The purpose of this research is to determine if racial discrimination is evident in the Galveston County Criminal District Courts. This is to be accomplished by focusing on the sentences received by black and white defendants for specific felony offenses during 1979 through 1981. The offenses that are utilized in the study are: capital murder, murder (including voluntary and involuntary manslaughter); aggravated rape, rape; offenses against children including sexual abuse of, indecency with, rape of and injury to; aggravated assault; aggravated robbery, robbery; burglary of a habitation and burglary of a building. Six hundred cases were examined in these felony offenses to provide the basis for the comparisons in the final analysis. To determine if racial discrimination existed in the Galveston County Criminal District Courts, the following variables were utilized in relation to the effect each has on sentences: the indictment, nature of counsel (i.e., court appointed or retained), plea bargaining, jury trials and dismissals. These variables were chosen to ascertain if the mechanics of criminal court procedures are used for the benefit of all participants of the court, including the defendant.

This dissertation is a story about the divisions that characterize the mass public. Specifically, it explores how Americans think about politics, and, in particular, how citizens connect their attitudes, beliefs, and, vitally, ideological identity to their partisan affiliationa phenomenon known as sorting. Practically, this project proceeds in two parts. In Part 1, I investigate the nature of partisan sorting in the mass public. Chapter 2 reviews the extant scholarly literature regarding partisanship and ideology, or the raw materials of sorting. Drawing on this research, I operationalize two types of sorting in Chapter 3 and compare how different measurement protocols affect the characterization of public opinion. This distinction culminates in Chapter 4, which provides a series of empirical tests that justify partitioning sorting into identity- and policy-based constructs. The second part of this dissertation is devoted to the study of identity-based sorting. Chapter 5 takes up the question of why individuals identities converge and conveys that sorting is related to asymmetric perceptions of out-group dissimilarity rather than relative perceptions of between-group differences. Chapter 6 explores how this sorting affects compromise. I discover that, even in the absence of consistent policy preferences, identity sorting is sufficient to decrease an individuals willingness to accept bipartisanship. Finally, Chapter 7 examines how identity sorting alters the decisional criteria that voters utilize to select political candidates. Here, I show that sorting produces a disconnect between the perceived and objective ideological congruence between voters and their preferred candidate. Sorting, then, is a sufficient condition for pushing citizens toward more extreme candidateseven when individuals issue preferences suggest that their best candidate is considerably more moderate. Taken as a whole, this dissertation both refines the extant logic of sorting and pushes this research into new territory. In demonstrating that identity-based sorting constitutes a unique and particularly powerful political phenomenon, I reveal why concern over the systematic coherency of mass opinion is, perhaps, misplaced. Instead, it is this identity sorting that contributes to the intemperate and polarized atmosphere that characterizes the state of American politics.

This study examines the influence of China's foreign aid policies on the political economic development of Nigeria for the years 1979-2010. Three research questions were proposed and examined in this study: (1) What were the micro-macro political economic drivers of the relationship between China and Nigeria? (2) How has China's foreign aid policy between the years 1979 to 2010 influenced the political economy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? (3) What role has the international community played in the relationship between Nigeria and China? The international community in this context includes the United States, Soviet Union/Russia, United Kingdom, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. This study was based on the premise that the guiding principles which undergird China's foreign policy formulation, "Principles of Peaceful Coexistence," are no longer applicable in the 21st century. This assertion is made due to China's newly acquired position as the second largest economy in the world. This point is the crux of this research. The methodological approach utilized was case study and comparative analysis. Scholarly books, journals, government websites, and information from multilateral institutions such as the Bretton Woods Institutions and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were consulted. An additional source, AidData, which works closely with the aforementioned multilateral institutions, was also used. The sectors examined in this study include health, education, oil and mining and infrastructure in Nigeria. Time series design was utilized to track the influence of aid over the time period of study for the independent variable, China, and also the antecedent and intervening variables of the international community. The study was informed by two theoretical paradigms, complex interdependence and micro-macro linkage model guided by a political economic perspective highlighting the use of neo-mercantilism and neo classical realism by China. The findings indicate that the sectors of infrastructure and oil and mining are prominent sectors that have received a great deal of attention from China as compared to the global powers and the multilateral institutions. Two reasons can be attributed to this phenomenon: (1) From the Nigerian perspective, the trade and abundant natural resource oil and natural gas in exchange for infrastructure projects has been utilized to help place the country on a more sound economic footing; and (2) From the Chinese perspective, the economic and modernization goals that it wishes to fulfill to help facilitate its rise as a global power are assisted through both the human and natural resources provided by Nigeria.

This thesis presents an analysis of the past and current political and military situation in Uruguay, and an assessment of the environment in the Southern Cone of Latin America in light of the current leftist regimes in power in that region. It also raises the question of whether or not to deploy troops in future UN Chapter VII peacekeeping operations. All countries in the Southern Cone of Latin America are involved in the current UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Resolving this debate is essential insofar as it might affect the regionâ s traditional role as a peacekeeping troop â supplier.â This thesis argues that Uruguay should commit its Armed Forces to a broader spectrum of peacekeeping missions, including UN Chapter VII operations. This is consistent with Uruguayâ s foreign policy principles of preventive diplomacy and peaceful resolution of controversies, and would not violate the principle of nonintervention as long as military intervention takes place for â humanitarian reasons.â The current leftist government in Uruguay would also spread its ideal of international solidarity, and improve both the image of the country and domestic civil-military relations. The military would be able to train in a realistic conflict environment, upgrade its equipment and improve the economic well-being of its personnel.

Renewed violent attacks in Saudi Arabia against the monarchy, combined with growing concern over royal corruption has led some analysts to predict that Saudi Arabia is likely to be "the next Iran"-that Islamist revolutionaries will come to power in Riyadh. I test this theory through the lens of network analysis in order to measure the degree of state-society integration in Pahlavi Iran and Saudi Arabia. My analysis finds that a) the Saudi state is far more integrated in society through social networks than the Pahlavi state; and b) the radical opposition in Saudi is far less entrenched in society than the Khomeini-led opposition in Iran, a movement that was able to activate significant informal urban networks to mobilize the population. While both are rentier states, Saudi networks in society have effectively overcome the structural state weakness and potential instability that distributive political economies often engender. The shah had no equivalent system of networks linking regime to society, and thus was more vulnerable to revolution. Thus, while Saudi Arabia has significant internal problems, it is highly unlikely that those problems will be manifested as a social revolution. Persistent demands for reform and periodic bouts of violence are more likely outcomes.

Sociological models have been extensively used to predict the behavior of terrorist groups and to understand their use of terrorism. Much remains to be understood, however, concerning the factors that govern the growth or decline of these groups. Sociological models are inadequate for understanding terrorist behavior because these models typically do not account for the behavior of individuals who ignore social mores. This thesis explores the use of biological population models as a means to incorporate predator-prey behavior factors into terrorist models. This thesis also demonstrates that this method is more appropriate for examining the growth and decline of terrorist organizations through the interaction of law enforcement and terrorist recruitment efforts. After analyzing the respective strengths and weaknesses of sociological and biological models, the thesis applies a biological model, the Lotka-Volterra predatorprey model, to a highly suggestive case study, that of the Irish Republican Army. This case study illuminates how a biological model can be utilized to understand the actions of a terrorist organization, and offer predictive value that sociological models lack.

Why do legislators switch parties? What accounts for variation in party switching across different countries? How do electoral rules impact legislative party switching behavior and how is this behavior impacted by changes to these rules? The first chapter of this study builds on the existing body of research on the determinants of legislative party switching. More specifically, I build on the extant theories which have identified vote-, office-, and policy-seeking as motivations of legislator behavior. I examine the strategic decision making of legislators in various institutional contexts and argue that such contexts create or modify incentives and constraints that condition the decision to switch parties. Moving beyond the single country and cross-national party level analyses prevalent in the literature, this study attempts to approach party switching with a cross-national battery of variables from an original individual-level dataset. This dataset includes observations from Canada, Italy, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom from 1990-2001. I find support for vote- and policy-seeking hypotheses as well as district and system level institutional variables. In order to investigate how electoral rules impact party switching behavior, the second section of this study focuses on New Zealand and the evolution of its electoral system. These changes include a transition from a pure single-member district (SMD) electoral system to a mixed-member (MM), compensatory proportional representation system in 1996. Preliminary evidence suggests that the change to a MM electoral system is associated with a rise in the frequency of legislative party switching in New Zealand's House of Representatives. Additionally, there is evidence that party switching legislators are motivated by vote-seeking concerns over reelection.

How does being an electoral winner or loser shape a citizens satisfaction with democracy? More importantly, how does the voters institutional context moderate this relationship? In this paper, I demonstrate that the institutional context of a democracy interacts with a citizens national- level electoral loser status to moderate the relationship between the individuals status as a loser and her satisfaction with democracy in her country. I also explore the way winning and losing at different levels of representation interact to formulate satisfaction with democracy. Using cross-sectional survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems nested in 75 different country-election year cases over the time period of 1996 to 2012, I find mixed evidence that electoral losers are more likely to be satisfied with democracy when their chosen party is more favored by the party vote/seat share discrepancy. Unlike losing voters, winning voters do not appear to be more or less likely to be satisfied based on the vote/seat discrepancy. I also find mixed support for the idea that winning at the national level produces greater satisfaction than winning at the district level.

Dwight Eisenhower has long been thought of as a president who did not think about politics in a coherent way. This project finds, however, that Eisenhower was a coherent and systematic thinker about politics. The first chapter explores the sources of Eisenhowers political thought. In this chapter I establish that he had both the resources and inclination to reflect seriously on politics from early adulthood forward. Next, in Chapter 2, I outline his view of freedom in conjunction with how he thought about the state and society. Here, I find that he held that the state must be powerful enough to accomplish big tasks, such as the interstate highway system, but not so powerful that citizens could not hold it accountable. After establishing his thought on big political concepts, I turn to Eisenhowers thought on communism in Chapter 3. He imagined communism as a multifaceted threat that combined a spiritual challenge to America along with political and military challenges. Shifting back to America, Chapter 4 focuses on Eisenhowers perception of America as a unique political system. He was convinced that gradual progress was always likely to occur within Americas existing institutions and he had confidence in the innate goodness of the national character, fueled by his belief in Americas divine mandate to be an example of freedom to the world. I then turn, in Chapter 5, to exploring Eisenhowers unique brand of conservatism, which blends elements of traditional small government with progressivism. Although he did not fit neatly into either group, he exhibited both progressive and traditional conservative traits. Finally, I explore Eisenhowers view of the proper relationship between religion and American society in Chapter 6. He insisted that a broad religious commitment among Americas citizens was the most important weapon for the countrys Cold War arsenal. He also argued that the basis of citizenship in America was an individual belief in a divine power. Overall, I find that understanding Eisenhower as a thinker allows the student of American politics to understand both his actions and the politics of his time in a new way.

<p> This dissertation considers how income inequality affects attitudes towards tax policies and income redistribution. In the first paper, I adopt traditional models of the relationship between income inequality and policy preferences to incorporate income volatility. I find that greater income volatility can lead voters to prefer less progressive taxes depending on the distribution of the income shocks. Because income volatility and inequality are positively correlated, with each potentially having an opposite effect on public opinion, my model predicts that support for increasing taxes on upper incomes may not rise in the face of growing income inequality. In the second paper, I estimate the casual effect of short term, temporary changes in household income on individuals' tax progressivity preferences through a series survey experiments. I find evidence that volatility does in fact diminish preferences for tax progressivity. Respondents preferred significantly less progressive taxes when described households that had more volatile incomes regardless of the pattern of volatility over time. For the third and final paper, I develop a new, more powerful permutation procedure for analyzing two-way factorial experiments. The method is a non-parametric alternative to traditional analysis of variance (ANOVA). In Monte Carlo simulations, the procedure was better able to disentangle main factor and interaction effects than regression-based ANOVA tests, particularly when the design was imbalanced. I developed the procedure for use in the analysis of the income volatility experiments.</p>