Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Bourgeois Crown: Capitalism And The Monarchy In Thailand, 1946–2016, Puangchon Unchanam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the age of capitalism, monarchy has been treated as if it were an irrelevant institution. Once capitalism becomes the dominant mode of production in a state, it is argued, monarchy must be either abolished or transformed into a constitutional monarchy, a ceremonial institution that plays no significant role in a capitalist state that is ruled by the bourgeoisie. The monarchy of Thailand, however, fits neither of those two narratives, as it enjoys hegemonic status in the capitalist state, preeminent status in the market, and popular support from the urban bourgeoisie. What explains the resilience of the Thai monarchy in …

The Impact Of State-Promoted Participation In Democracy And Development: A Comparison Of Venezuela And Mexico, Domenico Romero

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the past two decades participatory democracy policies came to be seen as a useful alternative to address high inequality and lack of meaningful political representation allowed by clientelist politics in various parts of the world. This project explores the question: what is the impact that state-promoted participation has on democracy and development, the two key areas that political reformers in Latin America attempted to improve at the turn of the millennium? The hypotheses that this project proposes in response to that question are that participatory policies do not underperform neoliberal policies on macroeconomic or human development; that state-promoted participation …

The Politics Of Shorter Hours And Corporate-Centered Society: A History Of Work-Time Regulation In The United States And Japan, Keisuke Jinno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shorter working hours drew much attention as a means of fighting unemployment and crisis in capitalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, shorter work-time is rarely considered a policy option to fix economic or social issues in the United States and Japan. This dissertation presents a history of work-time regulation in the United States and Japan to examine how and why its developments and stalemate took place.

In the big picture, developments of work-time regulation during the first half of the twentieth century were a part of concessional modifications of class relations, a common phenomenon in many …

Stayin' Alive: Transnational Sanctuary And Insurgency, Matthew Murray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The conventional wisdom of counterinsurgency runs that insurgent groups with bases in neighboring states (transnational sanctuaries) are relatively more difficult to defeat than comparable groups without such bases. Insurgents with transnational sanctuaries benefit from relative protection from attack by counterinsurgents, they may recruit, train, and arm safely in their sanctuaries, transmit propaganda into their target state, and use these sanctuaries as staging points for infiltration or raids into their target state. Counterinsurgents have gone to great lengths to disrupt or destroy insurgent bases in neighboring countries based on the belief that this is necessary to defeating insurgents. However, several groups …

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Plsc 2260 (Introduction To Comparative Government), Anh Tran

Open Educational Resources

Why do states wield violence against its citizens? Does the expansion of state power always threaten individual freedom? When do ordinary people create social change peacefully, and when do they go to war? Is democratization an inevitable force in our world? Is there a trade-off between economic growth and economic equality? These are the types of puzzles we will be exploring through various theoretical and methodological lenses. We will compare variations in political behaviors, processes, and structures at work in different countries around the world. Each week, we focus on a different topic in comparative politics, then dig deeper into …

Swords Into Ploughshares: Agricultural Recovery And Postwar Institutional Development In Sub-Saharan Africa, Jinu R. Abraham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Civil wars have long been characterized in the comparative politics literature as having profoundly negative economic effects for both individual households and countries on a larger scale. However, variation in postwar economic outcomes indicates that conflict may indeed have some curative effects. I argue political settlements in the aftermath of civil wars can shape postwar economic outcomes by transforming institutions critical to agricultural productivity. The structure of the state postwar can shape land tenure security, local government participation, and the management of preexisting social divisions. I employ a case study method controlling for differences on the independent variable in order …

A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …

Webs Of War In The Congo: The Politics Of Hybrid Wars, Conflict Networks, And Multilateral Responses 1996-2003, Tatiana Carayannis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since 1996, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the battleground for was within wars, where networks of conflict interact to produce patterns of local resource extraction and patterns of local and regional violence, resulting in one of the most devastating, yet surprisingly understudied, humanitarian disasters of our day. This dissertation explains the complex political sociologies of the three Congo wars and tests key assumptions in the new war literature through empirical observation of the wars and a case study of the Mouvement de Liberation du Congo (MLC), one of the principal rebel movements in these wars.

This project challenges …

Egypt’S 2011–2012 Parliamentary Elections: Voting For Religious Vs. Secular Democracy?, H. Ege Ozen

Publications and Research

This study investigates whether individuals’ attitudes towards democracy and

secular politics have any influence on voting behavior in Egypt. Based on data

from a survey conducted immediately after the Egyptian parliamentary elections

in January 2012, this study finds that Egyptians’ attitudes towards democratic

governance were quite negative around the parliamentary elections, yet Egyptians

still endorsed democracy as the ideal political system for their country. However,

empirical findings suggest that support for democracy has a limited impact on

electoral results. On the other hand, the main division in Egyptian society around

the first free and fair parliamentary elections was the religious-secular …

Emancipatory Rural Politics: Confronting Authoritarian Populism, Ian Scooner, Marc Edelman, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ruth Hall, Wendy Wolford, Ben White

Publications and Research

A new political moment is underway. Although there are significant differences in how this is constituted in different places, one manifestation of the new moment is the rise of distinct forms of authoritarian populism. In this opening paper of the JPS Forum series on ‘Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World’, we explore the relationship between these new forms of politics and rural areas around the world. We ask how rural transformations have contributed to deepening regressive national politics, and how rural areas shape and are shaped by these politics. We propose a global agenda for research, debate and action, which …

Charting Syriza's Swift Rise And Fall, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.