Browsing Department of Government Theses and Dissertations by Title
Now showing items 171-190 of 213
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Security threats and the military's domestic political role: a comparative study of South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia
(2007)This dissertation constructs a structural theory of civil-military relations that identifies security threats as the primary independent variable that influences the military organization and its political role. My structural ... -
Self-financed candidates and how voters perceive them
(2012-05)The increasing number of candidates relying on their personal wealth and corporate experience in their bids for elected office raises the question: how do voters perceive these non-traditional candidates and their willingness ... -
Separatism or federalism?: Ethnic conflict and resolution in Russia and Georgia
(2005)Ethnic conflicts have accounted for most of the world’s wars in recent decades. My dissertation, based on research on ethno-federal regions in Russia and Georgia, analyzes the factors that cause some ethnic mobilization ... -
Shades of grey : constituencies, electoral incentives, and the president's legislative agenda
(2012-05)This dissertation investigates how presidents build successful legislative coalitions and enact their agenda into law in the United States Congress. It argues that constituencies and electoral incentives cause members of ... -
Signaling intentions through narrative persuasion : an examination of the Berlin Crisis
(2016-05)This paper evaluates the criteria for persuasive international signaling in the context of an incentive to deceive. National-level heuristics interact with observable indices of behavior to condition the effects of ... -
Signals in the fog : the media and government problem prioritization
(2010-05)Traditional scholarship on the media effects of government activity focuses on the transfer of salience. Salience and priorities are conceptually distinct, although they are often incorrectly used interchangeably. Whereas ... -
Some conflicts may not end: the stability of protracted violence in Colombia
(2002)This dissertation explains why intrastate conflicts may persist beyond the point where agreements are expected. I argue that the prolongation of certain conflicts may be tied to the character of the groups involved in ... -
A source of new information? the market effects of corporate testimony in congressional hearings (2000-2005)
(2011-05)Given that Congressional hearings are established legislative and political information generating tools for committee members engaging in oversight, fact finding, and agenda setting, I examine whether or not hearings ... -
The Spanish masters : the 16th century presence in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(2011-08)The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948 as a response to the atrocities of the Second World War. This analysis seeks to trace the influence of three Spanish masters of the 16th century, Las ... -
A spatial econometric approach to the study of social influence
(2012-12)While political scientists have traditionally examined social influence through social network or contextual studies, this dissertation argues for the use of spatial econometrics as an alternative approach. While spatial ... -
State sponsored terrorism? leader survival and the foreign policy of fear
(2013-05)States that sponsor terrorism pose one of the greatest policy and security challenges of the 21st century. Over the past decade, the United States and coalition allies have invested over a trillion dollars in the wars in ... -
Strategy of reform : courts, politics, and policy reform in Texas
(2012-12)When, how, and why do policy makers and reformers use courts and legal procedures to achieve their policy ends? This project explores the relationship of courts to the process of policy reform in Texas. I predict that ... -
Strong women, weak parties : challenges to democratic representation in Brazil
(2012-12)As a crisis of representation challenges third wave democracies, two of its most salient indicators – weak party institutionalization and the underrepresentation of marginalized groups – have thus far been evaluated only ... -
A supranational elite theory of neofunctionalist European integration
(2004)The national states of Europe are eliminating themselves. Not only is this development of historic import, it flies in the face of numerous theories of political science. Most notably, the school of international ... -
The surrender of secrecy : explaining the emergence of strong access to information laws in Latin America
(2010-05)Worldwide, the remarkable diffusion of transparency and access to information laws poses a monumental challenge to the state’s most enduringly undemocratic feature— excessive secrecy. Will recent laws lead to an effective ... -
Taiwan in cross-Strait relations, 1987-2004
(2007)This dissertation investigates Taiwan's role in the twists and turns in its relationship with China from 1987 to 2004. It employs the methods of both case studies and the VAR (vector autoregression) time-series analysis ... -
Taking a break from constitutional authority? : toward a relational understanding of recess appointments
(2015-05)This paper re-contextualize legal debates about recess appointments by considering how a relational approach might provide a better way to resolve these controversies. According to this relational reconceptualization, ... -
Taming political Islamists by Islamic Capital: the passions and the interests in Turkish Islamic society
(2005)This dissertation seeks to explain the moderation of the Turkish Islamic party since the end of 1990s. It is hypothesized that in a relatively open and pluralist political system, like Turkey, Islamic entrepreneurs may ... -
Technocracy under democracy : assessing the political autonomy of experts in Latin America
(2012-05)The important role that technocrats play in Latin America has stimulated a lively theoretical debate about experts’ influence in policy making and their effective independence from other sociopolitical players, especially ...
