this trend has been particularly visible since the end of the Cold War, when the race of the Eastern European countries to enter international organizations has been as competitive as ever. Nonetheless, a number of countries, upon careful evaluation and consideration of membership, has opted out of the opportunity to enter such international agreements. The question that this paper addresses is how do countries decided whether to enter or not international organizations? In other words, what elements, processes, and motives lie behind the decision of countries to commit to a new membership? Most of the studies that have addressed this topic have done so from an international perspective as they addressed the politics between countries, as well as the costs and benefits in terms of power, sovereignty, and national income once in the organizations. This paper, on the other hand, approaches the …

Scholars often address the process of enlargement as one-sided argument. This work provides a general theory of organizational expansion by including strategies and actions of both, applicant states and members of international organizations. It is argued that dependent on the domestic characteristics of states an organization strategically implement a set of conditions to avoid the application and admission of states, which are either not able to conform with the rules or not willing to pay the costs of membership. This process incorporates two stages. I test this theory by utilizing a Heckman-Probit-Selection Model, which accounts for this two-stage procedure. The results confirm that conditions are important to avoid costs in the process of expansion.

Three models are developed to analyze the state level conditions fostering the rise of far right parties in the European Union in the last two decades. The political background of these parties is examined. This study offers a definition for far right parties, which combines several previous attempts. The research has focused on the effects of the number of the parties, immigration, and unemployment on support for the far right in Europe. Empirical tests, using a random effects model of fifty elections in eight nations, suggest that there are political, social, and economic conditions that are conducive to electoral success. Specifically, increases in the number of "effective" parties favor the far right, while electoral thresholds serve to dampen support. Immigration proves to be a significant variable. Surprisingly, changes in crime and unemployment rates have a negative effect on support for the far right. Suggestions for future research are offered.

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.

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 thesis examines how drug policy and enforcement affect drug manufacturers. The approach taken is a comparative institutional analysis of cannabis and methamphetamine production. I focus on the effects of prohibition, privacy, and clandestine markets on producer behavior for these two drugs and the unintended consequences that result. I demonstrate that cannabis and methamphetamine producers both face substantial transaction costs and that producers alter their behavior to manage these transaction costs. I conclude that cannabis producers can adopt indoor, small-scale operations to hide their activity, which are capable of yielding continuous, high-potency crops. Methamphetamine producers also adopt small-scale, decentralized strategies, but commodity control increases their exposure and leads to greater overall transaction costs during the manufacturing process.

In recent years, explanations for the occurrence of civil war have mainly emphasized state weakness as providing an opportunity for greed-based rebellions. Yet, this explanation leaves many questions open, as it cannot distinguish between weak states that do and those that do not experience civil war. In this paper, I argue that abuses of personal integrity rights, committed or sponsored by the government, provide this missing link. The theory is illustrated and formalized in a game-theoretic model and then tested empirically, building on earlier work by Fearon and Laitin (2003a) and Sambanis (2004). The results show that repression is highly significant in both statistical and substantive terms. According to one model, the probability of civil war onset increases by a factor of almost 16 in highly repressive countries compared to countries with no repression. Further robustness tests across alternative civil war lists largely confirm the importance of human rights abuses in explaining the occurrence of civil war.

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.

The specific problem with which this investigation is concerned is training for public administration in Thailand. Of particular importance are the Western-style training programs developed since 1956, when Indiana University began the Institute of Public Administration in conjunction with the Thai government.

The purpose of this study is to expound the dilemma that, in spite of the huge wealth of Saudi Arabia, its drive for development and modernization is stumbling. This situation is due to a large extent to the country's severe administrative limitations.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the trends in Alabama voting which have occurred since V. O. Key's classic study of the problem in 1949; particular emphasis is placed upon the impact on Alabama politics of the growing Negro vote since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned addresses the question of the proper role of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union in the Soviet state. The political leadership has two alternatives in seeking a remedy to this civil-military question. They may either control the military establishment by granting strict professional autonomy or by integrating the armed forces into the civil structure.

Due to the actions of radicals and extremists, many in the West have come to view Islam as a religion of gender inequality that perpetuates the severe oppression of women. However, there is actually great variation in women’s rights across Muslim countries. This thesis presents a theoretical framework seeking to explain this variation, by examining differences in family law. The theory supposes that variation can be explained by the strategic actions of political leaders. From this theory, I hypothesize that the variations in women’s rights come from the variation in family law, which in large, are due to the existence of groups threatening the power of the political leaders, and the leader’s subsequent understanding of this threat. Using a most similar systems research design, I examine 4 moderate Muslim countries, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. Through case study research, I find limited support for the above hypothesis.

In order to explain presidential decisions to use force, a model is developed that incorporates three distinct decision-making environments. The results indicate the president is responsive not only to domestic and international environments, but also to the resource evaluation environment. The evidence here demonstrates that while these two environments are important the president can't use force arbitrarily; rather, his evaluation of resources available for the use of force can limit his ability to engage the military during crisis situations.

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.

Integrated process models that combine both legal and extralegal variables provide a more accurate specification of the judicial decision making process and capture the complexity of the factors that shape judicial behavior. Judicial decision making theories borrow heavily from U.S. Supreme Court research, however, such theories may not automatically be applicable to the lower federal bench. The author uses vote dilution cases originating in the federal district courts from the years 1965 to 1993 to examine what motivates the behavior of district and circuit court judges. The author uses an integrated process model to assess what factors are important to the adjudication process and if there are significant differences between federal district and appellate court judges in decision making.

The purpose of this study is to examine internal and external factors affecting the Egyptian-Soviet alliance during the period under investigation. Chapter I provides background information on Egyptian-Soviet relations, and in Chapter II important developments in those relations are outlined. Chapter III examines the October War of 1973 and Soviet policy during the war. Chapter IV traces efforts to reach a settlement in the Middle East, highlighting the role of the United States in the negotiations. Finally, Chapter V demonstrates that Egypt, like other small nations, has not surrendered its interests to the aims of either of the superpowers.

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 thesis offers an alternative of political leadership through a literature review of democratic theory as categorized into three models: classical, elitist, and egalitarian. The three models considered an ethical, an institutional, and an economic institutional postulate of political elites and their relationships. Still, the democratic elitist model emerging as the dominant model has been challenged by the egalitarian model enforcing economic institutional elites to be accountable to mass interest. As a competing idea, the egalitarian democratic model has been analyzed for its desirability over the democratic elitist model. This study is worthwhile in instigating an underscored concern surrounding economic institutional elites in the scope of accountable political elites, and in calling forth a further study on the preferred alternative, democratization of economic institutional elites.