Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 552-596). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ66363.

How do autocrats win elections? A powerful option is to use the state to coerce and coopt the population for support. The territorial nature of the state allows an autocrat to vary patterns of cooptation and coercion across a country either by implementing different rules to different places, or by applying the same rules differently in each location. The existing administrative arrangements an autocrat inherits from her predecessors, however, may not be best suited for an autocrat's ethnic geography - or the importance of different ethnic groups to the incumbent staying in power and their locations across the country - as she faces re-election. With the backdrop of donor-pressure for state reforms in the developing world since the 1980s, autocrats have found an enabling environment to change the state to better match their ethnic geography. Autocrats within competitive authoritarian regimes pursue reforms that target cooptation and/or coercion through the state to an area based on its expected level of support in an attempt to tilt the playing field and win re-election. I develop the argument through a set of sub-national analyses on two fundamental aspects of the state - administrative unit creation and management of officers in the internal security apparatus - in Kenya since the country's return to multi-party elections in 1992. I use records on administrative units, officer management, census data, elite interviews and archival material. The results show that incumbents since 1992 have attempted to coerce and coopt unaligned ethnic groups, those without a co-ethnic in the race nor who have lined up behind a viable challenger, and that these efforts have increased the incumbent's local vote share. More broadly, this work helps explain both the precipitous and widespread state reforms in recent decades in the developing world, and their lackluster results. These state-building reforms have not resulted in more efficient states as originally intended, but they have made competitive authoritarian regimes more durable. / Government

Election boycotts are a common occurrence in unconsolidated democracies, particularly in the developing world, with prominent examples from recent years occurring in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. Despite the frequent occurrence of boycotts, there are few studies available in the scholarly literature concerning the effectiveness of electoral boycotts, particularly as a strategy of opposition parties seeking to bring about the end of electoral authoritarian governments. This paper is based in the democratization literature, with a particular focus on the behavior and vulnerabilities of hybrid or electoral authoritarian regimes. Using an original dataset with global coverage including hybrid regimes from 1981 to 2006, this paper uses event-history analysis to determine the efficacy of boycotts in national elections among other risk factors thought to undermine electoral authoritarian regimes as well as the possibilities for subsequent democratization occurring following both contested and boycotted electoral processes.

<p>This study attempted to examine the role that selected civil society groups played to promote citizen participation in governance processes.</p>

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2008. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Politics, Faculty of Law, Business and Social Sciences, University of Glasgow, 2008. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Air University (U.S.), 2005. / "A thesis presented to the faculty of the school of advanced air and space studies for completion of the graduation requirements." "May 2005." ADA 477013. Includes bibliographical references (p. 1-6).

Thesis (M.A. (Human Rights))--Mahidol University, 2003.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Uppsala University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 290-308).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-172). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.