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.

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A pesar de la potencial del ecoturismo, todavía existen muchas comunidades que enfrentan obstáculos en realizar un proyecto exitoso del turismo. Vivir en el área natural o protegida no significa que la población local esté ganando del ecoturismo y desarrollándose. Un proyecto de ecoturismo exitoso no sólo tiene la carga de ser sostenible y dar beneficio al medio ambiente, el proyecto tiene que incluir la población local en una manera integral. El problema que será analizado en esta tesis es la multitud de barreras que existen frente a la movilización e integración de la población local, las cuales prohíben que la comunidad sea una parte fundamental del ecoturismo. En examinar los estudios de caso de proyectos de ecoturismo que han sido exitosos en conservar el medioambiente e integrar la comunidad local, se verán las estrategias que una comunidad puede emplear para poder superar las barreras de la movilización e integración y hacerse parte integral de un proyecto de ecoturismo.

This thesis is an analysis of the recruitment process of the Shining Path -SP- and Revolutionary Movement “Tupac Amaru” -MRTA- guerrilla groups. Although SP was considered more aggressive, it gained more followers than MRTA. This thesis tries to explain why. Social Revolution Theory and Social Movement Theory provide explanations based on issues of “poverty”, disregarding the specific characteristics of the guerrilla groups and their supporters, as well as the influence of specific persuasive processes between the leaders of the groups and their followers. Integrative complexity theory, on the contrary, provides a consistent method to analyze cognitive processes: because people tend to reject complex and sophisticated explanations that require mental efforts, simplicity was the key for success. To prove which guerrilla group provided a simpler worldview, a sample of official documents of SP and MRTA are compared. Finally, content analysis is applied through the Paragraph Completion Test (P.C.T.).