Peace and Conflict Studies Commons^™

Coalition Of The Ending: Why States Withdraw From International Military Coalitions, Weiss Mehrabi

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation examines the causes and conditions motivating states to discontinue supporting an ongoing military coalition operation and prematurely abandon their partners. In exploring coalition defection through a three-article dissertation, I advance three separate theoretical arguments focusing on three levels of analysis.

The first article contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of political regime types on coalition abandonment during interstate wars. I argue that anocracies are dependable wartime partners and will not abandon coalition warfare earlier than autocracies and democracies. I advance two arguments for the theory of anocratic reliability. First, leaders of mixed regimes expect severe post-defeat …

Open Secrets, Congressional Oversight, And The Geopolitics Of The Cia Drone Program, Marita C. Murphy

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Analyzing four congressional hearings that publicly discuss the CIA’s ‘secret’ drone program, this thesis considers the interaction between publicity and secrecy in facilitating practices of later-modern warfare. Specifically, I examine the content of these drone hearings within the broader context of leaks, Obama administration speeches, and public interest in CIA drones to better understand how open secrecy engages with public oversight. I argue these hearings are deceptively productive. While they largely fail as oversight events, the hearings facilitate numerous unexpected outcomes—including the normalization and entrenchment of the CIA drone program. Paradoxically then, publicity proves essential to the maintenance and acceptance …

Coups D'État And Democracy: Implications For Development Aid, Theresa Simcic

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Coups d’état are a type of political instability that involves a sitting ruler being overthrown by his or her own military or other elite within the state apparatus. Coups are commonly viewed as a threat to democracy. Policy makers in donor countries have taken action in line with this belief by implementing foreign aid suspension policies in regard to states that recently experienced a coup. More recent research, however, shows that coups may actually promote democracy; particularly in long-standing autocratic states. In these circumstances, the new democracies may benefit more from an increase in aid, as opposed to suspension of …