Matching Items (8)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Political Science
- Creators: Thomson, Henry
- Status: Published
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
Political scientists have long recognized the importance of representation as being critical to the American form of government. This paper begins by establishing the theoretical basis for representational studies in political science. It then turns to the empirical question of measuring the degree to which legislators represent their constituents. While there have been comprehensive studies of representation among members of Congress, several practical difficulties have prevented similar studies at the state legislature level. Underlying measures of representation are the preferences of constituents and the representational behavior of legislators. This paper proposes two metrics, a modified Partisan Voting Index and the American Conservative Union State Legislative Ratings, to compare the district-level preferences with roll call voting behavior (a form of substantive representation) of the corresponding legislators. This methodology is then tested against data collected from the Arizona legislature, specifically incorporating election returns from 2012, 2014, and 2016, and votes taken during the 2017 and 2018 sessions of the legislature. The findings suggest a strong relationship between the partisan and ideological leaning of a state legislative district and how conservative or liberal a legislator’s voting record is, even when controlling for political party. Two special cases are also examined in the context of this data. First, the three legislative districts with a split delegation are analyzed and determined to have a moderating effect on representative behavior. Second, five mid-term vacancies are examined along with the process for filling a vacancy. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this line of research can better inform legislators and help constituents hold their elected officials to account.
ContributorsFairbanks, Austin Kyle (Author) / Herrera, Richard (Thesis director) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Organizations use news releases to promote coverage of its operations and enhance the image and issues pertinent to the organization. In most cases, the primary focus of press releases and news media coverage differs. This thesis analyzes the resonance between coverage by news organizations and the materials released by the organization. Analysis of coverage by the news media and the NBA illustrates the resonance and connections in coverage by all three organizations. It also shows how information regarding the NBA lockout released by the NBA and news outlets can be differentiated into unique issue arenas. These issue arenas can have influence on each other, while also allowing organizations to provide their own unique perspectives.
ContributorsEckert, Marshall (Author) / Gilpin, Dawn (Thesis director) / Matera, Fran (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
In the sixty-seven years following the end of World War II, West Germany and Japan underwent a remarkable series of economic and social changes that irrevocably altered their respective ways of life. Formerly xenophobic, militaristic and highly socially stratified societies, both emerged from the 20th Century as liberal, prosperous and free. Both made great strides well beyond the expectations of their occupiers, and rebounded from the overwhelming destruction of their national economies within a few short decades. While these changes have yielded dramatic results, the wartime period still looms large in their respective collective memories. Therefore, an ongoing and diverse dialectical process would engage the considerable popular, official, and intellectual energy of their post-war generations. In West Germany, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung (VGB) emerged to describe a process of coming to terms with the past, while the Japanese chose kako no kokufuku to describe their similar historical sojourns. Although intellectuals of widely varying backgrounds in both nations made great strides toward making Japanese and German citizens cognizant of the roles that their militaries played in gruesome atrocities, popular cinematic productions served to reiterate older, discredited assertions of the fundamental honor and innocence of the average soldier, thereby nurturing a historically revisionist line of reasoning that continues to compete for public attention. All forms of media would play an important role in sustaining this “apologetic narrative,” and cinema, among the most popular and visible of these mediums, was not excluded from this. Indeed, films would play a unique recurring role, like rhetorical time capsules, in offering a sanitized historical image of Japanese and German soldiers that continues to endure in modern times. Nevertheless, even as West Germany and Japan regained their sovereignty and re-examined their pasts with ever greater resolution and insight, their respective film industries continued to “reset” the clock, and accentuated the visibility and relevancy of apologetic forces still in existence within both societies. However, it is important to note that, when speaking of “Germans” and “Japanese,” that they are not meant to be thought of as being uniformly of one mind or another. Rather, the use of these words is meant as convenient shorthand to refer to the dominant forces in Japanese and German civil society at any given time over the course of their respective post- war histories. Furthermore, references to “Germany” during the Cold War period are to be understood to mean the Federal Republic of Germany, rather than their socialist counterpart, the German Democratic Republic, a nation that undertook its own coming to terms with the past in an entirely distinct fashion.
ContributorsPiscopo, Michael (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis director) / Moore, Aaron (Committee member) / Machander, Sina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
Civil conflicts with ethnic motivating factors are more likely to experience recurrence than nonethnic conflicts. In this paper I conduct a survival analysis on a group of 175 conflict episodes from 1946-2005. I argue that grievances based on religion, race, culture, language, and/or history are difficult to resolve due to the concept of indivisibility that makes compromise on ethnic issues unpopular. Along with Clausewitz’s theory on the influence of passion, chance, and reason in war, I also argue the importance of following clear objectives. When goals change over time, strategy becomes confounded and conflict recurrence increases. Utilizing the Cox Proportional Hazards model, the hazard rate is found to be significantly higher for ethnic conflicts than nonethnic conflicts. They also face shorter periods of peace. To highlight how ethnic mechanisms effect similar conflict scenarios, a case study of the first Indo-Pakistani and Chinese Civil War is made. I find that in the absence of ethnic grievances through China’s cultural assimilation campaigns, they were able to effectively curb violent disputes while India could not.
ContributorsNguyen-Morris, Kelly (Author) / Thomson, Henry (Thesis advisor) / Wright, Thorin (Committee member) / Siroky, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
When does coercion succeed in international relations? Why do states resist coercion in some cases but concede in others? This dissertation adopts network analysis to investigate the network factors influencing the success and failure of economic and military coercion. The first chapter addresses the coercion target states’ information problem regarding how coercers would react to the targets’ resistances and concessions. By regarding resistances and concessions as network ties that can transmit information, it argues that past coercion outcomes endogenously influence targets’ current responses and coercion outcomes. Specifically, target states are more likely to concede to coercers who have been successful in gaining others’ compliance. Sender states are more likely to succeed in coercion when they had successful coercion in the past. The second chapter adds a condition to the first chapter’s argument. It argues that when being coerced by the same sender, a stronger sanction target’s compliance is likely to prompt a weaker target’s acquiescence, and that a weaker target’s resistance is likely to prompt a stronger target’s resistance. The third chapter explores how states’ positions in international security and economic networks influence the success and failure of military and trade coercion. States that occupy different network positions own different network power. I argue that when the coercion sender has relatively more network power than the target, the more likely coercion will be successful. I use interstate military alliances and arms transfer data to operationalize international security networks. International economic networks are operationalized by bilateral trade and regional trade agreements networks. Using military and trade coercion outcomes in the Military Compellent Threats (MCT) and the Threats and Imposition of Economic Sanctions (TIES) datasets as outcome variables, the statistical analysis partially supports my argument. Trade coercion is more likely to succeed when the sender has more network power. However, military coercion is less likely to succeed when the sender has more network power than the target.
ContributorsAi, Weining (Author) / Peterson, Timothy (Thesis advisor) / Thies, Cameron (Committee member) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / Chyzh, Olga (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
What factors influence an authoritarian state to emphasize lower-utility repressive methods to neutralize dissidents? Previous studies have addressed covert methods of repression in the form of intelligence gathering to support the state's overt repressive actions. Such constructs, however, fail to fully articulate clandestine repressive methods that not only conceal the identity of the responsible actor from the target, but also the activity itself. To fill this gap, in this study I explore the construct of disintegration as a means for states to clandestinely neutralize dissent. While effective, these methods are also resource intensive, which makes them lower utility for the state from a cost perspective relative to overt repression and in turn begs the questions of why a state would emphasize such methods in their repressive strategy. To answer this question, I forward a structuralist argument that seeks to challenge assumptions in the literature that over-rely on existing theories of state repression. By incorporating literature from multiple disciplines, I outline a causal process that identifies the linkage between a state’s legitimation strategy and its guarantees for civil-political human rights norms to create a mechanism that could cause the state to emphasize disintegration measures. I examine three periods in the history of the German Democratic Republic and find that it emphasized disintegration in its repressive strategy during the mid-seventies due to its financial and economic agreements with the West being dependent on (appeared) compliance with the human rights stipulations of the Helsinki Accords of 1975. Stemming from this case a mid-range theory of disintegration that has implications for contemporary autocracies as well as democracies. The primary contribution of this theory lies in its ability to explain this outcome in authoritarian states that are typically less restricted in their implementation of overt repression.
ContributorsRector, William (Author) / Thomson, Henry (Thesis advisor) / Hanson, Margaret (Committee member) / Bustikova, Lenka (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Regarding the question “Why do sanctions fail?” the majority of sanctions studies take the perspective of the target countries or the interactions between the dyadic countries involved, but the sender countries’ impact on sanctions’ effectiveness is largely neglected. This dissertation looks at the domestic economic actors, i.e., enterprises and consumers, of the sender countries. By answering “Who participates in economic sanctions?” this dissertation assesses one factor potentially influencing the sanctions’ effectiveness: the sanctions participation and evasion inside the sender countries. More precisely speaking, this dissertation applies the factor of the political connections economic actors have with their governments to explain their participation in or circumvention from sanctions imposed by their own countries. This dissertation consists of three independent empirical papers, respectively. The first looks at the anti-Japanese consumer boycotts in China 2012, the second at the trade controls by companies inside mainland China targeting Taiwan in 2002, and the third, the Steel and Aluminum Tariffs imposed by the US since 2018. Generally speaking, the papers find that strong political connections in China promote sanctions participation, reflected via the larger transaction reduction by organizational consumers and State-Owned Enterprises, yet facilitate sanctions evasion in the US, reflected by the larger chance for tariff exemptions for companies with more political importance and monetary investment to the governments. Dissertation findings reveal the effect of connections on sanctions, and at the same time show how divergent institutions make one variable function in the opposite way.
ContributorsKONG, FANYING (Author) / Thies, Cameron (Thesis advisor) / Shair-Rosenfield, Sarah (Committee member) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021