Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by FAS Department "Government"
Now showing items 1-20 of 121
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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 ... -
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 ... -
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 ... -
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 ... -
Deep Solidarity: Political Theology, Jewish Thought, and Liberal Commitment in a Secular Age
(2016-09-16)Solidarity is crucial for liberalism. It helps to stabilize society, realize justice, diminish domination, and cultivate moral personality. Yet the sources of liberal solidarity have received almost no attention in ... -
Democracy Beyond Disclosure: Secrecy, Transparency, and the Logic of Self-Government
(2017-01-19)"Transparency" is the constant refrain of democratic politics, a promised aid to accountability and integrity in public life. Secrecy is stigmatized as a work of corruption, tolerable (if at all) by a compromise of democratic ... -
Democratic Theory and the Question of Character
(2013-02-12)This dissertation uses the history of political thought to shed light on the disconnect between the prominent place of judgments about the character in American democratic life, and the marginalized place of those judgments ... -
Determinants of Success and Failure in US Advising of Foreign Militaries, 1945-present
(2017-05-16)Military advising is frequently touted as a high-impact, low-cost strategy that allows the United States to achieve its security goals without deploying combat troops. The US military now considers foreign military advising ...