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Articles 1 - 30 of 33
Full-Text Articles in Defense and Security Studies
The Attention Safeguard Models: Governing Digital Harm Without Restricting Lawful Speech, Delante Clark
The Attention Safeguard Models: Governing Digital Harm Without Restricting Lawful Speech, Delante Clark
Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works
Digital platforms increasingly govern contemporary social, civic, and psychological life through systems optimized for attention capture, amplification, and monetization. While lawful expression remains protected under the First Amendment, the infrastructural mechanisms that determine how speech circulates have produced a range of attention‑based harms, including cyberbullying, engagement farming, compulsive doom scrolling, emotional dysregulation, and civic polarization. This research paper introduces the Attentional Safeguards Model (ASM), coined and formalized by Delante Clark, as a novel governance framework that mitigates such harms by regulating systems of amplification rather than restricting expression itself. Building on attention economy theory, technological mediation, constitutional free‑speech doctrine, …
Solving The National Security Threat Of The United States Drug Crisis, Anna B. Freehafer
Solving The National Security Threat Of The United States Drug Crisis, Anna B. Freehafer
Honors Undergraduate Theses
This thesis analyzes the current drug crisis in the United States with the intention of forming a sound National Security Report and Strategy to equip current and future administrations with the necessary tools and information to adapt to the modern crisis. The number of drug induced and related deaths are rising in the U.S., which arguably is cause for alarm at the federal level. With the country divided on how to properly attack this crisis, which affects hundreds of thousands of lives across the nation, this thesis aims to provide a solution to a drug crisis that is unlike any …
Threats To The United States, Elyssa R. Barna
Threats To The United States, Elyssa R. Barna
Honors Undergraduate Theses
This research goes over various threats that the United States may deal with in the future, how severe they may be, and what policy implications and further research could be done. This research is done by case studies, looking into different previous threats to the United States including the Cold War, the September 11th, 2001, attacks, the anti-western or jihadist terrorist groups, and the usage of biological and chemical weapons in terrorist attacks. After detailing the changes that have occurred in recent times, such as the evolution of technology and social media, it is explained how this can influence terrorism …
Peacekeeping For Peace: Effectiveness And Impacts, Santosh Sapkota
Peacekeeping For Peace: Effectiveness And Impacts, Santosh Sapkota
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
This dissertation examines three aspects of peacekeeping research within the overall framework of peacekeeping effectiveness and its impacts on troop-contributing countries (TCC). This dissertation comprises three different papers that employ three different methodological approaches. The first paper investigates why the military failed to achieve its primary mandate of the protection of civilians (POC) in the wake of continued killings of civilians despite the presence of peacekeepers. The general expectation from the military is to contain or eliminate violent incidents and civilian deaths in areas of responsibility (AOR). Utilizing a case study of Beni, DRC —a highly violent and militarized area …
Exploring Regional Dynamics: States, International Civil Society, And Regional Interstate Cooperation, Ozgur Kayaalp
Exploring Regional Dynamics: States, International Civil Society, And Regional Interstate Cooperation, Ozgur Kayaalp
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Regional cooperation is widely acknowledged as a crucial element in fostering peace and prosperity among nations, yet few systematic studies have investigated the forces that promote and sustain it. This dissertation examines regional cooperation through the lens of states, state-led institutions, and non-state actors. In order to achieve this, the study first aims to undertake a systematic analysis of the correlates associated with regional cooperation, using country pairings to analyze where cooperation takes place. Second, I explore the role of international civil society in promoting regional cooperation. To gauge international civil society, a new dataset on International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) …
Leadership And Military Power – Can A Leadership Approach Provide A Competitive Advantage?, Lawrence E. Skelly Iii
Leadership And Military Power – Can A Leadership Approach Provide A Competitive Advantage?, Lawrence E. Skelly Iii
Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024
Leadership and Military Power – Can a Leadership Approach Provide a Competitive Advantage? When does a military commander's leadership approach give his or her unit a performance advantage? U.S. Army senior leaders have asserted that forces led using the mission command approach will have an edge in future combat. Mission command decentralizes decision-making to empower subordinates to react more successfully and seize battlefield opportunities. American forces have struggled to employ mission command partly because of a lack of understanding of the approach. This study applied two concepts from organizational psychology, empowering leadership and directive leadership, to better define and examine …
Progress In Chaos: Cash Transfers And Women Economic Empowerment Amidst Climate Change And Violent Conflicts In West Africa, Jennifer Obado Joel
Progress In Chaos: Cash Transfers And Women Economic Empowerment Amidst Climate Change And Violent Conflicts In West Africa, Jennifer Obado Joel
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Do cash transfers shift gender norms of economic relations within households and communities during crises? This study explores the effect of social protection programs like cash transfers on women's economic empowerment in contexts where climate change and violent conflicts co-occur. Cash transfers have become a policy of choice for governments and development agencies seeking to alleviate poverty, address economic and political grievances, and build individual and community resilience to climate change. Due to the recent popularity of cash transfers, there needs to be more scholarship on its effect on women's intra-household economic agency and voice in communities. Therefore, this study …
Struggling For Security: The Complexity Of Nato Burden-Sharing, Tad Schnaufer Ii
Struggling For Security: The Complexity Of Nato Burden-Sharing, Tad Schnaufer Ii
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Since the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), US administrations have criticized their European allies for not meeting security burden-sharing goals. This study aims to gain insight into what factors motivate alliance members to contribute to the burden-sharing objectives they have agreed to achieve. From a US perspective, the need for its European allies to reach these goals will allow the United States to shift resources to more pressing strategic challenges like the rise of China. Informed by Mancur Olson's theory of collective action and Glenn Snyder's concept of the security dilemma in alliances, this project tests the …
The Direct And Indirect Effects Of Strategic Displacement On Territorial Control In Conventional Civil War, Jennifer Hudson
The Direct And Indirect Effects Of Strategic Displacement On Territorial Control In Conventional Civil War, Jennifer Hudson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Which strategies contribute towards a belligerent's ability to shift territorial control in its favor more quickly than others? This dissertation advances a theory of territorial control dynamics in conventional civil war that places the civilian population at the center of the analysis. Existing scholarship explaining territorial control in conventional civil war has emphasized the role of relative military capabilities, direct military confrontations aimed at territorial conquest, and the existence of established zones of control, with civilians generally residing in areas clearly dominated by one party or another, not in contested areas. As such, theory holds that this makes the civilian …
Decentralization And Violence, Alexander Norat
Decentralization And Violence, Alexander Norat
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
How does the political environment that a group operates affect whether they engage in terrorism? My research is concerned with how political opportunities, which I conceptualize in terms of political decentralization, affect how groups engage with the state, and whether they will engage in terrorism. Previous research has indicated that decentralization can reduce violence but can pose stability problems in other countries. I hypothesize that states with higher levels of decentralization will have lower levels of violence. I believe this works by allowing minority groups more access to power. Because they have access to political power, there is less incentive …
Trauma, Resilience, And Empowerment: Post-Genocide Experiences Of Yezidi Women, Tutku Ayhan Ergin
Trauma, Resilience, And Empowerment: Post-Genocide Experiences Of Yezidi Women, Tutku Ayhan Ergin
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Under what conditions do women become more resilient and empowered in post conflict settings? Utilizing data from multi site fieldwork in northern Iraq, Germany, and the U.S. involving over 160 in depth interviews, this dissertation addresses this question by studying the experiences of Yezidi women who were subject to genocidal violence by the Islamic State in Iraq in 2014. By adopting an intersectional approach, it contributes to feminist research on post conflict dynamics and suggests that how women cope with trauma and achieve positive changes in their lives depends on a variety of factors. Age, history of sexual violence and …
Between Fighting And Serving: How Existential Motivations Shaped Combat Participation In The Donbas War In Ukraine, Miroslav Shapovalov
Between Fighting And Serving: How Existential Motivations Shaped Combat Participation In The Donbas War In Ukraine, Miroslav Shapovalov
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
The project studies enlistment into Pro-Government Militia groups (or PGMs) in the context of modern armed conflicts. While PGMs as armed groups are getting an increased attention, very little insight has been generated regarding the circumstances under which pro-government combatants choose to join PGMs over the army. I develop survey tools, a survey experiments and a series of semi-structured interviews to study individual-level factors affecting recruitment dynamics in Ukraine, the country that successfully employed PGMs to defend itself against Russian hybrid aggression. The inquiry tests for the role of such factors as trust in the army, emotions, and subjective individual …
Small Intrusions, Powerful Payoff: Shaping Status Relationships Through Interstate Intrusions And Responses, Logan Kerschner
Small Intrusions, Powerful Payoff: Shaping Status Relationships Through Interstate Intrusions And Responses, Logan Kerschner
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Intrusions are the intentional unauthorized violation of a state's sovereign territory or claimed space (e.g., air defense identification zone, exclusive economic zone) by assets controlled by another state. Intrusions are one of the most common military interactions between major powers. Yet, intrusions are poorly understood by security studies scholars. To the extent that they are addressed in the literature, they are usually understood through the lens of coercive signaling. However, most intrusions lack the requisite components for this coercive signaling such as competing political objectives, associated demands, and the necessary risk to demonstrate resolve. As a result, most intrusions are …
An Illusional Nuclear Taboo: Mechanisms Of Domestic Attitudinal Patterns For Extreme Methods Of War, Doreen Horschig
An Illusional Nuclear Taboo: Mechanisms Of Domestic Attitudinal Patterns For Extreme Methods Of War, Doreen Horschig
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
This dissertation studies public attitudes toward nuclear weapons. When do people become more willing to endorse a preemptive nuclear strike against a foreign country? Utilizing theoretical insights from international relations, comparative politics, and social psychology and original experimental survey data from Israel and the U.S., this dissertation aims to answer these questions. Influential strands of scholarship argue that both the public and political elites have internalized anti-nuclear norms. The critics, however, assert that the moral nuclear taboo lacks robustness. The dissertation joins this debate by offering a novel theoretical framework informed by terror management theory (TMT) and suggests that people …
Group Level Cues And The Use Of Force In Domestic And Foreign Policy Contexts, Zlatin Mitkov
Group Level Cues And The Use Of Force In Domestic And Foreign Policy Contexts, Zlatin Mitkov
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
To what extent do elite and social group cues affect the public's willingness to embrace their leader's actions during domestic and international security crises? Studies traditionally have focused on top-down elite cue-driven models to study how the public's attitudes are influenced during international and domestic security crises, largely disregarding the bottom-up effects social peer groups can have on individuals' attitudes. This is problematic as the public is regularly exposed to cue messages from elites and social peer groups, both of which are expected to help determine how successful leaders will be in mobilizing public support on a tactical level. To …
Cute Panda Or Evil Dragon? Market Economy, Conflict Behavior And China's Peaceful Rise, Xiongwei Cao
Cute Panda Or Evil Dragon? Market Economy, Conflict Behavior And China's Peaceful Rise, Xiongwei Cao
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
China has two contrasting images in the West: a cute panda and an evil dragon. In recent years, a near-consensus seems to be forming among policy makers in Washington that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is more of an evil dragon than a cute panda, using "sharp power" to threaten U.S. interests and world peace. The PRC is regarded by the current U.S. administration as a "strategic competitor," and a new Cold War seems to be looming between the world's two largest economies. Is the rise of China destined to cause conflicts or even war? After analyzing the conflict …
Improving Foreign Militaries -- The Effects Of U.S. Military Aid In The Form Of International Military Education And Training Programs, Sandor Fabian
Improving Foreign Militaries -- The Effects Of U.S. Military Aid In The Form Of International Military Education And Training Programs, Sandor Fabian
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Great powers have often sought to achieve their strategic goals through the allocation of military aid. The United States is no exception, as it has frequently used military aid to influence the policies and military capacity of its allies and partners. However, our understanding of the effects of US military aid on the conflict behavior of recipient states - and especially the mechanisms underlying these effects - remains poorly understood. The results of previous studies of U.S. military aid are often contradictory, and are mostly based on over-aggregated, country-level data. In this dissertation, I argue that examining the individual-level effects …
Food, Familiarity, And Forecasting: Modeling Coups With Computational Methods, Joshua Lambert
Food, Familiarity, And Forecasting: Modeling Coups With Computational Methods, Joshua Lambert
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023
Military coups are the most consequential breakdown of civil-military relations. This dissertation contributes to the explanation and prediction of coups through three independent quantitative analyses. First, I argue that food insecurity is an important determinant of coups. The presence of hunger can generate discontent in society and subsequently alter coup plotter opportunities. Furthermore, I show that the presence of chronic hunger can condition the effect of increasing development. While increasing levels of development have been shown to limit coup proclivity, a state experiencing chronic hunger will recognize the fundamental failure of basic needs provision. As development increases, the presence of …
Federal, State And Local Law Enforcement Agency Interoperability Capabilities And Cyber Vulnerabilities, Tyrone Trapnell
Federal, State And Local Law Enforcement Agency Interoperability Capabilities And Cyber Vulnerabilities, Tyrone Trapnell
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The National Data Exchange (N-DEx) System is the central informational hub located at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Its purpose is to provide network subscriptions to all Federal, state and local level law enforcement agencies while increasing information collaboration across all domains. The National Data Exchange users must satisfy the Advanced Permission Requirements, confirming the terms of N-DEx information use, and the Verification Requirement (verifying the completeness, timeliness, accuracy, and relevancy of N-DEx information) through coordination with the record-owning agency (Management, 2018). A network infection model is proposed to simulate the spread impact of various cyber-attacks within Federal, state …
The Causes, Dynamics, And Implications Of Child Soldiering, Christopher Faulkner
The Causes, Dynamics, And Implications Of Child Soldiering, Christopher Faulkner
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Child soldiers continue to be regular participants in modern conflicts in many different parts of the world. This dissertation addresses several interrelated questions about child soldiering employing large-N statistical analyses, process-tracing, and in-depth interviews. First, it asks how foreign state support and the characteristics of these donors influence rebels' recruitment of child soldiers. An important finding is that rebels supported by democratic states are less likely to employ child soldiers. It then investigates the factors and conditions that lead some groups to diversify their demographics in the types of recruits and others to not. Specifically, it considers why a rebel …
Superforecasting Or Snafu: The Forecasting Ability Of The Us Military Officer, David Raugh
Superforecasting Or Snafu: The Forecasting Ability Of The Us Military Officer, David Raugh
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
What is the impact of military institutional tendencies and habits on U.S. Army senior officer forecasting accuracy and how does this forecasting ability shape success in battle? Military leaders plan operations based on the forecasted strengths and vulnerabilities of their adversary. Negative habits, such as limited option development, confirmation bias, doctrinal overreliance, and over-consideration of sunk costs, inhibit effective forecasting. The tempo of the modern battlefield, hierarchical culture, and institutional tendencies of the US Army may promote and reinforce these habits. I surveyed Colonels in US Army War College programs to measure their individual tendencies, levels of education, and accuracy …
Community Responses To Mass Casualty Events: A Mixed Method Approach, Jeffrey Payne
Community Responses To Mass Casualty Events: A Mixed Method Approach, Jeffrey Payne
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores how traits of a mass casualty event and community institutionalization affect how a community demonstrates solidarity after a mass casualty event. A systematic examination of mass casualty events along these lines has not been conducted before. Theoretically, individual helping behaviors like altruism help explain individual involvement in demonstrations of solidarity while solidarity and resilience help in explaining group behaviors. A typology is proposed that breaks up mass casualty events into four different types: terrorism, criminal, weather and accidents. These types of events make up the majority of non-war mass casualty events. Experimentally a sample of students is …
Exogenous Shocks And Political Unrest, Didara Nurmanova
Exogenous Shocks And Political Unrest, Didara Nurmanova
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores the role of exogenous shocks such as economic shocks and natural disasters in producing political unrest in the form of anti-government protests and ethnic riots. It is integrated by three articles, each covering a different topic. The first article argues that economic shocks play a crucial role in protest mobilization in rentier states conditional on weaker repressive capacity or higher taxation. Empirically, it conducts a cross-national study of high resource-dependent states in the period of 1995-2014. The second article contends that there is a variation in the degree to which a country's regions are exposed to economic …
National Security And Political Polarization, Joseph Funderburke
National Security And Political Polarization, Joseph Funderburke
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores how partisan polarization among the political elites (the President and key Members of Congress) impacts national security decision-making. The research examines the relationship over time beginning at the start of the Cold War through 2014. In doing so, the research tests several hypotheses to determine the nature of the relationship and what the implications might be for future U.S. national security policy-making. There are three different approaches used in the research centered on the same theory of partisan polarization. The first approach examines changes in the level of polarization and defense budgets each year. The second explores …
Assessment Of Information Security Culture In Higher Education, Henry Glaspie
Assessment Of Information Security Culture In Higher Education, Henry Glaspie
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Information security programs are instituted by organizations to provide guidance to their users who handle their data and systems. The main goal of these programs is to protect the organization's information assets through the creation and cultivation of a positive information security culture within the organization. As the collection and use of data expands in all economic sectors, the threat of data breach due to human error increases. Employee's behavior towards information security is influenced by the organizations information security programs and the overall information security culture. This study examines the human factors of an information security program and their …
A Content Analysis Of Jihadist Magazines: Theoretical Perspectives, Catalina M. Udani
A Content Analysis Of Jihadist Magazines: Theoretical Perspectives, Catalina M. Udani
Honors Undergraduate Theses
During its violent spread across the Middle East, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) amassed both a local and international following in large part due to its usage of emergent media distribution. Beginning in 2014, ISIS’s Ministry of Media published an English-language magazine, Dabiq, disseminating its issues through online platforms. Dabiq and its successor Rumiyah both serve as propagandistic recruitment material for ISIS’s international community as well as broadcasting the message of the jihadist movement to ISIS’s enemies. This study analyzed ISIS’s publications using a qualitative content analysis in order to identify jihadist recruitment strategies through the perspectives …
Analysis Of Remote Tripping Command Injection Attacks In Industrial Control Systems Through Statistical And Machine Learning Methods, Charles Timm
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In the past decade, cyber operations have been increasingly utilized to further policy goals of state-sponsored actors to shift the balance of politics and power on a global scale. One of the ways this has been evidenced is through the exploitation of electric grids via cyber means. A remote tripping command injection attack is one of the types of attacks that could have devastating effects on the North American power grid. To better understand these attacks and create detection axioms to both quickly identify and mitigate the effects of a remote tripping command injection attack, a dataset comprised of 128 …
A Case Study Of Veteran And Civilian Student Academic Performance At The University Of Central Florida, Floyd C. Diehl Jr
A Case Study Of Veteran And Civilian Student Academic Performance At The University Of Central Florida, Floyd C. Diehl Jr
Honors Undergraduate Theses
This study seeks to provide a brief overview of academic standards and performance of veterans of the United States military and civilians who attend the University of Central Florida. Whether a student is a veteran or a civilian, he or she must learn how to adapt to the requirements of an academic community in order to be successful in that environment. It may be difficult for some. In able for society to discern the importance of the academic performance of both veterans and civilians alike, research is vital. There are various assumptions about veterans. For example, it can be assumed …
The Conditionality Of Vulnerability: Three Analyses Of Risk And Opportunity In Civil Military Relations, Rebecca Schiel
The Conditionality Of Vulnerability: Three Analyses Of Risk And Opportunity In Civil Military Relations, Rebecca Schiel
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Prior research has not established a clear relationship between democracy and insulation from coups d'etat. I contend that the lack of attention paid to the conditional influences of democracy have resulted in these mixed findings. I posit that insulation from coups occurs at higher levels of economic development and judicial institutional strength in democracies. Further, the vulnerability at low levels of both economic development and judicial institutional strength is significantly greater in democracies than in autocracies. Empirical assessments of 165 states for the years 1950-2012 offer strong support for both arguments. Results from these studies first help to reconcile earlier …
Altruistic Punishment Theory And Inter-Group Violence, Clayton Besaw
Altruistic Punishment Theory And Inter-Group Violence, Clayton Besaw
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores the role of altruistic punishment, the act of punishing outsiders perceived to harm members of one's group at a personal cost, in explaining individual motivations to participate in inter-group violence. It first develops a social theory of this type punishment. This theory argues that an egalitarian social logic may be key to understanding motivations of parochial altruism, and that one's social environment may influence thresholds of anger needed to induce punishment behavior. Empirically, it conducts two survey-experimental studies. The first experiment utilizes subject partisan identity in the context of American politics and hypothetical acts of violence to …