College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item The utility of NGO interventions: Influences on terrorist activity.(2015) Hodwitz, Omi; Dugan, Laura; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Terrorism studies have increased following the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. While a great deal of research has focused on the influence of state-sponsored counterterrorism strategies on terrorist activities, limited attention has been directed towards examining the influence of non-state actors on terrorist organizations (TOs). This dissertation seeks to assess the role that an influential but often overlooked player may have on terrorist activity: the non-governmental organization (NGO). Many TOs and NGOs engage in similar campaigns, primarily providing services or advocating for a shared constituency or minority that experiences suffering at the hands of a majority, usually the state. Both TOs and NGOs require the support of the constituents in order to maintain group legitimacy, fundraise, and recruit. In addition, both vie for media attention in order to publicize the issue, radicalize the larger community, and exert pressure on the state. Public support and attention is limited and difficult to acquire, placing TOs and NGOs in competition. As such, within the rational choice and game theoretic frameworks, when faced with an NGO competitor, TOs are hypothesized to adjust their activities in order to gain constituent support, media attention, and to eliminate the competition. Using data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), this dissertation assesses the influence that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, International Committee of the Red Cross, and local NGOs have on TOs in Algeria, Lebanon, and Turkey between 1987 and 2011. Results from autoregressive Poisson and negative binomial models demonstrate limited support for the hypothesized relationships. NGOs appear to have a marginal influence on TO activities in Algeria, an extremely limited impact in Lebanon, and no relationship in Turkey. Overall findings suggest two conclusions: NGO activities, in general, do not appear to escalate TO violence and NGO campaign activities specifically focused on de-escalating TO violence appear to be ineffective in these three countries. Replication is needed in additional countries to substantiate these findings.Item Three essays on institutions and economic development(2006-08-23) Shepotylo, Oleksandr; Murrell, Peter; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Institutions are humanly devised constraints that shape interactions between people. Changing those constraints affects people's incentives and, therefore, affects economic, political, and social outcomes. Studying institutional arrangements helps to shed some light on why there is a high variation of the level of economic development across countries. These theses address the questions of how institutions are formed, how institutional changes affect incentives, and how they influence economic development. The first chapter studies the effect of change in the rule that assign points in soccer on optimal strategies of soccer teams playing in a tournament. It demonstrates that the change in the rule increases incentives of teams to collude in order to trade points. It also has heterogeneous effects on top and lesser teams. Second chapter looks at impact of good regional governance infrastructure on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 24 transition countries from 1993 to 2003. The model takes into account spatial spillovers and spatially correlated error terms. It is estimated by a recently developed generalized method of moment (GMM) three-stage procedure. The results show that the regional quality of institutions is an important factor that explains variations in FDI inflows. The positive effect of good regional governance dominates the effect of better developed regional markets. The third chapter investigates determinants of the quality of governance inside a country. The main finding is the importance of relative geographical location: good governance in the neighboring countries has a positive impact on quality of governance inside a particular country. Spatial links work mostly through long-term determinants of governance that include culture, legal system, and colonial history. At the same time, the closest neighbors have the strongest impact on quality of governance, while cultural and colonial " neighbors" that are not close geographically, have smaller impact on the local institutional development. According to our results, cross-country regressions that do not take into account spatial interdependence of countries produce biased estimation of the coefficients and incorrect inference of variance-covariance matrix.Item Interjurisdictional Competition and Urban Area Fragmentation(2005-05-26) Aylward, Stephen Richard; Oppenheimer, Joe A.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The collective action problem in political science examines the circumstances under which groups can be successfully formed and maintained. While earlier generations of political scientists believed that groups developed in democracies because of the nature of democratic culture and procedures, Mancur Olson (The Logic of Collective Action, 1965) demonstrated that free-riding doomed many attempts at collective action unless selective benefits were granted to members--hence automobile association members receive free travel services, for example. Subsequent theories posited other reasons for successful collective action, such as communication, leadership and anticipated returns from joining. Tests of these hypotheses have taken place primarily in laboratory experiments. This study conducts a real-world natural experiment, examining interjurisdictional competition (IJC)--a government's offer of incentives for businesses to locate within its environs as opposed to the territories of others--in the setting of urbanized areas of various degrees of fragmentation (political organization as one, several or many local governments). If the free-rider hypothesis is true, IJC would increase with higher fragmentation. As the "free-rider" title suggests, IJC has been portrayed in game theory as a prisoners' dilemma. However, more detailed analysis in this study reveals several possible games, each posing a related collective action problem. Methodologically, additive indices from a nationwide survey of economic development practices measure the intensity of IJC effort. Urban area fragmentation is represented by indices using the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index method. The major hypothesis--IJC is a function of fragmentation--is analyzed using OLS regression. The regressions refute the free-rider hypothesis. The statistical analysis then examines the subsequent explanations of collective action. Anticipated returns cannot be substantiated; however, civil society-based indicators show communication and leadership to be causes of successful collective action. Finally, a case study of Hampton Roads (the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Virginia metropolitan area) provides a historical narrative of the efficacy of communication and leadership in successful collective action as well as a possible example of game transition from the prisoners' dilemma to an assurance game.