International Relations Commons^™

The Pivot To Asia: South Korea As A Strategic Partner For U.S. Foreign Policy In Asia, Rachel M. Hale

Senior Honors Theses

The relationship between the United States and the Republic of South Korea requires reexamination due to the recent U.S. foreign policy shift from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region. The nature of the relationship has altered considerably over the past 70 years. South Korea is a leading country in East Asia, and a strengthened partnership could have many benefits for the United States. South Korea tends to be overlooked in foreign policy discussions because of the security concerns posed by North Korea; but South Korea possesses many qualities which could be utilized to the advantage of U.S. foreign policy. …

South Africa And Abusive Regimes At The Un Human Rights Council, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There is some dispute over the extent to which South Africa has become a defender of regimes that abuse human rights. This article sheds further light on this question by focusing on South Africa's positions during the UN Human Rights Council's engagement with human rights problems in six countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel, North Korea, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Sudan. In five of the six chosen cases. South Africa's attitude ranged from reluctant to obstructive of efforts to defend human rights. In only one case-Israel-was South Africa willing to bring to bear the full weight of the council's power. …

Human Trafficking From Southern Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, And Guatemala: Why These Victims Are Trafficked Into Modern Day Florida, Timothy Adam Golob

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida is ranked as one of the United States' top three destination states for human trafficking; many of those victims originate from Mesoamerica--Southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Human trafficking is a growing problem which hinders universal human rights for hundreds of new victims in Florida every year. Mesoamericans have a high risk of becoming victims due to the situations in their home countries. The issue of human trafficking has only recently gained the national and state attention of law makers and law enforcement officers.

This study uses several human trafficking cases to educate and exemplify why Mesoamerican victims …

Leaders, Ideas, National Interests, And Economic Strategies: Explaining The Regional Integration Decisions Of Mexico And Brazil, Roberto Genoves

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Regional integration agreements (RIAs) facilitate economic integration by allowing member countries access to each other's markets and by removing or reducing trade and investment barriers. Their increasing influence on international patterns of trade and investment flows has stimulated substantial academic work. Yet, scholars note that we lack an adequate comprehension of the factors that cause governments to seek RIAs, and why they prefer a particular type of integration arrangement. These are important questions because they speak to the forces that shape cooperation among states, a vital issue in international relations with implications for global governance.

Using an eclectic analytical approach, …

Turkish Accession To The European Union: Shaped By Perception Or Reality?, Hannah Q. Young

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Throughout the last fifty years, Turkish-EU relations have fluctuated between positive to completely suspended, though one factor has remained consistent: the European Union’s hesitation to grant Turkey full membership. While some EU member countries justify barring Turkey from their ranks for a multitude of institutional, economic, and security reasons, similar issues have been overlooked in the past when accepting the membership bids of countries such as Spain, Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria. Why has Turkey in particular faced such sustained opposition from EU citizens? Is this opposition based on misinformed perceptions or an actual “clash” of cultures between the EU and …

The Continental Approach To Climate Change: An Analysis Of The European Union’S Emissions Trading System, Jacob P. Wellman

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

The European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) stands as a model for managing a changing climate in a complicated international environment. As it enters its Phase III period of auctioning emissions permits, an understanding of players and their performance is essential to evaluating the success of the emissions market. Concerns that wealthy countries will purchase permits, rather than reduce their real emissions, have led to skepticism about the system’s potential for success. In this study, I examine ambition exhibited by countries in using less than maximum allowable levels of offsets to achieve Phase II reduction requirements. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative …

The External Action Service And Its Effect On The Cohesion Of Eu Foreign Policy, Timothy Stretton

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This study is designed to evaluate the European External Action Service (EEAS) by analyzing its effectiveness in achieving a greater level of cohesion amongst European Union (EU) member states. The research examines voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) by EU member states between 2003 and 2012. This study uses each committee of the UNGA, as a variable to determine voting patterns on specific policy areas. This paper includes the enlargements of 2004 and 2007, while also extending the data collection up to the most recent completed session of the UNGA. The years 2009, 2011, and 2012 are …

The Hour Of The Regions: An Analysis Of The State Of Governance In The European Union, Shaniqua L. Singleton

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

As the European Union (EU) has expanded and delved into new policy areas, the need for cooperation among local, national, and supranational actors has become evident. Scholars have characterized this new wave of EU and regional cooperation as multilevel governance. However, the exact role of regional entities remains a hotly contested issue. This paper analyzes the current state of regional government participation in the EU. I argue that despite its initial fame in the late nineties, multilevel governance is not a viable description of the type of governance seen in today’s EU. Instead, I show that governance in the EU …

Transatlantic Cooperation In Financial Regulation Post-2008, Eytan Schindelhaim

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This paper attempts to explain the international policy consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis by comparing the regulatory response in Europe to that in the United States. Specifically, it accounts for the level of cooperation between the two jurisdictions in their efforts to improve oversight of the financial system. The paper is concerned primarily with the regulatory laws, agreements, and frameworks enacted since 2008, as efforts to improve financial regulation are ongoing and only starting to reach the implementation phases. Still, implementation plays a meaningful role in the analysis, as variation in implementation capacity among jurisdictions often shapes the …

Market Integration, Soccer, And The Eu: Changes In The Game’S Core Territories, John Y. Ray

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This paper uses soccer as a lens to look at governance structures and how they affect labor markets and economic outcomes in major European countries. It looks at three different models of soccer governance: “coordinated,” “liberal,” and “neutral,” found in the five major European soccer leagues (England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France) and suggests that coordinated structures may have a comparative advantage over liberal structures.

The Eu And The Rights Of The Roma: How Could The Eu Have Changed The French Repatriation Program Of 2010?, Julia M. Markham-Cameron

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

In August of 2010, the French government began a program of deporting those Roma who lived within the country. Under European Union (EU) law, mass expulsions based on ethnicity are forbidden, as are mass examinations of peoples as opposed to individual assessments in the case of a crime. However, in the spirit of egalitarianism, France does not acknowledge the idea of racial or ethnic minorities. Instead, they have reframed the non- French Roma as a group engaged in criminal activity following Italy’s “security package” of 2008, which described ‘nomads’ as a national security threat and created legislation leading to expulsions …

Diverging Paths: Economic Integration In The Eu And Asean, Zoë Bollinger

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

The European Union (EU) represents a quintessential example of regional economic integration, but not the sole case meriting consideration. This paper uses a comparative regional approach to analyze economic integration in the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Excluding colonialism’s role in Asian regionalism, the EU and ASEAN had similar roots and goals for economic integration including creating stability in a post war era, gaining a stronger collective voice, and fostering economic growth. However, despite similar foundations their trajectories towards integration diverged. This paper identifies key factors influencing how these polities have integrated markets including institutional structure …

Csdp And Nato: Rethinking The Transatlantic Security Relationship, Pia Bhathal

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This paper explores the European Union’s (EU) security relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United States (US) through the framework of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP). Skeptics have decried the rise of CSDP as a new security pillar, arguing that it is an attempt to balance against NATO and the US. I argue that this criticism is false. A comparison of two CSDP military operations, European Union Force Chad/CAR (EUFOR Tchad/RCA) and European Union Force Althea (EUFOR Althea), shows that operational success is heavily dependent on the EU’s ability to use NATO assets through …

Foreword, David M. Andrews

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Seeking Common Ground While Keeping Differences: “Using The Case Of Cross-Strait Relations As A Case”, Charles Chong-Han Wu

Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies

For the past decade, the “joint democracy produces peace” theory has received substantial attention. Evidence has confirmed that democracies rarely, if ever, engage in large-scale conflicts with each other. However, there is a lack of specific information regarding the mixed dyads (democracies and non-democracies), especially when we attempt to study their peace scenarios. Hence, some other international relations scholars proclaim that even though the political structures may be different between democracies and non-democracies, sharing similar interests provide certain strong incentives for states to behave peacefully. Regime types may be influential, but under the mixed dyads scenario, states’ vital interests have …

Sovereignty And Intervention In The Middle East: From The Fall Of The Ottoman Empire To The Arab Spring, Raslan Ibrahim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research provides an institutional explanation of the practices of external intervention in the Arab state system from the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 to the Arab Spring.

My explanation consists of two institutional variables: sovereignty and inter-state borders. I examine the changes in regional and international norms of sovereignty and their impact on the practices of external intervention in the Arab state system. I also examine the impact of the level of institutionalization of inter-state borders in the Arab World on the practices of external intervention. I argue that changes in regional and international norms of sovereignty …

Table Of Contents

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Religiosity And Its Impact On Individual Support For Welfare Spending Over Time, John P. Adams Ii

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

In this paper, I will argue that individual preferences toward religion have a significant relationship with an individual’s level of support for welfare spending. Specifically, this research finds that as religiosity increases support for welfare spending decreases. This assessment is reached through Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions using the World Values Survey (WVS). Furthermore it looks to address the potential for a temporal pattern that results from these preferences. The objective of this work is to not only establish the relationship between these two individual preferences but to also illustrate the implication they may have on federal policy toward welfare …

European Integration And Anti-Money Laundering Cooperation, Allison Blauvelt

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This paper compares European Union anti-money laundering (AML) efforts with international efforts in scope and intensity through an analysis of the timeline of AML cooperation in Europe from 1980 to 2012, showing the creation or adoption date for relevant organizations and legislation, referred to as actions. The actors include United Nations bodies, the Financial Action Task Force, the Council of Europe, and European Union bodies. This paper also comments on the utility of different European Union (EU) integration theories in explaining the patterns in cooperation. The key finding of this paper is that international AML cooperation operates in waves, with …

The Politics And Future Of Carbon Cap-And-Trade: Lessons From The European Union, Alice H. Chang

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Economists and policy analysts recognize a well-designed cap-and-trade scheme as the premier approach to effectively reduce carbon emissions. However, politics is bound to play a major role in the policymaking process—more so with carbon dioxide emissions than other pollutants like sulfur dioxide. This paper examines the political climate in which the major trading scheme in the European Union was proposed in order to explore how politics affects the programs’ environmental integrity and ultimate policy outcome. Based on an analysis of the EU’s program, many pieces need to align within the political landscape for a cap-and-trade system to pass the policymaking …

The Political Hindrances In Solving The European Sovereign Debt Crisis, C. Cole Fairbanks

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Once revered as a progressive supranational success story, the European Union now faces excessive public debt, unemployment, and stagnation partly due to its flawed institutional design. This has become apparent in southern Eurozone countries like Portugal and Greece, which continue to suffer from strict austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund, European Commission, and European Central Bank (Troika). This report examines the politics behind the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, including the rise of Eurosceptic populist parties. Furthermore, it analyzes austerity in southern Europe, the ‘moral hazard’ argument, and the German government’s reluctance to lead Europe out the crisis. This …

No Light At The End Of The Tunnel: Ideological And Systematic Causes Of Spain's Economic Paralysis, Taylor S. Shippen

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Since 2008, Spain’s economy has suffered from an unemployment crisis. In response, voters elevated the Partido Popular (PP) to power in 2011 after becoming frustrated with the Partido Socialista Obrero Español’s (PSOE) lack of effective action. However, since the election of 2011, very little has changed in Spain’s stagnant economy. Unemployment remains high despite initially promising reforms in Spain’s labor market and a bailout for Spain’s larger banks in 2012 has done little to bring foreign investment back into the country. In this paper, I contend that the PP’s timid response to the unemployment crisis is the result of a …

Expectations And Reality: Opinion Of The European Union In Ukraine, Andrew J. Zahuranec

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

The internet has had a profound impact on how political scientists understand social movements. Using websites like Facebook and Twitter, demonstrators are able to share and organize their ideas, to develop political strategies, and recruit supporters. Activists communicate with one another and these messages can be analyzed to find patterns in how social movements frame themselves in reaction to current events. In short, the internet has an unprecedented capacity to show how political groups form. By examining posts on social media websites, this paper will assess the motivations of demonstrators involved in the Euromaidan protests and determine the movement’s ultimate …

Explaining The Perseverance Of "Independence In Europe": Strategic Reinforcements Of Minority Nationalist Pro-Europeanism, Judith Sijstermans

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

In the 1980’s minority nationalist parties adopted a policy of “independence in Europe.” Paradoxically, the policy simultaneously advocated conceding powers to a supranational body and taking back powers from the state. EU regional development programs initially spurred these pro-European policies, but these programs have since failed. Given the EU incentives, why do minority nationalist parties remain pro-European? I test a bottom-up, party political theory and use the British case studies of the Scottish National Party and the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru. I argue that these parties have remained pro-European because they are small oppositional parties. As small oppositional parties, …

Going Mobile: Political Careers And Institutional Power In The European Commission, Zachary Arace

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

The European Commission is arguably the most powerful component of today’s European Union, yet little is understood about who actually comprises the Commission and how they get to Brussels. Scholars have thus far focused on piecemeal studies of backgrounds of Commissioners, legislative approaches to Commission recruitment, or spatial models of multilevel governance systems (among others). In contrast, this paper takes a comprehensive approach to understanding paths to the Commission. To support this approach, a large-N data set of both institutional and personal (i.e., biographies and career histories) data of all Commissioners appointed since 2010 is constructed. This data set is …

Constructing Fortress Europe: Third Country Nationals As Unwelcome Guests, Robertus Anders

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Ever since the introduction of the EU’s four freedoms, EU citizens have been promised the freedom to move freely within the confines of the EU. As the EU’s population expanded through enlargement, in conjunction with growing pressure on labor market, wages and employment, European public attitudes toward immigration seem to become more polarized. Thus, immigration, especially that of the admittance of non-EU third-country nationals, may be rendered as a highly contested issue within Europe’s two-level systems. However, what is happening inside the EU, in terms of intra-EU immigration, is rarely considered within such contestation. This paper plans to address this …

Reconciliation And The Rule Of Law: The Changing Role Of International War Crimes Tribunals, Oriana Lavilla

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This paper explores the relationship between international war crimes tribunals and reconciliation in post-conflict societies. The aim of the present study was to examine how the role of international war crimes tribunals has changed in the peacebuilding process since the early years after World War II. Due to the evolving nature of international law and the international criminal legal system, international tribunals have become increasingly recognized as an integral component of peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was the first international tribunal with a mandate to contribute to international peace and security. The …

Feuds Of A Thousand Years: Explaining Europe Via The World System, Hans Hubbard

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

This paper argues for a more comprehensive study of the European Union that includes consideration, not only of socio-economic and political processes, but also of changing conceptualisations of identity, governance and democratic legitimacy. It argues for a re-examination of traditional narratives that frame the European Union as a response to the cruelties of the Second World War. Several key paradoxes in European history cannot be satisfactorily accounted for through purely intra-European processes: the European idea’s pre-dating the Second World War; the lack of a strong impulse for unified defence; the UK’s late membership and euroscepticism; the desire for a closed-off …

Foreword

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.