College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item TIES THAT MATTER: THREE ESSAYS ON COOPERATION AMONG ARMED NONSTATE ORGANIZATIONS(2024) Yarlagadda, Rithvik; Cunningham, David; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Armed non-state groups frequently cooperate with other groups, even to the point of allyingwith them. This dissertation examines the role of group leaders in understanding when and to what extent do armed groups cooperate, and the impact that cooperation has on the severity of terrorist violence. When operating in complex environments such as civil wars, armed groups face information barriers in credibly signaling to other groups about their willingness to engage in cooperation. I argue that group leader’s length of time in power and their prewar experiences help resolve the information uncertainty and promote cooperation between armed groups. Prior to assuming power, some leaders participate in a variety of military and political activities. These prewar leader experiences, I argue, condition the type of armed group cooperation that occurs during civil wars. Furthermore, I also explore if and how cooperation influences the violent behavior of armed groups. Specifically, I argue that in addition to the number of cooperative ties, the diversity and directionality of support within those ties also matter equally, if not more, in affecting the severity of armed group violence. Using a large-N design, I conduct a variety of statistical models to test my hypotheses related to the incidence, type, and effects of cooperation among armed groups. My findings show that leader tenure is positively and statistically significantly associated with the occurrence of armed group cooperation. I also find that leaders with prior military experience are more likely to engage in informal ties while prior political experience increases the odds of formal cooperation in a statistically significant manner. Lastly, the proportion of cooperative ties in which an armed group is the major provider of support is shown to have a negative and statistically significant impact on violence lethality. Overall, this study demonstrates the value of leaders in understanding the nature of armed group interactions. Cooperative ties involving armed groups are not necessarily uniform and it is recommended that both scholars and policy makers should consider the heterogeneity in ties when evaluating the risks posed by armed groups.Item Firm Connectivity and Trade Protection under Global Value Chains(2024) Park, Kee Hyun; Allee, Todd; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Antidumping (AD) duties have been the most widely used trade policy globally to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Prior research assumes that firms within domestic industries will demonstrate a united stance in petitioning their home government for AD protection, and that the political salience of unified domestic industries will compel the home governments to grant protection. However, I find that many firms in the same industry remain silent or oppose these petitions, even though AD aims to protect the entire industry. I offer a firm-level theory that explains how a firm’s business connections with foreign firms shapes its AD participation. As a domestic firm connects with foreign firms, two sources make it vulnerable to potential costs generated if AD duties harm foreign firms with whom it is connected. First, foreign firms can pass along the costs of AD to the domestic firm by increasing the prices of inputs or by cutting demand for products they sell to or buy from the domestic firm. Second, targeted governments can impose various trade and investment barriers on the domestic firm’s business in the target country’s market. I test my theory with a new firm-level dataset that accounts for all domestic firms involvedin US AD cases between 2010 and 2020, matched with millions of shipment records representing their foreign connections. I find that firms that are more sensitive to trade and have more foreign affiliates are less likely to participate in AD. Next, I demonstrate that the previously identified firm participation in AD significantly reduces the probability that the US International Trade Commission (ITC) will accept the petition and impose AD. I first show that the ITC is largely insulated from external political pressure and that its investigation operates like a quasi-judicial procedure, through which the ITC (i.e., the judge) collects information from supporting firms (i.e., the plaintiff) and the opposing firms (i.e., the defendant) to identify the causal link between foreign dumping and material injury to the domestic industry. Under such a setting, information from opposing firms can help the ITC identify and counteract potentially biased information from the supporting firms, making rejection of the petition more likely. I test my argument by examining the ITC’s AD decisions between 2010 and 2020, using the previously-constructed dataset accompanied by data taken from the ITC’s final reports on these cases. I find that greater opposition from domestic firms in an AD case makes an AD petition more likely to be rejected. This dissertation offers a more precise understanding of the origins and outcomes of antidumping duties through a firm-based approach, which bring the AD literature in line with more recent scholarship on trade. The dissertation also demonstrates the value of rule-based and transparent trade policymaking in the context of antidumping duties, providing important policy lessons for the current era of rising protectionism.Item Supernatural Ties: Religious Beliefs and Practices and Commitment and Cohesion in Politics(2024) Rao, Sean Christopher; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I propose a general mechanism of religion in politics which is not limited to the use of violent tactics or a particular religious background: religious belief and practice generate strong mutual commitment among individuals in a group and this commitment can, in turn, create political cohesion. This process gives a strong organizational resource to political actors who can successfully link political goals to religious commitment and illuminates three puzzles: first, why do some organizations persist in demanding autonomy or independence for decades while others cease after only a short time? Little is known about the persistence of contentious actors, violent and nonviolent, who may eventually become rebels in a civil war. Linking research on civil war duration, nonviolent contention, and the club model of religion with novel cross-national time series data from a sample of self-determination organizations in Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, and Canada, I find some evidence that organizations based on religion or religion-like ideologies in the sample are more likely to persist. I find stronger evidence that organizations persist when they encourage membership practices (such as religious study or dress codes) through which individual members demonstrate public commitment to the group. Second, why do some politicians offer an overt religious basis for their policies? Overt religious rhetoric can harm a politician’s standing with less religious voters in the United States, and positive stereotypes of religious people are diminishing. Still, even politicians who depend on less religious voters sometimes use overt rhetoric instead of subtler religious cues. In two survey experiments, I find that religious rhetoric does not increase the level of a voter’s confidence that a politician is committed to a noncontroversial policy in an undergraduate sample nor to a controversial policy in a national sample in the United States, but it does increase the probability that a voter becomes completely convinced of a politician’s commitment to a controversial policy, though not among Democrats, nor does visible participation in a congregation affect this signal. Third, what keeps some civil wars from resuming after violence has stopped? Previous research has shown religious civil wars are likely to recur due to time-invariant factors of issue indivisibility and information uncertainty. Using existing data on secessionist rebels from 1975 to 2009, I find evidence that recruitment from religious networks drives recurrence. Giving religious constituencies equal access to political power and reaching formal ceasefires or agreements with territorial rebels discourages rebels from mobilizing that network for a return to fighting and makes them no more likely to return than nonreligious territorial rebels. These results identify a general process of religion applicable across different religious backgrounds and political contexts: cohesion from practices, often related to religion, which allow individuals to signal their commitment to a group. Identifying this process makes the study of religion in politics less context limited giving a starting point for future research.Item LOCAL DYNAMICS IN CIVIL WARS: HOW CIVILIANS RESIST VIOLENCE(2024) Su, Mingyang; Cunningham, David E.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis addresses puzzles related to violence against civilians in civil wars. Specifically, the thesis emphasizes civilians’ roles in influencing rebel groups’ decisions to escalate indiscriminate violence against civilians in conflicts. Previous literature on violence against civilians suggest that rebel groups in civil wars may kill selectively or indiscriminately. These studies argue that indiscriminate violence is counter-productive since it eliminates incentives for civilian collaboration with the perpetrator. Yet, indiscriminate violence remains a common phenomenon. Why do rebels use indiscriminate violence when doing so is counterproductive? What explains the occurrence and intensity of indiscriminate violence? The thesis answers the puzzle by focusing on civilian mobilizations against rebel groups. It argues that civilians’ resolve to mobilize against rebel groups is important in influencing rebels’ decisions to escalate indiscriminate violence. Civilians can signal this resolve by engaging in violent and nonviolent risky mobilization against rebels. Statistical tests, which are based on conflict event data collected from civil wars in Africa, reveal that the occurrence, long duration, and high frequency of civilian mobilization negatively correlate with violence. The thesis further traces a detailed single case study on Boko Haram and four cross comparison cases to provide qualitative evidence on the mechanisms of the theory. The thesis makes two theoretical contributions to the field of conflict. First, when explaining indiscriminate violence, the thesis shifts the attention to civilians’ decisions and resolve to reduce violence. Second, the theory provides novel mechanisms on how civilians mobilize to deter rebel groups from using indiscriminate violence. The mechanisms also link specific predictions on the conditions under which civilians are likely to be successful in deterring rebels from using violence.Item Sovereigns of Sanctuaries: Host State Responses to Transnational Repression(2024) Kopchick, Connor Nicholas; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Jones, Calvert W; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While political scientists have long studied nation-states’ domestic repression of anti-government dissent, there is a growing awareness that such coercion extends across international borders. Nation-states pursue and repress their nationals abroad through a predatory process known as transnational repression (TR). Host states, those nation-states in which expatriate dissidents seek refuge, are crucial to the defense against and deterrence of TR. Yet host states’ role in and reactions to TR remains underexplored by scholars. This dissertation seeks to fill this gap by identifying the factors that lead host states to defend victims of TR, disregard foreign repression of individuals within their territory, or actively collaborate with predatory origin states. I theorize that host states engage in cost-benefit calculations when responding to instances of TR, and in addition to considering the benefits derived from their relationships with predatory states, host state executives also consider the risk of backlash should they facilitate TR or not respond to public instances of it. This backlash can originate from external actors such as interested third states, as well as internal actors such as civil society or autonomous host state agents. I adopt a mixed methodology to assess the validity of hypotheses derived from these theoretical bases. First, I leverage new availability of cross-national datasets identifying individual acts of TR. From these incidents, I conduct statistical analyses on which predatory states are most likely to commit TR, which host states are most likely see such TR targeting victims in their territory, and what type of bilateral relationships lend themselves most to TR. From there I build on this merged dataset, collecting original data on host-state reactions to TR through targeted Nexis Uni searches to create the Host Response to transnational Repression Dataset (HRRD). Using the HRRD, I conduct further statistical analyses to assess my hypotheses and identify predictors of host state actions countering TR, as well as active complicity with origin states. I follow this quantitative analysis with a series of comparative case studies, comparing exemplars of my theory in which external and internal backlash to incidents of TR corresponded to responsive host state actions with those where it did not. In doing so I parse through causal mechanisms which are difficult to measure through cross-national statistical analysis. I argue that while host states’ laxity on TR is frequently explained as a derivative of their mutually beneficial relationships with predatory states, scholars would do well take a more expansive view of the factors which lead host states to view certain coercions as assaults to national values and community, and others as peripheral.Item Foreign Direct Investment in Authoritarian States(2023) Englund, Chase Coleman; Allee, Todd; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I examine autocracies and demonstrate why some autocratic regimes attract considerable investment whereas others do not. I advance two primary claims. The first is that autocratic regimes in which there is political competition actually receive less FDI than those in which there is less competition. Autocratic states tend to have weak institutional protections for investors, which causes greater uncertainty for businesses that fear costly policy changes. Therefore, when political competition in autocracies is greater, investors become more cautious and FDI inflows decline. The second claim is that FDI is more targeted to certain sectors in autocratic states with less political competition. This is because autocratic leaders seek to use FDI as a private good to favor members of their winning coalition. Therefore, autocrats with smaller coalitions (i.e., less political competition) will use policy to steer the benefits of FDI more narrowly. This is important because the use of FDI as a private good in this way tends to entrench authoritarianism. In analyzing both claims, I also examine the relative number of economic elites in a state, which I argue is an important and fundamental indicator of competition over policy (alongside the political measures), because it determines the size of an autocrat’s winning coalition. I find strong support for both of these hypotheses, using a wide range of novel data that I have compiled from several unique sources and various private organizations. I examine the volume and sectoral concentration of FDI in thousands of cases involving more than 100 non-democratic states over a 42-year period, beginning in 1980. In order to measure foreign investors’ perceptions of the policy environment in nondemocratic states, I also utilize data from an automated textual analysis of quarterly earnings calls of publicly traded firms located in authoritarian settings. Even after controlling for other factors, I first find that greater political competition is associated with greater perception of risk by foreign investors and lower FDI inflows. To measure the number of economic elites relative to economic activity, I employ a novel measure of stock market concentration that estimates the degree to which a market is either oligarchic or diversified. These results are important and timely because many of the largest recipients of FDI globally are now autocratic states. This means that large segments of the global population will depend on authoritarian governance to attract FDI, which is widely considered important to global economic development. Furthermore, understanding whether or not we can expect FDI to have a democratizing impact on autocratic government is crucial to developing expectations about how FDI will shape global politics in the decades to come.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 Oil Blessing? Hydrocarbons’ Effects on Maritime Boundary Formation(2023) O'Brien, Patrick L; Huth, Paul H; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Do natural resources help states resolve contentious maritime boundary issues? Literature on maritime boundaries suggests that states often sign maritime boundary agreements to acquire offshore hydrocarbons, yet there are also ample examples when resources have been the reason why states dispute maritime zones. To explain this apparent contradiction, an oil effect is posited that is conditional on states’ pre-existing claims. When maritime neighbors do not have overlapping maritime claims, the onset of oil interests in bordering maritime space make states more likely to sign delimitation agreements to achieve the legal certainty necessary to extract the oil. However, among states engaged in a maritime dispute prior to the onset of hydrocarbon interests, a different industry risk calculus, increased audience costs, and institutional challenges in reducing extant claims all mean that the same effect should not be observable. Meanwhile, the increased issue salience born from the oil interest should also make states more likely to pursue peaceful settlement attempts through other agreements related to their maritime zones, like establishing a joint development zone or pursuing third party conflict management. A dataset of maritime boundaries was improved upon to test this theory on 447 pairs of maritime neighbors from 1946 to 2016. Regression analyses confirm that a nearby oil discovery makes delimitation agreements more likely only among dyads without a prior existing dispute. Closer examination of 27 joint development zone agreements and 38 agreements to pursue binding third-party dispute settlement suggest that the order of events also plays a key role. Indeed, states engaged in a new dispute prompted by hydrocarbon interests are the most likely to sign all three agreement types—delimitation, joint development zone, and judicial settlement. In a comparative case study using U.S. maritime boundaries, oil interests are shown to have hastened delimitation agreements between the United States and Mexico, whereas oil interests made dispute resolution more difficult in U.S.-Canada maritime boundary areas. After resorting to and enduring the ordeal of a World Court case to achieve one partial settlement, Ottawa and Washington had little appetite to address remaining disputes. The implications of these findings for the world’s remaining undelimited boundaries are then discussed, focusing on East Asia.Item Words that Matter: Three Essays on Multilateral Opposition to War(2022) Kim, Hyunki; Huth, Paul; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation titled “Words that Matter: Three Essays on Multilateral Opposition to War” advances our understanding of how the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) constrains state behavior through the use of verbal condemnation. The UNSC has an array of tools to manage violent conflicts, including condemnations, economic sanctions, and military actions. Existing scholarship largely discounts verbal condemnations as ineffective because they are not backed up by coercive actions that impose tangible costs. Empirical patterns and anecdotal illustrations, however, suggest contrary findings – that verbal condemnations can constrain state behavior under certain conditions. I address this gap by examining how variation across UNSC condemnations impacts the crisis-actors’ decision to escalate. I argue that variation in legal invocation and rhetorical severity sends important signals to the targeted state that can change the expected costs of war and, ultimately, prevent escalation. I further examine the determinants of rhetorical variation across UNSC condemnations through the lens of power-sharing and power-politics within the UN. I find that the permanent members influence the contents of the resolution, but the Council President shapes the UN’s agenda. My theoretical expectations and findings are validated by an empirical analysis of international crisis-actors from 1946 to 2017 with the original coding of legality and severity in the UNSC resolutions. This dissertation project improves our understanding of the UN’s role in conflict management, especially through condemnations. The findings suggest that rhetorical tools can be just as effective, and that the UN’s multilateral efforts can mitigate interstate conflicts in world politics by invoking international law and designing impactful messages.Item Why Do Rebels Split? Examining The Causes Of Rebel Group Fragmentation(2022) Stern , Moran; Telhami, Shibley; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Why do rebel groups undergo fragmentation? While extensive research about the consequences of rebel fragmentation exists, research on the process of fragmentation remains relatively nascent. This dissertation collects three papers on the causes of rebel group fragmentation. In the first paper, I develop a junior cadres-based explanation of fragmentation. I argue that in a centralized rebel group, factions will emerge when leaders block junior cadres’ access to senior decision-making bodies. Junior cadres who want to influence the organization’s politics therefore face a choice between remaining within the rebel group and exiting it. Factionalizing is a way to redress grievances by aggrieved junior cadres who deem peaceful mechanisms for upward mobility ineffective. Using original datasets and personal interviews, I find strong evidence supporting my argument in the case of Palestinian Fatah. In the second paper, I argue that the solution to the question of fragmentation lies in rebel socialization—specifically, military training (MT). MT increases group cohesion by strengthening horizontal bonds among combatants; vertical bonds between combatants and commanders; and members’ institutional bonds to the organization’s overall mission and esprit de corps. Members become mutually dependent, thus making splintering more costly and fragmentation less likely. I test this argument on a global sample of 83 rebel groups active between 1989 and 2010. I find that rebel groups that have recently conducted MT are less likely to fragment by about 75 percent. In the third paper, I explore the effect of foreign fighters (FFs) on rebel fragmentation, examining a number of mechanisms derived from previous research. First, I explore how reduced group dependency on local fighters, preference divergence, strategic disagreements, and member segregation increase the likelihood of fragmentation for rebel groups that recruit FFs. Second, I posit that if the foreignness of FFs in relation to local insurgents makes fragmentation more likely, then rebel groups that recruit coethnic FFs will be less likely to experience fragmentation. I test these arguments on a global sample of 227 rebel groups active between 1989 and 2011. I find that rebel groups that recruit FFs are significantly more likely to fragment, even after accounting for the endogenous choice of rebel groups to recruit FFs. Against my expectations, I find that the recruitment of coethnic FFs does not diminish the probability of fragmentation. This finding raises questions about the value of ethnic homogeneity in the context of FFs in particular.