Matching Items (44)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Political Science
- Creators: School of Politics and Global Studies
- Creators: Siroky, David
- Creators: Warner, Carolyn
- Creators: Economics Program in CLAS
Description
What does it mean to speak of governance in the absence of states? This dissertation seeks to answer this question through an empirical examination of the founding of two unique agricultural settlements constructed by the Jewish community of Palestine, also known as the Yishuv: the kibbutz and the moshav. Commonly, in order to be considered effective, states must, at minimum, provide their population with two critical public goods: the satisfaction of their material needs and their physical protection through a military or police force. Dominant assumptions across multiple subfields of both Comparative Politics and International Relations content that because weak and failed states cannot provide their civilian populations with these critical public goods, that governance in the absence of effective, sovereign, and territorial states is a myth. It is often argued that violence, anarchy, and human suffering inevitably follow in the wake of state collapse and that in order to alleviate these problems, state building practices must focus on creating a fully sovereign state that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within its borders. This dissertation questions these assumptions. Through quantitative analysis of an original dataset constructed from Israeli archival sources as well as a qualitative historical examination of declassified Israeli archival material from 1920-1948, this dissertation demonstrates that it is possible for non-state actors to construct institutions of governance within the context of a weak or failing state. The Jewish community, through its organs of governance, utilized the kibbutzim and the moshavim to provide the all important public goods of military defense and economic growth respectively. It is shown in this dissertation how political institutions can be crafted endogenously within weak and failing states and how these institutions may actually serve to increase political stability, staving off anarchy and violence.
ContributorsMuchlinski, David (Author) / Warner, Carolyn (Thesis advisor) / Siroky, David (Committee member) / Hechter, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Why do religious organizations facilitate secular political activism in some settings and not others? This dissertation uses regional variation in political activism across Mexico to elucidate the relationship between religious organizations and political activism, as measured through associational activity and involvement in political protests. I utilize a quantitative analysis of 13,500 data observations collected from the nationally representative National Survey of Political Culture and Citizenship (ENCUP), supplemented by municipal and diocesan-level data from a variety of governmental and Church statistical databases, to test several theories describing religion's potential impact on political activism. I also utilize a qualitative comparative analysis examining the relationship between the Catholic Church and political mobilization in the Mexican States of Chiapas, Morelos, and Yucatán. I present an agent-based model developed to delineate the micro-level mechanisms linking Church institutional configurations and religion's pro-social effects to individual incentives to politically organize. The predictions of the agent-based model are assessed against my statistical dataset. The study finds where religious institutions devolve decision-making, monitoring, and sanctioning authority to the laity, individuals develop capacities to overcome collective action problems related to political activism. Religious ideology is also found to influence capacities for political activism.
ContributorsHale, Chris (Christopher) (Author) / Warner, Carolyn (Thesis advisor) / Hechter, Michael (Committee member) / Siroky, David (Committee member) / Hinojosa, Magda (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
International organizations are ubiquitous in the international system and often intervene in domestic political affairs. Interventions can occur because states do not have adequate infrastructure to govern, because a political regime seeks international legitimation of its rule, or because an intervention may prevent political crisis. Whatever the reason, there are consequences of such interventions for domestic society. This project asks how interventions sanctioned by international organizations affect individual political involvement, specifically attitudes toward democracy and democratic institutions. I theorize and empirically demonstrate that when an international intervention reinforces existing democratic institutions in a state, individual levels of confidence in democracy and levels of trust in democratic institutions improve. By contrast, when an intervention undermines existing democratic institutions, levels of confidence in democracy and trust in democratic institutions decrease. This research is important because it shows that the determinants of individual political engagement are not only domestic, but also affected by international-level phenomena. This means that international organizations and the interventions they regularly employ in states can meaningfully affect the prospects for democratic consolidation.
ContributorsSwagerty, R. Scott (Author) / Kittilson, Miki C (Thesis advisor) / Siroky, David (Committee member) / Abbott, Kenneth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Political and economic competition, so goes the broad argument, reduce corruption because competition increases the cost of actors to engage in corrupt practices. It increases the risk of exposure, provides non-corrupt alternatives for consumers, and introduces non-corrupt practices into the political and economic domains. Why then, has corruption persisted in the Central Eastern European countries decades after the introduction of political and economic competition in the early 1990s?
This dissertation asks how and why the emergence of competition in the political and economic domains leads to a transformation of the patterns of corruption. I define corruption as an act involving a public official who violates the norms or regulations of their office, receives some compensation in return, and thus harms the public interest.
I argue that under conditions of a communist past and high levels of uncertainty, the simultaneous emergence of political and economic competition transforms the opportunity structures of actors to engage in corruption. The resulting constellation of powerful incentives for and weak constraints against corruption encourages political and economic actors to enter into corrupt state-business relationships. Finally, the resource distribution between the actors in the corrupt state-business relationship determines the type of corruption that emerges—legal corruption, local capture, or covert political financing.
To test the causal mechanism, I employ intensive process-tracing of the micro-causal mechanisms of eleven corruption cases in Poland and Hungary. Using paired comparisons of cases from the same business sector but at different points in time, the dissertation examines how corruption patterns transformed over time in Poland and Hungary.
The dissertation shows that the emergence of political and economic competition changes the opportunity structures of actors in favor of corruption. Moreover, the new constellation of incentives and constraints encourages political and economic actors to establish corrupt state-business relationships. Crucially, I find that the resource distribution within these corrupt relationships determines the type of corruption emerges—local capture where both sides have concentrated resources that balance each other out, legal corruption when a strong economic actor confronts a fragmented political actor, and covert political financing when a weak economic actor faces a strong political actor.
This dissertation asks how and why the emergence of competition in the political and economic domains leads to a transformation of the patterns of corruption. I define corruption as an act involving a public official who violates the norms or regulations of their office, receives some compensation in return, and thus harms the public interest.
I argue that under conditions of a communist past and high levels of uncertainty, the simultaneous emergence of political and economic competition transforms the opportunity structures of actors to engage in corruption. The resulting constellation of powerful incentives for and weak constraints against corruption encourages political and economic actors to enter into corrupt state-business relationships. Finally, the resource distribution between the actors in the corrupt state-business relationship determines the type of corruption that emerges—legal corruption, local capture, or covert political financing.
To test the causal mechanism, I employ intensive process-tracing of the micro-causal mechanisms of eleven corruption cases in Poland and Hungary. Using paired comparisons of cases from the same business sector but at different points in time, the dissertation examines how corruption patterns transformed over time in Poland and Hungary.
The dissertation shows that the emergence of political and economic competition changes the opportunity structures of actors in favor of corruption. Moreover, the new constellation of incentives and constraints encourages political and economic actors to establish corrupt state-business relationships. Crucially, I find that the resource distribution within these corrupt relationships determines the type of corruption emerges—local capture where both sides have concentrated resources that balance each other out, legal corruption when a strong economic actor confronts a fragmented political actor, and covert political financing when a weak economic actor faces a strong political actor.
ContributorsKartner, Jennifer Joan (Author) / Warner, Carolyn (Thesis advisor) / Thies, Cameron (Committee member) / Von Hagen, Mark (Committee member) / Berliner, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This work explores the underlying dynamics of democracies in the context of underdevelopment, arguing that when society has not attained a substantial degree of economic independence from the state, it undermines democratic quality and stability. Economic underdevelopment and political oppression are mutually reinforcing, and both are rooted in the structure of the agriculture sector, the distribution of land, and the rural societies that emerge around this order. These systems produce persistent power imbalances that militate toward their continuance, encourage dependency, and foster the development of neopatrimonialism and corruption in the government, thereby weakening key pillars of democracy such as accountability and representativeness. Through historical analysis of a single case study, this dissertation demonstrates that while this is partly a result of actor choices at key points in time, it is highly influenced by structural constraints embedded in earlier time periods. I find that Ghana’s historical development from the colonial era to present day closely follows this trajectory.
ContributorsEllis, Alicia N (Author) / Thies, Cameron (Thesis advisor) / Warner, Carolyn (Committee member) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This thesis paper examines the rise of nationalist parties in the Netherlands from the 1960s to 2015. It examines two major explanations for this growth: increasing numbers of predominantly Islamic immigrants and the increasing powers of the European Union. Concerns with these events have brought neo-nationalist parties to the forefront of the political process. This analysis begins in the 1960s during the depillarization of Dutch society and concludes with Geert Wilders and the Partij voor de Vrijheid.
ContributorsVan Gijlswijk, Christiaan Cornelis (Author) / Bustikova-Siroky, Lenka (Thesis director) / Hechter, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The purpose of this research is to identify the factors contributing the resiliency of Syria's President Assad amongst a backdrop of falling authoritarians during the Arab Spring. After determining the Assad's regime's strategies of authoritarian rule both before and after the 2011 uprisings, this paper theorizes what Assad's persistence is most dependent on today by analyzing his discourse throughout the conflict. Assad's framing of the war to the media has significantly legitimized his rule.
ContributorsKassab, Seema (Author) / Parmentier, Mary Jane (Thesis director) / Simon, Sheldon (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This paper examines the development of United States drone policy outside of traditional battle zones. It poses the question of why do states use drones as a projection of force? In particular, the paper examines the expansion of the drone program within a system of democratic checks and balances. It looks at the effect that political and legal influences have had on the expansion of the drone program and hypothesizes that the presence of these constraints should increase drone use outside of traditional battle zones. In order to investigate this hypothesis, the paper looks at data on drone strikes from Yemen and Somalia. The data partially supports the hypothesis as there has not been a clear linear increase in the number of drone strikes in each of these countries. Nevertheless, an examination of the surrounding literature regarding political and legal influences within these countries seems to favorably point to the increase of drone operations. Future research, however, needs to be cognizant of the limitations in gathering specific statistics on drone operations as these operations are covert. It's also important to understand how the covert nature of the drone operations impacts issues regarding political oversight and legality. Lastly, it's important to constantly examine the broader implications drone policy has for US policy.
ContributorsRajan, Rohit Subramaniam (Author) / Wright, Thorin (Thesis director) / Rothenberg, Daniel (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
This thesis comparatively examines the percentage of women who have been appointed to federal level Cabinet positions in the United States and Canada between 1980 and 2010. The thesis will first explain the differences in the nation's democratic systems -- presidential and parliamentarian -- to contextualize how each nation elects federal representatives coupled with their process of appointing individuals to Cabinet positions per administration. Then the thesis will briefly explain the basis of the political parties that have been active in each country alongside their prominent ideals, in an effort to understand the impact it has had on the number of women elected to federal positions. Finally, the research will focus on the number of women appointed to Cabinet to demonstrate how an increase in the amount of political parties, creates more competition between political parties, in turn allowing for a higher number of women to be elected as well as appointed to federal positions. In conclusion, the research suggests that liberal party's push forth more women to federal level positions in both countries. Coupled with the fact that the increase in the amount of office holding parties increases competition between parties and increases the number of women appointed to Cabinet.
ContributorsOkula, Victoria (Author) / Shair-Rosenfield, Sarah (Thesis director) / Kittilson, Miki (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
Over the last 30 years, the public has become somewhat less willing to accept the “feminist” label. However, most Americans indicate support for general feminist ideals. In fact, many of these ideals have become so prevalent in American culture that they are not considered feminist anymore. This thesis will examine the reason behind this disparity and analyze where public opinion began to shift. The disparity between the definition of feminism and the definition perceived by the public will be explored along with the idea that the American people still want and need a “feminist movement,” but that its current state is not resonating with the majority of the public.
ContributorsKasle, Lauren Jessica (Author) / Lennon, Tara (Thesis director) / Woodall, Gina (Committee member) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05