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Going Nuclear: Conflict Transformation In Asia, Hariharan Murugesan

Student Theses and Dissertations

On July 16th, 1945, codenamed “Trinity,” the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated, releasing 18.6 kilotons of energy, morphing the sand in the Alamo Desert into green sheet glass.

International relations and its study were fundamentally changed with the creation of nuclear weapons. Mutually Assured Destruction, aptly shortened to MAD became a prevailing theory that tried to explain why countries would acquire nuclear weapons but would never use them; overtime, through various frameworks and treaties, the world tried to control the spread of nuclear weapons, and since 2006, only nine countries have succeeded in creating nuclear weapons, and yet interestingly …

Network Tango: Examining State Dispositions Toward Attribution In International Cyber Conflict, Robert Riley Turner

University Honors Theses

Cyberspace is an environment of international conflict often sought out due to its ability to create significant effects at little cost, and obfuscating the ready attribution of hostility. One avenue toward streamlining the attribution of hostile actions in cyberspace is the introduction of a due diligence of data transparency amongst states. This level of data transparency must somehow be incentivized. The following study surveys the geopolitical dispositions of three major powers that utilize cyberspace as a venue of conflict: The United States, China, and Russia; in order to determine how each nation might interact with an international due diligence of …

Legitimacy In Conflict Contexts: Shifting Rebel Engagement In Sierra Leone And The Presence Of Private Contractors, Anne Lauder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The growth of non-state actors has significantly changed the nature of conflict. Rebel groups increasingly challenge state rule while private military and security companies (PMSCs) increasingly enter conflict spaces on behalf of a variety of actors, including states seeking to suppress insurgencies. This case study of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during Sierra Leone’s civil war between 1991-2002 contributes to emerging work on rebel behavior by examining how rebel’s legitimacy-seeking behavior might evolve when PMSCs enter a conflict context. I explore the ways that PMSCs can shift perceived incentive structures surrounding insurgents’ interpretations of and engagements with legitimacy during conflict, …

U.S.-Russia Relationships: How Superpower Relations Affect Conflict Resolution, Julian Terris

Political Science

Russia and the United States struggle for power throughout the 20^th and 21^st century has imprinted itself on many current conflicts. While the post-war international order has focused on avoiding violent conflict, the inability of Russia and U.S. to cooperate has hindered the ability to create peace throughout these zones of conflict. This paper seeks to demonstrate how U.S. and Russian relations have influenced current conflicts as well as which policies they should adopt in order to help resolve conflicts in the future. It specifically analyses ideological, military and economic actions taken by both nations throughout the Ukrainian, …

Arming Development: Measuring The Effects Of Development Aid On Armed Conflict. An Analysis On West Africa, 1990-2020, Alyk Collins

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Did the securitization of the development aid to West Africa lead to an increase in armed conflict and one-sided violence? The goal of this research is to provide evidence that development aid allocation following the September 11th terror attacks had undergone securitization that led to an increase in casualties from armed conflict and one-sided violence in West Africa. I argue the Global War on Terror shifted development aid allocation from development projects to security projects in countries that were geostrategic partners. My approach is based on the Security Complex theory conceptualization of development aid in West African countries. Using both …

Self-Interest Or Altruism: Why Do Some Ingos Engage In Conflict Settings While Others Leave?, Rachel Arthur

International Relations Honors Papers

Why do some international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) continue work in conflict settings while others leave? Understanding the motivations influencing INGO behavior in fragile and conflict settings is important for scholars and practitioners: INGOs are a major part of the network of international third-party actors in conflict and fragile settings and provide much of the services funded by third-party state donors. While previous literature investigates the selflessness of INGOs, or lack thereof, and the behavior of INGOs within specific sectors, this thesis proposes a comprehensive analysis of the factors that impact INGO behavior in conflict settings at multiple levels. Drawing on …

The Economic Reintegration Of Former Child Soldiers In Northern Uganda, Capri Gutiérrez

Honors Program Theses

During the Northern Ugandan War, the Lord’s Resistance Army kidnapped and recruited 30,000 children and forced them to become soldiers. Nearly twenty years since the end of the war, former child soldiers continue to experience extreme poverty, psychological distress, and social isolation. For many, the economic hardship they face, due to stigma and missing out on school, is their greatest challenge upon returning home. This paper analyzes the strategies used by the government and non-state actors to reintegrate former child soldiers back into the Ugandan economy. These strategies are then compared to best practices in the field using secondary research …

The Nexus Of Climate Change And Human Rights: An Examination Of How Social, Political, And Environmental Impacts Of Climate Change Jeopardize The Protection Of Human Rights In The African Sahel, Camden R. Malone

Dissertations and Theses

Climate change is a threat multiplier by its driving forces of environmental stress and scarcity. In the developing world, countries are hit hardest and most frequently by the effects of climate change, such as severe floods, droughts, and desertification. In this thesis, I argue that existing models for the umbrella-term of climate-security underemphasize dimensions of human security through exclusion of HR violations linked to climate such as subjection to food/water stress, compromised health, displacement, and violent conflict. Therefore, the climate-security paradigm should be recast to pay closer attention to its consequences related to human rights protection, which I refer to …

Preventing Civil War: The Role Of Independent Courts, Hector R. Mendoza

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the role of judicial institutions, typically overlooked in conflict studies, in their capacity to reduce the likelihood of conflict such as civil wars. I argue that courts that enjoy judicial independence can provide institutional mechanisms that reduce conflict, such as civil war. Specifically, I employ several rare events logistic and OLS regression models with robust clustered standard errors testing the effects of judicial independence on civil war likelihood and regime opposition size. The results indicate that judicial independence and judicial power have inconsistent and mixed results across these models and generally do not support the theory. In …

The Enduring Role Of Conflict In The Perpetuation Of Famine: Advancing 'The Right To Adequate Food' For Sustainable Peace, Robert M. Bane

Dissertations and Theses

The present thesis evaluates developments and trends in global conflict dynamics, global systems of governance, and global hunger. Together, the thesis investigates and upholds the notion that famine is a ‘man-made’ phenomenon and explains how famine persists in a world abundant with food. Through analysis and research the following is found: the occurrence of global conflict is accelerating alongside an increase in the severity of organized violence dynamics; global authoritarianism is expanding presenting a threat to global freedoms and liberal democracy; as these trends are occurring, world hunger is steadily on the rise reflecting a significant backsliding of progress achieved …

How Biden Wants Us To Think About Ukraine’S Conflict, Rainer Shea

Communication 300 Papers

President Joe Biden’s rhetorical style when talking to the American people about the conflict in Ukraine is one which can be compared to that of President George W. Bush in regards to the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks. During Biden’s speech about Ukraine in March of 2022, he conveyed an idea parallel to that which Bush conveyed: an enemy of the United States has committed a transgression which can’t go unpunished, and the “free world” needs to fight back at any cost. In order to make this case, Biden used the speech to counter Putin’s arguments for a …

A Hot Conflict Growing Ever Hotter: How Climate Change Provokes Instances Of Violence In South Sudan, Madison Menard

CMC Senior Theses

In South Sudan, people are not engaging in violent altercations because of climate change. People are not deciding to kill other people because the average temperature of the world has risen 1 degree celsius, or harming their neighbor because of irregular rain patterns. Alas the link from climate change to violence is not as direct as that. Rather, climate change has played a non-direct role in the South Sudanese conflict. Within the political marketplace it has subtly altered conditions which later spark or intensify outbreaks of violence. Climate change in this sense should be viewed as a stressor of sorts …

The Second-Order Impact Of Relative Power On Outcomes Of Crisis Bargaining: A Theory Of Expected Disutility And Resolve, Tatevik Movsisyan

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

How does structure shape behavior and outcomes in crisis bargaining? Formal bargaining models of war rely on expected utility theory to describe first-order effects, whereby the payoffs of war determine actors’ “resolve” to fight as a function of costs and benefits. Value preferences of risk and future discounting are routinely treated as predefined and subjective individual attributes, outside the strategic context of bargaining or independent from expected utility. However, such treatment fails to account for context-conditional preferences sourcing from actors’ expectations of relative gain or loss. Drawing on a wealth of experimental evidence from behavioral economics, but without departing from …

Nuances In Bottom-Up Interpretations: Colombia's And Guatemala's Radically Different Approaches To Transitional Justice, Chelsea L. Carrick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars have treated “bottom-up” transitional justice processes as a non-nuanced whole, situating grassroots actors in direct opposition to large-scale, or “top-down,” approaches to transitional justice. Such an analysis is limited because it fails to take into account complex contextual factors that contribute to the ways in which bottom-up mechanisms manifest. Colombia and Guatemala are two cases in which bottom-up actors have strived to influence the ways in which peace and justice were articulated by their respective governments; however, the methods and outcomes are strikingly different. In Guatemala, grassroots actors sought to achieve ethnic inclusion, neglecting class and land-based demands. Colombia’s …

Victims To Victors: Women Reclaiming Conflict Management In Sub-Saharan Africa, Joy N. Ballard

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Women in sub-Saharan Africa are often viewed as the victims of the conflict around them. This view discredits the hundreds of women who are serving in legislative and executive branches across the region. This research investigates if women in positions of power make more peaceful decisions in times of conflict than their male counterparts. Using negative binomial regression methods this research examines the percentages of women in legislative and executive branches to number of conflict days in a year and number of peace agreements signed. This study found that as the percentage of women in office rise the number of …

Identifying Armed Group Presence Using Hidden Markov Models, Mauricio Vela Baron

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifying armed group presence is often helpful for conflict studies to examine patterns of conflict. Armed group presence is often used as the main variable of interest in several studies, and in some cases, this variable is ignored. Many of these studies use expert data or proxy variables to analyze armed group presence. This paper proposes Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) as a method to identify armed group presence. HMMs permit identifying armed group presence at a sub-national level and in long panel data sets. A HMM is used in this paper to identify paramilitary and FARC presence in Colombia. The …

The Dove's Advantage: Impact Of Gender And Conflict On Executive Approval, Micala H. Gillespie

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Do citizens evaluate female vs. male leaders’ foreign policy decisions differently? The number of countries that have had female leaders continues to expand, but little is known about how domestic audiences reward or punish female (relative to male) leaders for foreign policy choices. This study examines how the gender of a national leader conditions the relationship between their hawkish/dovish ideology and public approval for rapprochement policies in militarized interstate conflicts. Results from time-series cross-sectional data using multiple regression models with fixed effects from 31 countries and 127 leaders show that public approval tends to be lower for women leaders and …

Perpetuating Peace: Context Versus Contents Of The Power-Sharing Agreements Between The Kdp And Puk Of The Kurdistan Region Of Iraq In 1992 And 1998, Brigitte E. Hugh

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the mid-1990s the two Kurdish parties in Iraq—the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—signed two power-sharing agreements, which had dramatically different results. The 1992 50-50 Agreement ended in conflict while the 1998 Washington Agreement ended in long-lasting peace.

I examine both the agreements and their surrounding context to identify what explains the success or failure of these two agreements in establishing long-lasting and cooperative peace. I find that the presence or absence of peace is due to both the language of the agreements and the context in which they were created. I demonstrate this …

Conflict Of A Nation, And Repatriation In Collapsed States: The Case Of South Sudan, Emmanuel Bakheit

Master's Theses

The purpose of this paper is to intervene in the discourse about South Sudan’s civil war to express and provide insights into the broader reality of South Sudan’s civil war. This is to highlight challenges for democracy, possible interface in the peace process, and repatriation of refugees and resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs). The aim of this paper is, therefore, to transcend the current literature that lacks critical analysis in capturing the true nature of the civil war. South Sudan’s civil war has been portrayed as a conflict of two tribes, Dinka and Nuer. This is the imprecise politics …

Analyzing The Onset And Resolution Of Nonstate Conflict In The Middle East & North Africa, Emily A. Barbaro

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

By applying structural-functionalist theories of deviance and opposition, this thesis deconstructs nonstate mobilization in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Using data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, the quantitative analysis interpreted both group and leader behavior in conflict situations to determine factors that influenced conflict onset and resolution. The quasipoisson regression analysis of group behavior suggested that polity and state capacity were both significant predictors of violent and nonviolent mobilization. The negative binomial regression of regime behavior suggested that civilian casualties were the most significant predictor of a government response to nonstate mobilization. Ultimately, the …

Climate Migration: Evaluating The Conditions That Breed Conflict, Avery Dillon

Honors Thesis

The prediction that climate change will cause conflict is at its core based on the assumption that climate change will trigger resource scarcity, resulting in displaced peoples and potentially violent conflict. However, the empirical evidence supporting this phenomenon is highly uncertain and at times directly contradictory. In recent decades, some have claimed that climate change’s exacerbation of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts have already played major roles in conflicts such as the Syrian Civil War (Selby 2019). Others directly dispute this direct effect, arguing instead that climate change has played only a minor role in influencing …

Women And Strategies Of Violence: Gender Roles, Foreign Support And Maintaining The Rebellion, Caglayan Baser

Dissertations

How do women affect conflict dynamics in different ways than men? I examine how expectations based on gender identities impact rebel group strategies, as well as attitudes of foreign publics and political elites toward rebel groups. First, women can substantially contribute to rebel groups' ability to resist governments and maintain their rebellion through unique gendered ways. These include enabling greater tactical diversity, increased appeal to international audiences, and spearheading coup-proofing strategies against intra-organizational factions. Women's contributions to rebel groups are most salient during times of crises and in settings where gender stereotypes are stronger. Second, rebel groups with women participants …

Understanding The Connections: An Analysis Of Climate Change And Human Security, Erica Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Increasing evidence shows that the impacts of anthropogenic climate change have magnified and will have dramatic implications for both the natural and social systems (Adger et al., 2014). While research on the security implications of climate change has been found to have a major bearing on policy making, experts have not reached a consensus about how climate change and human security are related, leaving the climate-security nexus and corresponding policies underdeveloped.

The purpose of this study is to delineate and scrutinize the relationship between climate change and human security so that a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon is achieved. …

The Impact Of Globalization As An Economic Theory On The Mass Migration Of Vulnerable Populations, Amalia Luxardo

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

As the world becomes increasingly globalized, the question of economy, of who hinders it or allows it to blossom, has become a point of contention that has led to many acts of violence. This research utilizes globalization as an economic theory as the underlying factor that causes these violent conflicts and imminent mass movements of migration. In using this lens, I emphasize that economically fueled violent conflict leads to the migration of populations and their ultimate elimination. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate and draw data from major violent conflicts in different nation-states and perform a quantitative …

Targeting The Minority: A New Theory Of Diversionary Violence, Nathaniel M. Arnold

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This research develops a novel theory for domestic diversionary violence, contending that the main drivers for this type of conflict are the specific characteristics of state-targeted domestic minority groups. Seven new variables measuring minority group characteristics are identified through a case study of the Kurdish minority in the Turkish Republic, then applied to a quantitative analysis of domestic diversionary violence in a dataset of 284 observations across 117 countries during the years 2004-2005, utilizing data from the University of Maryland’s Minorities at Risk Project, the University of Illinois Cline Center SPEED Database, and World Bank. A proportional odds logistic regression …

The Cholera Crisis In Yemen: Case Studies On Vulnerability And Resilience In Sana'a, Al Hudaydah, And Ma'areb, Noor Albannein A. Al-Saad

Honors Theses and Capstones

The largest recorded cholera epidemic in history is happening right now in Yemen, a country which has reported over 2 million cases of cholera as of 2020. Yemen has a history of endemic cholera, but prolonged conflict in the country has led to deteriorating conditions that have triggered massive outbreaks of the disease. The purpose of this study is to investigate the direct and indirect causes of the cholera epidemic in Yemen by proposing factors that may confer vulnerability and resilience in Yemeni governorates. Case studies were constructed for three governorates: Sana’a and the inner municipality of Amanat Al Asimah; …

The Long-Term Causes And Consequences Of Conflict: A Micro-Level Behavioral Perspective, Joan Barcelo

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the behavioral determinants and legacies of conflict from a socio-psychological perspective. The three papers that compose this dissertation investigate use tools of causal inference to explore, on the one hand, the socialization processes that influence leaders' decision to pursue war-like policies and, on the other hand, the longue durée legacy of wartime violence on preferences, as well as on people's proneness to being swayed by messages of collective threat during conflict. The first paper of the dissertation examines the long-term determinants of interstate conflict by exploring the impact of leader's socialization processes. Based on the soft power …

Intervening In Wartime Rape: Lessons From Bosnia And Herzegovina And Guatemala, Liv Salinger

Honors Theses

Rape and sexual violence has been a part of war throughout history. Wartime rape that occurred during the 20^th century was often marked by public spectacle and brutality, which caught the attention of the world in new ways. Scholars, policymakers and the general public now consider how militaries and armed groups use rape as a tool of ethnic cleansing and genocide, meaning that this form of violence is used to hinder the health and growth of the enemy population. This study draws upon feminist literature, humanitarian intervention discourse, and international relations literature to develop a feminist intersectional framework with …

Does Climate Change Invoke Conditions That Create Conflict? Lessons Learned From Syria And Beyond, Mara A. O'Connell

Senior Projects Fall 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

The Short-Term And Long-Term Relationship Between Public Sentiment And Insurgency Violence In 3 Southern Provinces Of Thailand, Domrongphol Sangmanee

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation is aimed to developing and improving the theory on the intrastate conflict and public sentiment as well as the conventional wisdom on the conflict study as well as developing new analytical framework for studying intrastate conflict and for informing policymakers to deliver or adjust for a better policy to cope with this problem. The empirical case study is an insurgency conflict in three Southern provinces of Thailand. The study employs multivariate time-series analysis, namely Vector Autoregressive Model (VAR) and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), and empirical system dynamics analysis, namely Convergent CrossMapping (CCM). The results show that the …