Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

To Continued Success: Reforming Internal Tunisian Security Policy, Thomas Eli Banghart V

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tunisia's reputation as the success story from the Arab Spring rests on the integration of a stable democratic regime. Domestic as well as regional threats continue to push the boundaries of this fledgling democracy. Development measures, and reform of the Tunisian Internal Security Forces are paramount for the state's survival. This work presents measures for Security Sector Reform within Tunisia, then proceeds to create a map a developmental intervention aimed at securing stability through several drivers. Understanding that development is a security threat for Tunisia will help allies, other regional actors, NGO's, and other organizations furthers the unique situation where …

The Eu's Impact On Managing Levels Of Corruption In The Post-Communist World, Sabina Gueorguieva Pavlovska-Hilaiel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the role of the European Union (EU) in the process of managing corruption in the post-communist world. Throughout the post-communist transitions, which began in 1989, the EU has been consistent in putting a strong emphasis on the problem of corruption. As part of the transitions, there were many attempts at abating corruption domestically, most of which were expressed in the creation of institutions and legislation. Yet such attempts had varying effectiveness, and outcomes were not always expected nor predicted by scholars and policy-makers. Internationally, the EU expected that conditionality, which offered EU membership in exchange for compliance …

Political Participation And Political Repression: Women In Saudi Arabia, Amalkhon Y. Azimova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2015 Saudi Arabian women were for the first time in history granted political space through electoral suffrage. To evaluate whether the new political opening for Saudi Arabian women has improved women's rights and equality in the Kingdom, I sought to conduct interviews to acquire their views and attitudes. In the process my encounters with Saudi Arabian women revealed their fear, cautiousness, and unwillingness to participate politically, which impelled me to discover the relationship between women's political participation and political repression. In the course of this research I learned that political repression inhibits women's political participation, and in Saudi Arabia …

Cuba After Fidel: Economic Reform, Political Liberalization And Foreign Policy (2006–2014), Arturo Lopez-Levy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discussed Cuba's processes of economic reform and political liberalization, and their impact on Cuba's foreign policy's adaptation to the post-Cold War. The first part of the dissertation explains economic reform and political liberalization from the perspective of partial reform equilibrium as a result of the Cuban Communist Party's focus on domestic stability and international legitimacy. The second part of the dissertation focused on Cuba's foreign policy dynamics associated to the domestic reform, the changes in the international system after the end of the Cold War and the asymmetric conflict between Cuba and the United States.

With Or Without Class: A Comparative Study Of Union-Worker Cooperative Relations In The U.S. And South Korea, Minsun Ji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines to what extent union-cooperative partnerships in the U.S. and S. Korea might revitalize labor movements and to what extent class-based narratives (or their absence) shape labor movements. Exploring competing labor ontologies, the dissertation analyzes how variants of traditional Marxism and poststructural thinking shape labor campaigns. Through a historical review of union and worker coop activism, and modern case studies of union-coop partnerships among taxi drivers and bus drivers, the dissertation analyzes the consequences of organizing "with" and "without" class narratives.

These labor histories and case studies lend support to the poststructural claim that class identity is constructed …

The Oil Blessing: Reexamining Conflict In The Muslim World, Kumail Wasif

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An influential conventional wisdom holds that oil causes intrastate conflict and that oil in particular explains the prevalence of domestic political violence in the Muslim world. I show that the relationship between oil and intrastate conflict in the empirical literature is more ambiguous than commonly assumed. I test to see if the various measures of the oil resource predict any dimension of intrastate conflict in the Muslim world. My results show oil resources are associated with lower levels of civil conflict, repression and terrorism in Muslim-majority countries. This supports the 'rentier state' perspective which states that regimes with significant oil …

War Tax Free: Institutional Resiliency For War In The United States, Sarah Nelson Bakhtiari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The obsolescence of war taxes in the United States after 1968 is a product of the state's increased institutional resiliency for war. Historically, war taxes were raised for purposes of revenue generation for contemporaneous war spending or wartime inflation control. The state's development of a robust tax system that provides high and automatically increasing revenues over time, along with monetary mechanisms for price stability, obviate the need for war taxes. In particular, the development of the income tax system and the use of inflation-targeting monetary policy expanded the state's warfighting capacity without reliance on war taxes. These developments suggest a …