Ownership refers to programme aid recipient countries establishing their own development priorities by leading development policymaking in partnership with donors, rather than donors prescribing priorities for these recipients. Ownership has become a central indicator of global aid effectiveness since the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Simultaneously, donors have shifted towards a reliance on sectoral programme assistance which channels programme aid throughout whole sectors rather than using piecemeal projects. The donors comprising the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development-Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) have institutionalized ownership as international aid policy, and are broadly of the view that ownership at the sectoral level is best promoted through a reliance on sector wide approaches (SWAps). However there is no settled understanding of what recipient leadership entails; there is lack of an institutional understanding of recipient contexts, and how these contexts can operationalize ownership; and there has been a spurious association between ownership and SWAps over time. By relying on Historical Institutionalism, this thesis discusses how broader institutional characteristics establish the context of recipient policymaking generally, and how these characteristics contextualize the operationalization of ownership during sectoral development policymaking, specifically. The evidence reveals that ownership can be simultaneously reflected and challenged in Jamaica.

The present research provides new insights into the main causes of the unsuccessful negotiation attempts made by the dispute parties in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at different points in time throughout the peace talks from 1992 till 2013 and seeks to explain the failure of the sides to achieve a final settlement of the dispute. This research employs a qualitative research design and makes use of the congruence and process tracing methods whereby a time-series comparative analysis of six negotiation phases within the whole Nagorno-Karabakh peace process is undertaken. By studying both the domestic and international context in which the conflict has been embedded, as well as the contents of the proposed peace deals in the past, this study argues that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution process has failed to produce a final settlement due to the absence of a ripe moment, i.e. a mutually hurting stalemate, and mutually enticing opportunity, a winning formula, the political willingness, the particular quality of the Armenian and Azerbaijani political leaderships, as well as the presence of self-oriented mediators.

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Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

The United States, in cooperation with European governments and international aid organizations, has sponsored the development of independent media as a major component of both conflict interventions and democratization programs, and more recently as part of nation building efforts. This study explores the evolution and export of those dominant democratic media models and their impact on recipient communities in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia from 2000 to 2007. International donors came to see media development as a silver bullet for democratization efforts to foster freedom of speech, civil society, good governance, as well as an engaged citizenry. Donors and practitioners initially believed that institutions, once established, would function in a specific way, and coupled with assistance to professionalize and commercialize the media sector, would create or at least jump start systems similar to those in the US and Europe. Over the years, policy makers have identified the vital parts of a democratic media system, but what they have failed to fully understand is the dynamic interaction among them. Now, more than fifteen years after the end of the Bosnian war and twelve after the end of the war in Kosovo, numerous assessments by government sponsors and independent evaluators have reported success in achieving fundamental media freedoms in these countries, yet these media sectors have not demonstrated their anticipated transformative power – leaving struggling or dysfunctional organizations in the wake of donor financial retreat. This study argues that media organizations and institutions are trapped between pressures to commercialize and professionalize, which have become conflicting rather than enabling forces when combined with weak economic environments. In each of the countries in this study, a lack of synchronization among reforms, political divisions, and poor economic growth have contributed to a web of interrelated challenges. Despite significant economic reforms, growth and stability have never reached a threshold for systemic change.

Prospective Balace is an interactionist systemic theory that utilizes the concepts of non-additivity and non-linearity to better explain the incidence of cooperation and conflict. The theory argues against neorealism in which the distribution of power in the international system purports to explain the phenomenon of interest. Balance theory is a manifestation of non-additivity, while attitudinal consistency is a manifestation of non-linearity. Balanced and imbalanced configurations comprise balance theory. Rational and irrational consistency comprise attitudinal consistency. In turn, cognitive (or unmotivated) biases and affective (or motivated) biases comprise irrational consistency. Both balance and attitudinal consistency serve as independent variables. The dynamics of prospect theory, in which states are risk acceptant for loss but risk averse for gain, and the dynamics of deterrence theory serve as intervening variables. Characteristic actor behaviors, identified as perceptual syndrome, intentional clarity, widespread loss aversion, and affective abandonment of rational consistency, comprise the outcomes to be explained. Because neorealism is predicated upon maximizing rationality, its predicate is expected utility theory, in which states take actions should they provide benefits in excess of costs with appropriate utilities and probabilities considered. Because of this orientation, neorealism is unable to explain instances in which states engage in conflict that has little rational basis for success, on the one hand, and instances in which states cooperate with one another when aggression has a reasonable chance of success, on the other hand. By adopting prospect precepts, Prospective Balance provides a more powerful explanation of this puzzling behavior. Case studies selected from early to later 19th-century Europe serve as the empirical basis for analyzing in detail two of the characteristic behaviors, that of widespread loss aversion, and that of affective abandonment.

This dissertation analyzes how statesmen and soldiers make decisions on war and peace and identifies key linkages between a state's civil-military relations and its international relations. It shows that there is a clear connection between a state's civil-military relations and the making of strategy. This study analyzes how different patterns of civil-military relations affect a state's propensity to use military force, as well as its ability to design effective military strategies to achieve its political objectives. It develops a framework, which allows us to derive hypotheses as to the conditions under which policy-makers would be more likely to make informed decisions on the use of force. The dissertation studies how top decision-makers process information and advice and the political and psychological dynamics that affect the policy-making process. I show that firm civilian control, while necessary, is not a sufficient condition and does not automatically translate into effective national security decision-making or victorious military strategies. Even wealthy and powerful states with firm control over their militaries have paid, at times, enormous cost in blood and treasure due to poorly-conceived diplomatic and military strategies. In the coming years, we are certain to have many occasions when the U.S. uses or considers the use of military force. That is why scholars should continue studying the dynamics of the relations between civilian and military leaders at the pinnacle of government and their effect on the making of military strategy and national security policy.

There have been some 163 foreign occupations since 1900. In many cases, military occupations have led to bloody and protracted resistance, while in most cases occupiers faced little resistance at all. This dissertation seeks to answer the puzzle: under what conditions do foreign occupations produce consequential resistance? Conventional wisdom holds that resistance is driven by nationalism. However, states exhibit different levels of resistance to different occupiers, indicating that not only the nature of the occupied but also the nature and the policies of occupiers play a role. Specifically, I look at the role of political dislocation and trust. First, domestic groups that would have otherwise waited out the occupation may be driven to resistance when occupiers implement policies or establish institutions that permanently weaken their relative domestic position, what I call political dislocation. Second, resistance will be muted when occupiers can credibly commit to treating the population benignly and vacating occupied territory promptly. I argue that democracies, international organizations, and co-religionists are better able to make credible commitments and therefore more likely to elicit trust among occupied communities. Conversely, occupiers that victimize the occupied population will face greater resistance. I test these hypotheses on an original dataset of occupier fatalities in every occupation since 1900. Drawing on geospatial data, I then conduct a sub-national quantitative and qualitative study of resistance in Afghanistan. Finally, in order to ensure that these findings are generalizable, I conduct a set of case studies comparing the Soviet and German occupations of Lithuania; the Vietnamese and UN occupations of Cambodia; and the Syrian, Multinational, UN, and Israeli occupations of Lebanon. I find that political dislocation, in the form of forceful regime change, increases the likelihood of resistance. I also find that occupations led by democracies, international organizations, and co-religionists are generally less likely to face resistance. Thus, the nature and context of occupation are some of the most important predictors of resistance.

Historians have traditionally paid little attention to the influence of institutional religion in shaping the international state system in the twentieth century. This dissertation attempts to fill the gap. It draws on newly released archival material to show how through diplomatic activism, theological innovation, and the centralization of Catholic associational life, the Vatican helped unite the fates of Western Europe and North America as never before. Following its loss of the Papal States in 1870, the Vatican fought to regain influence on the European continent by pioneering a new form of treaty diplomacy and launching a transnational anticommunist campaign with broad appeal. These actions enabled the Vatican to seize a prominent place in European affairs, and integrate elements of its vision of state-society relations within the legal, economic and social framework of nearly a dozen European states. The Vatican's interwar gains led it to partner during World War II with the United States and Christian Democratic leaders, forging an alliance that would help sanction the continent's "democratic turn," contribute decisively to Europe's moral and material reconstruction, and lay the diplomatic and discursive foundations for the Cold War.