Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Longing For The Homeland: The Palestinian American Diaspora And Palestinian Advocacy In The United States, Mohamed Khaled Ghumrawi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores how Palestinian Americans in the diaspora connect with Palestine, Palestinian advocacy, and the Palestinian question. It analyzes and synthesizes the interaction of the Palestinian American diaspora and Palestinian advocacy, exploring its domestic and transnational linkages. It also explores the nexus of domestic and transnational aspects relating to Palestinian identity, political life, advocacy, culture, and politics. This project utilizes two main frameworks, the first is the tripartite composite state theory, focusing specifically on the normative-social structure. The second applies a framework of intersectionality, highlighting the interconnectedness of the Palestinian diaspora and the Palestinian question with other social …

Stoicism And Just War Theory, Leonidas D. Konstantakos

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The ancient philosophy of Stoicism, itself one of the foundations for international law, can improve contemporary just war thinking by forming a coherent set of philosophical principles to serve as a foundation for a just war theory. A Stoic approach considers justifications for moral actions to come not from an appeal to human rights, conformity to deontological rules, or from the utility of the actions themselves, but from virtuous character traits and corresponding virtuous actions. As such, a Stoic approach to just war theory is a virtue ethics perspective in which metaethical incentive for moral action is the agent’s own …

Political Economy Of Religion: Maintaining State Legitimacy Through Religious Discourse In The Arab Gulf, Lana Shehadeh

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Contrary to the popular belief in IR that religion has no place within the political sphere, religion has been an integral part of the political and social fabric of the Middle East since the advent of Islam. States in the Arab Gulf, more specifically, have used religion and the religious establishment (Ulama) to proactively encourage support from the public when trying to permit or prohibit policies that would benefit or undermine state interests and objectives. For these states, religious discourse has become an essential tool to legitimate their authority and policies. By exploring this trend more closely, my dissertation fills …

Credibility And Opportunity: The Limits On U.S. Coercive Strategies After The Cold War, Danijela Felendes

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In coercive diplomacy, states employ the threat of force to get an opponent to change its behavior. A common belief is that strong military powers, such as the United States, make persuasive threats due to their capability to inflict punishment in the case of noncompliance. However, the record shows that the failure of asymmetric coercion has been a persistent feature of international crises. This finding inspires the core question of this dissertation: Why do weak states resist coercive threats from a militarily superior state, and under what conditions do weak states concede?

This dissertation addresses the question by proposing the …

Canadian Banks And Imperialism In The English-Speaking Caribbean, Tamanisha J. John

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Canadian banks have been important components of an imperialist system since at least the 19^th century. However, their long and rich history of operating as purely exploitative entities in the English-speaking Caribbean region is often overlooked— leading to many incomplete and conflicting narratives about Canada’s role within the global system. I argue that Canada is an imperial actor that exerts agency in supporting a Canadian banking oligopoly both within Canada and in the English-speaking Caribbean. Insufficient attention is given to these Canadian banks, especially considering the power they have wielded in the Caribbean over the centuries. By analyzing the …

The Creation Of International Crimes: How Narratives Shape Our Understanding Of The "Most Serious Crimes Of International Concern", Christine Bianco

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court labels the crimes within its jurisdiction as “the most serious crimes of international concern.” This characterization creates a hierarchy of international issues in which those that are under the jurisdiction of the court are portrayed as more important than those that are not. The Statute’s framing implies a permeance and absolutism to the distinction between international issues that obscures the political contestation behind this topic. The line between wrong and criminal in international law is one that is neither constant nor entirely coherent. It is one that has grown and changed over …

Cuban Exiles And U.S. Foreign Policy, Caroline Ranawn Mcculloch

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the influence of Cuban-American exiles in shaping U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba from the 1980s to the present. The role of Cuban-American interest groups is analyzed within a larger context of U.S. national security objectives, national politics and Cuban politics. Instead of privileging domestic politics or national security politics in explaining Cuban-American influence, as other International Relations theories do, this study argues that Cuban exile politics can best be understood as an expression of subnational interest group power that affects, and is affected by, the shifting dynamics of local, national and global politics. Also, ideological divisions and …

Eu Accession Negotiations In The Shadow Of The Market, Deniss Kaskurs

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

At the end of the 20th century, the European Union (EU) had decided to expand into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by extending accession invitations to ten CEE states. During the accession process, each nation had a bargaining committee which was established to negotiate with EU representatives about the entrance requirements. Formally, negotiations revolve around political and economic bargaining between politicians of the incoming member states and the EU representatives. Informally, however, private commercial entities heavily influence the bargaining process, both from the EU and from the member state side. This scholarly work refers to these entities as transnational interest …

Transformative Constitutionalism And The Adjudication Of Elections In Kenya, Carl Bevelhymer

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The judicialization of politics has been an ongoing and expanding global phenomenon for decades. In Kenya, the record number of cases brought before courts prior to and following the 2017 elections is evidence of the continued growth and spread of the judicialization of politics, and more specifically elections; it is also the result of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution, which introduced a new form of governance, expanded the number of elective seats and mandated judicial and electoral reforms. One of the most remarkable events of the 2017 election period was the Supreme Court’s nullification of the presidential election due to electoral irregularities. …

Turkey-Russia Relations In 2001-2020: Deepening Partnership And Heightening Competition Amid Regional Restructuring, Muhammet Koçak

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explains the evolution of Turkey-Russia relations in 2001 2020. Turkey and Russia are two of the most critical powerhouses of Central Eurasia. In the past, the Russian Empire played a significant role in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey took part in containing the USSR during the Cold War. In 2001 2020, however, Turkey and Russia invested in bilateral trade and established partnerships in the defense and energy sectors. Two countries also worked together to resolve several regional conflicts, including the Syrian Crisis. Despite this trend’s regional and global significance, the literature suffers from an inadequacy …

The Evolution Of United States - Central Asian Security Policy Post-9/11: Military, Terrorism, And Cyber-Security, Shamsuddin Karimi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rudyard Kipling once described and wrote about the Great Game as a way to outline 19^th century great power politics in the struggle for empire in Central Asia. While Kipling’s tale of spy-craft and espionage is fiction, the political philosophy behind the story has never lost relevance. The struggle for political dominance in Central Asia continued through the twentieth century in the Cold War as well as into twenty-first century after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Although the great power players may have changed over the past 120 years, the importance of Central Asia has not.

This …

National Material Capability Buildup And The Rank-Magnitude Distribution Of Wars, Matthew Felice

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Are there physical laws, rather than conventions like diplomacy, that determine when war will break out and how severe it will be? On the eve of World War II, L. F. Richardson discovered a curious pattern: Major wars are rare and minor wars are common to such a predictable degree that the size-frequency offset can be plotted with a straight line. Complex-systems theorists have since confirmed those findings and tested them with computer models. Yet none of the research has fully synthesized this law-like observation with the established theoretical approaches in international relations that would apply, such as power transition …

A Rising Regional Power: Making Sense Of Ethiopia's Influence In The Horn Of Africa Region, Yonas K. Mulat

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the conditions under which a state’s regional influence increases, or a state becomes a regional power, using an in-depth analysis of the case of Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. I make a two-fold argument (a) developments in the Horn of Africa over the last two decades show that the regional influence of Ethiopia has been growing, and (b) analysis of attributional capabilities – population, military, economy – alone do not fully explain this development. This dissertation tests a hypothesis derived from neo-classical realism recognizing that relative power (vis a vis the neighbors), although key to …

Sino-American Competition In Latin America And The Caribbean, Anthony Russo Orezzoli

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the various ways in which great-power competition between China and the United States will affect regional stability within Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). This research will evaluate various theoretical approaches within the study of international relations (neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, constructivism), as well as review foundational works of Robert Koehane, Robert Gilpin, and other major IR theorists. By utilizing these approaches, this thesis seeks to explain an increased Chinese presence in Latin America and the Caribbean through diplomatic, information, military and economic lens (DIME). In doing so, it becomes clear that stable …

Neoliberalism And Monopoly In The Motion Picture Industry, Michael S. Wartenbe

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monopolies and industry concentration have returned in our time, as did the ramifications in the globalized political economy. One of the most impactful in our daily lives are the Mass Media Conglomerates who not only own the majority of film, television, and news we access, but increasingly control the means of accessing it, from cable to digital. While many are familiar with these corporations via their services and products, less known by the public are their political operations and close cooperation with Washington. This is due to the lack of holistic analysis of the industry and cooperation in the media …

Historical Geopolitics Of Kashmir: A Discourse Analysis Of Civilizational Framings, Thomas J. Liguori

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation attempts to locate the intractable issue of Kashmir within a global context. The global setting utilized here is constituted and shaped by multiple levels, none of which is purely discrete, and which act upon each other with differing degrees of salience. Taking a discourse analytic approach, political positions can be seen as activating (acting upon, mobilizing, or challenging) existing discursive material in a given political context and then deploying it. This dissertation aims to show how the Kashmir problem has: 1) come about; that is, how it has been constituted and the (discursive) contexts which shaped the available …

Gender Politics And Policies In Post-Communist Democracies, Vera N. Beloshitzkaya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation investigates why variation exists in gender policies that challenge traditional power hierarchies across central and eastern European (CEE) countries and the role of political parties in this process. I first ask how gender issues get onto party agendas and then test whether parties in government that have campaigned on gender issues ultimately deliver on their promises. I examine three policy domains, marginally affected by the EU and international "soft" norms, affirmative action in the labor market, father's leave, and anti-domestic violence policies.

I argue that parties are least responsive when it comes to altering gender power hierarchies at …

Bangladesh And India: The Domestic And International Repercussions Of Asymmetric And Securitized Hydro-Politics, Tamanna Ashraf

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

India, the second-most populous country in the world, is experiencing the worst water crisis in its history, and by 2030, 40% of Indians will lack access to drinking water. Equally concerning is Bangladesh’s situation, with 2.5 million people experiencing water shortage due to increased salinity. Both India and Bangladesh share 54 transboundary rivers in the larger Ganges Brahmaputra and Meghna (GBM) basin. Even though the two nations have signed multiple treaties on the Ganges River, disputes still take place over the Ganges and other transboundary rivers. Since this region of the world is facing an increasing population and water demand, …

After Deterrence: Policy Choices During Crises Of Conventional And Nuclear Direct Deterrence Failure, Yang Gyu Kim

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite a plethora of research on the conditions of successful deterrence, the literature has been remarkably silent on the aftermath of its possible failure. Especially in the situation of direct deterrence where the defender’s people and territory are at stake, the defender experiences tremendous pressure and stress when a challenger defies the former’s threat. Due to the high interest at stake, direct deterrent threat is regarded as the most credible type of deterrence and, according to the literature, is most likely successful. How could an intrinsically credible threat fail? What should the defender do when direct deterrence fails and its …

Understanding The Motivations And Pathways Of Women And Girls' Involvement In Terrorism In Nigeria, Peculiar M. Awa

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the experiences of 20 women and girls who lived in the Boko Haram camp in 2014-2018 and had varying levels of engagement in the organization's activities. The study employs a qualitative phenomenological in-depth interview methodology. Semi-structured interviews conducted in Nigeria and the United States yielded data on the experiences of the respondents before, during, and after their lives with Boko Haram. Based on the analysis of interview responses and field notes, several themes emerged. Overall findings suggest that family and community dynamics play a significant role in terrorism in Nigeria. The study found that early child marriage …

Theory And Practice In Political Economy: Explaining Continuity In South American Socioeconomic Conditions, Diego Zambrano

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The socioeconomic history of South America has been traditionally marked by the chronic problems of poverty and inequality. South American states and societies have commonly failed to address these issues effectively, which continue to characterize the region’s socioeconomic outlook today. The persistence of poverty and inequality has created social and political pressures on those designing economic policy, prioritizing short-term “alleviating” mechanisms rather than long-term structural solutions. These same conditions, combined with historical experiences, have created a singular cyclical dynamic in the political economy of the region. In this context, this dissertation explores the underlying causes behind the continuity of such …

How The Balance Of Power Conditions International Trade Agreements: A Comparative Case Analysis, Kevin Modlin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explains how the balance of power influences the incidence of international trade agreements. It shows the interaction of factors from the disciplines of Economics, Politics, and International Relations. Specifically, it shows the influence of the balance of power within three cases of trade agreements. The following cases illustrate how states, when negotiating agreements, respond to power competition. This influence of power within state relations is a social interaction but also one where individual states respond. Some of those responses include trade agreements with other states. Systems influence the decisions of negotiators involved in trade agreements. As the cases …

Drug Policy In An Era Of Normative Change: Prohibition And Harm Reduction In Uruguay, Ecuador, And Peru, Nicolas A. Beckmann

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation investigates how the advocacy and contestation of international norms related to the production and use of psychoactive substances affected drug policy decisions in South America since 1971. The goal is to provide a more complete account of why most states in the region are sticking to prohibitionist policy models, despite their evident failure and an international context that has become more favorable to the exploration of alternative policies. At the same time, it seeks to detect some of the factors that enabled countries to move towards a framework of harm reduction, prohibition’s main competitor in international drug …

Revising The Status Quo Of Revisionism, Grand Strategy, And International Order, Onur Erpul

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines a type of variance in state behavior pertaining to international conflict and cooperation. Rather than confining this discussion to a binary understanding of state behavior, between revisionism and status-quo seeking, it endeavors to provide a nuanced discussion of the type of grand-strategic orientations states undertake in pursuit of their interests. It poses the question, “under what circumstances do states aspire to uphold, seek to reform, or challenge international order?” In doing so, the study helps to understanding the gamut of behaviors that purportedly satisfied or revisionist states display.

System-level material opportunities that are filtered by elite-preferences and …

Silenced Bodies: (En)Gendering Syrian Refugee Insecurity In Lebanon, Jessy Abouarab

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While there has been a shift in security studies from the security of states to that of people, realpolitik still takes place under the banner of an emerging discourse of ‘refugee crisis.’ Refugee insecurities are (en)gendered and experienced where their depth and breadth pose significant challenges to asylum seekers, neighboring host-states, and humanitarian agencies. To this end, this research captures the unique dynamics of a South-South refugee crisis in Lebanon, in which Syrians residents make up nearly one-third of its population. It applies a transnational feminist framework to trace how refugee security norms get defined, are managed, and how they …

Japan’S Relations With Muslim Asia: Trans-Continental Normativity And Policy, B. Bryan Barber Iv

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2006, Japanese Foreign Minister Asō Tarō outlined a new pillar of Japan’s foreign policy across Asia he called the ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity.’ The Arc would become the most lucid case for values-based diplomacy elaborated by Tokyo in the postwar era. It is a significant change from what was both a constrained and myopic approach for a state of such global economic influence and substantial diplomatic potential. In practice, however, is Japan’s values-based diplomacy actually working? How is Tokyo grappling with reconceptualizing an Asia inclusive of Muslim societies in a time when the global metanarrative is to protect …

Genocide In The Modern Age: State-Society Relations In The Making Of Mass Political Violence, 1900-2015, Zachary Karazsia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a new conceptual framework for understanding genocide and mass political violence. I build upon existing theories of mass violence that take into account motivations for committing mass atrocities, combine these with the task of counting civilian casualties, and propose a new framework based on the perpetrators’ socio-political standing in society. This model develops a four-part typology of perpetrators by examining the level of government participation and societal participation in the process of violence. Four patterns of perpetrators emerge from this deductive assessment of large-scale violence. These mass political violence perpetrator categories are: a) state perpetrators; b) state-society …

Ordered Anarchy: The Origins And Evolution Of A Society Of States In South America, 1864-1939, Nicolas Terradas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation studies why South American states have fought so few wars among one another since their independence in the early 1800s, and why those wars in which they did enter were limited in intensity, casualty rates, number of battles, and overall duration. It offers an extensive review of the literature on South America’s “long peace” and advances two critiques. First, that the existing studies have usually followed either a narrow quantitative definition of war, or a broad qualitative definition of peace. And second, that the literature tends to neglect the relevance of the 19th century in the historical …

Resource Nationalism And Energy Integration In Latin America: The Paradox Of Populism, Brian Hollingsworth

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between resource nationalism and energy integration, and uses Bolivia and Brazil as a test case. Essentially, does resource nationalism affect energy integration? The findings nest within more expansive questions on international political economy and export-driven models of development. Why do populist regimes, historically operating under an economic nationalist cum protectionist paradigm, simultaneously pursue policies of economic integration? What is the relationship between resource nationalists and open markets, especially in the hydrocarbons sector? What is the relationship between populists, who are typically resource nationalists, and their decision to choose policies of energy integration?

The most common …

China's Eurasian Foreign Policy: Region-Building Through State-Building Since 1991, Zenel Garcia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, its leaders have been preoccupied with efforts to increase state capacity in order to exercise more effective control over their western frontier by controlling their minority population and generating the conditions for economic development in the area. Although these state-building initiatives have always incorporated an international component, the collapse of the USSR, the transnational characteristics of development, and China’s concern around the challenges of terrorism, separatism, and extremism have necessitated an accompanying region-building project in Eurasia. Using a synthesis of the region-building approach and the concept of regionalization, this …