Government & Politics Theses and Dissertations

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TIES THAT MATTER: THREE ESSAYS ON COOPERATION AMONG ARMED NONSTATE ORGANIZATIONS
(2024) Yarlagadda, Rithvik; Cunningham, David; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Armed non-state groups frequently cooperate with other groups, even to the point of allyingwith them. This dissertation examines the role of group leaders in understanding when and to what extent do armed groups cooperate, and the impact that cooperation has on the severity of terrorist violence. When operating in complex environments such as civil wars, armed groups face information barriers in credibly signaling to other groups about their willingness to engage in cooperation. I argue that group leader’s length of time in power and their prewar experiences help resolve the information uncertainty and promote cooperation between armed groups. Prior to assuming power, some leaders participate in a variety of military and political activities. These prewar leader experiences, I argue, condition the type of armed group cooperation that occurs during civil wars. Furthermore, I also explore if and how cooperation influences the violent behavior of armed groups. Specifically, I argue that in addition to the number of cooperative ties, the diversity and directionality of support within those ties also matter equally, if not more, in affecting the severity of armed group violence. Using a large-N design, I conduct a variety of statistical models to test my hypotheses related to the incidence, type, and effects of cooperation among armed groups. My findings show that leader tenure is positively and statistically significantly associated with the occurrence of armed group cooperation. I also find that leaders with prior military experience are more likely to engage in informal ties while prior political experience increases the odds of formal cooperation in a statistically significant manner. Lastly, the proportion of cooperative ties in which an armed group is the major provider of support is shown to have a negative and statistically significant impact on violence lethality. Overall, this study demonstrates the value of leaders in understanding the nature of armed group interactions. Cooperative ties involving armed groups are not necessarily uniform and it is recommended that both scholars and policy makers should consider the heterogeneity in ties when evaluating the risks posed by armed groups.
Firm Connectivity and Trade Protection under Global Value Chains
(2024) Park, Kee Hyun; Allee, Todd; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Antidumping (AD) duties have been the most widely used trade policy globally to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Prior research assumes that firms within domestic industries will demonstrate a united stance in petitioning their home government for AD protection, and that the political salience of unified domestic industries will compel the home governments to grant protection. However, I find that many firms in the same industry remain silent or oppose these petitions, even though AD aims to protect the entire industry. I offer a firm-level theory that explains how a firm’s business connections with foreign firms shapes its AD participation. As a domestic firm connects with foreign firms, two sources make it vulnerable to potential costs generated if AD duties harm foreign firms with whom it is connected. First, foreign firms can pass along the costs of AD to the domestic firm by increasing the prices of inputs or by cutting demand for products they sell to or buy from the domestic firm. Second, targeted governments can impose various trade and investment barriers on the domestic firm’s business in the target country’s market. I test my theory with a new firm-level dataset that accounts for all domestic firms involvedin US AD cases between 2010 and 2020, matched with millions of shipment records representing their foreign connections. I find that firms that are more sensitive to trade and have more foreign affiliates are less likely to participate in AD. Next, I demonstrate that the previously identified firm participation in AD significantly reduces the probability that the US International Trade Commission (ITC) will accept the petition and impose AD. I first show that the ITC is largely insulated from external political pressure and that its investigation operates like a quasi-judicial procedure, through which the ITC (i.e., the judge) collects information from supporting firms (i.e., the plaintiff) and the opposing firms (i.e., the defendant) to identify the causal link between foreign dumping and material injury to the domestic industry. Under such a setting, information from opposing firms can help the ITC identify and counteract potentially biased information from the supporting firms, making rejection of the petition more likely. I test my argument by examining the ITC’s AD decisions between 2010 and 2020, using the previously-constructed dataset accompanied by data taken from the ITC’s final reports on these cases. I find that greater opposition from domestic firms in an AD case makes an AD petition more likely to be rejected. This dissertation offers a more precise understanding of the origins and outcomes of antidumping duties through a firm-based approach, which bring the AD literature in line with more recent scholarship on trade. The dissertation also demonstrates the value of rule-based and transparent trade policymaking in the context of antidumping duties, providing important policy lessons for the current era of rising protectionism.
Black Racial Grievance, Black American Identity, and Black Political Participation
(2024) St Sume, Jennifer; Laird, Chryl; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation explores the relationship among Black racial grievance, Black American identity, and Black political participation. Black racial grievance is defined as the extent to which Black individuals believe their racial group is mistreated in the United States. This study is divided into three articles. The first article explores the link between Black racial grievance and Black American identity. Political science research has found that racial discrimination makes Black people feel less American (Huddy and Khatib 2007; Kam and Ramos 2008; Theiss-Morse 2009; Levundusky 2017). However, the consequences of discrimination and how they shape what it means to be a Black American remain underexplored. This paper addresses this critical gap, arguing that Black Americans consider their racial group’s treatment and the consequences of this treatment in their self-conception as Americans. I propose a new six-item measure of Black racial grievance, capturing Black perceptions of unfair treatment regarding their racial group, the current significance of racial grievance, and their awareness of these grievances across social, political, and economic domains. Using two national samples, I find that Black people who score higher on the racial grievance measure—indicative of a belief that the mistreatment of their racial group is a problem to be addressed across American society —feel less American. These findings underscore the importance of institutional inequality in Black politics. The second article examines the relationship between Black racial grievance and Black political participation. Previous research has employed measures such as relative deprivation, group consciousness, politicized collective identity, and linked fate to predict Black political participation. However, these measures fail to explain how individuals define their personal Black racial grievance, overlooking how these grievances shape Black participation. These shortcomings are driven by the assumption that little variation exists in Black political behavior. Accordingly, I argue that Black Americans rely on specific evaluations of racial grievance to determine whether to participate in politics. I develop a refined measure of Black racial grievance that captures the extent to which an individual perceives their racial group as being treated unfairly across various domains. I validate this measure through factor analysis and assess its robustness by comparing it to previous measures. As a proof of concept, I find that Black people who score higher on the racial grievance scale—those who feel their group is treated unfairly in more domains of society—and feel strongly attached to their racial group are more likely to participate in politics. The third article investigates the causal links among Black racial grievance, Black American identity, and Black political participation. Current research suggests that Black participation is motivated by perceptions of discrimination (Klandermans, 2014). To date, scant research has explored the interplay among Black racial grievance, Black American identity, and Black political participation. Therefore, this study addresses this gap by evaluating how Black racial grievance shapes political behavior among Black Americans. Using data from a national survey of 505 Black adults, I introduce a new measure of Black racial grievance and explore its impact on political engagement. The findings reveal that while experiencing racial discrimination increases racial grievance, it also complicates the relationship with political participation. Specifically, elevated levels of racial grievance correlate with decreased political participation in contexts where individuals feel disillusioned with the prospect of systemic changes. Thus, Black people with high Black racial grievance may choose not to vote or engage in political campaigns if they believe these actions will not lead to meaningful change. This article illustrates how Black racial grievance can sometimes hinder political action. Overall, this dissertation offers three significant contributions to the study of Black political behavior. First, it provides a novel framework to explain how Black people process racial mistreatment. Second, it highlights the intricate interplay among racial grievance, identity, and political action. Third, it lays the groundwork for future research on policy interventions tailored to the unique challenges faced by Black Americans. Ultimately, this work enhances the understanding of systemic marginalization and improves the ability to foster a more inclusive and equitable democracy.
Popular Backlash to Language Assimilation Regimes
(2024) Derks, John William; McCauley, John; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Do assimilationist restrictions on a minority language lead to greater national unity or a more rebellious minority population? Under what conditions might short-term backlash to language assimilation evolve into greater national unity in the long term? While much of the literature on ethnic politics implicitly treats language simply as an identifying feature of ethnic groups, this dissertation contends that salient language identities and grievances can serve as a source of meaningful division. I examine when and why the costs of pursuing linguistic homogeneity exceed its practical benefits. Just as minority individuals must conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether they should acquire or have their children acquire the dominant language of a host state, so too must governments consider the likelihood that an assimilation program will succeed or fail. I highlight an interaction between three key mechanisms that lead to a distortion of political leaders’ cost-benefit analysis when deciding on the nature of their desired language assimilation program. This distortion leads host states governed by the dominant language group to systematically overestimate the willingness of minority individuals to assimilate voluntarily and underestimate the likely level of subsequent backlash to severe language restrictions. From this theoretical framework, I argue that more severe language restrictions increase minority backlash and that the intensity of this backlash is influenced by the presence of exclusionary political and economic policies targeting the minority group. To this end, I conduct five comparative historical case studies on the language assimilation programs imposed on the South Tyroleans in Italy, Amazigh in Algeria, Azerbaijanis in Iran, Mayans in Mexico, and the Anglophones in Cameroon. The overall findings show that the use of more severe language restrictions and exclusionary political and economic policies are very likely to result in intense backlash responses. More often than not, this elevated backlash response will inflict considerable long-term damage to a state’s national unity.
Supernatural Ties: Religious Beliefs and Practices and Commitment and Cohesion in Politics
(2024) Rao, Sean Christopher; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
I propose a general mechanism of religion in politics which is not limited to the use of violent tactics or a particular religious background: religious belief and practice generate strong mutual commitment among individuals in a group and this commitment can, in turn, create political cohesion. This process gives a strong organizational resource to political actors who can successfully link political goals to religious commitment and illuminates three puzzles: first, why do some organizations persist in demanding autonomy or independence for decades while others cease after only a short time? Little is known about the persistence of contentious actors, violent and nonviolent, who may eventually become rebels in a civil war. Linking research on civil war duration, nonviolent contention, and the club model of religion with novel cross-national time series data from a sample of self-determination organizations in Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, and Canada, I find some evidence that organizations based on religion or religion-like ideologies in the sample are more likely to persist. I find stronger evidence that organizations persist when they encourage membership practices (such as religious study or dress codes) through which individual members demonstrate public commitment to the group. Second, why do some politicians offer an overt religious basis for their policies? Overt religious rhetoric can harm a politician’s standing with less religious voters in the United States, and positive stereotypes of religious people are diminishing. Still, even politicians who depend on less religious voters sometimes use overt rhetoric instead of subtler religious cues. In two survey experiments, I find that religious rhetoric does not increase the level of a voter’s confidence that a politician is committed to a noncontroversial policy in an undergraduate sample nor to a controversial policy in a national sample in the United States, but it does increase the probability that a voter becomes completely convinced of a politician’s commitment to a controversial policy, though not among Democrats, nor does visible participation in a congregation affect this signal. Third, what keeps some civil wars from resuming after violence has stopped? Previous research has shown religious civil wars are likely to recur due to time-invariant factors of issue indivisibility and information uncertainty. Using existing data on secessionist rebels from 1975 to 2009, I find evidence that recruitment from religious networks drives recurrence. Giving religious constituencies equal access to political power and reaching formal ceasefires or agreements with territorial rebels discourages rebels from mobilizing that network for a return to fighting and makes them no more likely to return than nonreligious territorial rebels. These results identify a general process of religion applicable across different religious backgrounds and political contexts: cohesion from practices, often related to religion, which allow individuals to signal their commitment to a group. Identifying this process makes the study of religion in politics less context limited giving a starting point for future research.
The Life Cycle of Issue Spaces
(2024) Hightower, Tristan Matthew; Miler, Kristina; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this dissertation I explore the dynamics of interest group populations through the development and application of a novel life cycle theory. Building on the work of population ecologists and other interest group scholars, this theory examines the stages of formation, growth, and decline of interest groups within various issue spaces. I conduct empirical analyses across three distinct domains: the agricultural sector with a focus on cranberries, the contentious and ideologically driven area of reproductive rights, and the declining population of banking institutions. These cases illustrate how interest groups navigate their life cycles and influence policy outcomes. Life cycle theory emphasizes the role of density dependence and interspecific competition, providing a comprehensive framework for analyzing the long-term trends and adaptive strategies of interest groups. The analysis of the cranberry lobby demonstrates how group diversity and population density affect policy attention. The analysis of reproductive rights organizations highlights the complex interplay between opposing groups and the significance of group population dynamics in shaping legislative outcomes. Finally, the analysis of the banking sector focuses on how regulatory changes and economic shifts impact the life cycles of financial institutions. My findings underscore the importance of considering group populations in understanding group formation, policy attention, and democratic engagement. I conclude that interest groups are essential components of American democratic processes, providing marginalized communities with avenues for influence amidst overburdened institutions. By offering a framework for analyzing the adaptive strategies and long-term trends of interest groups, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of how interests are advanced and under what conditions they thrive.
LOCAL DYNAMICS IN CIVIL WARS: HOW CIVILIANS RESIST VIOLENCE
(2024) Su, Mingyang; Cunningham, David E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis addresses puzzles related to violence against civilians in civil wars. Specifically, the thesis emphasizes civilians’ roles in influencing rebel groups’ decisions to escalate indiscriminate violence against civilians in conflicts. Previous literature on violence against civilians suggest that rebel groups in civil wars may kill selectively or indiscriminately. These studies argue that indiscriminate violence is counter-productive since it eliminates incentives for civilian collaboration with the perpetrator. Yet, indiscriminate violence remains a common phenomenon. Why do rebels use indiscriminate violence when doing so is counterproductive? What explains the occurrence and intensity of indiscriminate violence? The thesis answers the puzzle by focusing on civilian mobilizations against rebel groups. It argues that civilians’ resolve to mobilize against rebel groups is important in influencing rebels’ decisions to escalate indiscriminate violence. Civilians can signal this resolve by engaging in violent and nonviolent risky mobilization against rebels. Statistical tests, which are based on conflict event data collected from civil wars in Africa, reveal that the occurrence, long duration, and high frequency of civilian mobilization negatively correlate with violence. The thesis further traces a detailed single case study on Boko Haram and four cross comparison cases to provide qualitative evidence on the mechanisms of the theory. The thesis makes two theoretical contributions to the field of conflict. First, when explaining indiscriminate violence, the thesis shifts the attention to civilians’ decisions and resolve to reduce violence. Second, the theory provides novel mechanisms on how civilians mobilize to deter rebel groups from using indiscriminate violence. The mechanisms also link specific predictions on the conditions under which civilians are likely to be successful in deterring rebels from using violence.
Rule of the Fewer: Electoral Inversions and their Consequences
(2024) Friedman, Jack Ryan Chambers; Calvo, Ernesto; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The advent of democracy is supposed to represent a transition from the rule of the few to the rule of the many. In this folkloric account, majority rule is both the embodiment of democracy and its source of legitimacy. Unsurprisingly, however, democratic realities are far more complex—and sometimes more disappointing—than democratic ideals. Although democracy is often equated with the principle of majority rule, government by popular minorities is more common in modern liberal democracies than is government by popular majorities. But if the ideal of majority rule often goes unfulfilled, a redeeming quality of most elections in most democracies is that they nevertheless manage to satisfy the principle of “plurality rule.” That is, even when popular minorities govern, as is so often the case, the minority that governs is usually the largest minority. But not always. Sometimes governments are elected without even the support of a popular plurality. This phenomenon is called an electoral inversion; it is the focus of my dissertation. More precisely, electoral inversions occur when the party (or coalition of parties) that wins the most votes nevertheless loses the election. While scholars have long recognized that electoral inversions can and sometimes do occur, especially with respect to the U.S. Electoral College system for presidential elections, no systematic attempt has been made either to identify how often electoral inversions occur in the world’s established liberal democracies, or to understand what their consequences are for democracy when they do occur. I address both of these unanswered questions. My first objective is to understand where, when, and thus how often electoral inversions have occurred historically. To do so, I undertake a descriptive study of electoral inversions in 28 established democracies. The results show that electoral inversions have occurred in roughly 8% of elections between 1900 and 2022. To better understand the consequences of electoral inversions, my second objective, I examine how inversions affect democratic support in two countries that have experienced electoral inversions in recent years: Canada (2019 and 2021) and the United States (2000 and 2016). Building on the “winner-loser gap” literature, I show that electoral inversions magnify winner-loser effects on democratic support. While I find consistent evidence in the U.S. and Canada that inversions widen winner-loser gaps by weakening losers’ support for democracy, I also find, paradoxically, that the 2016 U.S. inversion increased winners’ support. I argue that the negative effect of electoral inversions on losers’ support is the consequence of a basic and widely shared normative expectation—which electoral inversions violate—that democratic elections ought to respond the preferences of the greater number. The positive effect of inversions on winners’ support in the U.S. is more difficult to explain. I consider whether this result indicates a propensity of these voters to conflate democracy with its short-term benefits, or whether it reflects underlying conditions of political polarization. Either way, since democracy depends on the support of its citizens—and in particular, on their willingness to accept the results of democratic processes—these findings have implications for continued democratic stability in countries that experience electoral inversions.
Winter Soldiers and Moonlight Rebels
(2024) Cowan, Michael; Reed, William; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
How do rebel groups cultivate devotion? Civil conflict scholars have found that when rebel groups fill their ranks with ideologically committed soldiers they are able to operate more effectively in several ways. However, the mechanisms by which rebel groups attain such devoted followers remains unexplained. I propose that insurgencies are able to cultivate devotion when they successfully deploy an ideology that balances between explanatory power and complexity. An ideology that manages to make sense of a political environment with minimal complexity provides adherents with certainty, which is a source of substantial utility. Groups that deploy maximally potent ideologies foster the emergence of a "hard core" of soldiers who depend upon the certainty afforded by the ideology and will therefore go to great lengths to act on its behalf. I articulate a theory of ideological potency and propose an associated function that expresses how much utility an individual will derive from that ideology via its certainty mechanism. I then analyze and compare the PIRA, the Viet Minh and Renamo insurgencies to demonstrate how variation in the extent to which they effectively balanced between explanatory power and complexity in their ideologies can explain variation in their capacity to attract, generate, control, and sustain devoted soldiers.
Mobilized Interests: How Interest Groups Influence Member Perceptions of Politics
(2024) Meli, Amy D; Miler, Kristina; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this project, I investigate how interest group mobilizations influence their members’ perceptions of government and politics. I theorize that some groups – especially issue advocacy nonprofits whose issues have been incorporated into the Democratic or Republican party platforms – use partisan strategies focused on electing the leaders who can help them move their policy agendas in Congress. Other groups, especially trade and professional associations, choose not to affiliate with a pollical party and instead build relationships with policymakers on both sides of the aisle so that they can move their policy agendas regardless of who is in office. I find that these two different policy strategies lead interest groups to communicate differently with their members, with partisan groups and issue advocacy nonprofits using more partisan and conflict-oriented language, while nonpartisan groups and associations use more pragmatic language. I find that these messages have effects on the people who read them. In a survey experiment, I find that independents and weak partisans who read pragmatic and bipartisan messages have warmer feelings towards the other party, while strong partisans have warmer feelings towards the other party when they hear partisan messaging. Notably, I find that these different approaches lead to varying effects on interest group members, including differences in levels of affective polarization and political efficacy. As professionals join their professional society and get more involved in their association’s activities, they have more trust in government, higher levels of internal and external efficacy, and warmer feelings towards those in the out party. Through interview research, I find that members are influenced by a number of factors, including the public policy training they receive from their interest groups, interactions they have with members of Congress and others in the political system, and messages members receive about how groups use bipartisan strategies to accomplish member goals. All of these stimuli are contributing factors to these effects.
Divided We Stand: Partisan Control and U.S. Foreign Policy
(2024) Wang, Guan; Kastner, Scott SK; Miler, Kris KM; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
How does U.S. foreign policy differ under unified versus divided government? Much of the existing scholarship concentrates on the repercussions of divided government on domestic affairs. Yet, there is little research exploring the influence divided government might have on U.S. foreign policy. My dissertation aims to bridge this gap in literature. My central argument is that U.S. foreign policy garners less attention from politicians and is accorded less agenda space under unified government compared to divided government. This disparity holds important implications in three main areas: the progression of foreign policy bills through legislative processes, the decision to impose sanctions through the United Nations or alternative approaches, and the frequency of change in the policies towards China. Under unified government, the majority party often seizes this opportunity to focus on issues that will bolster their prospects in the next election. Typically, these issues are domestic in nature. Given the limited attention span of politicians and the constraints of institutional agenda, the consideration of foreign policy issues tends to be postponed. By contrast, under divided government, domestic issues negotiations frequently face gridlock. Foreign policy issues, which are more likely to see bipartisan consensus, receive more attention and greater agenda space. Empirically, I analyzed the entire corpus of foreign policy bills in Congress and all sanctions imposed by the U.S. over the last two decades. I also incorporated a wide array of official documents and politicians’ speeches concerning U.S.-China relations. The results show that foreign policy bills are more likely to be considered by the House floor under divided than under unified government, the U.S. is more likely to impose sanctions on a target through the United Nations under divided than under unified government, and Washington is more likely to formulate new policies towards China under divided than under unified government.
Sovereigns of Sanctuaries: Host State Responses to Transnational Repression
(2024) Kopchick, Connor Nicholas; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Jones, Calvert W; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
While political scientists have long studied nation-states’ domestic repression of anti-government dissent, there is a growing awareness that such coercion extends across international borders. Nation-states pursue and repress their nationals abroad through a predatory process known as transnational repression (TR). Host states, those nation-states in which expatriate dissidents seek refuge, are crucial to the defense against and deterrence of TR. Yet host states’ role in and reactions to TR remains underexplored by scholars. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap by identifying the factors that lead host states to defend victims of TR, disregard foreign repression of individuals within their territory, or actively collaborate with predatory origin states. I theorize that host states engage in cost-benefit calculations when responding to instances of TR, and in addition to considering the benefits derived from their relationships with predatory states, host state executives also consider the risk of backlash should they facilitate TR or not respond to public instances of it. This backlash can originate from external actors such as interested third states, as well as internal actors such as civil society or autonomous host state agents. I adopt a mixed methodology to assess the validity of hypotheses derived from these theoretical bases. First, I leverage new availability of cross-national datasets identifying individual acts of TR. From these incidents, I conduct statistical analyses on which predatory states are most likely to commit TR, which host states are most likely see such TR targeting victims in their territory, and what type of bilateral relationships lend themselves most to TR. From there I build on this merged dataset, collecting original data on host-state reactions to TR through targeted Nexis Uni searches to create the Host Response to transnational Repression Dataset (HRRD). Using the HRRD, I conduct further statistical analyses to assess my hypotheses and identify predictors of host state actions countering TR, as well as active complicity with origin states. I follow this quantitative analysis with a series of comparative case studies, comparing exemplars of my theory in which external and internal backlash to incidents of TR corresponded to responsive host state actions with those where it did not. In doing so I parse through causal mechanisms which are difficult to measure through cross-national statistical analysis. I argue that while host states’ laxity on TR is frequently explained as a derivative of their mutually beneficial relationships with predatory states, scholars would do well take a more expansive view of the factors which lead host states to view certain coercions as assaults to national values and community, and others as peripheral.
Making Sense of Violence: How the Lebanon War Became Sectarian
(2024) Ellsworth, Ted Spencer; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Jones, Calvert W; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation analyzes the rise of sectarian political order in Lebanon during the Civil War. In the Middle East, religious differences are often seen as an intractable problem, and sectarian power-sharing rules, all-encompassing. When we look at the pre-war period in Lebanon, while religious differences played a role at the national level, most sectarian communities did not have robust institutions to maintain order and coordination amongst themselves. Internally, the groups were politically divided, and many political parties were ostensibly secular. Despite serious efforts to abolish sectarianism throughout the war, by the end, the system of sectarian order was more entrenched in all levels of society. At the same time, sectarianism remains just one of many relevant cleavages within Lebanon. How do we explain the trajectory of sectarian order in Lebanon? What does the persistence of sectarian order reveal about the challenges of nation building and political order? Conventional scholarship argues that violence can help construct both identities and order: external violence is thought to reinforce national identities instead of subnational ones, and intra-group violence is thought to reinforce subnational boundaries. By contrast, my argument highlights the role of framing in mediating these relationships. This inductive study is based on analysis of fourteen archives, novel event data, and a close reading of party ephemera and historical newspapers from 1958 to 1982. By combining this data within a micro-comparative framework, this dissertation reconstructs the dynamics of contention leading up to and throughout the early stages of the Lebanon Civil War. Comparing episodes of violence in Lebanon over time, I explore how external violence, inter-group violence, and intra-group violence shaped political order. I show that the relationship between violence and the creation of identity-based order is conditional on framing effects. These frames help decision-makers link specific threats to policies, including new rules and institutions to govern intra- and inter-group behavior. By examining examples of each type of violence over successive junctures, I unsettle the notion that sectarian political order in Lebanon was inevitable, instead showing how elites became trapped by their ideas as they attempted to make sense of problems that arose in the war such as Israeli interference in Lebanese politics, inter-communal massacres, and opportunistic violence. My work has general implications for how violence can shape behavior, the types of political order that emerge from civil conflicts, and the important role of ideational change during periods marked by uncertainty.
Racial Moderation as Preference or Constraint? Examining Racial Pragmatism Among Black Americans
(2023) Bishop, William B; Banks, Antoine; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this dissertation, I offer a theory of racial pragmatism to explain how the broader social context influences the social and political behavior of Black Americans. I define racial pragmatism as a Black belief system where through double consciousness (DuBois 1903) and their use of the pragmatic method (Dewey 1929), adherents are aware of Americans’ opposition to Black voters’ desired social changes. This reality has led pragmatic Black Americans to conclude that as a group, Black Americans are hampered in their ability to articulate and enact a progressive and racialized political agenda that uniquely benefits members of their racial group. Behaving similarly to pragmatic Black elites such as David Dinkins and Barack Obama (Harris 2012; Marable and Clark 2009; Reft 2009), when striving for social progress, I argue that pragmatic Black voters are hesitant to embrace race conscious political strategies, policies, and candidates, not because they oppose them outright, but rather they view these race-conscious options as ineffective in the current social environment. To evaluate my theory, I created an 8-item survey measure of racial pragmatism. I find that racial pragmatism is a statistically reliable measure and I found repeated support for my theory through a series of observational and experimental studies. As racial pragmatism increases, Black Americans are less likely to vote for racially progressive Democrats, offer more moderate positions on racial policies such as reparations, and envision greater political backlash from white Americans when politicians speak out about racial issues that affect Black people. I also find that pragmatists are more reactive to threat when compared to co-racial group members who scored lower in racial pragmatism. As racial pragmatism increases, Black Americans are more likely to compromise and abandon their liberal policy positions when responding to threat stimuli. Finally, I also found that my theory and measure of racial pragmatism has important social implications outside of politics. As racial pragmatism increases, Black Americans are more likely to both support and engage in strategic deracialization efforts such as codeswitching to mute their racial identities and increase their chances of fair treatment in American society. This research provides insight into the complex actions that Black Americans employ in their daily lives to compensate for prejudice and strategically develop tactics for achieving uplift in a country that is hostile to their interests and rights. Through racial pragmatism, some Black Americans make strategic and deliberate choices to deemphasize their racial identities and relegate racial issues in politics to decrease their chances of experiencing prejudice and backlash from non-Black Americans.
Religious belief, religious minorities, and support for democracy
(2023) Overos, Henry David; Birnir, Johanna K.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Over the last two decades, the intersection of religion in politics and democratic backsliding has prompted questions about public support for democracy. This study investigates the link between individual-level religious beliefs, religious minority status, and support for democracy. It presents a modified authoritarian personality theory, proposing that higher religious commitment correlates with stronger support for authoritarianism and weaker support for liberal democracy. This hypothesis is tested using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and validated through the World Values Survey data. A survey experiment in Indonesia in 2022 examines the impact of minority status on views regarding liberal democracy. The findings indicate that religious commitment is associated with reduced support for liberal democracy, and minority status can affect perspectives on democracy under specific political contexts. Additionally, this research pioneers a large-scale approach to measuring religious experience through clustering analysis. It underscores the need to explore how democracy is perceived differently by diverse segments of the population, adding depth to the study of democratic support.
Foreign Direct Investment in Authoritarian States
(2023) Englund, Chase Coleman; Allee, Todd; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this dissertation, I examine autocracies and demonstrate why some autocratic regimes attract considerable investment whereas others do not. I advance two primary claims. The first is that autocratic regimes in which there is political competition actually receive less FDI than those in which there is less competition. Autocratic states tend to have weak institutional protections for investors, which causes greater uncertainty for businesses that fear costly policy changes. Therefore, when political competition in autocracies is greater, investors become more cautious and FDI inflows decline. The second claim is that FDI is more targeted to certain sectors in autocratic states with less political competition. This is because autocratic leaders seek to use FDI as a private good to favor members of their winning coalition. Therefore, autocrats with smaller coalitions (i.e., less political competition) will use policy to steer the benefits of FDI more narrowly. This is important because the use of FDI as a private good in this way tends to entrench authoritarianism. In analyzing both claims, I also examine the relative number of economic elites in a state, which I argue is an important and fundamental indicator of competition over policy (alongside the political measures), because it determines the size of an autocrat’s winning coalition. I find strong support for both of these hypotheses, using a wide range of novel data that I have compiled from several unique sources and various private organizations. I examine the volume and sectoral concentration of FDI in thousands of cases involving more than 100 non-democratic states over a 42-year period, beginning in 1980. In order to measure foreign investors’ perceptions of the policy environment in nondemocratic states, I also utilize data from an automated textual analysis of quarterly earnings calls of publicly traded firms located in authoritarian settings. Even after controlling for other factors, I first find that greater political competition is associated with greater perception of risk by foreign investors and lower FDI inflows. To measure the number of economic elites relative to economic activity, I employ a novel measure of stock market concentration that estimates the degree to which a market is either oligarchic or diversified. These results are important and timely because many of the largest recipients of FDI globally are now autocratic states. This means that large segments of the global population will depend on authoritarian governance to attract FDI, which is widely considered important to global economic development. Furthermore, understanding whether or not we can expect FDI to have a democratizing impact on autocratic government is crucial to developing expectations about how FDI will shape global politics in the decades to come.
The Origins and Implementation of the 1992 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) Agreement
(2002) Perry, Todd E.; Quester, George
The 1992 Nuclear Suppliers (NSG) Agreement remains the only multilateral forum, with the exception of the complementary Zangger Committee, in which states capable of supplying nuclear and nuclear-related technologies attempt to constrain the flow of these technologies to countries of proliferation concern. This study reviews the history of multilateral nuclear nonproliferation export control cooperation and complementary international safeguards systems leading up to the conclusion of the 1992 NSG Agreement. This review reveals that nuclear-related crises like the Indian nuclear explosion of the 1974 and the discovery of the Iraqi near-proliferation in 1991 have been the most proximate causes of multilateral reforms, but that U.S. domestic politics has been the primary filter through which these crises have been interpreted and subsequently translated into domestic and multilateral export control arrangements. This study therefore asks the question as to whether or not the "feedback loop" between proliferation-related crises and multilateral export control reform remains in place. To evaluate the main variables responsible for reform and the evolving relationships between them, three increasingly stringent stages of multilateral export controls on nuclear weapons-related technology from 1943 to 1992 are analyzed. These variables are then reviewed for the 1992-2002 period and compared to the three earlier stages of reform to assess the continued relevance of the determinative factors of Cold War-era export control reforms to the export control challenges of the 21st century. This study concludes that the crisis-reform dynamic is unlikely to repeat itself due to changes at the U.S. domestic level, but that knowledgeable bureaucrats and outside experts remain prepared to pursue reform should U.S. leaders attempt to pursue reform in the absence of the public pressures created by a nuclear-related crisis.
Minority Language Policy and Ethnic Conflict
(2023) Ozkan, Alperen; Birnir, Jóhanna K; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Language is one of the most important cleavages along which ethnic identities are formed and shaped. Yet, in addition to being an identity marker, language is a policy area, in which the state cannot remain impartial toward the interests of the speakers of different languages in a country. The main research questions of my dissertation are how minority language policies are formed and how different policy outcomes affect likelihood of ethnic conflict. Recent empirical evidence suggests that ethnic conflicts are likely to occur along linguistic lines at least as much as religious ones. Despite this finding, the role of language policies in occurrence of conflict remains uncovered. I claim that this is partly due to paying insufficient attention to how minority language policies are formed while explaining the link between language and ethnic conflict. Language policies in multilingual societies are political outcomes that emerge out of the interplay between ethnic competition and rivalry, national cohesion, and ethnolinguistic vitality of linguistic minorities. I argue that these three factors are primarily reflected by relative group size and interaction of language divide with other social cleavages. Specifically, I contend that these two variables shape language policy outcome by impacting group capability for mobilization and coalition building patterns. In turn, I claim that the most restrictive policy option, defined by exclusion of minority language from public sphere, and the most accommodative policy option, promotion of minority language by state, contribute to outbreak of ethnic conflict along linguistic lines. But middle-ground policies based on toleration of use of minority language in public sphere and providing support for it has the potential to defuse the tensions over language policy and contribute to prevention of conflict breaking out. I test these propositions on a cross-national dataset of minority language policy that covers 424 linguistic minority groups from 50 randomly selected countries. Results provide robust empirical support for the theory.
The Impact of Sanctions on the Domestic Response of Autocrats as Conditioned by Political and Economic Structures
(2023) Stein, Maeryn Goldman; Huth, Paul K.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The use of economic sanctions has grown exponentially since the conclusion of the Cold War, and research on these policy tools has similarly proliferated. Although much of this scholarship is dedicated to evaluating the efficacy of sanctions, in recent years researchers have begun considering the consequences of sanctions for target states, and the international community more broadly, while also exploring how the characteristics of the target state influence the effects and outcomes of sanctions. Nevertheless, fundamental questions remain unanswered: How do sanctions impact a leader’s domestic policy choices? How do state structures condition the effects of sanctions? And how do sanctions influence the relationship between leaders and their populace? This project addresses these issues by examining how the economic and political structures that define a state shape how sanctions influence the domestic policy choices of autocratic regimes.I argue that a leader’s domestic constituency is multifaceted, and policies that might quiet certain subsets of the population will have little impact on other groups. Autocratic regimes select a matrix of policies best suited to coopt or suppress different sources of threat, thereby achieving a status quo. When sanctions target a primed audience, autocrats must adjust their policy matrix or risk either a coup or rebellion. The groups that are impacted by sanctions, how these groups respond, and how autocrats can best mitigate unrest is contingent on the types of sanctions imposed (targeted or comprehensive) and the economic and political structures that define the state. My theoretical arguments produce two hypotheses and eight sub-hypotheses. The first hypothesis deals with how the political structure (measured by the regime’s Loyalty Norm) conditions the regime’s domestic policy response (Systemic Repression and/or Patronage) to threats resulting from the imposition of targeted and comprehensive sanctions. The second hypothesis addresses how a state’s economic structure, measured by the regime’s income source (earned or unearned), conditions the response (Public Goods and/or Patronage) to threats that arise from targeted and comprehensive sanctions. I explore the relationship between sanctions, state structures, and response using a reconstructed dataset that examines sanction imposition at the target-year level of analysis. The quantitative study supports five of my eight sub-hypotheses. Interestingly, the three sub-hypotheses that are not supported involve the use of Patronage, suggesting that there are issues with the definition and/or measures of Patronage I employed that bear further investigation. To further clarify the dynamics between sanction type, economic and political structures, and domestic response, I conduct two case studies that focus on the leader’s use of Patronage. The first case study evaluates the impact of US sanctions on Nicaragua during the 1980s. The second explores how sanctions influenced the Qadhafi regime’s domestic policies in Libya from 1978 - 1999. Taken together, the quantitative and qualitative studies confirm that economic sanctions can and do disrupt the relationship between autocrats and the populace, leading the regime to reconstruct their domestic policy matrix. The state’s structures condition this dynamic, and economic structures can be as influential as political institutions in shaping policies. Finally, this study demonstrates that traditional conceptions of Patronage require further consideration and a regime’s use of Patronage is typically more nuanced than it is for repressive strategies. Conventional measures of Patronage, such as corruption and clientelism, as well as the boundary between Patronage and the provision of Public Goods deserve closer scrutiny.
The Oil Blessing? Hydrocarbons’ Effects on Maritime Boundary Formation
(2023) O'Brien, Patrick L; Huth, Paul H; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Do natural resources help states resolve contentious maritime boundary issues? Literature on maritime boundaries suggests that states often sign maritime boundary agreements to acquire offshore hydrocarbons, yet there are also ample examples when resources have been the reason why states dispute maritime zones. To explain this apparent contradiction, an oil effect is posited that is conditional on states’ pre-existing claims. When maritime neighbors do not have overlapping maritime claims, the onset of oil interests in bordering maritime space make states more likely to sign delimitation agreements to achieve the legal certainty necessary to extract the oil. However, among states engaged in a maritime dispute prior to the onset of hydrocarbon interests, a different industry risk calculus, increased audience costs, and institutional challenges in reducing extant claims all mean that the same effect should not be observable. Meanwhile, the increased issue salience born from the oil interest should also make states more likely to pursue peaceful settlement attempts through other agreements related to their maritime zones, like establishing a joint development zone or pursuing third party conflict management. A dataset of maritime boundaries was improved upon to test this theory on 447 pairs of maritime neighbors from 1946 to 2016. Regression analyses confirm that a nearby oil discovery makes delimitation agreements more likely only among dyads without a prior existing dispute. Closer examination of 27 joint development zone agreements and 38 agreements to pursue binding third-party dispute settlement suggest that the order of events also plays a key role. Indeed, states engaged in a new dispute prompted by hydrocarbon interests are the most likely to sign all three agreement types—delimitation, joint development zone, and judicial settlement. In a comparative case study using U.S. maritime boundaries, oil interests are shown to have hastened delimitation agreements between the United States and Mexico, whereas oil interests made dispute resolution more difficult in U.S.-Canada maritime boundary areas. After resorting to and enduring the ordeal of a World Court case to achieve one partial settlement, Ottawa and Washington had little appetite to address remaining disputes. The implications of these findings for the world’s remaining undelimited boundaries are then discussed, focusing on East Asia.

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