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Background: Despite substantial global progress against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Eastern Europe and Central Asian region has experienced a 43% increase in HIV incidence. The HIV epidemic in Kazakhstan has outpaced that of the region, with the incidence of new infections growing by 73% since 2010. Key populations of people who inject drugs (PWID), female sex workers (FSW) and their sexual partners account for the majority of new infections, where drug policies continue to undermine HIV prevention and control efforts. Kazakhstan has made insufficient progress towards 95-95-95 HIV epidemic control targets, with 78% of people living with HIV (PLWH) knowing their HIV status, of which 57% receive ART, and 48% of those receiving ART achieve viral suppression. Laws, policies and their enforcement can shape social and structural determinants of health, and it is fundamental to understand how punitive legal environments shape the HIV epidemic in Kazakhstan. This dissertation seeks to identify patterns of police violence victimization among FSW who use drugs and examine how police violence is associated with the HIV risk environment. Given the insufficient progress towards 95-95-95 HIV epidemic control targets, this dissertation also seeks to identify how patterns of injection and sexual HIV transmission risk behaviors vary among men and women who inject drugs and examine how criminal-legal involvement is associated with patterns of HIV transmission risk behaviors. Methods: Data on police violence victimization among FSW who use drugs were drawn from Project Nova, a cluster-randomized control trial that evaluated the efficacy of a combination HIV risk reduction and microfinance intervention. A community-based sample of 255 FSW who use drugs were recruited and enrolled between February 2015 and May 2017 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to characterize women into distinct subgroups (i.e., classes) of police violence victimization. Next, multinomial logistic regression was used to examine how police violence victimization subgroups are associated with the physical, social, economic and policy HIV risk environment. Data on injection and sexual HIV transmission risk behaviors were drawn from Bridge, an implementation science study that evaluated the effectiveness of HIV service integration into needle/syringe programs on retention in care and viral suppression for PWID living with HIV in Kazakhstan. A random sample of 450 men and 166 women who inject drugs were recruited and enrolled in Almaty, Shymkent, and Temirtau/ Karaganda between February 2017 and June 2019. Similarly, LCA was used to characterize distinct subgroups of HIV transmission risk behaviors among men and women who inject drugs. Multinomial logistic regression was then used to identify associations between criminal-legal involvement and patterns of HIV transmission risk. Results: Three subgroups of police violence victimization among FSW who use drugs emerged. Just over half were characterized as experiencing low violence victimization (“Low Violence;” 51%); over one-third were characterized as experiencing all forms of police violence victimization (Poly-Victimization; 34%), and 15% were characterized as experiencing primarily discrimination and extortion from the police. Relative to Low Violence, factors associated with Poly-Victimization included being positive for HIV and/or sexually-transmitted infections (STI) (aOR= 1.78 (95% CI: 1.01, 3.14)), prior tuberculosis diagnosis (aOR= 2.73 (1.15, 6.50)), injection drug use (IDU) (aOR= 2.00 (1.12, 3.58)), greater number of unsafe injection behaviors (aOR= 1.21 (1.08, 1.35)), homelessness (aOR= 1.92 (1.06, 3.48)), greater drug use stigma (aOR= 1.22 (1.07, 1.39)) and sex work stigma (aOR= 1.23 (1.06, 1.43)), greater number of sex work clients (aOR= 2.40 (1.33, 4.31)), working for a boss/pimp (aOR= 2.74 (1.16, 6.50)), client violence (aOR= 2.99 (1.65, 5.42)), economic incentives for condomless sex (aOR= 2.77 (1.42, 5.41)), accessing needle/syringe exchange programs (aOR= 3.47 (1.42, 8.50)), recent arrest (aOR= 2.99 (1.36, 6.55)) and detention (aOR= 2.93 (1.62, 5.30)), and negative police perceptions (aOR= 8.28 (4.20, 16.3)). Compared to Low Violence, Discrimination and Extortion was associated with lower odds of experiencing intimate partner violence (aOR= 0.26 (0.12, 0.59)), but no other significant associations with the risk environment upon adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics. Distinct patterns of HIV transmission risk behaviors emerged among men and women, in which men were characterized as having Low Sexual Risk (41.8%), Injection & Sexual Risk (36.4%), and High Injection Risk (21.8%) behaviors. Class membership in the Injection & Sexual Risk and High Injection Risk class was associated with greater criminal-legal involvement, compared to the Low Sexual Risk class. This is demonstrated by higher odds of multiple detentions ((aORInjection & Sexual Risk = 1.28 (1.10, 1.49); aORHigh Injection Risk = 1.25 (1.06, 1.46)) and drug court participation (aORHigh Injection Risk = 5.29 (1.03, 27.20) in the past six months, committing crimes while under the influence of alcohol or drugs (aORInjection & Sexual Risk = 2.79 (1.53, 5.11); aORHigh Injection Risk = 2.76 (1.34, 5.65), and perceived police discrimination (aORHigh Injection Risk = 1.79 (1.01, 3.19). Women who inject drugs were characterized as having Low Injection & Sexual Risk (60.7%), Sex Work Behaviors (8.4%), High Injection Risk (30.7%) behaviors. Class membership in the Sex Work Behaviors and High Injection Risk class was associated with greater odds of being detained (aORSex Work Behaviors= 4.59 (1.27, 16.53) and experiencing verbal police harassment (aORSex Work Behaviors= 3.31 (1.20, 9.15); aORHigh Injection Risk = 2.91 (1.32, 6.40), compared to the Low Injection & Sexual Risk class. Conclusion: Results from this dissertation show that police violence against FSW who use drugs is pervasive in Kazakhstan. Patterns of police violence victimization among FSW who use drugs vary, with multiple forms of police violence victimization being associated with greater HIV susceptibility. This dissertation also demonstrates that men and women who inject drugs and are living with HIV have a high prevalence of injection and sexual HIV transmission risk behaviors, despite low viral suppression, and that patterns of HIV transmission risk behaviors vary by gender. Moreover, criminal-legal involvement is associated with injection and sexual HIV transmission risk, particularly among men who inject drugs. Collectively, these results support drug policy reforms and suggest that decriminalization of drug use and possession may promote enabling environments that support harm reduction, and subsequently reduce HIV transmission through injection and sexual networks of PWID in Kazakhstan.

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Chilean governments have simultaneously used a combination of price policies and expenditures on agricultural research in their efforts to enhance the performance of the agricultural sector. These two policy instruments, under changing political environments, have had important distributional implications for agricultural producers and consumers. Neglecting the interactions between these instruments may have distorted the measurement of research benefits. This dissertation examines the implications of agricultural price policies on the funding of public agricultural research. A political-economy framework allows for the interactions between producers and consumers/taxpayers in affecting policy formation. The welfare effects on each interest group are identified. Agricultural price policies and research expenditures on beef, wheat, milk, apples, and grapes are considered within a simultaneous system of supply, demand, price and research policy equations. Economic and political considerations determine the choice between direct price policies and public research expenditures. Results conform to theoretical expectations that the level and distribution of public research investments are affected by agricultural price policies. The implications derived from these results are that policies can be made more effective if decision-makers consider the complementarity or substitutability of these policy instruments. Agricultural production was influenced by direct price policies and by domestic agricultural research and foreign technology transfers. Publicly-sponsored agricultural research in Chile has had positive economic returns. The benefits to research, however, would have been larger if distorting price policies had not been present. / Ph. D.

State support and sponsorship of terrorism is a growing tactic among states unable or unwilling to achieve their international goals using the more traditional means of foreign policy: diplomacy, propaganda, economic statecraft, and military statecraft. This has brought about a new dilemma in the field of foreign policy: How does one state deal with another state as terrorists? As states react to incidents of terrorism, it is equally likely that the terrorist states will react to these responses. Therefore, this thesis considers the following question: How does a state's reaction to state supported or sponsored terrorism affect future terrorism? In order to answer this question, a case study of Cuba was performed to trace the flow of terrorist support and sponsorship by the state since its inception in 1959. Periods of high and low support for terrorism by the Castro regime were contrasted with responses of the target states, the United States, the Soviet Union and China using a cost/benefit formula. The value of material costs, rhetorical costs, material benefits and rhetorical benefits were compared in an attempt to determine a pattern of events that either consistently increased or decreased Cuba's use of the tool of terrorism in response to feedback from other states. The case study was inconclusive. Evaluation of terrorism is highly subjective. It became clear that it was impossible to determine the relative weight given to the various costs and benefits accrued through support of terrorism by the Cuban government. The projection of the goals and motivations is only speculation. The only clear pattern that emerged was a decrease in support activity in response to the imposition of significant economic costs on Cuba. However, this only has an effect in situations where no other state was able or willing to fill in the economic gap created by sanctions. / Master of Arts

This dissertation explores the roles that the news media and public opinion play in shaping policymaking in American state and local governments, drawing on extensive archives of local newspaper transcripts, media market and circulation data, outputs of the policymaking process in states and municipalities, and measures of public opinion. In the first paper, I show that media coverage is associated with greater policy responsiveness in state legislatures. When legislators are more likely to be covered by local newspapers and television news broadcasts in their districts, they are better at reflecting constituent preferences in roll-call voting. Defying the seminal theories of electoral accountability, however, I find no evidence that the media affects what the public knows about state politics or how they behave in state legislative elections. Rather, I conjecture that local news affects representation via a more direct, elite-focused “watchdog” mechanism—by informing legislators about public opinion or increasing the perceived costs that politicians face when deciding to cast an unpopular vote. The second paper examines the implications of news organizations’ decisions as to which local governments to invest in covering routinely. Newspapers are more likely to cover politics in larger cities and those with more white and wealthy residents. In cities and towns that the press covers more frequently, I find that local governments spend more per-capita on providing public goods, particularly policing, parks, housing, and public transportation. This suggests that increasing financial pressures on already resource-constrained news outlets may have negative implications for local public goods provision that could exacerbate existing inequalities in American democracy. Finally, in the third paper, I offer a methodological contribution to the measurement of public opinion at subnational geographies. Although the development of Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) has allowed scholars to more accurately estimate subnational public opinion using national polls, its usefulness has been limited in certain contexts because it generally recovers less accurate estimates from cluster-sampled surveys. I propose two approaches to improve estimation from MRP with cluster-sampled polls. The first is pooling data from multiple surveys to produce a larger sample of clusters. The second is Clustered MRP (CMRP), which extends MRP by modeling opinion using the geographic information included in a survey’s cluster-sampling procedure.