A relatively well established literature already proffers explanations for the persistence of Euroskeptic Radical Right Parties (ERRPs) in Western Europe and for their emergence in the new democracies of the East. The purpose of this study is not to replicate those existing studies; instead, the argument advanced here is that there may be an important intervening factor as yet unexplored in the extant literature. Drawing upon aggregate survey data from select Western European EU member states and a focused case study of Slovakia, this paper seeks to assess the impact of information, in this case information about the European Union, on voting for ERRPs. The argument presented here is that EU information mitigates the support for ERRPs, more so in the East than in the West.

Slow agrarian development has often been blamed on the absence of civil society mobilization. This paper quantitatively analyzes the effect of political and fiscal decentralization on agricultural development in 30 democratizing African States. Hence two hypotheses are tested: H1) New democracies that combine elected sub-national governments with fiscal decentralization will be more likely to spend more in agriculture. H2) In such system we should observe better agricultural outputs, other things equal. Results reveal that counter-intuitively simultaneous democratic and fiscal decentralization have a negative impact on public investment in agriculture. On the other hand, as expected fiscal decentralization does not have any significant impact in the absence of democratic decentralization. Most importantly democratic decentralization is found to have a highly positive impact on the provision of agricultural related public goods when fiscal decentralization is low. The test also reveals that fiscal and political decentralization positively influence agricultural production.

Can the success of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq be applied to other counter-insurgency conflicts, or is it an exemplary case? Using case studies including Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be examined whether or not militias can be can be used to fight counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and generally to other conflicts. It may not work in Afghanistan, and certainly presents a Catch-22 situation, but it may be applicable in certain situations in other conflicts under certain conditions.

This paper grapples with the differences between genuine and ordinary democracy within the political thought of Jacques Rancière, Sheldon Wolin, and Hannah Arendt. Each discusses the problems of ordinary democracy and offer solutions in terms of what I call genuine democracy. Ordinary democracy is the established norm of liberal democracy celebrated as the stable and a desired “end” of political action. It is what happens when politics as usual becomes the norm and shuts the people from the halls of power. Genuine politics exist within the structure ordinary democracy and seeks to achieve the continuous re-establishment of democratic processes while in the process speeding up and disrupting “politics as usual”.

Family law regulates the formation of marriage, divorce, marital property rights, child custody, inheritance, and spousal duties. This study aims to demonstrate how family law formation in the Middle East and North Africa reflects the struggle among social and political forces to capture the state and assert authority. The balance of power between competing social forces impacts both the timing (short-term versus long-term struggle) and type (progressive or regressive) of family law after independence. The ability of one of two competing forces, broadly categorized as traditionalist versus modernist, to capture the state is necessary for codification and is predictive of family law content. Case studies reveal that systemic shocks (e.g. revolution, social unrest, or foreign intervention) tip the balance of power in favor of traditional or modernizing forces in the post-independence state-building process and facilitate the successful consolidation of power and the codification of family law.

For decades, rhetoric has been utilized by both politicians and those in the scientific community to convey either support for or denial of the existence of climate change. This study combined two forms of rhetoric in the forms of both framing and politicization to determine which form of rhetoric is most powerful in influencing a person’s attitudes and behavioral intentions. Pro climate change frames are expected to increase support for climate change action, while anti climate change politicization is expected to decrease support for climate change action. The results of this study show that select frames have the intended effect of influence on increasing support for climate change measures. Surprisingly, the results also show that politicization that questions the science of climate change has the power to both increase and decrease support for attitudinal measures with regard to climate change.

Recent research has posited that retributiveness is an individual level disposition that can help us understand foreign policy preferences (e.g. Liberman 2006, Liberman 2007, Liberman in press, Stein n.d.). However, previous research is limited in two related respects. First, previous research relies on correlational data, blunting our ability to make clear causal inferences. Also, retributiveness is not made theoretically distinct from general hawkishness. In this paper, I present results from two experiments to refine our understanding of how retributiveness can affect support for use of the military. In the first experiment, I examine how retributiveness affects support for greater military commitment across a number of potential missions. In the second experiment, I examine how retributiveness interacts with different rhetorical justifications for military endeavors (e.g. punishing transgressors versus eliminating a foreign policy threat).

The thesis will examine the harm principle, as originally described by John Stuart Mill. In doing so, it will defend that, though unintended, the harm principle may justify several principles of distributive justice. To augment this analysis, the paper will examine several secondary authors’ interpretations of the harm principle, including potential critiques of the thesis itself.

Political success in semi-democratic countries has two aspects: shifting the balance of power in one’s favor and maintaining it. This thesis seeks to examine how the AKP has succeeded in shifting the balance of power in its favor while its predecessor the Welfare Party did not. Focusing on electoral success, existing research primarily lists center-periphery conflict, moderation, class struggle, party organization, and failures of others as the main determinants. Yet the significance of reining in the power of the Kemalist state structure has been mostly disregarded. Therefore, with a comparison of the AKP (2002-2007) and the Welfare Party (1996-1997) governments, this study tests one assertion using most-similar systems research design that in semi-democratic political settings with strong authoritarian actors, political parties that build broad coalitions via group specific policy promises will be more likely to shift the balance of power in favor of themselves than actors that lack such connections.

For the past several decades the South has moved toward one-party Republican control, and yet the mega-southern state of Florida has not kept pace with the greater Southern Republican realignment for candidates running for statewide office. Instead, Florida has exhibited a Southern lag, where rural counties maintain higher Democratic registration than voting levels in supporting Democratic candidates for governor and U.S. Senate in the same general election year. There has been a gradual regional dealignment occurring in rural counties that are closer to the Deep Southern states of Alabama and Georgia. Using a range of aggregate Florida county election and registration data, research found the percentage of white voters and percentage of registered Democrats that comprise counties effect the Democratic deviation. These results have implications for campaign strategy and can be used in campaign targeting efforts.