Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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.
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Item Winter Soldiers and Moonlight Rebels(2024) Cowan, Michael; Reed, William; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How do rebel groups cultivate devotion? Civil conflict scholars have found that when rebel groups fill their ranks with ideologically committed soldiers they are able to operate more effectively in several ways. However, the mechanisms by which rebel groups attain such devoted followers remains unexplained. I propose that insurgencies are able to cultivate devotion when they successfully deploy an ideology that balances between explanatory power and complexity. An ideology that manages to make sense of a political environment with minimal complexity provides adherents with certainty, which is a source of substantial utility. Groups that deploy maximally potent ideologies foster the emergence of a "hard core" of soldiers who depend upon the certainty afforded by the ideology and will therefore go to great lengths to act on its behalf. I articulate a theory of ideological potency and propose an associated function that expresses how much utility an individual will derive from that ideology via its certainty mechanism. I then analyze and compare the PIRA, the Viet Minh and Renamo insurgencies to demonstrate how variation in the extent to which they effectively balanced between explanatory power and complexity in their ideologies can explain variation in their capacity to attract, generate, control, and sustain devoted soldiers.Item Racial Moderation as Preference or Constraint? Examining Racial Pragmatism Among Black Americans(2023) Bishop, William B; Banks, Antoine; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I offer a theory of racial pragmatism to explain how the broader social context influences the social and political behavior of Black Americans. I define racial pragmatism as a Black belief system where through double consciousness (DuBois 1903) and their use of the pragmatic method (Dewey 1929), adherents are aware of Americans’ opposition to Black voters’ desired social changes. This reality has led pragmatic Black Americans to conclude that as a group, Black Americans are hampered in their ability to articulate and enact a progressive and racialized political agenda that uniquely benefits members of their racial group. Behaving similarly to pragmatic Black elites such as David Dinkins and Barack Obama (Harris 2012; Marable and Clark 2009; Reft 2009), when striving for social progress, I argue that pragmatic Black voters are hesitant to embrace race conscious political strategies, policies, and candidates, not because they oppose them outright, but rather they view these race-conscious options as ineffective in the current social environment. To evaluate my theory, I created an 8-item survey measure of racial pragmatism. I find that racial pragmatism is a statistically reliable measure and I found repeated support for my theory through a series of observational and experimental studies. As racial pragmatism increases, Black Americans are less likely to vote for racially progressive Democrats, offer more moderate positions on racial policies such as reparations, and envision greater political backlash from white Americans when politicians speak out about racial issues that affect Black people. I also find that pragmatists are more reactive to threat when compared to co-racial group members who scored lower in racial pragmatism. As racial pragmatism increases, Black Americans are more likely to compromise and abandon their liberal policy positions when responding to threat stimuli. Finally, I also found that my theory and measure of racial pragmatism has important social implications outside of politics. As racial pragmatism increases, Black Americans are more likely to both support and engage in strategic deracialization efforts such as codeswitching to mute their racial identities and increase their chances of fair treatment in American society. This research provides insight into the complex actions that Black Americans employ in their daily lives to compensate for prejudice and strategically develop tactics for achieving uplift in a country that is hostile to their interests and rights. Through racial pragmatism, some Black Americans make strategic and deliberate choices to deemphasize their racial identities and relegate racial issues in politics to decrease their chances of experiencing prejudice and backlash from non-Black Americans.