International Relations Commons^™

Introduction To The Jervis Forum Roundtable Of Review Essays On Mark Kramer, The Fate Of The Soviet Bloc’S Military Alliance: Reform, Adaptation, And Collapse Of The Warsaw Pact, 1985–1991, Cynthia A. Roberts

Publications and Research

This introduction frames a Jervis Forum roundtable of review essays on Mark Kramer’s study of the final years of the Warsaw Pact and situates the book within broader scholarship on the end of the Cold War. It examines Kramer’s archivally- grounded argument that the alliance’s collapse was not predetermined but followed from a consequential Soviet policy shift under Mikhail Gorbachev, particularly the decision to renounce military intervention to preserve communist regimes in Eastern Europe. This introduction considers changes in Soviet military doctrine, civil-military relations, arms-control priorities, and Moscow’s effort to transform rather than abolish the alliance. It also situates Kramer’s …

Digital Diplomacy And Activism: Sustaining Institutional Legacy Through State-Proxy Discursive Competition In The Aftermath Of The Usaid 2025 Suspension, Maryam Alaa Elprince

Capstone and Graduation Projects

This study examines how the 2025 suspension of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) transformed the arena of U.S. foreign-aid diplomacy by eliminating the agency’s operational capacity and erasing its digital presence, thereby redistributing discursive authority across a fragmented communicative field. The research aims to determine how diplomacy adapts when a bilateral institution central to American soft power is dismantled through top-down decision, and whether discursive power exercised online can extend institutional relevance and legitimacy beyond structural collapse. Using an interpretivist qualitative design that combines digital-forensic reconstruction, document-based content analysis, and elite interviews  with top ranking officials, the …

Vacuum Wars: The Belt & Road Initiative’S Rise In The Arab League, Corabeth R. Pierce

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The world has shifted and changed in the last decade, resulting in a new world order. The Middle East and North Africa region houses the Arab League, which has drawn the attention of several states throughout the world. China has shown particular interest in the region since its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was first created in 2013. The BRI demonstrates how China has become more involved in the region and that these Arab states are more interested in what China has to offer compared to other countries. With the United States developing more nationalist policies, the European Union facing …

Monetary Sovereignty In Peril? Cryptocurrencies, Capital Controls And Exchange-Rate Volatility: A Quantitative Global Analysis, Mckeown Boadi Owusu

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines whether the rise of cryptocurrencies affects the constraints states face in exercising monetary sovereignty, specifically in stabilizing their currencies. The analysis tests two hypotheses: first, that higher levels of cryptocurrency interests are associated with greater exchange-rate volatility; and second, that this relationship is stronger in countries with more stringent capital-flow management measures. Drawing on a panel dataset of country–month observations across 46 countries from 2017 to 2024, The results provide no consistent evidence that cryptocurrency interest is directly associated with higher exchange-rate volatility. Similarly, the interaction between cryptocurrency interest and capital controls remains insignificant across all models, …

Missionary Body Politics: Physical Education In West China, 1905-1950, Cory Willmott

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Republican Era China saw a radical transformation in Chinese physical culture as it aimed to compete in the global geopolitics of nation-states. Employing an historical ethnographic approach, this paper outlines how the unique conditions of Sichuanese warlordism and secret societies affected missionary relations with the Guomindang (GMD) as they implemented increasingly militarized physical education programs. Before the 1928 GMD consolidation of power, missionaries and GMD educators aligned with the YM/ WCA in physical education programs. After the GMD moved their headquarters to Chongqing in 1938, relations soured between the GMD and the Sichuan missionaries. Although the latter had been the …

Transboundary Water Dependence And State Legitimacy In Iraq: Assessing The Political Consequences Of Iraq's Vulnerability To Upstream Water Control By Türkiye, Nawras Hamanoori

SSRC Faculty Publications

Iraq’s dependence on transboundary water resources is an important but underexamined dimension of ‎its domestic governance challenges. As a downstream state in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, Iraq relies ‎substantially on flows originating beyond its borders. This article examines how transboundary water ‎dependence can pressure state legitimacy in Iraq. Using a theory-guided qualitative case-study ‎approach, it draws on academic scholarship, institutional data, policy documents, and public-opinion ‎evidence. The analysis integrates hydro-hegemony, asymmetrical interdependence, environmental ‎security, and performance-based legitimacy. It finds that upstream water asymmetry does not ‎independently determine legitimacy outcomes. Rather, it interacts with domestic institutional ‎fragmentation, weak infrastructure, water pollution, salinity, …

Transformed, Not Resolved: Ethnic Federalism And The Politics Of Conflict In Ethiopia, Melayae L. Houser

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis investigates whether Ethiopia's system of ethnic federalism resolved the longstanding conflicts that have characterized the country's political history or instead transformed them into new manifestations. Introduced in 1991 after the collapse of the Derg regime, ethnic federalism reorganized Ethiopia into ethnically defined regional states and granted groups constitutional rights to self-governance and self-determination. The system aimed to address historical grievances stemming from decades of centralized, exclusionary governance.

Employing a four-part analytical framework, this thesis analyzes two case studies: the Tigray War of 2020–2022 and the Oromia-Somali border conflict, to argue that ethnic federalism did not resolve Ethiopia's underlying …

From Endowment To Extraction: Critical Mineral Governance And Supply-Chain Integration In The Arctic, Charles Bollwerk

CMC Senior Theses

Annexing Greenland, making Canada the 51st State – what’s it all about? Critical minerals are often treated as a geological and national security problem that can be fixed through strength and coercion. This thesis argues that, in the Arctic, governance structures are what determine whether critical mineral wealth becomes strategically useful. Through a comparative qualitative analysis of Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia, and the Nordic countries, it examines what drives variation in critical mineral extraction and supply-chain integration across Arctic states, an especially relevant topic as Western states seek to reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains. The analysis applies four variables …

Revenge Of The Interceptors? The Dod, Congress, And The Return Of Space-Based Missile Defense During Trump 45, Chad Mcelroy

CMC Senior Theses

The initiation of the Golden Dome for America program has brought space-based missile defense (SBMD) to the forefront of American national security policy and rekindled debates that had laid dormant since the administration of President Ronald Reagan. How, forty-two years after President Reagan first proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, did SBMD return as a national priority? In lieu of public information about the ongoing Golden Dome initiative, this thesis explores the first Trump administration, otherwise known as Trump 45, in order to analyze the development of SBMD proposals by its proponents in Congress and the Department of Defense. I used …

No Coup, No Conscience: Coup-Proofing In The Armenian Genocide, Rachel Svoyskiy

CMC Senior Theses

The Armenian Genocide functioned as a form of coup-proofing under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Existing scholarship emphasizes nationalism, wartime radicalization, and security dilemmas, but does not fully account for why the military complied, why dissenters were removed, or how Armenian property became tied to political loyalty. Applying Hicham Bou Nassif’s framework of coup-proofing, this study examines four tactics the CUP used to secure military obedience while carrying out mass violence. First, the regime framed Armenians as an existential threat to align the officer corps ideologically with the state. Second, it promoted the material interests of military and …

A Reevaluation Of South Korea’S Economic Rise: The Defense Industrial Base, Timothy Lee

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to reexamine how the Republic of Korea (ROK) was able to rise from one of the world's poorest economies after the Korean War to a leading international defense exporter today. Existing development theories—such as dependency theory, export-led industrialization, and world-systems theory—each offer partial explanations but none fully accounts for the ROK's rapid economic growth. To address this gap, the paper analyzes U.S. foreign aid data, U.S. national security documents, and the economic data of the ROK’s chaebols, family-owned business conglomerates, to reevaluate two key variables: the United States' strategic imperative to contain communism during the Cold War, …

The Vestiges Of The German Democratic Republic: Memory Politics And Xenophobia In Former East Germany, Diana Zhou

CMC Senior Theses

From the 2015 migration influx onward, xenophobic and nationalist sentiments permeated Germany’s national political discourse. The former socialist territories in eastern Germany have proven particularly susceptible to far-right, anti-immigration, and anti-integration rhetoric. This thesis explores the mnemonic foundations of xenophobic sentiments in former East German states, tracing the development of an antifascist yet ethnically nationalist mnemonic framework to the state-sanctioned myths and invented traditions of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As the loss of a collective GDR identity produced a reactionary rehabilitation of this framework post-unification, the racial and ethnic “other” — migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees — became constructed …

Lessons Unlearned: Cultural Competence And The Limits Of U.S. Army Doctrine In Iraq And Afghanistan, Kylie W. Ha

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how the absence of comprehensive cultural and linguistic competence within U.S. Army doctrine contributed to operational and ethical failures during the wars in Iraq (2003–2011) and Afghanistan (2001–2021). It focuses on the gap between doctrinal recognition of culture and language and the failure to institutionalize these elements as measurable, force-wide competencies. The thesis analyzes doctrinal publications spanning the period from 2001 to 2014 and finds that, while these publications increasingly acknowledged the importance of cultural awareness, language, and local context—particularly in counterinsurgency operations—these elements were not embedded as standardized requirements across training, planning, or evaluation. Iraq and …

Eurovision As A Platform For Cultural Diplomacy In Times Of Conflict, Lucy Meza

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how states utilize the Eurovision Song Contest as a platform for soft power, focusing on the conditions under which cultural performance translates into reputational gains. Drawing on Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power, Biasioli’s theory of songwashing, Zamorano’s typology of cultural diplomacy, Anholt’s competitive identity framework, and Feklyunina’s analysis of identity and narrative, it argues that Eurovision’s effectiveness as a soft power platform is fundamentally contingent on the alignment between a state’s cultural narrative and dominant international perceptions of its legitimacy. Through a qualitative comparative case study approach, the thesis examines two nations whose Eurovision participation during …

The Jamaica That Dreams: A Normative Application Of Developmental Theory, Tamoy Pitt

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines Jamaica’s persistent underdevelopment through Martha Nussbaum's normative application of the capabilities approach as per her conception in Creating Capabilities. Through this approach, the paper will argue that Jamaica’s underdevelopment is a result of the failure of its domestic institutions to provide all citizens with the substantive freedoms and capabilities necessary to live lives of dignity. Originally detailed by Amartya Sen in his book Development as Freedom, the capabilities approach posits freedom as both the means and ends to development while rejecting contemporary approaches to development such as GDP, Utilitarianism, or Rawlsian resource-based approaches as insufficient frameworks for …

Immigration Policy Priorities In The Carter And Reagan Administrations, Sulgi Kim

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

Historically, immigration policy has been important for the United States. It has shaped the nation’s economy, demographics, and political landscape. In each presidential administration, immigration has been addressed differently, shaped by a combination of political, economic, and international factors. While scholars such as Higham (1956), Zolberg (2008), and Pineau and Waters (2016) have examined the events leading up to and the effect of various immigration policies, the literature has not focused on a critical actor in immigration policy: the president. This thesis asks what factors shaped the immigration policy priorities of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan? This study used …

Framing The War On Terror: Media Narratives And U.S. Foreign Policy After 9/11, Neva Essex

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

The media plays an essential role in developing an informed public and the shaping of information. Foreign policy and the coverage of the U.S. movements abroad drastically changed with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This paper seeks to examine the ways in which media coverage of presidential rhetoric in regard to the U.S. response to terrorism changed over the course of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. With the use of qualitative narrative analysis of print news media sources and official statements made from the White House, this paper will identify the patterns and changes which occurred over the …

Strategic Reconsolidation Of U.S. Foreign Policy, Kaden J. Kosniewski

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Is the United States' global hegemony sustainable if its society continues to decline? It is undeniable that global U.S. power is declining as a plethora of internal crises weaken the country from the inside out. Over many years, the U.S. has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars overseas to garrison and develop many countries, while millions of its citizens struggle weekly to maintain a respectable quality of life. The cries of injustice from the American people grow louder as the Pax Americana weakens under internal and external pressures. This research examines the rationale and advantages of the United States reorienting its …

News Media Sentiment Toward Chinese Ai: A Comparative Analysis With Belt And Road Initiative Involvement And Public Opinion On China, Asya Vaisberg

Pomona Senior Theses

This study evaluates different countries' news media’s sentiment towards Chinese AI, between May 2023 and May 2024, by using Microsoft Azure NLP Sentiment Analysis. The results are then compared with the country’s public opinion on China and its involvement in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For this study 12 countries have been selected which are USA, Australia, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, Romania, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Philippines, Brazil, and Egypt. For each one, GNews Application Programming Interface (API), which has access to more than 60,000 global news sources, was used to aggregate relevant news articles based on queried keywords. The collected …

Elite Perceptions Of The Us’ Commitment To Nato After Russia’S Invasion Of Ukraine: “The Direction Of Travel Is Clear”, Jason W. Davidson

Political Science & International Affairs Articles

This article seeks to explore elite perceptions of the US’ commitment to NATO in the leadup to the 2024 election. It presents findings from ninety-two interviews from 2023 and 2024 with policymakers and analysts from six leading NATO allies. Analysis of the interviews demonstrates that only roughly half of interviewees were concerned with the US’ future commitment to NATO. The bulk of the article seeks to make sense of the variety of responses by categorizing them according to five different worldviews. A domestic political worldview provides an explanation for why some elites were concerned with the prospect of Donald Trump’s …

Assessing The Feasibility Of Small Modular Reactor Deployment On Islands In Southeast Asia And The Pacific, Hayden C. Beauchemin

CMC Senior Theses

This study looks at the feasibility of using Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) to provide island microgrids in Southeast Asia and the Pacific with clean, reliable electricity. SMRs are compared to current methods of electricity generation, namely diesel generators, as well as to renewable alternatives. Policymakers will face geopolitical, technical, economic, and domestic political challenges to SMR deployment. The key considerations of SMRs, including economic viability, safety approaches, public attitudes, and diplomatic relations are considered, and solutions are identified for issues such as financing and nuclear waste disposal. The analysis reinforces the conclusion that SMR deployment is feasible for islands in …

Cultural Dissonance: Western Hierarchical Structures In Unesco’S Representative List Of The Intangible Cultural Heritage Of Humanity, Chumnan J. Sangsvang Iii

CMC Senior Theses

This paper explores how the heritage ideologies of the academic and legal traditions of the “West” have exerted influence over the modern conception of heritage in order to fulfill their own ideas of value. It uses a combination of anthropological theory, ethnographic research, and international law to analyze this phenomenon, first identifying the theory and history behind culture, heritage, and civilization in international law. The paper then goes on to analyze UNESCO’s ICH designation and the consequences of Western heritage construction from 4 case studies, each variably removed from the West: Cases from Greece, Uruguay, Malawi, and Tonga will identify …

Moving The Goalposts: Saudi Arabia, Football, And The Changing Rules Of Global Legitimacy, Sanskriti S. Kumar

CMC Senior Theses

Most commentary on Gulf state sports investment concludes that sportswashing fails: Saudi Arabia's favorability ratings remain low, its human rights situation has deteriorated, and Western public opinion shows no measurable improvement. This thesis argues that this conclusion applies the wrong standard. Asking whether Saudi Arabia has become more admired misses the more consequential question of whether it has become more accepted, and treating those two outcomes as equivalent produces misleading results. This thesis develops an original Normalization-Attraction Framework to evaluate whether the Saudi Public Investment Fund's October 2021 acquisition of Newcastle United Football Club has generated measurable political returns. The …

From Collective Punishment To Collective Action, Samuel N. Johnson-Saeger

CMC Senior Theses

Regime change may be sought in two primary ways, absent a turn to internal or external violence: through nonviolent resistance, from within, and sanctions, from abroad. This paper is about how those two pathways are intertwined. I challenge two different strands of the existing literature. First, I show that Liou et al. (2022)'s finding that sanctions increase the predicted probability of nonviolent resistance movement progress is subject to substantial upward bias from country heterogeneity. Incorporating country fixed effects, I show that sanctions, on average, have no statistically significant effect on resistance outcomes. Second, I challenge Chenoweth and Stephan (2008)'s argument …

Sinking City To Breakthrough City: A Political Analysis And Evaluation Of Indonesia's Capital City Relocation From Jakarta To Nusantara, Yuji Jones

CMC Senior Theses

This paper analyzes Indonesia’s national decision to move its capital city from Jakarta to Nusantara. Indonesia is facing a dire catastrophe in its most populous city. The land surrounding Jakarta is sinking, and without significant mitigation efforts, the streets will be submerged by 2045. This is a slow-motion disaster coming for Indonesia and Jakarta. This left the country with a crucial decision: to save the capital city. In response to this environmental crisis, Indonesia’s government has committed to making a nationwide and ambitious decision to move the capital to Nusantara, a smaller city bustling with tropical forests 1,000 kilometers away, …

Politics Of A Silent Pandemic: Antimicrobial Resistance And State Capacity In India And Nigeria, Mia Kelly

CMC Senior Theses

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) has emerged as one of the most pressing yet widely underestimated health threats of the 21st century; this thesis explores the potentially devastating global impact of this “silent pandemic”, exposing how deeply health outcomes depend on political choices, regulatory capacity, and economic constraints. Although the danger of spreading drug-resistant pathogens is now widely acknowledged in both the scientific and political communities, states differ in their abilities to contain the issue, with low- and middle-income countries facing the greatest obstacles to national action plan implementation. This thesis investigates these disparities through a comparison of India and Nigeria, two …

Keeping America Ahead: The Global Chip Conundrum, Ethan Chen

CMC Senior Theses

Semiconductors underpin nearly every aspect of modern economic, military, and technological power. Yet while the United States pioneered chip innovation and design, it now heavily depends on foreign manufacturing, particularly Taiwan and the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company who produce more than 90% of the world’s leading edge chips. This thesis investigates how the U.S. lost its fabrication leadership, what risks its current dependence creates, and what strategies can most effectively restore domestic capacity and resilience in both the short term and long term. By going through historical analysis of industrial development, recent policy evaluation such as export controls and the …

Shifting Tide: A Comparative Analysis Of News Coverage Of The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict, Devon Skufca, Gloria S. Vaquera

2026 Faculty Bibliography

Internationally, the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine has been widely reported for years in mass media. Most recently, the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, again focused international attention on this region. Examining how this conflict has been reported starting October 2023 and for the subsequent eight months provides an opportunity to examine the framing of these events. This comparative study examines two newspapers of record, one from the United States (a known ally of Israel) and the other from Ireland, often seen as more sympathetic toward Palestinian statehood. A total of 179 articles from the New York …

Finding Aid For The James Wilford Garner Collection (Mum00197)

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

James Wilford Garner (1871-1938) was a University of Illinois political science professor and a highly respected scholar of international law who accepted numerous speaking engagements domestically and across the world.  The collection contains his library of pamphlets as well as correspondence, speeches, and material related to his various research interests.

Dokdo/Takeshima And Maritime Delimitation Between The Republic Of Korea And Japan: A Comment On Icj Dispute Resolution, Katherine Angell

Celebrating WCL Student Authors

The Republic of Korea (Korea) should agree to submit the issue of sovereignty over Dokdo/Takeshima and the issue of maritime delimitation in the East Sea/Sea of Japan to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) because the ICJ is likely to decide that Dokdo/Takeshima is Korean territory and the tensions in the East Sea/Sea of Japan can be resolved to allow further cooperation between the two nations. The ICJ is the primary avenue for peacefully resolving territorial and maritime delimitation disputes between nations, and the ICJ has developed a substantial body of case law analyzing these issues. The ICJ considers various …