Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by FAS Department "Government"
Now showing items 1-20 of 172
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A Theory of Protest Escalation
(2017-09-13)Based on 18 months of extensive field-work, I engage in an in-depth comparison of two major episodes of contentious action - the Brazilian and Turkish street protests that took place in 2013, the largest ever recorded in ... -
A Theory of Target State Side Determinants of Information Attacks: Russia’s Information Wars in Its Neighborhood and Afar
(2020-05-12)What factors determine the timing and intensity of information attacks between states? “Timing” means either accompanying traditional military action, or occurring independently of it. “Intensity” means large-scale or ... -
Accountability and Advice in Greek Political Thought
(2013-02-15)This dissertation offers a new reading of Athenian democracy, focusing on the connection between the politics of accountability and the dynamics of political advice. I analyze Athenian institutions, norms, and practices ... -
Aid, Agency, and the Malleability of International Law: The Post-2003 Iraqi Refugee Crisis
(2013-03-06)Why do states tolerate large numbers of refugees? This dissertation offers an answer to this puzzle by examining changes in policy responses by the international community toward Iraqis displaced after the U.S. invasion ... -
Aid, Violence, and Intervention: Three Essays on the Transnational Implications of Refugee Polic
(2017-05-10)This collection of papers develops theory and empirical evidence to respond to three pressing questions on the implications of refugee policy. The first paper explains how large population flows can cause violence in their ... -
Ancient Polities, Modern States
(2016-02-23)Political science is concerned with the study of polities. However, remarkably few scholars are familiar with the polities of the premodern era, such as Vijayanagara, Siam, Abyssinia, the Kingdoms of Kongo or Mutapa, or ... -
Appreciating Housing: The Role of Housing in Politics
(2016-05-03)While the economic implications of housing have been examined extensively, surprisingly limited attention has been devoted to how the housing market impacts politics. My dissertation is a three paper compilation that ... -
Authoritarian Inheritance and Conservative Party-Building in Latin America
(2014-10-21)Beginning in the late 1970s, with the onset of the third wave of democratization, a host of new conservative parties emerged in Latin America. The trajectories of these parties varied tremendously. While some went on to ... -
Between Liberty and Necessity: Spinoza’s Philosophical Vision of Democracy
(2018-09-16)Spinoza is rare among early modern philosophers in his claim that democracy is the best form of government. Rarer still, he argues that it is the best regime because it is the best guarantor of “the freedom to philosophize.” ... -
Blood and Treasure: Money and Military Force in Irregular Warfare
(2013-03-15)Among the most important choices made by groups fighting a civil war -- governments and rebels alike -- is how to allocate available military and pecuniary resources across the contested areas of a conflict-ridden territory. ... -
Business Orders under Disordered Bureaucracies: Firms, Associations and the Post-Communist State
(2013-02-06)The dissertation analyzes the behavior of post-communist firms and business associations, and explores how business interests and organization are affected by the types of states that firms confront. Focusing on the ... -
Buying Inertia: Preempting Social Disorder With Selective Welfare Provision in Urban China
(2015-03-30)A considerable number of welfare programs and social policies are adopted by authoritarian regimes, but we know relatively little about what shapes the pattern of redistribution in the absence of electoral competition. ... -
The Candidate Supply: How the Costs and Benefits of Running for Office Shape the Democratic Process
(2015-04-30)Dominant theories of U.S. elections focus on how candidates fluidly change positions based on the demands of voters. I argue instead that candidates' positions are more rigid. As a result, the supply of candidates, and ... -
Certainty and War
(2016-05-11)Does greater certainty about an adversary’s attributes cause peace? What states believe they can secure through force dictates the diplomatic settlements they will accept. In prevailing accounts which preclude assessment ... -
Citizens of the Market: New Forms of International Migration and their Consequences for People, Parties and Political Systems
(2014-02-25)How does high-mobility migration affect politics in the migrants' countries of origin? This dissertation examines the socio-political effects of intra-EU migrations using quantitative and qualitative data from Romania and ... -
Coercive Institutions and State Violence Under Authoritarianism
(2013-09-30)Why do we observe such widely differing patterns of repression and state violence under authoritarian rule? Despite a wave of recent interest in authoritarian politics, the origins, design and behavior of the coercive ... -
Colossus: Constitutional Theory in America and France, 1776-1799
(2018-09-25)This dissertation presents a new intellectual history of constitution-making in America and France, from the publication of Common Sense in Philadelphia through the coup d'état of Napoleon in Paris. It proposes that ... -
Combating Corruption in Authoritarian Regimes
(2019-05-14)How and why do authoritarian regimes succeed in curbing corruption? Scholars generally assume that autocrats will not curb government corruption because they benefit from it and curbing it would require ceding power to ... -
Combative Pasts: Politics and Remembering in the Post-Communist Space
(2014-02-25)More than two decades after the Polish Roundtable Agreement inaugurated the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, political conversations in the post-communist space remain remarkably attuned to symbolic and ethical questions. ... -
Constructing Kallipolis: The Political Argument of Plato's Socratic Dialogues
(2016-05-18)This dissertation examines the political argument of Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Common interpretations of these texts suggest, variously: (1) that Socrates does not offer much in the way of a political theory; (2) that ...