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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.
The aim of this dissertation is to fill in the vacant spots in the innovation and diffusion study, which are meaningful but have not had much work done previously. First, most policy diffusion studies have focused on the adoption of a...
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...
This article addresses the impact of financial literacy on high school students' financial decisions. To analyze the impact, financial literacy information was provided to the treatment group and the treatment and control group discussed...
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...
This thesis examines the effect and various aspects that Political Satire shows have on the political acquisition of people. The intention of this thesis is to highlight the effects that political satires such as the Colbert Report and...
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...
This project analyzes how elite actors influence democracy in contexts of high levels of public anxiety. Drawing from work on Affective Intelligence in Political Psychology, the project provides a theoretical explanation for the varying...
Analysts in the United States fear the unprecedented growth and modernization of China's Navy could lead to problems for the U.S. and its allies, upsetting America's political influence and economic interests in the Southeast Asia...
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...
Florida Governor Rick Scott defended his move to eliminate the growth management-oriented Department of Community Affairs (DCA) in 2011, claiming that the DCA was killing jobs in the state of Florida, and that it was an inefficient use...
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...
This study examines perceptions of the "typical American" from 49 cultures around the world. Contrary to the ethnocentric bias hypothesis, we found strong agreement between in-group and out-group ratings on the American profile ...
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...
This research investigated South Korean citizens' political information behaviors on Twitter during the 2014 Seoul Mayoral election. By using the mixed methods design of network analysis, tweet content analysis, and interviews, this...
This thesis deals directly with the FDA ban on sexually active homosexual men from donating blood. This work examines how organizations have made arguments against the ban and actions taken in both the legislative realm and college...
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 individuals update their opinions when faced with new information? More specifically, does media coverage affect factual beliefs on foreign policy issues? These questions are directly related to theories of information processing, ...
This thesis aims to situate the controversy surrounding Muslim women's attire in France in a historical context of this country, specifically the development of the French concept of laïcité. In 1905, there occurred an important...
Global politics is a complex game, particularly when conflict dominates the relationship between countries. South Asia is no different as both India and Pakistan have fought four wars since achieving independence from the British in 1947...
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...
Though historical scholarship on gender and international relations has grown over the last few decades, there has been little work done on women in the Foreign Service. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the role of women...
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...
Intervening to supposedly protect human rights constitutes a potent justification for foreign involvement, but how humanitarian discourse became critical to the United States' (US) foreign policy remains poorly studied. I argue that...
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...
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...
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