The purpose of this paper is to apply the work of Richard Rorty to questions of ethics in International Relations. Beginning with discussion of Pragmatism in this chapter, and Rorty's political beliefs in the second, the paper moves in Chapter Three to the means by which Rorty has come to hold his ethical beliefs. This takes the reader through discussions of the contingency of language, self and community to the notions of irony and liberal ironism. Chapter Four contrasts the (neo)Pragmatist conception of progressive, piecemeal social change to traditions which eschew such a notion in favor of immanent critique. Discussion in chapter five moves to the application of this neopragmatist line of thought to the discussion of solidarity and human rights, bringing all of the various strands of this paper together. In the conclusion, two apparent inconsistencies in Rorty's thought are clarified.

In 1966 Nigeria joined the extended list of nations where the military through the coup d'etat substituted themselves and their policies in place of civilian regimes. This thesis deals with the problem of the coup d'etat in that nation with a specific focus on the coups of 1966 and 1983. The major emphasis centers on factors that are significant in the occurrence of the coup d'etat. Nigeria presents an interesting case study because at the time of independence it was not expected to be plagued by the specter of unstable civil-military relations that was rampant in other parts of Africa and Latin America. This study thus, set out to analyze societal conditions to attain valid reasons why the constitutional government had been so easily displaced by the military. This study hypothesizes that the failure of political elites to acquire confidence and support for societal institutions significantly enhanced the atmosphere that was conducive to the coup d'etat. This approach pays specific attention to societal conditions such as, weak institutions and elite inefficiency to make its case. This study describes the failure of the elites to rally mass support for societal institutions as the critical variable in the occurrence of the coup d’état. It is my genuine hope that this study will contribute to the debate on the coup d’état by adding the concept of internal dynamics to the institutional theories. In this regard, this study hopes to determine to what extent internal societal conditions are relevant in the occurrence of the coup d’état.

This study examined whether African Americans could consolidate political power through a migration into a specific state or set of states in sufficient numbers to establish a voting majority within that state. In order to examine the feasibility and efficacy of this strategy, a variety of factors were reviewed, including the historical context leading to the current situation; the political benefits to be derived from the control of a state; and the population and migration patterns of African Americans. The results indicated that this strategy could succeed in providing significant substantive and symbolic political benefits to the African American community, but could also have some negative repercussions.

French-speaking countries in West Africa have a long history of inter-state cooperation that goes to the French colonization of the region. The culmination of their integration resulted in the creation of L'Union Economique et Monétaire Quest Africaine, UEMOA (The West African Economic and Monetary Union). With its financial and monetary arrangements, which include a common currency and a central bank, UEMOA is one of the most far-reaching examples of economic integration among developing countries. UEMOA's main advantage has thus been its "depth." What makes the study of Francophone regionalism in West Africa even more interesting at this particular time is the fact that it is taking place within the context of a new wave of integration characterized by a trend towards broader regional integration in West Africa. The efforts towards broader integration in West Africa are reflected in the activities of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). ECOWAS has been able to engage in integration activities in a broad range of sectors. The existence of the two integration schemes has raised questions regarding the chances for the successful accomplishment of regional integration in West Africa. More specifically, UEMOA has been seen as posing an obstacle to the progress of the larger sub-regional grouping of ECOWAS. In this study, it is argued to the contrary, that UEMOA does not constitute an obstacle to ECOWAS. The research demonstrates that UEMOA and ECOWAS complement each other in the process of West African integration. The concept of "depth" and "scope" of integration are introduced to illustrate the complementarity between the two West African integration schemes. UEMOA's depth is presented as a necessary complement to ECOWAS' scope. As a result, this analysis demonstrates that Francophone regionalism can indeed make a substantial contribution to West African integration.

The International Coffee Agreements (ICA) involved the majority of nations producing and consuming coffee and provided relative economic stability to the coffee sectors of the exporting Third World countries. This study focuses on the serious impact of the 1989 collapse of the ICA on the domestic coffee sectors of Colombia and Cote d'Ivoire. In particular, the dissertation examines the role of the Colombian and Ivoirian coffee parastatals, the Federacion Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia and the Caisse de Stabilisation et Soutien des Prix des Produits Agricoles, during the crisis and their transformation by it. The theoretical framework employed in this study is borrowed from the literature on state-society relations. The methodology includes: in-depth analysis of the historical roles of the parastatal agencies in coffee production, state-society relations and economic development in Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire; interviews with parastatal administrators, producers and other knowledgeable informants in both countries; and a comprehensive review of newspaper articles and official statements of coffee policy published in Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire prior to, during, and after the crisis. The Colombian and Ivoirian coffee sectors and their producers faced serious economic and social problems following the drop in coffee prices. The coffee parastatals in Colombia and Côte d'Ivoire first lost some of their responsibilities following the world coffee crisis. The Caisse was in the end eliminated while FEDECAFE struggled to remain in existence. Along the way, both entities faced protests from disgruntled coffee producers, who organized politically for the first time in their nations' histories. I argue that the outcome for the parastatals depended in part on the conditions of their formation, particularly the level of societal involvement in their creation. I also posit that the country's dependence on foreign aid played a key role in the fate of the parastatals. This dissertation concludes that developments in the Colombian and Ivoirian coffee sectors have significantly contributed to the creation of the difficult political and economic conditions of both countries today.

Initial representations of the Rwanda genocide in the Western media were at best inaccurate and at worst, stereotypical, citing African "tribal savagery" and "centuries-old tribal hatred" as the reason for the mass killings. Two major human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, had the opportunity to correct media portrayals and help shape the agenda for policymakers. The purpose of this study was to take a critical look at media portrayals and discover whether these two nongovernmental organizations played a role in influencing the coverage. An extensive media analysis of three elite Western newspapers found that NGOs were the single largest source of nuanced political explanations countering stereotypes of African "tribal warfare." Human Rights Watch, in particular, played a pivotal role in sensitizing the media to the genocide's character as a planned, politically motivated campaign.

Political science uses international relations (IR) theory to explain state-actor political behavior. Research suggests that this theoretical framework can inform a predictive model incorporating features of systems dynamics (SD) and agent based (AB) modeling. The Foreign Policy Model (ForPol) herein applies Alexander Y. Lubyansky's (2014) SD model for macro-political behavior to represent behaviors between real systems and mental models. While verifying and validating the resulting SD/AB/IR holistic model requires an extensive comprehensive research agenda, the present work will take a closer examination at input parameter calibration and conducting typical runs of the SD portion of the model as a first step in the testing, verification and validation process of the proposed integrative model. This thesis proposes incorporating an AB paradigm drawn from work by Claudio Cioffi-Revilla (2009), Edward P. MacKerrow (2003), David L. Rousseau (2006), Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell (1996) as a future hybrid extension. The model applies a SD approach for the modeling of macro-political aggregate behavior. Therefore, the deep analysis of the SD portion of ForPol is modeled and calibrated in Vensim, using empirical data from the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War as a pilot. Interactions within the model actualize Choucri, et. al. (2006), definition of state stability and agent behavior aspects of Cioffi-Revilla's (2009) SimPol polity model. Following calibration results discussion, the present work closes with consideration of future research directions.

This dissertation is about Shinra Myojin, a god of Silla that was worshipped in medieval Japanese Buddhism. It analyzes the various networks with which the deity was involved, namely, networks of Silla immigrants, Silla shrines and temples, and a variety of gods. Through examining the worship of Shinra Myojin from several different angles, each chapter has different, and yet related arguments. In the first chapter, I argue that the emergence of Shinra Myojin's cult can be fully understood when viewed within the context of the "East Asian Mediterranean" trade network, in which Silla merchants, immigrants, and Buddhist monks played a prominent role. In the second chapter, while focusing on a pivotal moment of the Shinra Myojin cult--a process of sedentarisation in which he changed from a sea deity into a mountain deity, I argue that Shinra Myojin was the central deity of Onjoji, as well as the entire Jimon tradition. The third chapter explains how the Japanese imaginaire of Silla was evolved, encoded and had effects in medieval Japan, and how Shinra Myojin functioned as a god of pestilence. Another pivotal point of Shinra Myojin's career was his mythological transformation from 'a god of Silla' to 'a god who conquered Silla.' In the last chapter, I analyze the visual representation of Shinra Myojin within this larger religious context, and argue that Shinra Myojin is best understood when we consider the deity in this network of other Silla-related deities, represented as an old man. The examination of Shinra Myojin's cult from an interdisciplinary angle serves as a gateway for exploring other understudied associations between medieval Japanese religiosity and those religious ideas and practices that were either continental in origin or were at least perceived to be so by medieval Japanese. My findings from interdisciplinary research contribute to elucidating those connections existing across the boundaries of religion, history, mythology, literature, and visual culture, all of which describes broader dynamics of East Asian religion as a whole.

This is a comparative case study of income maintenance policy formation involving six economically underdeveloped countries, i.e. Bolivia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Ghana, Mauritius, Thailand and the United Arab Republic (now Egypt). The major questions raised are: what are the types of income maintenance programs in the selected countries?; are there specific factors associated with the adoption of those programs? If so, what are they?; and what are the conditions, if any, under which certain factors may become active in association with the program types? In this study, the income maintenance program was defined as a body of statutory measures designed to help assure a minimum income for selected or all sectors of population through direct transfers of cash or benefit-in-kind. The specific program components examined were food subsidies, public education, public health, demogrants, modified negative tax and public assistance in the non-occupational sector and social insurance, provident fund, corporative profit-sharing and subsidized commissary in the occupational sector. For the purpose of cross-national analysis, four basic program types determined by the level of pertinent expenditures, the number and type of components involved, population coverage and the relative balance between occupational and non-occupational components were delineated and employed. In addition to exploring the substantive questions, this study attempted to formulate a conceptual model which may be useful for future studies in terms of defining the problem, generating hypotheses and comparing the findings of one study with those of another. The basic problem of the study relates to theories of choice in the social field. The selection criteria of the study settings were: the level of economy as represented by per capita income (US $137-157 and US $209-211 brackets), the income maintenance program variation and data availability. This study covers various historical junctures of the post World War II period, usually coinciding with the life span of one government in each country. In one country only (Mauritius) a period of nearly 20 years was covered because the evolvement of the income maintenance program in that country took that long. Of existing theories and hypotheses of public policy, the study findings generally support a political one, particularly those involving the political self-interest theory of Anthony Downs, Theodore Riker, Daniel Ellsberg and others. This, however, does not rule out the secondary or conditional significance of non-political factors such as needs, resources, economic context, demography, technical assistance, socio-cultural and institutional factors and external factors. The overall concept of income maintenance policy determination emerging from the study findings as a whole is represented by a systems model distinguished by politico-kinetic dynamics among all the underlying factors. In this model, the policy-making environment is envisaged as a kinetic field in which the movements of and the relationships between all underlying factors of income maintenance policies are controlled by a shifting balance of forces among political factors, such as pressure group influence, power requisites of political leadership, the leadership orientation and commitment, ideology, and so on. These political factors are conceived to change not only in their relative strengths but also in their aims or directions, and thus cause modifications in the income maintenance program. With the changes in the controlling factors and their relationships, the non-political factors are regarded to change also in terms of their relative strengths and dispositions in relation to the political factors as well as in relation to one another, thus undergoing changes in their powers of influence upon the program. The pattern of inter-factor relationships represented in the model is regarded to hold at any given moment in time as well as over a period of time. The conceptual model that best embodies the above dynamics among the underlying factors may appropriately be termed a politico-kinetic paradigm.

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