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- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
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
How do political elites perceive regional intergovernmental organizations that seek to promote democracy? When do political elites view regional intergovernmental institutions promoting democracy as legitimate? Many informal and formal types of regional intergovernmental institutions have sought to spread democracy. However, previous research on the nexus of regional intergovernmental institutions and democracy has focused primarily on the latter. Furthermore, these studies claim that membership in these formal international institutions (a.k.a. international organizations) increases the likelihood of the democratic survival of a newly democratic regime. Membership in these organizations provides a seal of approval that the newly democratic country intends to remain democratic. This kind of external validation should dissuade spoilers from undermining the transition and encourage ordinary people to support the transitional regime. This argument assumes that the domestic audience trusts this organization and believes it plays a vital role in society. Whether elites have confidence that the regional organization can positively impact democratic consolidation and how they perceive different types of regional organizations promoting democracy are empirical questions. This project seeks to answer these questions through a small sample and non-population-based elite survey experiment in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. I also run a laboratory survey experiment with a larger sample of university students, giving me the opportunity for statistical power. The results suggest that political elites are skeptical of regional intergovernmental bodies promoting democracy. Meanwhile, non-elites consider regional institutions promoting democracy illegitimate when they are informal, i.e., no written shared expectations, rules, and permanent secretariat. When regional interstate cooperation on democracy operates under a formal procedure or codified in an international treaty and supported by a permanent secretariat, non-elites tend to consider them more legitimate.
ContributorsSari, Angguntari Ceria (Author) / Thies, Cameron G. (Thesis advisor) / Wright, Thorin (Thesis advisor) / Neuner, Fabian (Committee member) / Thomson, Henry (Committee member) / Shair-Rosenfield, Sarah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
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