Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Transformative Constitutionalism And The Adjudication Of Elections In Kenya, Carl Bevelhymer

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The judicialization of politics has been an ongoing and expanding global phenomenon for decades. In Kenya, the record number of cases brought before courts prior to and following the 2017 elections is evidence of the continued growth and spread of the judicialization of politics, and more specifically elections; it is also the result of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, which introduced a new form of governance, expanded the number of elective seats and mandated judicial and electoral reforms. One of the most remarkable events of the 2017 election period was the Supreme Court’s nullification of the presidential election due to electoral irregularities. …

National Material Capability Buildup And The Rank-Magnitude Distribution Of Wars, Matthew Felice

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Are there physical laws, rather than conventions like diplomacy, that determine when war will break out and how severe it will be? On the eve of World War II, L. F. Richardson discovered a curious pattern: Major wars are rare and minor wars are common to such a predictable degree that the size-frequency offset can be plotted with a straight line. Complex-systems theorists have since confirmed those findings and tested them with computer models. Yet none of the research has fully synthesized this law-like observation with the established theoretical approaches in international relations that would apply, such as power transition …

Revising The Status Quo Of Revisionism, Grand Strategy, And International Order, Onur Erpul

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines a type of variance in state behavior pertaining to international conflict and cooperation. Rather than confining this discussion to a binary understanding of state behavior, between revisionism and status-quo seeking, it endeavors to provide a nuanced discussion of the type of grand-strategic orientations states undertake in pursuit of their interests. It poses the question, “under what circumstances do states aspire to uphold, seek to reform, or challenge international order?” In doing so, the study helps to understanding the gamut of behaviors that purportedly satisfied or revisionist states display.

System-level material opportunities that are filtered by elite-preferences and …

Ordered Anarchy: The Origins And Evolution Of A Society Of States In South America, 1864-1939, Nicolas Terradas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation studies why South American states have fought so few wars among one another since their independence in the early 1800s, and why those wars in which they did enter were limited in intensity, casualty rates, number of battles, and overall duration. It offers an extensive review of the literature on South America’s “long peace” and advances two critiques. First, that the existing studies have usually followed either a narrow quantitative definition of war, or a broad qualitative definition of peace. And second, that the literature tends to neglect the relevance of the 19th century in the historical …