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Description
Civil society, when taken as a whole, is a complex phenomenon that incorporates several movements and can be accompanied with international support. For instance in 1987, 40 NGOs (non-governmental organizations) were registered by the government, and within 25 years, the number has increased to 300,000 in the present day Russian Federation. These numbers only include registered organizations, and do not count unregistered organizations, as approved under article 3 "Public organizations...can function without state registration and acquiring of the rights of registered legal body," or organizations that have been refused registration, such as the "Marriage Equality Russia" NGO that was denied registration in 2010. Thus the total amount of NGOs is significantly higher than 300,000. Every one of these NGOs "contribute to Russia‘s economic, political and social life in numerous ways and provide opportunities for citizens to help create better communities and elevate their voices" ("USAID in Russia"). With hundreds of thousands of organizations attempting to make a better society, they are creating a Russian civil society, one that could use the experience of countries with already well-established civil societies (Walzer). Walzer, however, notes the importance for civil society of political engagement with the state (317). In this thesis, I argue that the LGBT movement in Russia today has set an important example for other groups in civil society through its willingness to take on the Russian state through demonstrations and to use the state through the EU Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
ContributorsMark, Daniel (Author) / Hoogenboom, Hilde (Thesis director) / Hagen, V. Mark (Committee member) / Siroky, David (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
This dissertation grapples with the dynamics of intractable conflicts, especially those fought on religious grounds. Intractable conflicts are conceptualized as those which are particularly resistant to resolution. They tend to widen in scope, grow in destructive intensity, and even lengthen in duration. Traditional conflict resolution techniques such as negotiation and mediation fail to manage or resolve such conflicts. Tangible issues with intangible salience are difficult to be resolved peacefully. Disagreements over religion have intangible significance, meaning they are difficult or impossible to define, understand and divide. They result in indivisible bargains, which subsequently lead to intense, persistent and hence, intractable conflicts. Existing literature mostly compares religious and non-religious conflicts and overlook the variations within religious conflicts, especially among different religious causes and their effects on conflict intractability. Operationalizing intractable conflicts in terms of their intensity and duration, I concentrate on conflicts between two world religions – Hinduism and Islam in India. Using the Varshney-Wilkinson Dataset on Hindu-Muslim Violence in India (1950-1995) and Mitra and Ray’s (2014) extension of the same dataset (1996-2000), I classify religious conflicts into four types – (1) Conflicts over Sacred Sites, (2) Animal Slaughter, (3) Religious Festivities and (4) Mixed. I hypothesize that compared to the latter three conflicts, any conflict that involves Sacred Sites results in greater intensity and duration and hence, will be the most intractable. Moreover, in comparison to non-religious conflicts, the same holds true. My findings confirm these hypotheses and additionally demonstrate the varied effects that each of these types have on conflict intensity and duration.
ContributorsMukherjee, Chirasree (Author) / Thomas, George (Thesis advisor) / Siroky, David (Committee member) / Fox, Jonathan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022