Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 The Smoking Gun: Toward Understanding the Decision Calculus Behind Repressive Outcomes(2015) Munayyer, Yousef; Telhami, Shibley; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Why do states repress? Why are civil liberties curtailed? Explorations of these questions have departed from the assumption that security concerns motivate decisions that lead to repressive outcomes. If the state is challenged, it will repress. A state, it is assumed, must "strike a balance" between security and liberty. But what if those assumptions are flawed? If the decisions behind politically repressive outcomes are not always motivated by security challenges to the state, then we must ask a different set of questions about what can motivate state behavior and repression. This study examines the validity of these assumptions. A survey of cases of repressive episodes in the United States, using both primary and secondary sources, reveals that the decisions behind enacting repressive measures is not as straightforward as these assumptions would have it seem. A unique case, situated both contextually and historically by the preceding survey, is then explored in depth using data that is rarely available to shed a new degree of light on a decision making process. This data is overwhelming primary source information and includes declassified material from a variety of archives, material obtained from Freedom of Information Act Requests, as well as uniquely revelatory audio evidence that has only recently been made publicly available. After reviewing the case I argue that enough evidence exists to suggest the main assumptions of the repression and civil liberties literature fails to encompass all motivating factors behind repressive outcomes and a deeper understanding of how other factors can lead to repressive outcomes is needed.Item Differentiating a Landscape of Lac Repressor Mediated DNA Loops Using FRET(2011) Haeusler, Aaron Raymond; Kahn, Jason D; Biochemistry; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The variety of DNA loops formed by a protein such as Lac Repressor (LacI), predicted to populate multiple loop topologies and geometries, increases the uncertainty of models that have not been experimentally verified. We created a method for evaluating the multitude of LacI-DNA looped states using FRET with fluorophore position variants (FPVs) on a landscape DNA constructs with dual operator phasing variants bracketing an intrinsically curved DNA sequence. The FRET signature for each FPV corresponds to a specific LacI-DNA loop topology, and when applied to the landscape of constructs we could systematically explore DNA sequence dependent LacI mediated DNA looping. The FRET efficiencies calculated for each FPV landscape revealed the first unambiguous detection of antiparallel (A1 and A2) and distributions among parallel loop (P1) and antiparallel loops. The FRET efficiency maximum of each FPV landscape was used to calculate the loop population distribution for each topology assuming a uniform population at the peaks. The differences in the observed peak FRET among FPV landscapes led to an unavoidable estimate of loop populations with an extended LacI-DNA loop geometry, and also slightly extended LacI-DNA loop in the cases of antiparallel loops. The addition of saturating inducer to the FPV landscape demonstrated that IPTG-LacI-DNA loops have different properties than uninduced loops: they have increased instability, increased competition among previously energetically unfavorable states, and presumably have increased switching between specific and nonspecific LacI-DNA interactions. This multivariate data set confirms that rod mechanics models of DNA looping should also consider protein flexibility, and also demonstrates the importance of protein flexibility in modeling genetic regulatory circuits that are similar to the "hydrogen atom of gene regulation", the lac operon.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.