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In recent times, religion has become a powerful force in giving legitimacy to terrorist actions. The present work considers this highly salient fact, as well as stresses the necessity to consider the historical and social contexts and group power resources in any meaningful analysis of violent protest movements. Quantitative rigor is combined with a sensitivity to context. Terrorism is operationalized by taking a time-based count of terrorist killings of innocent people. Regime acts of omission and commission are coded as time series interventions. The analysis also includes a continuous variable measuring the incidence of economic distress in Punjab. A case is also made for the superiority of Box- Jenkins time series techniques for the quantitative analysis of problems of this nature.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the politics of separatism in multinational federations. Switzerland, Canada, and India are investigated in detail. Switzerland is a multinational federation that has not experienced a separatist movement for more than one hundred and fifty years. In Canada, there is a significant separatist movement in the province of Quebec. India has experienced a number of violent secessionist crises in a number of states over the past two decades. The cases thus exhibit a range in the dependent variable (presence or absence of secessionist movements). This study adopts a legal-institutional approach to the problem of secession in multinational federations. This approach marries the classical understanding of federalism as a system of government with divided sovereignty to the more recent state-society and new institutional approaches in political science. Federalism is operationalized around three core institutions: constitutions, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and party systems. These three institutions are situated as the independent variables in the study. The dissertation argues that the institutional structure of federalism is a critical determinant of stability or instability (the presence or absence of secessionism) in multinational federations.

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The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the politics of separatism in multinational federations. Switzerland, Canada, and India are investigated in detail. Switzerland is a multinational federation that has not experienced a separatist movement for more than one hundred and fifty years. In Canada, there is a significant separatist movement in the province of Quebec. India has experienced a number of violent secessionist crises in a number of states over the past two decades. The cases thus exhibit a range in the dependent variable (presence or absence of secessionist movements). This study adopts a legal-institutional approach to the problem of secession in multinational federations. This approach marries the classical understanding of federalism as a system of government with divided sovereignty to the more recent state-society and new institutional approaches in political science. Federalism is operationalized around three core institutions: constitutions, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and party systems. These three institutions are situated as the independent variables in the study. The dissertation argues that the institutional structure of federalism is a critical determinant of stability or instability (the presence or absence of secessionism) in multinational federations. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

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The conventional theoretical and analytical debate surrounding Third World development emphasizes economic development within the interaction of First and Third World. This thesis takes a different approach, not arguing about the correctness or falseness of these approaches, but concentrating on the historical inheritance of political and social values which influence a society. This concept within India highlights the limitation on both economic and political development through traditional fragmentation. This persistence of tradition, such as religion, caste organization, etc., was characterized by persisting traditional forms of political legitimacy. The theoretical concept of political legitimacy serves as analytical tool to examine, how the traditional values persisted in Indian society, and why these values were obstacles to a modern political structure, and therefore hindered adequate political and economic development / Master of Arts

This analysis addresses the relationship between pre-political cultural identity and political outcomes. It posits that the political mobilization of sub-national groups cannot be understood without an examination of the cultural processes of identity formation. The analysis engages cultural discourse and its organization as an explanatory factor in the examination of the variation in ethnic political outcomes. Hence, important questions about ethnonational conflict can be answered by engaging the levels at which identity is constructed and reshaped through cultural discourse. It shifts the arena of analysis from the state to the ethnic groups themselves. The two empirical cases analyzed are that of Sikh nationalism in Punjab and 'ethnic' Assamese nationalism in Assam.