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 How Rebels Get What They Want(2021) McWeeney, Margaret; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the often-unseen nonviolent world of nonviolence in armed rebellion. Although states often act and react to violent rebellion, recent research has highlighted nonviolent, governance and service activities rebels take on for survival of their organization. However, little is known about the effects of these behaviors. Theorizing a new category of rebel activity called legitimacy-seeking nonviolence, I show the ways that rebels peacefully “get what they want.” Legitimacy-seeking nonviolence works by reducing concerns over information and commitment that keep rebels and states from reaching a mutually-beneficial bargain. In the following papers, I highlight three behaviors, diplomacy, local interdependence networks, and peace enforcement via gender inclusion, that rebels used that facilitate successful negotiations and durable peace with the state in Southeast Asia. In concluding, this dissertation asks scholars, academics, and policymakers to rethink traditional conceptions of rebels, violence, and conflict and outline scenarios where giving in to some demands would be preferable to continued violence.Item The Social Terrain of Rebel Held Territory(2020) Breslawski, Marjorie; Cunningham, David; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The extent of local order varies widely in rebel held areas, from total chaos to well-run governing institutions. When these institutions exist, why do some include and even empower civilians to run community affairs, while others exclude civilians from governance? I argue that rebels choose different governing strategies that maximize their utility of territorial control, based on certain characteristics of civilian inhabitants populating the territory. Rebels’ constituency determines whether rebels seek to govern civilians or control them solely with coercive violence, and community cohesion (or lack thereof) then determines the type of institutions that rebels develop. I focus on three different outcomes for communities under rebel control—no institutions, exclusive institutions, and inclusive institutions. I test my argument using historical, statistical, and case evidence, leveraging original cross-national data on local order in rebel held territory as well as interviews with village heads, ex-combatants, and community members in Aceh, Indonesia. The results provide support for my theory and yield implications for our understanding of human security during conflict and the determinants of civilians’ political and social reality during war.Item Institutions, Poverty, and Tropical Cyclone Mortality(2019) Tennant, Elizabeth; Patwardhan, Anand; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tropical cyclones can result in thousands of deaths when the exposed population is unprepared or ill-equipped to cope with the hazard. Evaluating the importance of institutions and socioeconomic conditions for these deaths is challenging due to the extreme variability in hazard exposure. Studies of socioeconomic risk factors that do not account for exposure will be imprecise and possibly biased, as a storm’s path and intensity are important determinants of mortality and may be correlated with socioeconomic conditions. I therefore model and then control for hazard exposure by spatially interacting meteorological and socioeconomic data, allowing me to develop novel evidence of socioeconomic risk factors. In essay 1, I construct a global dataset of over one thousand tropical cyclone events occurring between 1979 and 2016. Controlling for population exposure to strong winds and rainfall, I find that higher levels of national government effectiveness are associated with lower tropical cyclone mortality. Further, deaths are higher when exposure is concentrated over a subset of the population that is already less well off. In essay 2, I investigate whether local government capacity and poverty alleviation can reduce tropical cyclone deaths, using panel data from 78 provinces and 1,426 municipalities in the Philippines. Tropical cyclone exposure is concentrated in wealthier regions of the Philippines, but once wind exposure and rainfall are controlled for I find robust evidence of a link between local poverty rates and cyclone deaths. In essay 3, I investigate the potential for leveraging policy experiments for causal inference about the effects of development interventions on disaster mortality using an existing randomized control trial in the Philippines. This empirical example illustrates how randomization overcomes issues of multicollinearity and omitted variable bias; however, the presence of outliers in exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards interact to make average treatment effect estimates highly imprecise. Strong evidence of an association between government effectiveness and cyclone deaths suggests that capacity constraints need to be addressed in tandem with risk-specific strategies and financial transfers. Further, evidence that local poverty rates and socioeconomic conditions matter highlights the need for equitable and inclusive approaches to mitigating the risk from tropical cyclones.Item Essays on Intitutional Governance(2011) Hu, Bingjie; Murrell, Peter; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis consists of three chapters on the choice of institutional governance. The first chapter provides empirical evidence on the effect of local norms on the contractual choice, using a comprehensive dataset on US agricultural leasing contracts. We focus on the choice between cash-rent and share-rent contracts and examine whether the prevalence of share-rent contracts has an effect on contractual choice. We use a generalized spatial two-stage least squares approach to address endogeneity issues. Our results show that there is a strong tendency for agents to choose the contractual form that conforms to local norms. Our study also suggests that share-rent contracts are more likely to be chosen when there is a higher likelihood or more severe consequence of opportunistic behavior by agents. This suggests that share contracts reduce transaction costs by helping to foster a productive governance atmosphere for the contracting parties. The second chapter explores whether the choice of institutions depends on the historical experience and the stock of knowledge of economic agents. We provide firm-level evidence on the choice of between legal and relational governance, in the context of the transition economy of Romania. Our results show that previously state-owned businesses are more likely to rely on legal governance than other firms. We also find evidence that the legal knowledge held by firm managers affects the choice of governance, which is consistent with the path-dependence theory of institutional development. The third chapter is based on a cross-country study of the link between public spending on health care, quality of institutional governance and child health outcomes. We show that both public spending on health care and the quality of governance matter for the reduction of child and infant mortality rates.Item Microdynamics of Illegitimacy and Complex Urban Violence in Medellin, Colombia(2010) Lamb, Robert Dale; Steinbruner, John D; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)For most of the past 25 years, Medellin, Colombia, has been an extreme case of complex, urban violence, involving not just drug cartels and state security forces, but also street gangs, urban guerrillas, community militias, paramilitaries, and other nonstate armed actors who have controlled micro-territories in the city's densely populated slums in ever-shifting alliances. Before 2002, Medellin's homicide rate was among the highest in the world, but after the guerrillas and militias were defeated in 2003, a major paramilitary alliance disarmed and a period of peace known as the "Medellin Miracle" began. Policy makers facing complex violence elsewhere were interested in finding out how that had happened so quickly. The research presented here is a case study of violence in Medellin over five periods since 1984 and at two levels of analysis: the city as a whole, and a sector called Caicedo La Sierra. The objectives were to describe and explain the patterns of violence, and determine whether legitimacy played any role, as the literature on social stability suggested it might. Multilevel, multidimensional frameworks for violence and legitimacy were developed to organize data collection and analysis. The study found that most decreases in violence at all levels of analysis were explained by increases in territorial control. Increases in collective (organized) violence resulted from a process of "illegitimation," in which an intolerably unpredictable living environment sparked internal opposition to local rulers and raised the costs of territorial control, increasing their vulnerability to rivals. As this violence weakened social order and the rule of law, interpersonal-communal (unorganized) violence increased. Over time, the "true believers" in armed political and social movements became marginalized or corrupted; most organized violence today is motivated by money. These findings imply that state actors, facing resurgent violence, can keep their tenuous control over the hillside slums (and other "ungoverned" areas) if they can avoid illegitimizing themselves. Their priority, therefore, should be to establish a tolerable, predictable daily living environment for local residents and businesses: other anti-violence programs will fail without strong, permanent, and respectful governance structures.Item Governance, Identity, and Counterinsurgency Strategy(2009) Fitzsimmons, Michael; Steinbruner, John D.; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The premise of most Western thinking on counterinsurgency is that success depends on establishing a perception of legitimacy among local populations. The path to legitimacy is often seen as the improvement of governance in the form of effective and efficient administration of government and public services. However, good governance is not the only possible basis for claims to legitimacy. Prompted by recent experience in Iraq, the research presented here formally considers whether in insurgencies where ethno-religious identities are politically salient, claims to legitimacy may rest more on the identity of who governs, rather than on how whoever governs governs. Specifically, this dissertation poses and tests the hypothesis that in the presence of major ethno-religious cleavages, good governance will contribute much less to counterinsurgent success than will efforts toward reaching political agreements that directly address those cleavages. The dissertation reviews and synthesizes the record of scholarship and policy regarding insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, the politics of ethnic identity, governance, and legitimacy. Building on this synthesis, it presents an analytic framework designed to formalize the terms of the main hypothesis sufficiently to enable empirical tests. It then applies that framework to brief analyses of counterinsurgent experiences in Malaya, Algeria, South Vietnam, and then of two detailed local cases studies of American counterinsurgency operations in Iraq: Ramadi from 2004-2005; and Tal Afar from 2005-2006. These Iraq case studies are based on primary research, including 37 interviews with participants and eyewitnesses. The cases examined yield ample evidence that ethno-religious identity politics do shape counterinsurgency outcomes in important ways, and also offer qualified support for the hypothesis about the relative importance to counterinsurgent success of identity politics versus good governance. However, the cases do not discredit the utility to counterinsurgents of providing good governance, and they corroborate the traditional view that population security is the most important element of successful counterinsurgency strategy. Key policy implications include the importance of making strategy development as sensitive as possible to the dynamics of identity politics, and to local variations and complexity in causal relationships among popular loyalties, grievances, and political violence.Item The Political Foundations of Ibn Bajjah's "Governance of the Solitary"(2008-05-12) Pavalko, Rima; Butterworth, Charles E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A first impression might lead one to characterize the "Governance of the Solitary," the most famous treatise by the medieval Arabic-Islamic philosopher Ibn Bājjah, as favoring radical individualism, and thus as breaking with the political orientation of ancient philosophy. In fact, the treatise returns to the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle, reaffirming the ancient principle that the human being is by nature political and that the highest life for the city and the individual is the same, the life of virtue pursued for the sake of happiness. For Ibn Bājjah, the highest goal intended for human beings by nature is political, namely, the perfect virtuous city. In the absence of the city oriented toward perfect virtue, the philosopher may find it necessary to lead a life of isolation. According to Ibn Bājjah, this solitary life seeks to preserve on behalf of the city the possibility of its deliverance from imperfection by pursuing the highest goal of the individual human being, namely, the attainment of conjunction with the divine intellect. By means of this intermediary goal, the solitary aims to deliver knowledge of perfect virtue to the city that is needed to bring about political happiness. Ibn Bājjah's account of the solitary shows that the philosopher does not abandon the city by pursuing philosophy in isolation, but in fact the isolated philosopher embodies the hope of bringing about the city's perfection. Practically speaking, this dissertation seeks to establish the second and third parts of the "Governance" as elaborations on the political teaching begun in the first part. To remain true to the author's intent, I argue that one cannot bypass Ibn Bājjah's concern for the perfect virtuous city in Part I, in order to present his teaching on governance as culminating in the life of the solitary described in Part III. The following study aims to take into account the treatise as a whole and to discuss it as faithful as possible to the original Arabic text.