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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Election Day Registration And Same Day Registration In State Legislative Districts, Rachel Fuentes Dec 2022

Election Day Registration And Same Day Registration In State Legislative Districts, Rachel Fuentes

Doctoral Dissertations

Decades of research into the effects of voter registration requirements on turnout has found that voter registration disproportionately suppresses turnout among marginalized racial and socioeconomic groups that traditionally are represented by the Democratic Party. Research also shows that enacting Same Day or Election Day Registration (EDR/SDR) increases voter turnout for Democratic candidates in national elections. The conclusion drawn has been that EDR/SDR increases the representation of marginalized groups. The study in this paper challenges these findings in three ways. First, although EDR/SDR results in a larger total democratic vote, the claims of increased representation may be overstated. This study of …


Conscientious Acceptance: The Impact Of Public Support On Conscription, Simon Rotzer Dec 2022

Conscientious Acceptance: The Impact Of Public Support On Conscription, Simon Rotzer

Doctoral Dissertations

“What makes a state maintain conscription, especially during peacetime?” – Conventional wisdom argues that forced recruitment is a practical and efficient tool to increase a country’s security, especially during episodes of high threat. However, the policy loses its appeal in times of peace when its downsides become more evident. Consequentially, it should be expected that states would rid themselves of the draft when there are no security-related reasons to keep it. Yet, empirical reality paints a different picture, with more than half of all conscription cases existing under no active threat. This dissertation proposes that it is the support of …


Leader Type And Responses To State-Sponsored Terrorism, Arjun Banerjee Aug 2022

Leader Type And Responses To State-Sponsored Terrorism, Arjun Banerjee

Doctoral Dissertations

State-sponsored terrorism (SST) has for long been used as a tool by countries to inflict costs on rival states without direct confrontation, as the latter risks inviting limited to full-scale war. The literature on SST has so far focused primarily on the motivations, facilitating factors, and the timing of state sponsorship. What has been insufficiently studied, however, are the responses of victim states to SST. Why does state response to SST vary spatio-temporally in different countries, under different governments, and even under different leaders of the same ruling political dispensation in a country? Under what conditions does a state respond …


State Technological Power And Interstate Trade Relations And Conflict, Tianjing Liao Aug 2022

State Technological Power And Interstate Trade Relations And Conflict, Tianjing Liao

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines roles of state technology capacity in determining national power, whether and in what ways international trade affects between-state tech power transition, as well as how state tech power position influences their trade policy. This research argues that technology is an increasingly important component of national power in the modern era; state trade dependence on another is likely to cause unfavorable tech power transition; states tend to initiate trade conflict against its trade partner that is technologically catching up toward it, attempting to prevent further dyadic tech power convergence or even surpassing. A variety of analytical methods, including …


Autocracies As Mediators In Conflicts, Jonathan A. S. Honig May 2022

Autocracies As Mediators In Conflicts, Jonathan A. S. Honig

Doctoral Dissertations

It is puzzling why autocracies, which typically are not renowned for their human rights record or their observance of international norms related to human rights and are frequently inured in their own violent conflicts, would choose to take on the seemingly humanitarian role of peacemaker as often as democracies in the conflicts of other states in the absence of such things as a former colonial relationship or shared geographic proximity with them. I argue that autocracies will offer more often to mediate when they are subjected to international scrutiny, sanctioning, and/or condemnation, as well as materially and immaterially benefitting from …