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Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
While formal and empirical studies of international relations have investigated the conditions under which weak states win conflicts against strong countries, there has been little systematic examination of how weaker states' incentives...
In the Aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the fear of apocalyptic terrorism has caused many Americans and academics worldwide to reexamine previously held beliefs on the morality and suitability of torture as a means of ensuring...
Transnational terrorism (TNT) is a process that, by definition, involves both international and domestic actors. A non-trivial portion of the literature that seeks to answer the question of why TNT occurs has focused on country-level...
Since its inception the European Union has made great strides in the realm of regional integration. However, the political and economic crises of the last decade have fundamentally changed the political landscape of the EU and have had...
In this dissertation, I seek to explain why states fail to commit to the exchange of fugitive offenders with every other state, even where there appear to be several benefits to doing so. Commitment is equated with signature to bilateral...
Representation may be viewed as a dance in which the citizens and their representatives move in graceful unison. The question posed here is not whether this dance occurs, but rather what sustains it. Results presented throughout this...
This dissertation explores two distinct lines of inquiry that are linked thematically through their focus on how narrow or broad an individual's world is affects that individual's beliefs and actions, as well as their regional focus on...
The study of diffusion and adoption of innovations in political science is incomplete and unable to answer the question why do policies diffuse? Additional information should be incorporated into the process. Specifically, rightly...
This dissertation examines the interactive effect of power and third-party peace operations on the bargaining offers made by warring groups during civil war. Chapter 1 sets up the motivation for the research and provides a broad overview...
In this dissertation, I consider what makes some states value ocean space more than others, and how these differences in value affect state actions. I posit that history, geography, legal systems, and national narratives all play a role...
Ideas, Interests, and American Economic Competitiveness: How Were the "Peddling Prosperity" Attempts Successful and Unsuccessful in the Polarized Legislature?
In this dissertation, I argue that concern about economic competitiveness, which emerged among political elites in the United States in the 1980s, became a coherent and salient economic idea around which a new dimension in the issue...
My dissertation "Inequality, Context, and Prosocial Behavior: An Examination of Redistributive Preferences" contributes to an emergent literature on the effects of inequality on policy outcomes by illuminating the psychological and...
The purpose of this study is to examine the contextual determinants of electoral choice, which has largely been characterized by strong regional variation, in recent Korean election from the 14th national election in 1992 to the 16th...
What kinds of states make the best allies? This dissertation studies the determinants of defensive alliance reliability during war. I argue that strong democratic states constitute reliable allies. For these states, the miltiary costs of...
After World War II, the six original members of the European Union claimed economic convergence to be one of their main goals in the Treaty of Rome. Since then, the organization has had to deal with global economics trends, membership...
Numerous scholars have argued that highly autonomous executives are a threat to democracy, which makes understanding the conditions surrounding the use of unilateral action an important topic for research. Accordingly, I turn to the...
In this dissertation, I attempt to answer the question, what are the important factors that predict whether or not people will learn political facts? I make the case that two mechanisms of motivated reasoning theory—confirmation bias and...
Do transnational ethnic linkages between third party states and disputants affect the probability of intervention? If so, how does regime type, power distribution of groups, and borders affect this decision? Do these interventions help...
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are third-party administrators that assist employers and insurers in managing prescription drug benefits. The practices of PBMs remain largely unregulated at the national level and lack transparency, ...
This dissertation consists of three individual essays which examine the relationship between interstate power distributions, hostile interstate relationships, and international conflict. Chapter 2 argues that strategic interstate...
My dissertation project examines the causes of FDI inflows in autocratic countries, attempting to answer the puzzle "Why do some autocratic countries attract more FDI inflows than others?" Given the credible commitment issue that FDI...
In this study I investigate an array of aspects concerning cultural conflict. I use Samuel Huntington's civilizations, from his theory of a Clash of Civilizations (1993), as a means of identifying different cultures. Taking advantage of...
While significant scholarly attention has been given to the literatures on civil war and on alliances, there has not been any exploration of the important role international alliances play in civil war onset. This dissertation posits...
This dissertation consists of three individual studies on the role of state governments in social welfare. The first paper discusses the relationship between gubernatorial administrative capacity and the ability for Democrats to increase...
How do judges use process to further their goals? The judicial politics literature places disproportionate emphasis on one type of judicial action---the decision on the merits. This emphasis obscures how judges make use of other aspects...
This dissertation investigates the causes and consequences of a core value of democracy: the ability of citizens to change the balance of power amongst the political parties that represent them--a phenomenon known as electoral volatility...
The primary objective of this study is to compare two methods of mapping and analyzing policy networks using semantic network analysis of textual information from media sources. The two methods compared were human coding and what the...
Under international law when governments come to power through extra-legal means the governments of other states must decide whether to recognize the new government as a legitimate agent of the state, and we observe considerable...
International actors have championed the rule of law as a fundamental principal for national progress among developing states. But for the post-colonial democracies of the Caribbean region, the concept of the rule of law engenders...
My dissertation consists of three essays of violent conflicts. In the first essay, we propose a novel solution to improve the efficiency of third- party interventions in conflicts. When an intervener coerces the rivals of conflicts into...
The United States stands out as the most economically unequal industrialized democracy. The wealthiest Americans hold nearly as much income today as they did prior to the Great Depression. Despite decades of rising inequality, in which...
Background: How can state Medicaid programs accomplish necessary cost-control reforms while preserving or improving the intent of the program? How can private insurers maximize satisfaction among enrollees while also managing a bottom...
Do regional human rights courts influence respect for rights? Conventional wisdom suggests that absent hard enforcement mechanisms, international legal obligations have little influence on state behavior. International human rights...
Forecasting in international relations is becoming increasingly common, accurate, and relevant for decision support to policymakers. One of the major subjects of forecast- ing has been inter- and intrastate war, through various...
This project investigates the role of the "context" in explaining support for European integration. The main goal of the dissertation is to assess the formative effect of time and space (i.e. context) on individual attitudes. Firs, the...
Third party presidential candidates often attract a great deal of attention, but there are multitudes of non-major party candidates at lower levels seeking to influence American politics. The following analysis will examine the...
Why do power-sharing arrangements fail to promote long-term peace in some civil wars and not in others? Recent work on the subject has shown that power-sharing institutions do increase the likelihood that peace will last; however, the...
The research question that the present project intends to wrestle with is to determine the causes of the long survival of authoritarian rule in post-colonial Francophone West Africa (FWA). The answer to that question should enlighten us...
This dissertation is comprised of three empirical studies that explore both the determinants and consequences of election law restrictiveness in the American states. The first study examines why states restrict the public's ability to...
The political fragmentation that characterize federal systems âand the extreme example that the American system constitutes of such a fragmentation- has attracted great attention from scholars interested in the study of the conditions...
Theories of congressional power can generally be placed into three competing camps that advocate the party, the standing committee, or the floor as the location of power. This work will address the question of power in Congress by...
International development advocates often argue that policy initiatives in spheres like conservation should perform better when they are more participatory. Yet, previous research struggles to identify the circumstances in which this...
Equity markets are becoming an intricate part of economic growth. They provide a source of capital, among other things, that companies may use to grow, innovate, and compete in a domestic or the world market. With the increase of equity...
Who, if anyone, controls the massive government bureaucracy responsible for the elaboration, implementation, and enforcement of laws and executive orders? Typical managerial techniques---screening, reward, and punishment---are hampered...
The project focuses on the interrelationship between both government and dissident leaders' "micromotives" and the regime's/group's "macrobehavior" (Schelling 1978). That is, I explain how dissident and government leaders' individual...
In the American political system we expect some meaningful connection between citizen opinion and legislative voting behavior. The literature has told us that on a broad scale this connection exists. However, we really know very little...
This dissertation contributes to the political violence literature by examining the impacts of refugee communities on the likelihood of international conflict, repression, and domestic terrorism. The main message of this study is that...
Rational deterrence theory understates the importance of declaratory policy by dismissing such as rhetoric. The theory presented here asserts that declaratory policy can provide significant information to a challenger regarding a...
Does adopting a National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) makes states' international commitments more constraining? If so, why would states adopt the constraining institution in the first place? When states do adopt an NHRI, how do they...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
