Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item 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.Item Domestic Political Consequences of Interstate Wars(2015) Mukherjee, Bappaditya; Huth, Paul K; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the connection between costs of interstate war and postwar domestic politics of countries that waged them. Previous research focused primarily on explaining the chances of survival of war leaders by factors like outcome of war, culpability and regime type. This project contends that the variation in level of domestic hostility facing postwar governments also needs explanation, independent of the tenure of individual leaders. This can be operationalized by counting political events that make it harder for an incumbent to govern effectively. This is the logical basis for replacing a dichotomous dependent variable (i.e. survival versus removal of a leader) with a combined count of antigovernment activities over a finite postwar period of five years. The study hypothesizes that the higher the cost incurred by a country in a war, the greater the likelihood that it will witness manifestations of antigovernment hostility. The hypotheses were tested using cross-national data from a sample of warring countries from the period, 1919-1999. Countries that suffered civilian fatalities during war, tended to be at greater risk of overt anti-government hostility in the postwar period. As a measure of costliness, battle deaths did not work as a predictor of postwar threats faced by governments of warring states. The quantitative analysis was supplemented by case analysis of two countries - Paraguay after the Chaco War (1932-35) and Egypt after the Six Day War (1967). The Paraguayan case demonstrated how counter-elites can successfully exploit popular discontent caused by the costs of the war to discredit and depose a victorious wartime leader and his coalition. On the other hand, Egypt in the aftermath of the 1967 war illustrates that leader turnover is only one among many possible political consequences of war. A factional struggle within the pre-war winning coalition and popular expressions of antigovernment sentiment are possible without resulting in the removal of a wartime leader. Secondly, it shows why outcome has consistently been a powerful predictor of a war's domestic effects.