Political Science Commons^™

Emigrants' Stories Of Foreign Aid And Their Reasons For Emigration: Guatemalans On The Move, Monica Spohn

History and Political Science | Student Professional Publications

This single instrumental case study was designed to learn about emigrants’ reasons for emigrating, situated within the challenges and available opportunities in their home country of Guatemala. Eight emigrants (two women and six men) were interviewed to better understand their personal experiences and to examine the role of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) investments, Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and Guatemala’s domestic conditions and development in participants’ decisions to emigrate to the U.S. The study was guided by the following central questions: (1) How do emigrants explain their reasons for leaving? (2) What motivates emigration in …

Strategic Culture In Sub-Saharan Africa: The Divergent Paths Of Uganda And Tanzania, Kevin Frank

Dissertations

Strategic culture is a concept accepted by scholars and practitioners, but with problematic applicability to states newly independent or emerging from conflict. The elements that comprise strategic culture in the developed world are not always present in emerging states. This research addresses the pertinency of strategic culture in Uganda and Tanzania, and then tests the operationalization of the concept using the case of participation in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The African Union and the international community expected Uganda and Tanzania to contribute troops to AMISON in 2007. In the event, Uganda did and Tanzania chose another path. …

The Unraveling Of The Nation-State In The Middle East: Examples Of Iraq And Syria, Zachary Kielp

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

After the carnage of World War One and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire a new form of political organization was brought to the Middle East, the Nation-State. Based on European ideas of Sovereignty and equality between countries; the nation-state was thrust upon these areas that had no history or interest in adopting a foreign form of governance and served the primary purpose of safeguarding the imperial interests of Europe. Compounding their error, the regions of these new nation-states contained populations that had long resented and mistrusted each other. While these countries could be held together by repressive dictatorships for …

Perspective: Arabia Infelix: The War Devouring Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

For many centuries, European cartographers labeled the southwest corner of the otherwise mostly desert Arabian Peninsula as Arabia Felix, or “Happy Arabia.” It was a place where towering mountains trapped clouds blown in from the Indian Ocean so that twice-annual monsoon rains blessed terraced slopes and lowland wadis with plentiful crops. Sadly, since fighting engulfed the country in late March 2015, Yemen has never been less felix.

After Coup, Will Zimbabwe See Democracy Or Dictatorship?, Steven Feldstein

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

For decades, Robert Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe in a ruthless, even reckless manner. Over nearly 40 years, he turned the “jewel of Africa” into an economic basket case that’s seen inflation of up to 800 percent.

What We Bring With Us And What We Leave Behind: Six Months In Post-Apartheid South Africa, Virginia Casper, Donna Futterman, Evan Casper-Futterman

Occasional Paper Series

The authors, a family, reflect on their experiences living, volunteering, and going to school in South Africa for six months. They sought to live in a society in which white people were not the majority and to experience the transformation of the new South Africa, not as tourists, but as participants.

Homophobia, Human Rights And Diplomacy, Douglas Janoff

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Multilateral human rights diplomacy is a product of the triad relationship between intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), and states. This paper examines the emergence of LGBT rights within the context of the UN human rights system. Recently, the global debates around LGBT rights have become much more public and increasingly complex: Ministers, leaders, and even the UN Secretary-General routinely call on states to do more to protect sexual minorities. Countries such as Uganda and Russia are labeled “homophobic” — not just by human rights activists, but by other states. These “accusations” are delivered both bilaterally and in multilateral …

Collective Memory Of Past Human Rights Abuses-South Korea, Ñusta Carranza Ko

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The discourse on transitional justice by academics and practitioners center upon a common understanding of the importance of truth-seeking or truth-telling, reparations, prosecutions, and other institutional reforms in addressing a state’s past abuses. Policies of memorialization complement these processes of transitional justice, with the production of collective memory and history that helps transitioning states from authoritarian pasts toward reconciliation.

This study builds on the growing interest in memory initiatives by bringing to light the integral and "visible" role memory practices have played in truth-seeking and reparations processes. Particularly, it focuses on the building of collective memory integrated in truth commission …

Understanding Truth: How Commissioners Influence The Final Report Of A Truth Commission, Christine Bianco

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Ensuring a future of human rights means coming to terms with past violations of human rights. This both recognizes human rights as an important position in the policy of the state and helps to end a system of impunity against such actions, even if it is done symbolically. One of the major mechanisms that states have used to address their past has been truth commissions. The strength of truth commissions lies in their ability to bring to light the voices of the victims as well as their ability to criticize those who have committed human rights abuses.

In order to …

Agency, Equality And Courage: A Case Study Of Women On The Front Lines Of Egypt’S 2011 Revolution, Carol Gray

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

How were women involved in Egypt’s 2011 revolution/uprising? What role did they play vis-à-vis male activists? To what degree were Egyptian women “equal” during those 18 days in Tahrir Square? These questions will be explored within the context of interviews conducted by this writer in Cairo during and following Egypt’s 18-day revolution (uprising). This essay will explore the public/private sphere split, political consciousness-raising, and gender equality within the context of the stories of Egyptian women on the front lines of protest.

Much of the recent literature on women's protests in Egypt has focused on women's victimization. Critical gender theorist Ann …

Faith-Based Resistance, Human Rights, And Emancipatory Practices, Curtis Kline

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Progressive political theologies can expand and deepen both the strength and the conceptualization of human rights advocacy. However, not all political theologies are an effort to defend human dignity; neither are all understandings and practices of human rights. The validation of progressive political theologies as well as the validation of human rights conceptualizations comes from their capacity to concretely change the lived reality of poor and oppressed peoples of the world.

As with political theologies, there is a constant struggle over the control of how to conceptualize what constitutes a human rights issue. While many communities of faith find liberating …

State Sovereignty And Human Security: The Migration-Securitization Nexus In The Global South, Eugene R. Sensenig

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This paper deals with the issues of state sovereignty and refugee policy in insecure and marginalized regions of the Global South. Using the displaced Syrian populations (UN-recognized and undocumented) in Lebanon as a case in point, the attempt will be made to portray and discuss the responses of underdeveloped host communities to overwhelming increases in the size of their non-national population. Lebanon has faced various waves of refugees since its independence in 1943, making up between 2.5% (Iraqis) and 25% (Syrians) of the entire citizen population, currently estimated to be slightly over 4 million. Almost 500,000 Palestinian refugees are registered …

Providing Refuge: A Regime Analysis Of Legal Protections For Displaced Persons In Sub-Saharan Africa, Natasha Bennett, Hannah K. Brown

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

While refugees are entitled to the right of asylum vis-a-vis the U.N. 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol, which includes rights of a legal resident in the host country, African states vary in their domestic implementation of refugee rights.

Sub-Saharan Africa host approximately 29 percent of the world’s refugees and as such represents a key region for understanding the dynamics of refugee rights and protections. With 45 member states having ratified (another 4 having signed) the Organization of African Unity’s 1969 Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of the Refugee Problem in Africa (OAU …

Front Matter, Comparative Civilizations Review

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Intrigue Of Paradigmatic Similarity: Leibniz And China, Yu Liu

Comparative Civilizations Review

The cosmology of China is indeed strikingly similar to the metaphysics of Leibniz, but precisely where the two resemble each other, the former is unmistakably different from Christianity. Scholars of Leibniz have so far generally taken it for granted that he was ideologically aligned with Christianity, but his paradigmatic similarity to China should alert us of a surprisingly different story. Leibniz was indisputably “the greatest of the seventeenth century sinophiles” and key Chinese cosmological ideas were introduced to Europe long before he formulated his worldview. Together, these two facts can help us decide whether he “owes to Chinese organic naturalism …

Narrativized Ethics And Hiroshima: Harry S. Truman, Homer, And Aeschylus, Michael Palencia-Roth

Comparative Civilizations Review

Discussions of the atomic bomb and Hiroshima have to be deeply troubling for anyone. The natural inclination is to turn one’s eyes away or to remain silent. Avoidance and silence, however, were not valid options immediately after the Second World War and are not valid options today. The decision – or decisions, for there were many – to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and later Nagasaki raises issues of profound importance for the human community. It compels us to ask who we are as individuals and as members of a society engaged in actions with such devastating consequences. We …

William Egginton, The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered In The Modern World. Bloomsbury, 2016., Ernest B. Hook

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Scott L. Montgomery And Daniel Chirot, The Shape Of The New: Four Big Ideas And How They Made The Modern World. Princeton University Press, 2015., Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

Daniel Chirot is the Herbert J. Ellison Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies in the University of Washington’s Henry Jackson School of International Studies. Chirot’s most recent book, co-authored with Scott Montgomery, is The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas and How They Made the Modern World (Princeton University Press, 2015.) Chirot’s other books have been about genocide, ethnic conflicts, tyranny, social change, and Eastern Europe.

48th Annual Conference Of The International Society For The Comparative Study Of Civilizations, Comparative Civilizations Review

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note: A Banner Year For Iscsc And The Comparative Civilizations Review, Peter Hecht

Comparative Civilizations Review

The past year has witnessed an enhanced level of dedication, by many volunteers, to the sustainability of our parent organization, the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilization, as well as to the continuing quality of the Comparative Civilizations Review. Costs are down, membership is up, our journal is more popular than it has been in years, the new website continues to amaze, and our 2017 conference was a success.

Civilizational Analysis, Political Discourse, And The Reception Of Western Modernity In Post-Soviet Russia, Yulia Prozorova

Comparative Civilizations Review

Official political discourse retains a special importance since the communicative practices of the political elites generate interpretations and meanings, which are able to become programmatic for the design and arrangement of the main societal domains. This paper considers civilizational analysis and associated multiple modernities theory as a promising framework for understanding of the post-Soviet Russians experience of modernity in Russia. It also provides a review of how contemporary Russian political discourse receives and interprets the Western modernity project.

The Challenge To Religious Tolerance: Fundamentalist Resistance To A Non-Muslim Leader In Indonesia, Hisanori Kato

Comparative Civilizations Review

It is important to question whether a long-standing tradition of religious tolerance in Indonesia has been overturned by the 2017 gubernatorial election. Equally important is that we explore the influence of religion in relation to the socio-political behavior of people. In the following parts of this paper, we attempt to find answers to these questions and to comprehend the meaning of this political event thoroughly.

Workplace Bullying Ii: A Civilizational Shortcoming Examined In A Comparative Content Analysis, Leah P. Hollis

Comparative Civilizations Review

According to Freud, civilization is meant to protect humans from the forces of nature, to protect human frailty; but then, paradoxically, it falls short of such protection by its lack of concomitant regulation (1991). In fact, civilized service to society, delivered via organizations, creates strife and anxiety. While civilization is a structure created to protect people from nature and to support a frail humanity, its rules and power structures yield aggression, spawning the need for people to control each other (Freud & Strachey, 1991).

Such control and the power structures that arise within organizations can be considered the root of …

Comments On “Civilizational Analysis And Paths Not Taken”, Johann P. Arnason

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

A Reply To Johann Arnason, Toby Huff

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Revolutions In History, Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

I saw the Iranian Revolution of 1979 up close and personally-- a revolution against a modernizing authoritarian king. I watched otherwise clever intellectuals deceive themselves that they would emerge the rulers of a democratic Iran, while the crafty theocrats waited in the wings to seize power. How could all these leftists be so naïve about how revolutions work? The trajectory of revolutions should be no mystery. Crane Brinton’s The Anatomy of Revolution” spelled it all out in 1952, and his observations have stood the test of time.

Buried On Three Continents In Three Civilizations: A Jewish Fate, Yishai Shuster

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Andrew Scull, Madness In Civilization: A Cultural History Of Insanity From The Bible To Freud From The Madhouse To Modern Medicine. Princeton University Press, 2015., Michael Palencia-Roth

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Comparative Civilizations Review Style Sheet, Comparative Civilizations Review

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis. Harpercollins, 2016., Laina Farhat-Holzman

Comparative Civilizations Review

The growing gap in the traditional trajectory from poverty to middle class may have less to do with color than with culture. We can see during this present election process the anger and distress of poor white men, flocking to the rallies of candidate Donald Trump. These men, who were once doing well during the post-WWII era, when our country was a manufacturing giant, are now victims of a changing economy.