I use a comparative political biographical approach to examine the lives and careers of two governors, Zell Miller and James B. Hunt. In so doing, I apply Shaffer’s theory of ideological realignment to two southern states by examining gubernatorial politics. I argue that these governors were electorally successful because they formed ideologically inclusive coalitions. I demonstrate that by forming ideologically inclusive coalitions that both governors experienced electoral successes. I examine those appeals through education, economic development, anti-crime, governmental efficiency and other issues. I seek to explain how Miller and Hunt’s life experiences shaped their respective political successes.

This thesis argues that Augustine’s account of Christian neighbour love properly characterizes and illuminates the political relevance of forgiveness within Christian community. The Christian commitment to love the neighbour is offensive to Hannah Arendt’s conceptualization of political freedom and political action, yet Augustine challenges Arendt’s notion of Christian ‘otherworldliness’ by locating the source of authentic forgiveness and political identity within the divine kenotic love of Christ. For Arendt, political forgiveness has the capacity to release us from the unforeseen and potentially devastating consequences of action as it safeguards our political interrelatedness and distinct human individuality. Arendt’s central objection to Augustinian forgiveness concerns its rootedness in Christ’s divine love, which, Arendt argues, destroys the public realm in which human political freedom rests. However, an Augustinian theological imagination responds to Arendt’s critical account of love by showing how the Incarnation is the exemplar of human political interaction. For Augustine, Christ as neighbour – in his divinity and humanity - makes forgiveness comprehensible as a politically relevant enactment of restorative love, and the worldly life of Christian community witnesses to this enactment as it points to coming fullness of God’s kingdom. Augustine offers us a way of thinking about a politic of forgiveness that tempers our expectations of political life as it broadens our understanding of love’s capacity to restore. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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This dissertation introduces instruments of agent-based modeling into the literature of contentious politics and broadens the application of game theory and quantitative analytical tools in this field. This work is composed of three working papers that focus specifically on the following topics: • In the first paper, I present a dynamic agent-based model encompassing the most important and up-to-date findings in the field of contentious politics and synthesize them within one homogeneous theoretical framework. After providing the theoretical description of the model, I run computer simulations to test the concrete functioning of the theoretical dynamics within it and find consistent analogies with real-world events. • In the second paper, I analyze the influence of socioeconomic inequality on individuals’ participation in contentious episodes. I do so by analyzing the socioeconomic trends that characterized three Arab countries – Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan – during the decade that preceded the 2011 uprisings and the social characteristics of those who participated in the subsequent protests, as they emerged in the 2011 wave of the Arab Barometer surveys. • In the third paper, I provide an overview of the relatively limited literature that applies the principles of game theory to the study of political or religious radicalization. After describing its main findings, I suggest how Rapoport’s seminal work on the historical “waves of terrorism” can be treated dynamically through some fundamental game-theoretic principles such as coordination problems, Thomas Shelling’s focal points and in the solutions proposed by the literature on correlated equilibria.

Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Religion/Political Science, 2007. / Author's name written on paper copy. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2008. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 4, 2009) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1981. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-88).

Thesis--Tampere. / Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-200) and index.

The Council of Ministers is arguably the most powerful of the EC's institutions, yet its operation still awaits an authoritative analysis. To date, research into the operation of the Council has tended only to deal with aspects of its structure, rather than analysing it as a complete body. Furthermore, there has been little theoretical appreciation of its internal operation, as research has tended to rely on existing methods of analysing EC policy-making. Therefore, a new methodological approach seems to be required which will address this lacuna in EC literature. Whilst the Council of Ministers legislates, it also negotiates. It would seem appropriate then to design a new approach that draws on both policy analysis and negotiation theory. The analytical framework used material drawn from interviews, and both primary and secondary written sources, to evaluate the day-to-day workings of a number of technical councils that constitute the Council of Ministers. Although there is an information deficit on the work of the Council, the flexible design of the framework allowed valuable insights into its operation. The findings gave some indication of the dynamics of the interactions between member states, which provides a better understanding of EC policymaking. The Council of Minister's character is influenced by member states. Their attitudes seem to have a strong effect upon the operational mechanisms of the various technical councils The Council may be an EC institution, but it is also the forum in which member states negotiate, preferring the diplomatic, consensus approach to prescriptive voting methods.

This study focuses on the protection and promotion of human rights in the context of the external relations of the European Union (EU). It sets out to examine, in particular, the position of human rights within the framework of EU foreign policy. While questions of human rights sparked a wide-ranging academic debate and resulted in enhanced levels of public scrutiny over the last decade, the research presented in this dissertation attempts to fill a significant gap in scholarly attention. It does so by offering a critique of the theoretical approaches towards, and the practical manifestations of human rights promotion initiatives in the context of EU policy interaction with countries in Asia. Evidence from previous work, included as part of this dissertation, suggests that the incremental growth of human rights competencies and agendas within the EU's legal and political systems was reflected in a number of areas of concrete EU external activity, such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), Development Policy, relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries and the EU's New Asia Strategy. This dissertation attempts to demonstrate how, in the context of a Constructivist perspective within International Relations Theory in general, and EU-Asia relations in particular, the EU can be conceptualised as a value-guided, 'ethical' polity, grounded in a constitutional framework of Treaties. As a result of this, the Union introdued a more pronounced human rights dimension to its dialogue with Asia. The evidence indicates that, in respect of its Asian partners, the EU implemented human rights strategies in a number or formats and with varying degrees of success. The study scrutinises, in particular, the Commission's 'strategy papers' on Asia and the Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM). In addition to findings analysed in previous work, this study demonstrates that the resulting debates about 'rights' and 'values' can be related to wider discourses derived from normative theory and surrounding issues of culture and identity. In the Asia-EU dialogue, arguments over human rights contain the potential to be both an enabling dynamic for, and an inhibiting agent of, a more intensive EU-Asia political and cultural dialogue. The study places a particular emphasis on EU human rights promotion policies towards the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Indonesia and Burma (The Union of Myanmar). It identifies and appraises three distinct EU policy approaches ranging from incentives based and coordinated measures to a more coercive and punitive diplomatic arsenal.