UMD Theses and Dissertations
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Item Essays on Optimal Aid and Fiscal Policy in Developing Economies(2010) Banerjee, Ryan Niladri; Mendoza, Enrique G; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Essay I: Which countries receive aid as insurance and why? A theory of optimal aid policy Empirical evidence shows that developing countries with opaque institutions receive procyclical Official Development Aid (ODA) while developing countries with transparent institutions receive acyclical or countercyclical ODA. This paper provides a dynamic equilibrium model of optimal aid policy that quantitatively accounts for this fact. In the model, the donor wants to (a) encourage actions by the aid receiving government that increase output and (b) smooth out economic fluctuations. The transparency of institutions in the country affects the donor's ability to distinguish downturns caused by exogenous shocks, from those caused by government actions. The solution to the donor's mechanism design problem is dependent on the transparency of government actions. If the donor has good information about government actions, aid policy is countercyclical and aid acts as insurance. However, if the donor is unable to infer perfectly the cause of the downturn, aid policy is procyclical to encourage unobservable good actions. The model predicts a similar pattern for ODA commitments for the following year which is supported by the data. For countries with opaque institutions procyclical aid is the result of optimal policies given the information constraints of donors. Essay II: New Evidence on the Relationship Between Aid Cyclicality and Institutions This paper documents a new fact: the correlation between official development assistance (ODA) and GDP is negatively related to the quality of institutions in the receipient country. Differences in institutional indicators that measure corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness and government transparency are particularly important. The results are robust to several modifications. The results hold for both pooled and within regressions specifications and for different sources of institutional quality measures. This fact also reconciles conflicting empirical results about the correlation between ODA and GDP in the literature. For instance, Pallage and Robe (2001) find a positive correlation in two thirds of African economies and half of non-African developing economies, but Rand and Tarp (2002) find no correlation in a different set of developing countries. First, once institutions are accounted for, African economies are not treated differently by donors. Second, the sample in Rand and Tarp (2002) comprises developing economies which have relatively good institutions, therefore, those countries receive acyclical or countercyclical aid. \\ Essay II: Optimal Procyclical Fiscal Policy Without Procyclical Government Spending Procyclical fiscal policy can be caused by either procyclical government expenditure, countercyclical taxes or both. The majority of models which try to explain procyclical fiscal policy as the result of optimal policy have procyclical government expenditures. This paper develops a model which optimally generates procyclical fiscal policy while keeping government expenditures acyclical. Instead, taxes are optimally countercyclical. The model uses endogenous sovereign default to generate an environment where interest rates are lower in booms than in recessions. If household's have insufficient access to financial instruments it is optimal for the government to lower taxes and borrow during booms. This enables impatient households to benefit from the lower interest rates in booms by helping the consumer bring consumption forward.Item Reluctant Realist: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on International Relations(2010) Paddags, Rene; Butterworth, Charles E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Jean-Jacques Rousseau's best known political work, the Social Contract, begins and ends by pointing to its incompleteness. Rousseau indicates that the Social Contract's completion would require an elaboration of the principles of international relations. However, Rousseau neither completes the Social Contract nor explicitly sets forth a theory of international relations. The contradiction between pointing to the necessary completion and its simultaneous absence can be solved by arguing that the principles of international relations contradicted those of the Social Contract. A close textual analysis of the pertinent works, Rousseau's Social Contract, the Discourse on Inequality, the Geneva Manuscript, the State of War, and the Abstract and Judgment of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's Plan for Perpetual Peace, demonstrates this thesis. The argument begins by showing the presence of two diverging principles in the Social Contract and their implications for international relations. The dominant set of principles of political self-rule necessarily leads to an international state of war. A secondary set of principles of security leads to the demand of international peace. Rousseau rejects the international implications of the latter set of principles, which can take the form of the Roman Catholic Church, balance of power, empire, and commerce as sources of international order. Instead, Rousseau strongly suggests natural law and confederations as solutions consistent with political self-rule. Yet, even these solutions fail ultimately to overcome the state of war. Rousseau's intention in suggesting possible solutions to the international state of war was to moderate the potentially deleterious effects of democratic self-rule. The incompleteness of the Social Contract is therefore due to the structure of international relations, whose principles are at the same time constituted by political societies and contradicted by them. This implies that the pursuits of security and freedom are mutually exclusive, contradicting in particular Immanuel Kant's claim of their compatibility and contradicting those contemporary theories of international relations derived from Kant.Item Camus and Sartre: The Unsettled Conflict on Violence and Terror(2008) Ahmed, Nadine Sara; Brami, Joseph; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The broad purpose of this paper is to bring attention to the subject of terrorism. In the paper two plays by are compared which both treat this matter somewhat differently. The first play is "Les Mains Sales" by Jean Paul Sartre and the second play is "Les Justes" by Albert Camus. The two authors who are both descendents of the existentialist time period have quite differing views on the subject. Sartre was known for his belief in action while Camus was known to be more of a pacifist. Both of these issues are portrayed in the paper. This paper also goes one step further because it looks at the literary aspect of both plays yet also places them and their theories into today's context. Both of the plays look terrorism from the eyes of the terrorist. This is something that is not very common even today in the middle of the all the terror that exists around the globe. However the issues and theories presented here bring some insight into the terrorists mind and how that affects the world today.Item Partition as a Solution to Ethnic Civil War: Statehood, Demography, and the Role of Post-War Balance of Power for Peace(2009) Johnson, Carter Randolph; Lichbach, Mark I; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Partition has been proposed as a way to (i) end ethnic civil wars and to (ii) build a lasting peace after ethnic civil wars end. This dissertation builds on partition theory and the ethnic security dilemma in three ways, demonstrating empirical support for a novel theory of why violence recurs following the end of ethnic civil wars and how partition can be used to prevent such violence. The dissertation begins by introducing the puzzle of ethnic group concentration: the social sciences have demonstrated that concentrated ethnic groups produce both peace and violence. The first case study discredits the notion that ethnic group concentration produced during ethnic civil wars will produce an end to ethnic civil wars. I conducted detailed field research, producing a longitudinal study of ethnic migration and violence in the Georgia-Abkhaz civil war (1992-1993), which acts as a crucial case. I conclude that partitioning groups does not end ethnic war. This is the first accurate empirical test of the ethnic security dilemma. Next, the dissertation looks at partition's ability to build peace by concentrating ethnic groups in new homeland states, and I argue that post-partition violence is caused by weak states and the triadic political space endogenously created by partitions that do not separate ethnic groups completely. I call this the Third Generation Ethnic Security Dilemma, building on previous ethnic security dilemma research. I test this empirically by introducing an index measuring the degree to which partitions separate ethnic groups, and I compare all ethnic civil war terminations between 1945 and 2004, demonstrating that partitions which completely separate ethnic groups provide a better chance for peace. Third, I selected two cases (Moldova and Georgia) to examine the causal processes of post-war recurring violence. Georgia, which experienced post-partition violence, and Moldova, which did not, act as a structured case comparison. I conclude that mixed ethnic demography interacts with state-building to cause or avert renewed violence.Item Water Resources, Institutional Capacity and Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa(2009) Haxton, Wanda Jeanne; Quester, George; Kim, Soo Yeon; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Case studies where both scarcity and conflict are present have dominated research on the nexus between environmental scarcity and conflict. This dissertation offers a quantitative analysis of the effect changes in water resources have on domestic conflict in 42 Sub-Saharan African nations which differ across the dependent variable, domestic conflict, and which vary across the explanatory environmental variables. This research advances the discussion of the causal effects of environmental scarcity and degradation on domestic conflict in four ways. It grounds the domestic conflict-environmental degradation discussion in the civil and social conflict literature; research on environmental security concludes that environmental change is most likely to play a role in domestic conflicts but research on domestic conflict typically does not include environmental variables. This quantitative study addresses a methodological shortcoming of earlier research, limited variation across the variable measuring water resource availability, by testing an alternative means of operationalizing water resources using annual precipitation data weighted by land area and population and weighted by land area and gross national product. This study introduces additional variation on the dependent variable and compares the results of a dichotomous variable with the results of a dependent variable with categorical coding based on the States in Armed Conflict Database. This research extends the scope of explanatory variables to include indicators for political institutions and their capacity to manage the water resources within their national boundaries. The findings support and extend previous conclusions that water resources contribute to civil conflict and demonstrate that the use of precipitation data weighted by land area and population, a variable with variation, is a correlate for water resource availability, a static variable; and thereby providing results that are more reliable. This correlate advances the environment-conflict discourse by more directly linking the data that describes the natural world to the social changes to which those natural phenomenon are purported to relate. This study also finds that institutional capacity to manage water resources creates opportunities for rent-seeking but that open political institutions mediate between water resources and conflict.Item After Empire: Ethnic Germans and Minority Nationalism in Interwar Yugoslavia(2008-11-30) Lyon, Philip; Lampe, John R; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study traces the (ethnically German) Danube Swabians' embrace of national identity in interwar Yugoslavia with attention to the German national movement's antecedents in Croatia-Slavonia and Vojvodina under the Habsburgs. We examine the important role of German national activists in Yugoslavia and survey the institutions they built to stimulate, shape and mobilize Yugoslavia's German population as a specifically national minority based on the Swabians' history and collective memory as colonists in the region. Thereafter, we discuss the rift that emerged inside the German minority during the 1930s, when the German leadership and its conservative variety of German nationalism were confronted by brash, young challengers who sought to "renew" the German minority in a Nazi image. These young enthusiasts for National Socialism directed their extreme nationalism not at the repressive Yugoslav authorities, but rather at their older rivals in the Germans' main cultural and political organization, the Kulturbund. German culture and national authenticity became key criteria for German leadership in this struggle to control the Kulturbund. Meanwhile, German Catholic priests also resisted the Nazi-oriented Erneuerungsbewegung insurgency. Ultimately, we see in this clash of generations both support for and resistance to local manifestations of Nazism in Southeastern Europe. One of this study's major finds is the stubborn endurance of national indifference and local identity in Southeastern Europe throughout interwar period, when national identity was supposed to be dominant. Many Germans embraced national identity, but certainly not all of them. The persistence of this indifference confounded the logic of twentieth century nationalists, for whom national indeterminacy seemed unnatural, archaic, and inexplicable. Even after years of effort by German nationalist activists in the nationalized political atmosphere of interwar Yugoslavia, some ethnic Germans remained indifferent to national identity or else identified as Croats or Magyars. There were also those who pined for Habsburg Hungary, which had offered a dynastic alternative to national identity before 1918. Still others' identity remained shaped by confession as Catholic or Protestant. We conclude therefore by observing the paradoxical situation whereby Nazi-oriented extreme nationalism coexisted with instances of German national indifference in Yugoslavia until the eve of the Second World War.Item Transboundary Water Politics: Conflict, Cooperation, and Shadows of the Past in the Okavango and Orange River Basins of Southern Africa(2008-10-14) Sebastian, Antoinette G; Conca, Kenneth L.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Rival use of limited water resources among riparian states is often problematic and politically contentious. The hydro-politics for transboundary rivers links its riparians in complex multidimensional networks of environmental, political, economic, and security interdependencies. In regions where water is politically scarce, expected to become hydrologically more so, and shared, it may be considered more valuable, thus potentially rendering cooperation or conflict prospects more significant. Given the number of agreements, basin organizations, and joint and permanent commissions/ committees, transboundary water cooperation amongst southern Africa basin riparians is considered high. Still, a riparian state's competing claims for limited water resources is often problematic and politically contentious because: (a) water agreements are often not about water, (b) cooperation does not equal a lack of no conflict, and (c) understanding the strategic interaction among riparian states as signatories to transboundary river agreements requires a contextual framework. Water may not be the only story and history and hydro-hegemony are important. In this research, the contextual framework focuses on understanding when and under what circumstances the past, the problem, and the politics interfere with the prospects of cooperation, or enables riparian behavioral change which, in turn, produces the desired levels of cooperation. It identifies and explains how South Africa as both basin and regional hydro-hegemon is driving hydro-cooperation and pursuing its own self-interests. This research explores how the geopolitical interests and history condition the types of environmental cooperation possible in the Orange and Okavango river basins in Southern Africa. It posits a Maslowian perspective to navigating a hierarchy of obstacles blocking the journey towards reaching quality cooperation outcomes in order to create spaces for positive conflict. Several of the actors are the same in both river basins. There are, however, differences, which have their origins in history--the shadows of the past. The cases illustrate how history matters. It drives contemporary politics by forcing governments to face difficult choices among sets of priorities, which may appear to compromise one group, unmet needs, or issues over others. History suppresses knowledge, aligns power, and shapes identity by framing the language of politics and power. By doing so, it influences hydro-political dialogue.Item Casualties of Cold War: Toward a Feminist Analysis of American Nationalism in U.S.-Russian Relations(2008-07-24) Williams, Kimberly; Moses, Claire G; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using a feminist transdisciplinary research approach, this dissertation interrogates the discursive configurations that constituted the framework of meaning within which the United States conducted its relationship with the Russian Federation between 1991 and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It calls attention to the production and operation of what I refer to as "gendered Russian imaginaries" (i.e., the range of masculinities and femininities that have been assigned to narrative and visual depictions of Russia and Russians in American political and popular culture) that have been invoked as part of American cold war triumphalism to craft and support U.S. foreign policy. The dissertation has two parts. While much has been written about the consequences of U.S. Russia policy, I explore its ideological causes in Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4. Chapter 1 enumerates the foundational precepts upon which my project relies, while Chapter 2 offers some necessary background information concerning the evolution and deployment of gendered nationalisms in the Russian Federation and in the United States. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the metaphors and analogies deployed throughout the congressional hearings that led to two pieces of U.S. legislation, the Freedom Support Act of 1992 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Through visual, narrative, and discursive analyses of several popular culture texts, including 1997's animated feature film Anastasia (Chapter 5), NBC's hit television series The West Wing (Chapter 6), and Washington, D.C.'s popular International Spy Museum (Chapter 7), part two explores the ways in which Russia and Russians were visually and narratively depicted in U.S. popular culture at the turn of the twenty-first century. Given the Russian Federation's status as the world's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, the importance of Russia to contemporary U.S.-Middle East politics can no longer be in any doubt. Consequently, the mistakes, assumptions, and triumphalist arrogance of the United States since 1991 must be reckoned with and accounted for. This dissertation contributes a feminist analysis to that endeavor by drawing attention to the links between cultural and national identities, the gendered politics of knowledge production, and the circulation of power in transnational contexts.Item Human Trafficking on the International and Domestic Agendas: Examining the Role of Transnational Advocacy Networks Between Thailand and United States(2008-05-23) Bertone, Andrea Marie; Schreurs, Miranda; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Thai activists, nonstate organizations, and transnational networks have been involved in trying to influence the Thai and international anti-trafficking agendas through their involvement with transnational and domestic advocacy networks since the early 1980s. Despite significant activism against human trafficking and related issues in Thailand throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. government and the broader international community did not seriously begin paying attention to human trafficking until the late 1990s. It was not until 2000 that both the U.S. government and the United Nations developed significant anti-trafficking policies. Why did it take until 2000 for the international community, including the U.S. government and many U.S.-based nonstate actors, to put the issue of trafficking on their political agendas, despite the fact that Thai-based nonstate actors and other Asian activists had been advocating for a response for nearly two decades? When the U.S. and the international community did finally put this issue on their agendas, how did Thai-based nonstate actors respond to international and U.S. styles of agenda-setting in Thailand? The issue of human trafficking has been put on the national political agendas in both the United States and Thailand; however, the issue took very different paths on its way to the agenda in each country. In the case of Thailand, we can find Thai activists working on related issues since the early 1980s, connecting and networking domestically and transnationally to advocate for a governmental response to complex international problems. In the case of the United States, an unlikely coalition of conservatives and feminist abolitionists has clashed with human rights organizations with regard to framing and defining human trafficking. One argument of this dissertation is that the emergence and operation of domestic and transnational advocacy networks have been instrumental in framing human trafficking in such a way to keep the issue on the national political agendas of the United States and Thailand. The primary drivers of the transnational advocacy networks are nonstate actors, and they have played key roles in spotlighting this issue, networking with one another, and interacting with governments in creative ways to address human trafficking.Item Greening Export Promotion: A Comparative Study of Environmental Standard-Setting for Export Credit Agencies(2008-01-15) Schaper, Marcus; Schreurs, Miranda A; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Export credit agencies (ECAs), private banks and the World Bank are all institutions which facilitate the construction of infrastructure projects in developing countries, which often have significant environmental ramifications. However, although all three types of institutions have also been known to acquiesce to public pressure to consider the extent of the environmental impact of their projects, export credit agencies were able to resist this pressure for 25 years, implementing environmental rules in their operations much later than did the World Bank and private banks, which introduced similar reforms within a much shorter period of time. This dissertation explains why ECAs as public institutions were less responsive to public demands than an international organization and even private banks. The answer to this puzzle is advanced in two dimensions: one dealing with the rule-making process and the other addressing the harmonization of policies among ECAs. In a cost-benefit analysis approach covering both dimensions, the political costs and benefits of changes to existing rules as well as the regulatory costs of these changes are considered. Political costs and benefits are considered to result from the effects of these rules on competing groups combined with the power these groups wield in the rule-making process. Regulatory costs result from changes in rules and procedures. They are especially pronounced when adaptations go beyond changes to regulatory targets and include modifications in regulations or even challenge meta-regulatory principles engrained in regulatory cultures. Diverging speed and scope of reform among these institutions is the consequence of variations in the power of competing demands made on them and variations in the institutional contexts enabling, channeling, and constraining the power of the groups making the demands. Adopted rules reflect these power relationships. ECA harmonization involves changes to pre-existing regulations and compromises on meta-regulatory principles. This kind of agreement is very difficult to achieve - if achieved at all. Institutional incompatibility between rules proposed by the United States and continental European regulatory cultures was a decisive obstacle to harmonization.