It is the key assertion of this thesis that Kazakhstan is determined to keep its Soviet-era nuclear capacity and become the world's third largest nuclear power should circumstances move in that direction. The Republic of Kazakhstan reneged on its original commitment to repatriate this material to Russia for final disposition. My tenure at the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, as well as the use of newly available declassified data on the Kazakhstan nuclear issue, and open government sources, supports the major arguments of my thesis. For primary sources in Kazakh and Russian languages, I utilized the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Both the external factors, including the competitive post-Soviet security environment in Eurasia, and complex and challenging domestic factors such as trans-regional social movements, clan ties, ethno-political cleavages, authoritarianism and government corruption, cast serious doubt on the future of Kazakhstan as a nuclear weapon free state.

No description available.

This study seeks to examine and refine the concept of consociational democracy, a political system in which political leaders of socially and politically distinct groups interact with one another in an atmosphere of moderation and mutual accommodation. A discussion of the explanations, suggested by various political theorists, of the political behavior and relationships in a consociational democracy produced a list of the basic characteristics of the system. Characteristics which were either ambiguous or ascribable to other political systems were eliminated. The Benelux countries— Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg— are three countries which have moderate political systems similar to the general definition of a consociational democracy. Using the Benelux countries as test cases made it possible to refine further those characteristics isolated in the theoretical discussion, and to synthesize a model of the political activity of a consociational democracy. This model, in turn, provided the basis for a theory as to why elites of distinct social groups are able to interact in a moderate, mutually accommodative fashion. The results of this study suggest, in broad terms, that consociational democracy exists because most individuals within the system see this type of interaction to be the normal and proper approach to politics. In actual political practice, relations between different groups or leaders are based upon mutual recognition of legitimacy. Distinct social groups and their political leaders recognize the right of other social groups to participate in the political system, and the individual groups recognise the right of their political leaders to act as spokesmen for the group and to interact freely with the leaders of other groups. Finally, there is-the common recognition that the political system, represented by the sovereign authority of the State, is the legitimate forum for political activity. As an afterword, there is a brief discussion as to the possible impact of the domestic practice of consociational politics on a country's approach to foreign affairs.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis attempts to understand the reasons behind Hungary’s surge in populism in the years following the 2008 financial crisis. In particular it looks at the two major political parties in Hungary, Fidesz and Jobbik, and how they continue to maintain control over the Hungarian government despite the common theory that populist support deteriorates overtime. A key component of Populism is that it usually grows in times of crises. Particularly in Hungary I focus on the many crises that arose during Hungary’s turbulent history of occupation, especially their transition out of Communism. Along with the devastation caused by the 2008 financial crash. Hungary’s inability to completely transition into a full-fledged Democracy as well as the economic devastation they witnessed following 2008 has created an environment where Populism can thrive indefinitely.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Jonathan Leib, Florida State University, College of Social Sciences, Dept. of Geography. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 13, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 326 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis explores briefly two experimental cases, Czechoslovakia and Poland, where between 1919 and 1938, efforts were made to solve the “minority problem." This thesis consists of five basic parts: Chapter I, an introduction that defines or describes such concepts as nationalism, nation, state, and minority; Chapter II that succinctly presents backgrounds and problems of minorities in Czechoslovakia (Germans, Magyars, Ruthenians, and Jews), and Poland (Germans, Jews and Ukrainians); Chapter III that analyzes the provisions of the Minority Treaties prepared by the principal Allied Powers at the end of World War I to protect minority rights within Czechoslovakia and Poland; Chapter IV that examines the implementation and results of the planned protection of minority rights in Czechoslovakia and Poland between 1919 and 1938; and Appendices that illuminate the minority problem in the two states.

No description available.

The Making of Soviet Chernivtsi: National “Reunification,” World War II, and the Fate of Jewish Czernowitz in Postwar Ukraine Doctor of Philosophy Svitlana Frunchak Graduate Department of History University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This dissertation revisits the meaning of Soviet expansion and sovietization during and after World War II, the effects of the war on a multiethnic Central-Eastern European city, and the postwar construction of a national identity. One of several multiethnic cities acquired by the USSR in the course of World War II, modern pre-Soviet Chernivtsi can be best characterized as a Jewish-German city dominated by acculturated Jews until the outbreak of World War II. Yet Chernivtsi emerged from the war, the Holocaust, and Soviet reconstruction as an almost homogeneous Ukrainian city that allegedly had always longed for reunification with its Slavic brethren. Focusing on the late Stalinist period (1940–1953) but covering earlier (1774–1940) and later (1953–present) periods, this study explores the relationship between the ideas behind the incorporation; the lived experience of the incorporation; and the historical memory of the city’s distant and recent past. Central to this dissertation is the fate of the Jewish residents of Czernowitz-Chernivtsi. This community was diminished from an influential plurality to about one percent of the city’s population whose past was marginalized in local historical memory. This study demonstrates a multifaceted local experience of the war which was all but silenced by the dominant Soviet Ukrainian myth of the Great Patriotic War and the “reunification of all Ukrainian lands.” When the authors of the official Soviet historical and cultural narratives represented Stalin’s annexation as the “reunification” of Ukraine, they in fact constructed and popularized a new concept of “historical Ukrainian lands.” This concept—a blueprint for the Soviet colonization of the western borderlands in the name of the Ukrainian nation—tied ethnically defined Ukrainian culture to a strictly delineated national territory. Applied to the new borderlands and particularly to their urban centres characterized by cultural diversity, this policy served to legitimize the marginalization and, in several cases, the violent displacement of ethnic minorities, bringing to an end Jewish Czernowitz.