Islam & Interfaith Dialogue: Innovative Diplomacy Between The United States And Islamic Republic Of Iran, Kristyn Rohrer

Honors Student Research

This meta-communicative study provides an analysis of global interfaith dialogue as it pertains to peace and conflict, with a primary focus on Islam. The Islamic Republic of Iran and United States have a complicated history. Their diplomatic relationship is rife with manipulation, radicalism, and a disregard for human dignity. Currently, the US is imposing hundreds of sanctions and restrictions on Iran, from nuclear energy to medicine, as a result of President Trump’s decision to back out of the Iran Deal. However, other forms of dialogue are affecting positive relations between the two countries. Interfaith dialogue between North American Mennonites and …

It Could Never Last: Why British Sovereignty And Its Influence Since 1945 Resulted In Brexit, Jeffrey Brandt

Master's Theses

The EU Referendum of June 2016 marked a watershed moment for the United Kingdom, as it sought to once again reassert its sovereignty and retake its place in the world as an independent state, free from European Union infringement. The British are usually seen as the cussid ones in Europe, stubbornly holding on to their principles and traditions of sovereignty. But why is that? Carefully tracing UK history, particularly from the end of the Second World War to the present day, it becomes understandable why the result of the 2016 referendum should not be quite a surprise. Studying events in …

The Spirit Is Willing, But The Flesh Is Weak: Contemporary Pan-Africanism And The Challenges To A United States Of Africa, Adesola Adeyemo

Master's Theses

Establishing a ‘United States of Africa’ to the average individual is deemed as a mythical idea in contemporary Africa, irrespective of the popularity of this idea several years ago. Today, the idea is idealized as overambitious – considering the balkanized state of the continent post-colonialization. Because of this, attempts made since then have favored enforcing regional integration over continental integration. Undeniably, this idea would not have come into being if it wasn’t for the concept of Pan-Africanism - which has for long guided the political and socio-economic policies created on the continent. The goal of this research is …

The Avenues Of Social And Economic Empowerment For Women In Ghana's Poor Urban Settlements, Comfort Amoah

Master's Theses

Poor urban settlements have over the years and in the present been described as places of despair and destitution with its inhabitants especially women referred to as the most poor and vulnerable of the society. This research however attempts to provide a complete elevation of the Avenues of Social and Economic Empowerment for Women in Ghana’s Poor Urban Settlements by using three contextual framework such as the social networks available to women and the political opportunities available to them in their communities and the role of men and women in achieving this agenda and how it has reshaped the status …

Remembering An Invasion: The Panama Intervention In America’S Political Memory, Dave Nagaji

Senior Theses

In December of 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, a military invasion of the country of Panama, capturing Manuel Noriega and overthrowing his government. This research project examines how Colin Powell, Richard Cheney, James Baker, and George H.W. Bush presented Operation Just Cause in their memoirs. It attempts to determine how these senior leaders’ depictions of this invasion incorporated it into the Bush administration’s overall foreign-policy strategy. The research finds that their general approach was to present the Panama intervention as an isolated incident which had no intentional link to other major events at the time, was not …

Divided Agencies: Internal Strife In The Fight Against Castro, Stephanie R. Schmidt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. State Department differed in their approaches to dealing with the Castro regime from 1959 through the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Using declassified documents from the CIA and State Department, I argue that the approaches of the CIA in dealing with the Castro regime were more aggressive than the approaches of the U.S. State Department. Many of the primary sources used in this work were accessed in the CIA electronic reading room and on the office of the historian website. The office of the historian is an …

Apathy And Foreign Policy: What We Can Learn From The Vietnam War, Pascal Spronk

Honors Projects and Presentations: Undergraduate

Americans as Indifferent to Foreign Affairs

“To speak with precision of public opinion is a task not unlike coming to grips with the Holy Ghost,” said V. O. Key, Junior. Nebulous and variable, public opinion invites description by cliché. Social scientists can’t help but dwell on it, discussing its characteristics and effects. To politicians, especially, public opinion is of particular interest, given the high profile of its relationship to government. Although the nature and sense of this relationship have been questioned, it has always remained a subject of discussion, particularly with the spread of democracy.

Refugee Resettlement And Perceptions Of Insecurity: A Comparative Study Of The United States And Canada, Erik Amundson

Dissertations

In the United States and Canada, refugee resettlement has been the subject of extensive scrutiny and political debate, particularly since the November 2015 terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) against targets in Paris. While public opinion polls have shown increasingly negative attitudes toward refugees, existing survey questionnaires only provide a limited understanding of what shapes these views. As such, this study focuses on two important factors that influence attitude formation toward refugees, pre-existing levels of knowledge and contact with minority groups. Using a comparative case study approach, this research examines how refugee resettlement …

Chinese Government’S Inability To Use Film – One Of The Most Powerful Cultural Tools Of Soft Power Expansion – To Achieve Its Soft Power Expansion Goals: Lessons For China To Tackle Its Soft Power-Deficit Problem, Kyungin Kim

International Political Economy Theses

Many scholars of Chinese soft power commonly believe that despite the fact that China has been working hard to achieve successful soft power expansion, one of the biggest factors that leads to Chinese soft power deficit or failure of the Chinese government to effectively trump “China threat” is its inability to use its cultural industries as a tool to fulfill its soft power expansion goals. This is a major obstacle to China in achieving its goal of successful Chinese soft power expansion, as it is said that culture is the most traditional and powerful source of soft power expansion. This …

Applying Stakeholder Analysis To Lay The Groundwork For Conflict-Sensitive Education In The Somali Education Sector, Nina Aristea Papadopoulos

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Foreign Aid And Political Stability In Post-Colonial Africa: A Case Study Analysis, Justine Biettron

LSU Master's Theses

Is foreign aid helpful or harmful in African countries? Even though scholars have tried to answer this question for decades, it is still unclear if foreign aid has efficiently helped the African continent to overcome the challenges that arose with the end of Colonization. A priority for the African countries was to reorganize the institutions in order to reestablish autonomous and stable system of governance. An important amount of help for this reconstruction has come from external actors, that have been referred to in the literature as foreign aid. In this paper, I seek to test the relationship between the …

The Politics Of Wounds, Jonathan Nash

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What configuration of strategies and discourses enable the white male and settler body politic to render itself as simultaneously wounded and invulnerable? I contextualize this question by reading the discursive continuities between Euro-America’s War on Terror post-9/11 and Algeria’s War for Independence. By interrogating political-philosophical responses to September 11, 2001 beside American rhetoric of a wounded nation, I argue that white nationalism, as a mode of settler colonialism, appropriates the discourses of political wounding to imagine and legitimize a narrative of white hurt and white victimhood; in effect, reproducing and hardening the borders of the nation-state. Additionally, by turning to …

Social Stability And Promotion In The Communist Party Of China, Siniša Mirić

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Communist Party of China CCP) controls all political, economic, and military issues in China. In the absence of elections, the only route of recruitment at higher levels of the political hierarchy in the Party is an official promotion. The scholarship on promotions offers two main explanations for advancement inside the Communist Party of China: (i) informal connections between high officials and candidates, and (ii) merit of candidates. This scholarship disregards, however, the importance of achievement of political targets by the candidates, specifically, their ability to deliver social stability.

Like every authoritarian regime, the CCP faces threats from the masses …

Challenges Faced By Non-Profit Associations In Laos: A Case Study Of Huam Jai Asasamak, Raminder Kaur

Major Papers

This paper looks at the case study of Huam Jai Asasamak, a Non-Profit Association operating in Laos in order to understand various challenges faced by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the socialist regime of the Laos. It uses participant observation as a research method based on time spent living in Laos as well as other qualitative research methods including document analysis, observation, and interviews. The paper gives a contextual overview of Laos and shows that civil society is a new phenomenon in Laos linked to social and political consequences of opening up of the Laos economy in 1980s. Furthermore, the …

The Effect Of Illicit Drugs Securitization In Indonesia, Yanu Widiyono

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Barry Buzan and the Copenhagen School scholars introduce the concept of Securitization in International Relations. This concept argues that threat is formed and based on the interpretation of the actors . Threat does not naturally arise from the situation of state. Rather, it arises because of how prominent actors politicize the issues.

This study mainly focuses on analyzing the effects of Illicit Drugs Securitization in Indonesia. Previous literature has analyzed the issue of Illicit Drugs Abuse and trafficking problems in Southeast Asia in general, but few focus on Indonesia in particular. As the biggest state in South East Asia and …

Domestic Economic Freedom And Regional Integration In Sub-Saharan Africa, Brevin Anderson

Honors Projects

This paper examines the relationship between policies facilitating domestic economic freedom in Sub-Saharan African states and the degree of regional integration of those states into their respective regional economic communities. It conducts a linear regression analysis with data from the Economic Freedom of the World Report 2017 and the AFRICA Regional Integration Index to conduct a quantitative study of Sub-Saharan African states. The regression finds strong evidence that domestic economic freedom is a significant contributing factor, between 5% and 15% causality, to a state’s degree of regional integration. The paper hypothesizes that private sector political and economic activity is the …

Towards A Beautiful Japan: Right-Wing Religious Nationalism In Japan's Ldp, Andrew Weiss

Student Work

A 2017-2018 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Andrew Weiss (Davenport College '18) for his essay submitted to the East Asian Studies Program, "Towards a Beautiful Japan: Right-Wing Religious Nationalism in Japan's LDP” (Frances Rosenbluth, Damon Wells Professor of Political Science, advisor).

Andrew Weiss, a double major in East Asian Studies and Global Affairs, spent several months of field work in Japan over the summer and winter of 2017 to understand the role of right-wing Shinto in the thinking and politics of the Liberal Democratic Party. Why is the LDP and Abe in …

The Rhetoric Is On The Wall: A Multimodal Study Of The U.S. – Mexico Border Through Image Narratives, Kristoffer Mason

Global Honors Theses

This paper applied social semiotics and systemic functional theory to study visual narratives related to President Trump’s border wall project and U.S. immigration policy. The images were selected by new articles posted by The New York Times using search parameters “border wall” and “undocumented immigration” between the dates of March 13 – April 13, 2018. Images were selected and categorized based on visual themes related to the border wall and policy enforcement. Of these categories, two images were selected for vertical perspective, vector patterns, and gestures to discover the narratives. Analysis of the images showed that social power and hierarchical …

Mafia And Globalization: The Consequences Of Economic Integration Without Legal Symmetry, Benjamin White

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project will examine the relationship between mafia and globalization through the lenses of two case studies, focusing on the Calabrian criminal organization known as ‘Ndrangheta. The first case study revolves around the Port of Gioia Tauro, which serves as the drug trafficking hub of ‘Ndrangheta and is emblematic of the overall trends in global commercial traffic and security deficits. The purpose of this case study is to demonstrate how ‘Ndrangheta exploits the advanced economic integration that began in the 1990s and continues to exist in the gap between frantic commercial activity and limited government oversight. This case study begins …

Comparing U.S. And French Approaches To Counterterrorism In Africa, Alexa Audino

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Although terrorism is typically associated, in the U.S., with the Middle East, there is also a significant presence of terrorist groups in Africa. Both the United States and France are involved in counterterrorism in the Sahel region, where the two states often work together. However, the strategies of the U.S. and France in this region also frequently diverge. This project analyzes the differences in the strategies taken by France and the United States in counterterrorism interventions in the Sahel, specifically studying the ways in which these two countries are fighting Boko Haram, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and Al-Shabab. …

Political Revolutions And Women's Progress: Why The Egyptian Arab Spring Failed To Deliver On The Promises Of Women's Rights, Anne Song

Master's Theses

The mass participation of women in the 2011 Egyptian Arab Spring began what many thought would be a new feminist movement. As news cycles started showing the central role of women in the Arab Spring, many people including the women who demonstrated believed women’s rights were on the horizon. This study shows why the 2011 Arab Spring did not deliver on the promises of women’s rights in Egypt. Explaining the historical, religious, and societal influences on women’s rights in Egypt, and using data from the Arab Barometer and reports from the World Bank and UN, this study shows that the …

Currents Of Consumption: How National Narratives Of Japanese Cuisine Collide With Localized Forms Of Sushi In Northern California, John Ostermiller

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper examines how national narratives of Japanese cuisine collide with the expectations, preferences, and perceptions of American consumers (particularly Northern California). The global economy has benefited the circulation of positive images of Japan managed by the Japanese government, but the commercialization of Japanese cuisine is also at odds with government efforts. In Japan, sushi is often synonymous with nigirizushi: sliced seafood and a daub of wasabi atop vinegared rice. As part of Japan’s washoku tradition, this singular image of sushi (allegedly) reflects the deepest essence of Japanese cultural sensibilities tied to simplicity, perfection, and nature. But in America, consumers’ …

Mineral Warfare: The Dark Side Of Technology And International Mediation, Priyanka Basnyat

Master's Theses

Conflict surrounding the extraction and trade of natural resources is not an uncommon phenomenon. Especially in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has historically suffered from the negative impacts of the resource curse since their mineral wealth was first discovered by their Colonial administrators. The importance of Congo’s minerals has fluctuated over the years but has peaked during recent times, as their use in technological advancements are becoming more vital. The global demand for these mineral ores have sky rocketed and consequentially, the largely informal trade has benefitted certain rebel groups, playing a pivotal role in …

Study Abroad And Track Ii Diplomacy, Makena Rafferty-Lewis

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Track II diplomacy, or person-to-person diplomacy is one of the most basic, but also most important types of international relations. Track II diplomacy requires not just effective legislature to be in place, but also requires individuals to have cross-cultural competency. One question that arises is how is this type of connectivity between cultures is formed. One of the most direct links can be found in students. As the political environment changes, young minds and rising experts will be the people who need to handle future international problems, that are possibly different from what we have seen in the past. How …

El Viaje Desde Centroamérica A Los Estados Unidos: How Us Foreign Policy Impacts Migration From Central America To The United States, Cecilia Cerja

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

In the face of ever increasing civil conflict in Central America, the United States is attempting to grapple with immigration reform as the number of refugees continues to rise. Though the dominant narrative seems to indicate that people are flocking to the United States for economic opportunity, upon further analysis it seems that there are a variety of push and pull factors for migration to the United States. In this thesis three case studies of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala are analyzed to determine the push and pull factors causing migration to the United States. After examining the push and …

Non-Traditional Transitional Justice Mechanisms And Perceptions And Symptoms Of Victimization Among Diasporic Individuals: Members Of The Coptic Christian Diaspora In The United States As A Case Study, Samy S. A. Gerges

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Transitional justice measures are state-centered measures articulating atrocities committed by officials and occurring within the borders of a specific state. Questioning members of a Diaspora about the impact of transitional justice on their self-classification as victims and their experienced symptoms of victimization may therefore support attempts to expand the field of transitional justice. This study contributes to a body of work promoting understanding of the possibilities and constraints of transitional justice mechanisms, in the context of hate crime against Copts by Muslims in Egypt. To analyze the impact of restored relationships on self-classified victimhood and experienced symptoms of victimization, the …

The Case For Management In The Turkish-Kurdish Conflict., Devin P. Brown

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

The Turkish-Kurdish conflict has ravaged Turkey for nearly 34 years. It is one of the world’s longest enduring rivalries, garnering significant international attention. Since 1984, experts estimate that at least 30,000 people have died in this conflict. In just the past two years, the fighting has killed 3,362 peopleand displaced another half million people. Although the parties have attempted to resolve this dispute multiple times, a comprehensive peace deal has remained elusive. So what should be done about this conflict? Is there a way to compel these parties to forge a lasting peace deal? Or, should the international community focus …

Education In Post-Conflict Colombia, Juliana Cabrera Pena

Master's Theses

After 52 years of civil war, Colombia now enters a period of precarious peace. The Colombian government and the largest guerrilla group, the FARC, signed a monumental peace agreement which ushered a period of change in a country which has yet to have sustained peace. Utilizing the power of civil society and social services, the Colombian government has the authority to maintain peace. Education, with its stabilizing power, has the capability of cultivating a society of peace. Thus, this thesis explores the level of value and importance the Colombian government is placing on the expansion of quality education to …

From The Tartan Tories To Scotland’S Social Democrats: The Remaking Of The Scottish National Party, Natalie Jayne Mauchline

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United Kingdom is entering a period of great uncertainty, with the future of Scotland’s membership still in question. Following personal work experience in the Scottish Parliament, it became apparent to me that the Scottish National Party currently finds itself in a unique position. By utilizing constituency maps, this study will trace the evolution of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and explore how its changing nature allowed it to grow from a minute populist group seeking independence to a social justice party hoping to appeal to a more diverse group of voters by increasing credibility at the local level and …

More Lessons From Vietnam: Comparing Refugee Policy In The Cold War And The War On Terror, Stephen Komar

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

The U.S. response to the Indochinese refugee crisis from 1975-1992 has been hailed as an excellent example of humanitarianism and sound U.S. foreign policy. It’s example has been used to criticize the U.S. for the refugee policy it currently employs in the Middle East, even as it remains heavily involved in the conflicts creating refugee flows there. This paper asks the following questions: How exactly has refugee policy differed between the two situations? Why is it different? And how might the former inform changes to the latter? This paper employs statistical analysis of refugee admissions data to answer the first, …