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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    U.S. NUCLEAR ENERGY COOPERATION AND PARTNER COUNTRY NONPROLIFERATION: CASE STUDIES FROM EAST ASIA
    (2022) Siegel, Jonas Elliott; Gallagher, Nancy; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    U.S. policy makers are promoting U.S. civilian nuclear exports as a means of influencing the nonproliferation policies of foreign governments and of achieving U.S. nuclear nonproliferation objectives. This approach to nonproliferation policy making assumes that engaging in international civilian nuclear cooperation is effective at influencing partner country nonproliferation commitments and behavior, and that it is more efficient and effective than other means of achieving similar nonproliferation goals. This dissertation tests these assumptions by examining the historical nonproliferation impact of U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation on three countries who sought to build civilian nuclear power programs with U.S. assistance: Japan, South Korea, and China. These case studies place U.S. civilian nuclear energy cooperation in the context of broader U.S. security and economic relations with these countries, and provide a nuanced understanding of each countries’ rationales for engaging in nuclear cooperation and nonproliferation in the first place. This dissertation also develops a novel approach to measuring nonproliferation that focuses on a country’s nonproliferation behavior in addition to its policy commitments. It also assesses whether particular types and stages of U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation and/or the characteristics of U.S. partners affect the strength and direction of the relationship between nuclear cooperation and nonproliferation. In examining multiple periods of U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with each country, this dissertation finds that U.S. civilian nuclear energy cooperation—and more specifically, the process of negotiating and renegotiating the terms of nuclear cooperation—can be effective ways to induce U.S. partner countries to adopt nonproliferation commitments. This is particularly the case when U.S. partners are energy insecure and rely predominantly (or exclusively) on foreign assistance in developing their civilian nuclear programs. U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation coupled with U.S. security cooperation (including nuclear security guarantees) can often win U.S. policy makers additional, detailed nonproliferation commitments from partner countries that are not possible with security cooperation alone. The dissertation also finds that U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation has limited impact on the nonproliferation behaviors of U.S. partners in the short run once they formally make nonproliferation commitments. In all three cases, U.S. partners’ nonproliferation behaviors improve over time, but these improvements are due to the partners’ internalization of global nonproliferation norms and partners’ development of their own nonproliferation logic, rather than the influence of U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation. Frequent changes in U.S. nonproliferation preferences and, in particular, the divergence of U.S. nonproliferation preferences from the baseline tenets of the multilateral nonproliferation regime make it costly and difficult for the United States to maintain influence on partner countries’ nonproliferation commitments and behaviors over time with civilian nuclear cooperation. On account of these findings, this dissertation argues that in many situations, U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation is not an effective means of achieving U.S. nonproliferation objectives. Compared to other possible courses of action, such as reinforcing multilateral nonproliferation agreements and norms, or engaging in nonproliferation capacity building, U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation is also not efficient in achieving U.S. aims. Should U.S. policy makers continue to pursue civilian nuclear cooperation as a means of achieving U.S. nonproliferation objectives, they should be aware of the conditions that are most conducive to U.S. nonproliferation influence, and they should be realistic about the challenges and costs associated with maintaining that influence over time.
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    Factors Contributing to the Experience of State Loneliness
    (2020) Rinderknecht, Robert Gordon; Lucas, Jeffrey W; Doan, Long; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this dissertation, I examine the factors that contribute to the experience of loneliness in daily life (i.e., state loneliness). In the first study, I propose that being alone is most likely to lead to feelings of loneliness when a person is expected to be social, relative to moments when there is less of an expectation to be social. In the second study, I propose that how people engage with others has implications for how lonely they will feel in a situation, and that the importance of how they engage with others will partly depend on the kinds of people present in the situation. In the third study, I propose that engagement with romantic partners will be less beneficial for avoiding state loneliness when experiencing work-schedule conflict, due to the detriment such conflict may have on relationship quality. The lack of research on state loneliness is related to the difficulty of collecting data during or near the moment in which it is experienced. In this dissertation, I overcome this challenge by developing a platform that allowed participants to conveniently provide the time-diary data utilized in all three studies. In Study 1, I found, as expected, that participants felt loneliest when isolated during normatively social times. Unexpectedly, normatively social activities and locations did not associate with the strongest feelings of state loneliness. Results for Study 2 came out largely as expected—engaging in a shared task (active engagement) associated with lower rates of state loneliness relative to mere co-presence (passive engagement), and the benefit of active over passive engagement was strongest among weak ties and, unexpectedly, family members. Lastly, as expected, results from Study 3 show that work-schedule conflict associated with heightened loneliness when engaging with romantic partners. Unexpectedly, this appears to be less related to relationship quality between romantic partners and more related to the association between work-schedule conflict and participants reporting being generally lonely. Results from these studies show how factors ranging from broad cultural beliefs to small changes in engagement influence the experience of loneliness throughout a day, while unexpected findings highlight the need for further research.
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    Tightness-Looseness in the United States: Ecological Predictors and State Level Outcomes
    (2014) Harrington, Jesse Ryan; Gelfand, Michele J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This research demonstrates wide variation in tightness-looseness (strength of punishment and degree of permissiveness) at the state level in the United States, and its association with various ecological and historical factors, psychological characteristics, and state-level outcomes. Consistent with theory and past research, ecological and man-made threats--more natural disasters, greater disease prevalence, fewer natural resources, and greater external threat--predict increased tightness at the state level. Tightness is also associated with higher trait conscientiousness and lower trait openness. Compared with loose states, tight states have more social stability, indicated by lowered drug and alcohol use, lower rates of homelessness, and lower social disorganization. However, tight states also have relatively higher incarceration rates, greater discrimination and inequality, lower creativity, and lower happiness. In all, tightness-looseness provides a parsimonious explanation of the wide variation seen across the 50 states of the United States of America.
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    Adapting to Norms at the United Nations: the Abortion-Rights and Anti-Abortion Networks
    (2007-11-20) Swinski, June Samuel; Conca, Ken; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation examines the practical effects of international norm construction for social movements attempting to navigate the UN system, specifically UN global conferences. Do norms become ingrained in the practices of intergovernmental organizations to such an extent that they hinder a movement with different norms or help a movement that conforms to them? In studying the UN and especially UN global conferences on issues of social significance, it has been argued that the norms stemming from classic Lockean liberalism, such as emphasis on individual liberties, a rights-based framework for developing policy, and progress through science and reason, are embodied in the procedures and frameworks of UN global conferences. I compare the strategies and influence of the abortion-rights and anti-abortion movements over time at the UN, particularly through the International Conferences on Population and Development, and trace how each movement has adjusted its strategies to accommodate the normative context it has encountered at the UN. I use a combined structural and agency-oriented framework that identifies the concrete mechanisms and processes through which the interplay of movement ideology and institutional-normative context may constrain or facilitate a social movement's actions within the UN system. What I've found in my research is that the abortion-rights network has had more success in actually influencing the debate and changing the language of population policy to reflect their goals, whereas the influence of the anti-abortion network can really only be measured by the language that they have blocked. But it is important to note that both the abortion-rights network and the anti-abortion network have adjusted over time to the UN in terms of their strategies, which is interesting because of the more progressive character of one, and the conservative character of the other. However, the progressive and conservative characters of the two movements still affected how easily each movement adapted to these norms at the UN, and the success of their strategies in that forum.