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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Leader Psychology And Civil War Behavior, Gary Smith Jan 2018

Leader Psychology And Civil War Behavior, Gary Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How do the psychological characteristics of world leaders affect civil wars? Multiple studies have investigated how the personalities and beliefs of world leaders affect foreign policy preferences and outcomes. However, this research has yet to be applied to the intrastate context, which is problematic, given the growing importance of civil wars in the conflict-studies literature. This dissertation project utilizes at-a-distance profiling methods to investigate how leaders and their psychological characteristics can affect the likelihood, severity, and duration of civil conflicts. The findings of this research provide further support for the general hypothesis that leaders can, and often do, matter when …


The Conditionality Of Vulnerability: Three Analyses Of Risk And Opportunity In Civil Military Relations, Rebecca Schiel Jan 2018

The Conditionality Of Vulnerability: Three Analyses Of Risk And Opportunity In Civil Military Relations, Rebecca Schiel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prior research has not established a clear relationship between democracy and insulation from coups d'etat. I contend that the lack of attention paid to the conditional influences of democracy have resulted in these mixed findings. I posit that insulation from coups occurs at higher levels of economic development and judicial institutional strength in democracies. Further, the vulnerability at low levels of both economic development and judicial institutional strength is significantly greater in democracies than in autocracies. Empirical assessments of 165 states for the years 1950-2012 offer strong support for both arguments. Results from these studies first help to reconcile earlier …


Analysis Of Remote Tripping Command Injection Attacks In Industrial Control Systems Through Statistical And Machine Learning Methods, Charles Timm Jan 2018

Analysis Of Remote Tripping Command Injection Attacks In Industrial Control Systems Through Statistical And Machine Learning Methods, Charles Timm

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the past decade, cyber operations have been increasingly utilized to further policy goals of state-sponsored actors to shift the balance of politics and power on a global scale. One of the ways this has been evidenced is through the exploitation of electric grids via cyber means. A remote tripping command injection attack is one of the types of attacks that could have devastating effects on the North American power grid. To better understand these attacks and create detection axioms to both quickly identify and mitigate the effects of a remote tripping command injection attack, a dataset comprised of 128 …


Assessment Of Information Security Culture In Higher Education, Henry Glaspie Jan 2018

Assessment Of Information Security Culture In Higher Education, Henry Glaspie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Information security programs are instituted by organizations to provide guidance to their users who handle their data and systems. The main goal of these programs is to protect the organization's information assets through the creation and cultivation of a positive information security culture within the organization. As the collection and use of data expands in all economic sectors, the threat of data breach due to human error increases. Employee's behavior towards information security is influenced by the organizations information security programs and the overall information security culture. This study examines the human factors of an information security program and their …


Altruistic Punishment Theory And Inter-Group Violence, Clayton Besaw Jan 2018

Altruistic Punishment Theory And Inter-Group Violence, Clayton Besaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the role of altruistic punishment, the act of punishing outsiders perceived to harm members of one's group at a personal cost, in explaining individual motivations to participate in inter-group violence. It first develops a social theory of this type punishment. This theory argues that an egalitarian social logic may be key to understanding motivations of parochial altruism, and that one's social environment may influence thresholds of anger needed to induce punishment behavior. Empirically, it conducts two survey-experimental studies. The first experiment utilizes subject partisan identity in the context of American politics and hypothetical acts of violence to …


National Interests And Security Policies In The Arctic Region Among Arctic States, Hilde-Gunn Bye Jan 2018

National Interests And Security Policies In The Arctic Region Among Arctic States, Hilde-Gunn Bye

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The United States, Canada, Russia, and Norway are all Arctic states; however, they prioritize the region to different degrees in terms of investments of security assets and military presence. What explains why some Arctic countries prioritize the Arctic more than others? This thesis explores this question through using an issue-based approach, which looks at the salience of issues as having implications for foreign policy tools and measures. This thesis finds that having interests and stakes in the region of high overall salience contribute to an explanation of why some countries prioritize the region more, while low overall salience is linked …