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 population 'less consequential'. I argue that as a strategy in conventional civil war aimed at increasing territorial control, displacement serves a direct and indirect purpose suited towards these ends. Beyond using strategic displacement as a means of clearing out civilians to facilitate territorial conquest and consolidating territorial control, belligerents can strategically displace civilians into enemy-held territory as a way of geographically concentrating the civilian population. This can serve to undermine the enemy's capacity to govern. Beyond the frontlines, strategic displacement is employed in part as a strategy of exhaustion. Using indirect violence to promote the repeated civilian displacement within the enemy's rearguard serves as indirect mechanism by which to exhaust the enemy by eroding the enemy's ability to maintain territorial control, both in the short and long term. As opposition groups are faced with the meeting the demands of the local civilian population in an increasingly concentrated geographical expanse, and the more civilians are randomly displaced within enemy-held territory, the more pressure the opposition group has placed on its governance capacity and the more exhausted the enemy becomes. This in turn weakens the ability of the enemy to maintain territorial control. However, I argue that these effects vary across armed groups, dependent upon each group's respective governance capacity. This effect is also amplified when the enemy does not represent a unitary movement.

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 in Eastern DRC— a novel dataset is created based on the daily situation reports from one battalion deployed in Beni DRC from January 2014 to September 2017. The spatial analysis at the village and AOR levels found that night patrolling effectively reduces civilian deaths. However, in a highly contested area, military operations leave the civilian population in the vicinity more vulnerable as they are more prone to retaliatory actions from armed groups. The second paper examines the effects of peacekeepers' fatalities on troops' contributions to UN peacekeeping missions. It is hard to justify the killings of soldiers in a conflict with no imminent national security interest/threat, which can create domestic resistance and might pose challenges regarding troops' contributions to UN peacekeeping missions. This study seeks to uncover why countries are increasingly contributing troops to UN peacekeeping missions despite suffering casualties and deaths using large N cross-sectional data between 1990 to 2022 across different regime types and countries with varying levels of development. The findings suggest no evidence for casualty sensitivity arguments. Once deployed, TCCs increase their contribution in response to fatalities, more so in the peacekeeping mission with an enforcement mandate. Developing countries continue to provide peacekeepers in response to fatalities. The third paper examines the impact of peacekeeping dependence on the domestic civil-military relationship in troop-contributing countries, explicitly asking the question about the preference of military officers regarding military intervention in responding to the domestic political crisis. It does so with a survey experiment among the military officers within the Nepalese Army. The evidence suggests that military officers are generally less supportive of military intervention in domestic crises but when future participation in UN peacekeeping missions is at stake, military officers do support intervention in domestic politics.

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) is constructed and introduced. The first part of my dissertation constructs two datasets on International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs). There is no ready-to-use, publicly available data source in the literature for researchers wishing to analyze INGOs systematically. There are a variety of online data sources, but none are based on identified inclusion criteria. I identify as INGOs all United Nations- accredited NGOs and construct two datasets: one of the INGOs and the other of INGOs at the state-year level of analysis. Both datasets can be integrated with other datasets, facilitating engagement with a broad range of research questions. While the INGO-level dataset provides information for 6,595 INGOs from 1816 to 2022, the state-level dataset includes 15,024 state-year observations from 1946 to 2022. The second part of the dissertation investigates the conditions under which regional countries engage in cooperation. Analyses of memberships in 76 regional organizations from 1945 to 2012 yield several factors as significant forces of regional cooperation. In order of importance, these are joint democracy, joint language, equal material capability, and trade interdependence. I found that weaker countries are more hesitant to cooperate with stronger ones within regions. At the theoretical level, this research supports a liberal explanation for regional interstate organization, emphasizing factors such as trade and democracy, over a hegemonic realist explanation that centers on power asymmetry. The third part of the dissertation examines the role of international civil society in regional cooperation. Drawing on the new INGO dataset, I found that the more international non-governmental organizations shared by two countries in a dyad in a year, the more likely the two countries share common memberships in Regional Organizations (ROs), Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), and Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). Even after accounting for such factors as democracy, economic status, and alliances, the results yield a robust correlation between the engagement of INGOs and the advancement of regional interstate cooperation.

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 put forth a theory that implores scholars to reassess many of the prevalent frames and lenses used in exploring women's economic empowerment topics. As cash transfer programs become more popular, researchers and development practitioners must pay more attention to how cash transfers and structural conditions interactively shape opportunities for women's economic empowerment. This study uses secondary data from the gender analysis of the Nigerian National Social Safety Nets Program (NASSP), the Ghanian Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) project, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Datasets (ACLED), and climate data from the World Meteorological Service. Findings from the Nigerian case study show that women receiving cash transfers may exercise increased intra-household economic agency during crises such as drought, flooding, or escalation of armed conflicts. Women may also be able to express their voice in community leadership during crises due to high out-migration of men and forced conscription and killing of male household leads. In the Ghanaian case, women's economic empowerment is often an artifact of their socioeconomic status pre-crisis. Across both cases, it is uncertain if women's acquired economic agency and voice persist post-conflict or when climate impacts abate.

This dissertation examines three research questions related to Muslim minorities in Western Europe. The first chapter explores the question why some countries in Western Europe suffered terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamist extremists whereas others did not. I argue that there is a positive association between level of discrimination towards Muslim minorities and number of terrorist attacks: the presence of cultural and religious networks in discriminated communities can enhance the socialization of grievances, resulting in the radicalization of a small portion of the community. I conduct a comparative analysis of the cases of Italy, France, and the U.K. In the second chapter, I examine factors that contribute to discriminatory laws against Muslims in Europe (laws like the hijab ban). I argue that more secular countries are more likely to pass such laws as they aim at a more comprehensive separation of the state from religion. On the other hand, less secular countries are less likely to approve this kind of legislation, because in doing so they might open the door to the regulation of the country's "favored" religion (or the majority religion, depending on the institutional architecture of the country). I use a multimethod approach consisting of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Lastly, the third chapter explores two questions; it seeks the effects of (1) geographical proximity of voters to terrorist attacks and (2) number of Muslim immigrants in a geographical area, on the vote share of far-right parties. I use a statistical model that incorporates alternative explanations and focus on the 2017 French Presidential elections. The findings of this dissertation yield relevant policy implications related to integration of Muslim minorities in the European host countries and makes a substantial contribution to the literature in this area of research.

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 effect on the information security culture. These human factors consist of stringency of organizational policies, behavior deterrence, employee attitudes towards information security, training and awareness, and management support of the information security programs. A survey questionnaire was given to employees in the Florida College System to measure the human aspects of the information security programs. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to investigate the relationships between the variables in the study using IBM® SPSS® Amos 24 software. The study results show that management support and behavior deterrence have a significant positive relationship with information security. Additionally, the results show no significant association between information security culture and organization policies, employee commitment and employee awareness. This suggests a need for further refinement of the model and the survey tool design to properly assess human factors of information security programs and their effects on the organizational security culture.

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 and local level law enforcement networks that are linked together through the topologies merging with the National Data Exchange (N-DEx) System as the ability to manipulate the live network is limited. The model design methodology is conducted in a manner that creates a level of organization from the state level to the local level of law enforcement agencies allowing for each organizational infection probability to be calculated and entered, thus making the model very specific in nature for determining spread or outbreaks of cyber-attacks among law enforcement agencies at all levels. This research will enable future researchers to further develop a model that is capable of detecting weak points within an information structure when multiple topologies merge, allowing for more secure operations among law enforcement networks.

In 2012, The New York Times reported that the Obama Administration excluded all Military-Age Males from the collateral damage count in areas where the U.S engaged in drone warfare/ Though the Military-Age Male (MAM) category references the draft, the term is applied to all boys and men, including civilians, who are aged sixteen years and older. The Military-Aged Male category is not synonymous with 'combatant,' but marks boys and men for differentiated treatment in conflict zones, to the point where male bodies are used as a shorthand for 'combatant' when assessing the collateral damage count. This dissertation seeks to answer an empirical puzzle. The U.S Army/Marine Corps Counter-Insurgency Field Manual (2006), a document which emerged from the American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, emphasizes that militants vie for the civilian population's support as a way to win the war against a stronger and better-resourced military force. These documents state that the United States cannot rely on military prowess alone and that, in fact, “non-military means are the most effective” way to win an irregular war against militant groups. Both the Bush Jr. and Obama Administrations used the Military-Age Male category to structure military strategy, meaning that civilian protection was applied asymmetrically and that military violence was legitimized when directed against male civilians. These security practices would seemingly cause resentment from a large segment of the population and undermine the success of U.S foreign policy. This dissertation documents the political ecosystem that legitimized violent military action against the 'Military-Age Male.' Specifically, I examine Military-Age Males under the Bush and Obama Administrations and illustrate how counterinsurgency and drone warfare became practices that were sustained by an elaborate bureaucracy that interpreted the battlespace—and combatant from civilian—by using assumptions about gender. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In the study of international relations, it has been all the time that ¡§security¡¨ means national security and military security. The topic of ¡§security¡¨ in early days was focused on how to avoid suffering from the external military attack. Under this concept structure, economy, culture, or ideology is considered to be the accessories under the military strategy, or a kind of tools to strengthen the military threat. Such practices and thinking are not only helpless to the settlement of the problem, but it is apt to face the security dilemma instead, and the development of education, culture, social welfare, economic construction, and environmental public security, etc. will be oppressed and restricted. Long time of the hostile state for the two sides of Mainland China and Taiwan, makes both sides all the time to construct stronger military force for national defense. However, how much security is really bought by spending huge number of money on national defense? And is it really safe by buying the military equipments? Is it really the security what we want? Is there no other ways to get security without military force to threaten? This thesis attempts to adopt critical study, and analyzes the four concepts of national security from David Baldwin: ¡§Security for whom?¡¨, ¡§Security for which values?¡¨, ¡§From what threat?¡¨, and ¡§By what means?¡¨ It also researches on the thinking of national security concept and different national defense policies in different periods after the government moving to Taiwan in 1949. It is hoped to find out the blind spot of the national security concept in Taiwan, and construct the security view that relies mainly on people.

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 are more likely to support extreme forms of warfare (e.g., nuclear strikes) when reminded of their own mortality. Thus, consequentialist factors, such as perceived utility, and psychological factors, such as moral foundations theory and TMT can be causal mechanism in the support for nuclear weapons. The findings support this argument as respondents who are treated with increased salience of their own mortality are more likely to support the use of nuclear weapons. Further, the results show that political ideology, threat perception, and religion are all significant factors in shaping individuals' attitudes towards the use of nuclear weapons. Lastly, the work suggests that Israelis in particular tend to support hawkish national security options at the aggregate level. There is a positive effect of conflict events on Israelis' support for hawkish policies. Overall, this dissertation makes a substantial contribution to our current understanding of public opinion on the use of nuclear weapons in a first strike and why nuclear weapons disarmament, elimination, and non-proliferation is deeply challenging.