UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Membership Diversity and Tactical Adaptation within Violent Non-State Organizations(2018) Dunford, Eric Thomas; Birnir, Johanna K; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines why some violent non-state organizations experiment with and develop a broader repertoire of tactics and targets to achieve their political goals while other groups consistently utilize the same methods across their lifespan. Social movement theory argues that challengers to the state's authority should continually innovate their repertoires of contention to mobilize support and sustain an effective challenge against the state; however, rebel groups vary markedly in the size of the tactical repertoires that they employ in their campaign to alter the status quo. Some non-state organizations are more capable of experimenting with and implementing new variations on existing methods than others. I explore the factors that shape a militant organization's ``adaptive capacity.'' Specifically, these are the conditions that make an organization more or less capable of the incremental innovations necessary for expanding its set of violent repertoires and generating a larger tactical menu from which it can draw when selecting a strategy to challenge the state. The project first delves into how measure tactical adaptation, employing a text as data pipeline to classify and numerically compare descriptions of violent events. It then argues develops a theory of membership diversity as an internal driver of tactical adaptation. The theory emphasizes the stochastic elements that underpin membership interactions, arguing that individuals bring with them prior knowledge and experience when joining an organization and that knowledge diversity in an organization positively impacts an organization's adaptive capacity. The argument establishes two distinct mechanisms that focus on the endogeneity inherent to how solution concepts emerge and members learn in an organization. The project directs the analytical focus on \textit{who} is in a violent organization and argues that the answer to this question can shape (a) the ultimate outcome of a civil conflict, (b) how analysts assess the military capabilities of an armed group, (c) other arenas for innovation, such as rebel governance or institution building, and (d) the underlying severity of the conflict. the theoretical framework advanced here atomizes the individual and thinks carefully about the information he or she possesses and how such information can operate contagiously in a closed system. Moreover, the theory generates a framework whereby individual-level interactions and outcomes contribute to larger organization-level outcomes that we observe. The theory reduces the concept of diversity down to its most basic element: information. This allows one to think about the impact of membership diversity more formally and to treat it as another resource that a violent organization has available to it.Item In the Court of World Opinion: International Law on the Use of Force and Crisis Escalation(2012) Appel, Benjamin; Huth, Paul; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I examine how international law on the use of force influences the behavior of leaders in international crises. I argue that leaders are less likely to escalate militarily in international crises when the Charter of the United Nations and related legal principles prohibit the use of force compared to when international law allows for the right of self-defense. I argue that international law can constrain crisis actors from employing the large-scale use of force by facilitating the dynamics of reciprocity in crisis-bargaining. Crisis actors who act in accordance with international law can expect to receive greater international support, while actors that violate the law can expect to obtain less support. International law therefore promotes the peaceful resolution of international crises because actors with the support of third parties can credibly signal their intent to employ the use of force in self-defense and deter their adversaries from engaging in the aggressive and illegal use of force in the first place. I find strong support for my theoretical argument using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Using an original dataset on international law on the use of force in international crises from 1946-2005, I find that leaders are less likely to escalate militarily when international law prohibits the use of force than when they have a right to use force. I also find that intergovernmental organizations are more likely to support leaders who have the right to use force, providing support for the underlying causal mechanism in my argument. Finally, I present a case study of the Cuban Missile Crisis and find that international law contributed to President Kennedy's decision to implement the blockade, instead of employing air strikes against Cuba.