Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Typologies of Forced Labor Exploitation in Brazil(2021) Hickman, Shelby Nichole; Simpson, Sally; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Forced labor exploitation is the most common element of present-day institutional slavery. Despite the pervasive nature of this crime, little is known about the ways that perpetrators recruit workers and keep them in exploitive situations. Further, forced labor exploitation cases are rarely brought forward for prosecution and even more rarely receive a conviction. In this dissertation I examine the characteristics of forced labor exploitation in Brazil. Additionally, using a Focal Concerns framework, I examine the factors that influence the decision making of key investigative and court practitioners involved in processing forced labor exploitation cases. To do this, I analyzed administrative data from all (n=1,764) forced labor exploitation cases processed in the criminal and civil court systems in Brazil between 2008 and 2020. I also conducted 28 interviews with labor inspectors, federal police, and judges and prosecutors from the civil and criminal court systems. Using latent class analysis, I identified three typologies of forced labor exploitation: degrading conditions and debt servitude, degrading conditions, and degrading conditions and weapons and surveillance. I then examined the factors associated with different typologies of forced labor exploitation as well as the association between type of forced labor exploitation and sentencing outcomes. Respondents described several factors that increase uncertainty in forced labor exploitation cases, including: subjective interpretations of the criminal code, lack of formal training in handling forced labor exploitation cases, and uncertainty about who should be held accountable in larger organizational schemes. Interview participants further reported that cases that include physical violence, weapons, and ostensive surveillance are more likely to receive a conviction. In my analysis of the administrative data, I find that cases in the degrading conditions and weapons class are no more likely to receive a criminal conviction; however, cases in the degrading conditions and weapons class that received a conviction received more severe punishments. I discuss ways to improve investigation and prosecution of forced labor exploitation cases based on the study findings as well as potential alternatives to criminal court processing that may be more effective in reducing the burden of forced labor exploitation.Item AWAKENING ACTIVISM: THE POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS(2018) Braun, Joseph; Reed, William L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Individuals are an integral part of international human rights. While central to our leading theories of human rights change and to the efforts of human rights organizations in the real world, empirical scholarship has not systematically investigated how individuals choose to become advocates. Without the mobilization of individuals, human rights institutions and campaigns are deprived of the energy and material that fuel their success. In this dissertation, I closely evaluate the reasons why individuals choose to become engaged in human rights campaigns, what drives them to advocacy, and what this tells us about the relationship between political psychology and international human rights. In Chapter 1, I consider how incidental emotions influence individuals’ support for child hunger relief and refugee assistance, finding that negative emotions like disgust tend to amplify pre-existing views. In Chapter 2, I evaluate the effects of the negativity bias and loss-aversion bias on support for child hunger relief. I find that the combination of negative imagery and gains-focused messaging had a significant and positive effect on individuals’ support for both personal and government action to help feed and house the hungry. In Chapter 3, I discuss the important effects that political ideology had on the relationships I observed in Chapters 1 and 2. I illustrate how those on the political left and right responded in systematically different ways in each of the experiments, and note how these differences reveal the critical importance of targeted messaging with an emphasis on ideology. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of these dissertation findings as theoretically important and practically useful, with an emphasis on a focused and practically-oriented future research agenda.Item Employing Moderate Resolution Sensors in Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Monitoring(2013) Marx, Andrew J.; Goward, Samuel N.; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Organizations concerned with human rights are increasingly using remote sensing as a tool to improve their detection of human rights and international humanitarian law violations. However, as these organizations have transitioned to human rights monitoring campaigns conducted over large regions and extended periods of time, current methods of using fine- resolution sensors and manpower-intensive analyses have become cost- prohibitive. To support the continued growth of remote sensing in human rights and international humanitarian law monitoring campaigns, this study researches how moderate resolution land observatories can provide complementary data to operational human rights monitoring efforts. This study demonstrates the capacity of moderate resolutions to provide data to monitoring efforts by developing an approach that uses Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) as part of a system for the detection of village destruction in Darfur, Sudan. Village destruction is an indicator of a human rights or international humanitarian law violations in Darfur during the 2004 study period. This analysis approach capitalizes on Landsat's historical archive and systematic observations by constructing a historic spectral baseline for each village in the study area that supports automated detection of a potentially destroyed village with each new overpass of the sensor. Using Landsat's near-infrared band, the approach demonstrates high levels of accuracy when compared with a U.S. government database documenting destroyed villages. This approach is then applied to the Darfur conflict from 2002 to 2008, providing new data on when and where villages were destroyed in this widespread and long-lasting conflict. This application to the duration of a real-world conflict illustrates the abilities and shortcomings of moderate resolution sensors in human rights monitoring efforts. This study demonstrates that moderate resolution satellites have the capacity to contribute complementary data to operational human rights monitoring efforts. While this study validates this capacity for the burning of villages in arid environments, this approach can be generalized to detect other human rights violations if an observable signal that represents the violation is identified.Item Global Justice as Fairness: Non-domination, Human Rights & the Global Basic Structure(2013) Hoitink, Aaron Philip; Morris, Christopher W.; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Most Rawlsian approaches to global justice fall into one of two main types—cosmopolitanisms that expand the scope of Rawls's domestic theory to the entire world, and those that, following Rawls's The Law of Peoples, develop a liberal foreign policy rooted in the toleration of “decent” but nonliberal peoples. Global Justice as Fairness offers an alternative to these by incorporating some aspects of each, as well as some unique features, into a coherent whole that avoids their more significant drawbacks. Employing a distinctive understanding of the global original position and a republican view of freedom, the theory generates two principles that aim to ensure the agency and non-domination of peoples. These principles provide the broad outlines of a just global basic structure for states that is both realistic and utopian. The most basic parameters of Rawlsian theories of global justice are the subject of and parties to the original position(s). Global Justice as Fairness is unique among such theories by identifying the global basic structure as subject (as cosmopolitans do) while also taking peoples, not persons, as the parties (following Rawls's law of peoples). It is also alone in severing the tie between domestic and global justice and recognizing the fact of reasonable global pluralism, according to which it is unreasonable to expect all peoples to hold liberal conceptions of domestic justice. Global Justice as Fairness excludes the parties’ knowledge of their domestic conceptions behind the veil of ignorance, forcing them to rely on their generic interests as peoples. This picture of peoples’ rationality is developed with an account of global primary goods rooted in their agency and a global analog of citizenship. Thus situated, the parties are led to select two principles of justice for a global basic structure formulated in terms of the republican vision of freedom. The first principle specifies a human rights regime that ensures the minimal conditions needed for peoples to maintain their distinctly political form of group agency. The second provides guidelines for minimizing the domination of peoples through a just global political and economic order within which they can freely exercise that agency.Item HUMAN RIGHTS AND US FOREIGN AID: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF AID ALLOCATIONS BEFORE AND DURING THE WAR ON TERROR(2011) Miller, Brian Lawrence; Huth, Paul; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this study, I examine the influence of human rights considerations on the US foreign aid decisionmaking process during the war on terror and, for comparative purposes, prior to its onset. The findings indicate that respect for human rights has been negatively related to the yes/no decision to allocate economic aid and the amount allocated since 9/11. In other words, more economic aid has flowed--and more readily--to regimes with poor human rights records since the onset of the war on terror. The findings also indicate that human rights considerations failed to influence post-9/11 military aid decisions. While these findings run counter to the Congressionally-mandated positive relationship between human rights and foreign aid, and my own expectations of American exceptionalism in the guise of human rights promotion, additional analysis indicates they were not a first. I also found that respect for human rights was negatively related to economic aid allocations under every administration since Reagan's and during the post-Cold War era. Only during the Cold War, and only for military aid, did better human rights practices increase the prospects of a regime receiving aid. In analyzing allocations to partners and non-partners in the war on terror, I found that human rights considerations negatively influenced decisions on economic aid amounts for both groups but only the yes/no decision for military aid allocations to partners. Looking across the models, and taking into account the influence of the control variables, one possible explanation for the lack of positive findings on the human rights variable becomes apparent: other, competing considerations--namely addressing recipient "need," promoting democracy, and confronting perceived threats to national security--regularly overshadow human rights concerns, leading US decisionmakers to extend aid to regimes with questionable human rights practices.Item An East and West Debate on Human Rights(2011) Chan, Benedict Shing Bun; Morris, Christopher W.; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In an East and West debate on human rights, scholars from different cultures disagree on whether all civil and political rights are human rights. While they generally agree that basic civil rights such as rights against torture and slavery (i.e., physical security rights) are human rights, some of them argue that traditional political rights in the West such as freedom of speech and political participation (i.e., liberal rights) are not human rights. Some scholars, such as Daniel A. Bell, argue that liberal rights are not human rights because liberal rights conflict with some East Asian cultures. In this dissertation, I argue that both physical security rights and liberal rights are human rights, and explain the relationship between these rights and East Asian cultures. First, I argue that if liberal rights are not human rights because they conflict with some East Asian cultures, then physical security rights are also not human rights because physical security rights also conflict with some East Asian cultures. Next, I discuss the idea from Daniel Bell and Michael Walzer that physical security rights are human rights because they are minimal values. Based on their idea, I explain what minimal values are, and why it is possible to develop some maximal theories of physical security rights in East Asian cultures. I argue that since physical security rights are minimal values, they are still human rights even they conflict with some East Asian cultures. I then argue that liberal rights, similar to physical security rights, are also minimal values, and it is possible to develop some maximal theories of them in East Asian cultures. Therefore, similar to physical security rights, liberal rights are also human rights even they also conflict with some East Asian cultures. I also discuss other human rights debates, especially the debates between Daniel Bell and other philosophers. Charles Taylor argues for an overlapping consensus approach on human rights; Jack Donnelly argues for a Western liberalist approach on human rights. I explain the relationship between these approaches and my arguments, and how my arguments can help them to reply to the challenges from Daniel Bell.Item Democracy and State Repression: What we Don't Know, Can Kill Us(2009) Armstrong II, David; Davenport, Christian; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There is an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence that democracy makes states more pacific toward their citizens. This robust finding has left scholars working in this area confident that they know {\em why} democracy causes states to be more pacific. I argue this is not true for two reasons. First, the theories adopted to explain this relationship have not been properly tested. Second, when good faith efforts have been made to test theories, measurement of all key variables has not been treated rigorously. I solve both of these problems by revisiting the theories upon which the literature rests and using a rigorous measurement strategy that is as true as possible to the theories proposed. I show that while the theories are up to the task of explaining the relationship, often the data are the weak link. Often, there is relatively little variation on the dependent and key independent variables. Thus, I show that most of the results generated in the literature are of the between-country variety rather than the within-country variety.Item Exploring the Empowerment Effects of the Internet on Active Publics(2007-12-10) Halvorson, Erik; Toth, Elizabeth; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of the Internet on the power of active publics using qualitative in-depth interviews with 19 human rights advocates. The study examines how the participants make meaning of power, use the Internet to achieve their goals, and the extent to which they feel empowered by the Internet. The results suggested four types of power in human rights advocacy, while advocates themselves rely primarily on the power of persuasion to achieve objectives. While the Internet has led to empowerment in some limited instances, no uniform empowerment for advocates was suggested by the data. The findings suggest numerous practical uses for Internet technologies in advocacy as well as important themes and theories to be incorporated into future studies.Item Rwanda and the Moral Obligation of Humanitarian Intervention(2007-04-25) Kassner, Joshua James; Morris, Christopher W; Morris, Christopher W; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1994, nearly one million Men, women, and children were slaughtered because of their ethnicity. The tragedy of the Rwandan genocide has caused many to question the international community's choice not to intervene. I use the Rwandan genocide as a means of discussing international morality and the role of morality in international relations. The first half of my project focuses on humanitarian intervention as an issue of global ethics. I argue that the international community, as a collection of duty-bearing states, had a moral obligation to intervene in Rwanda. To defend this proposition I must first establish the conceptual possibility of global ethics. In that vein, I begin by arguing against various skeptical arguments made by communitarians, relativists, and political realists. Having made the conceptual room for global ethics, I then develop a weak moral principle in support of the moral obligation of humanitarian intervention by identifying the set of conditions under which no one could reasonably deny that such an obligation exists. I next explain how states can and why they on occasion do bear that obligation. Lastly, I argue that the Rwandan genocide fulfilled such conditions; as a consequence, not only was intervention permissible, it was obligatory. The second half of my project is concerned with the role moral demands should play in the practical deliberations of states. Many international relations scholars contend that questions of intervention are largely determined by the right of nonintervention which precludes other states from considering reasons for action that would require intervention. Against such scholars I argue that the role the right of nonintervention played in the practical deliberations of states during the Rwandan genocide was, and remains, unjustified. In the alternative, I argue that we ought to adopt a rebuttable presumption in favor of nonintervention. Such a rule would serve the same goals as the right of nonintervention, but without the unjustified preclusion of moral reasons for action. I conclude that the presumption of nonintervention would have been rebutted during the Rwandan genocide, and that the international community ought to have intervened.