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
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Item RISK AND COMMITMENT: CRITICAL DIMENSIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE TO COUNTER INSURGENCIES(2019) Glubzinski, Andrew Joseph; Swagel, Phillip L; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Studies of development assistance in Afghanistan have found the impact of such assistance for reducing violence and countering insurgents to be weaker than in Iraq, not connected to improvements in Afghan perceptions of the quality of their governance, and inconsequential in the long term. While these previous results seem disappointing, existing frameworks offer only a limited perspective on why development assistance has not been more impactful in Afghanistan. My research analyzes development assistance in contexts that are more closely related to the reality of how insurgents fight within the geographic environment in Afghanistan compared to the existing literature, while also focusing on the longer-term effects of assistance rather than the short-term impacts previously examined. My framework identifies the concepts of risk and commitment as critical factors for countering insurgents. Risk refers to the risk tolerance for counterinsurgents, specifically the degree to which counterinsurgents emplace development assistance in areas that favor insurgent control. Commitment refers to the persistence of efforts aimed at development assistance, capturing the period of time over which counterinsurgents make investments in a local area. My empirical work coupled with qualitative interviews indicate that counterinsurgents must be willing to take risk and demonstrate commitment for development assistance to contribute to stabilizing a local area. An implication is that the weakness of development assistance for countering insurgents in Afghanistan reflects the typical situation in which development assistance has high commitment but low risk. Even when development assistance has taken risk, sporadic commitment might be constraining the effects. A hopeful implication of my research is that when development assistance involves sufficient risk and commitment, it has the potential to reduce violence in an adjoining area. In particular, I find that more risky rural development has a consistent association with less urban violence, while less risky urban development has a consistent association with more urban violence. However, the requirements of risk and commitment are steep in practice. It is possible for development assistance to reduce violence and improve stability, but the institutional headwinds are great and the costs—no matter the dimension in which they are measured—are substantial.Item The Politics of Insurgency(2015) Gandy, Maegen; Quester, George; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation introduces a new definition of insurgency for academic discourse. It argues that four components of a defined relationship framework must interoperate to satisfy organizational requirements and processes in order for an insurgency to achieve increasing levels of scale. From a systemic perspective, it presents a connective theory of constitutive and destructive mechanisms to assess why certain movements expand or ignite while others degrade or get stuck in a particular phase. The proposed perspective provides improved analytic leverage over existing phasing models. Chapter 1 introduces the scope and definition of the politics of insurgency. Chapter 2 presents academic, military, and legal perspectives of the phenomenon. Chapters 3 and 4 explain the limitations of existing insurgency models within the context of two historic case studies, the Chinese and Algerian Revolutions. Chapter 5 introduces the dissertation’s full phasing model. Chapters 6 and 7 present case studies to further elucidate the proposed relationship framework and composite phasing construct, assessing strengths and weaknesses in light of two comparable cases. The Chechen and Kosovar Albanian insurgencies provide insight and applied examples of the activities that occur within each phase. Chapter 8 then consolidates the findings and analysis from the case studies and assesses the viability of the phasing model as a usable tool to better comprehend insurgency behavior, movement scalability, and associated response options.