Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Why Foreign Counterinsurgency Campaigns Fail, Donald Frederick Butler

Doctoral Dissertations

Why have foreign counterinsurgency operations had such low success rates since 1945? While operations of this type succeeded at the rate of 85.71% during the period of 1816-1945, they declined by 56.30 percentage points to just 29.49% during period of 1945-1997 (Sarkees, 2000: 123-144). This occurred even though foreign powers were often fighting in the same territories where they had previously been overwhelmingly victorious.

I argue that military defeats suffered by European states during the Second World War convinced the peoples of the developing world that colonial control could be successfully challenged. As guerrilla struggles emerged in post-war Asia and …

The Sword, The Purse And The Gavel: Institutional Influences On The Behavior Of Supreme Court Justices, Hemant Sharma

Doctoral Dissertations

An inherent contradiction exists between two fundamental principles embedded in American political philosophy: the notion of "checks and balances" and the idea of an "independent judiciary." After all, a truly "independent" branch of government would be immune to the influences, or "checks," of external institutions. This dissertation addresses that juxtaposition through a two part analysis of Supreme Court decision-making.

The first part uses multivariate regression to illustrate that justices confirmed under conditions of divided government are more moderate in their voting behavior than justices confirmed under conditions of unified government. Ancillary findings also reveal that justices who receive more votes …

Service Delivery Consolidation, Governance And The Enhancement Of Local Government Capacity: Creating A Service Consolidation Model, Charles Richard Abernathy

Doctoral Dissertations

This research project addresses the issue of service consolidation by units of local government. Service consolidation between units of local government is a frequent occurrence and references the partial merger of local government departments. The research defines the topic and suggests a distinct placement in the academic literature. Service consolidation is a similar but different topic from local government cooperation, collaboration, functional consolidation or comprehensive merger. To assist, a survey of county managers in North Carolina is conducted to determine the frequency of service merger activity, the attitudes of manager‟s regarding the practice and to determine the types of services …

Why We Don't Vote: Low Voter Turnout In U.S. Presidential Elections, Daniel Steven Roberts

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.