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This paper examines the economic, social, and political relations that China has with Nigeria and Angola. The aim of this study is to understand the true impact of China’s bilateral expansion and to determine whether these relationships extend beyond South-South cooperation using domestic and international scholarly articles and literature reviews. In doing so, the paper will outline China’s initial penetration into Nigeria and Angola as well as their industries respectively. This research was founded through the use of secondary sources and scholarly reviews. Both Nigeria and Angola have had longstanding relationships with China that dates further beyond their official establishment of diplomatic relations. As developing nations, the partnership among these states was instrumental to the promotion of South-South cooperation, development, and economic growth. The conclusion to this study is that neither Nigeria’s nor Angola’s government holds policies indicative of Chinese soft power.

<p> The successful negotiation and implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement between the P5+1 world powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran has presents an important foreign policy opening for the United States. After 35 years of unconstructive policy and diplomatic near-silence, Washington has the chance to engage with Tehran toward mutual benefit. While obstacles to a more productive relationship between the United States and Iran remain considerable, this project attempts to chart a path forward. </p><p> The United States has engaged with its enemies and rivals before, and the time is now right for it to do so with Iran. Beyond the opportunities presented by the JCPOA, other factors make engagement the timely choice: Iran&rsquo;s political system and leadership is shifting, its economy is opening, and its security position in the Middle East continues to be pivotal and of the upmost importance to U.S. interests. Though there are arguments against moving towards any sort of relationship with Iran, this project finds them lacking in comparison to the possible benefits. </p><p> First and most fundamentally, Iran must be understood and approached as a unique and complex nation rather than a monolithic, simplified state. By replacing tired language and assumptions about Iran with consideration of its history, culture, and governance, this project establishes a framework that considers unique factors that provide context to Iran&rsquo;s society and government. Building upon this bedrock, the project proceeds to put forth policy steps in the realms of politics, economics, and security that would behoove Washington&rsquo;s efforts to develop a more effective relationship with Tehran. </p><p> There are immense challenges to these proposals, however. The governments of Iran and the United States have a storied history of conflict and have spent decades using poisonous messaging frames describing one another to their respective publics. They also have diametrically opposed security, geopolitical, and ideological interests, and each must incorporate and navigate complex relations with other states throughout the Middle East even while they negotiated directly. The project addresses these concerns as well as provides &lsquo;hedge&rsquo; recommendations that will allow the United States to continue opposing Iran where it is morally and strategically necessary to do so. </p><p> Ultimately, however, timing and the potential for political, economic, and security-based benefits build to a comprehensive case for engaging with Iran. By proceeding with principled resolve and considerable patience, policymakers can move forward from more than 35 years of stagnant policy and towards a vision that promotes a healthy integration of Iran into the international order and an aspirational vision of U.S. leadership in the world.</p>

Quels que soient l’angle ou la dimension envisagés, le contentieux international dit « classique » ne laisse guère de place prépondérante aux sujets internes. La règle de l’exclusion des recours individuels trouve son expression catégorique dans l’article 34 §.1 du Statut de la C.I.J.: « seuls les Etats ont qualité pour se présenter devant la Cour ». Cet état de fait, jadis justifié par un quasi-exclusivisme étatique de la justice internationale, conséquence du principe de l’unité de l’Etat et d’un statocentrisme de la vision classique du droit international, laissait a priori peu de place, sur la scène internationale, aux sujets de droit interne. Toutefois, cette exclusion de l’individu du contentieux international ne saurait s’entendre de ce que les litiges portés devant les prétoires internationaux ne concerneraient jamais ce dernier. Au contraire, et dans bien des situations, les individus apparaissent indirectement, selon que le préjudice à eux causé sert de prétexte à l’Etat ou que leur action dommageable engage la responsabilité de leur Etat. C'est à l’analyse d’un cas de traitement du sujet interne par le droit international qu’est principalement consacrée cette étude, qui a tenté de repenser la place de l’individu dans la perspective d’un jus gentium sensible et attentif aux besoins de protection et de responsabilisation de la personne humaine. / Whatever the point of view or dimension adopted, international disputes considered « classic » do not leave a dominant place to subjects of local law. The rule of exclusion of individual applications is categorically stated in Article 34 §.1 of the I.C.J. Statute: « Only states may be parties in cases before the Court ». This reality, in the past justified by a quasi-exclusive role of the State in international justice (a consequence of the principle of the unity of the State and a State-centered classical vision of international law) left a priori little space on the international scene to the subjects of local law. However, this exclusion of the individual from international disputes does not at all mean that conflicts settled by international courtrooms never concern them. On the contrary, in many cases individuals appear indirectly, either because the damage caused to them sets a pretext for the State, or because at other times the State is answerable for their harmful actions. This study is devoted primarily to the analysis of a case study of the treatment of internal subjects by international law. It attempts to rethink the place of the individual from the viewpoint of jus gentium, by remaining sensitive to and concerned with the needs for protection and empowerment of the human person.

What makes some conflicts more severe than others? This paper examines this question first by discussing what "severity" actually means. Then, the paper argues that rebel groups are stronger when they have access to lootable resources. When rebel groups are stronger, civil conflicts should tend to be bloodier. To examine this argument, this paper employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and discusses the results. The results here show strong support for the argument made in this paper. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the Master of Science. / Fall Semester 2015. / July 17, 2015. / civil war, rebel capability, severity / Includes bibliographical references. / Sean Ehrlich, Professor Directing Thesis; Mark Souva, Committee Member; Dale Smith, Committee Member.

This paper investigates the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture and the implications of the commitments of the agreement upon Indian agricultural trade. It begins with a discussion of the histories of the two most powerful developed economies and their policies regarding agricultural trade. Then an overview of Indian economic and agricultural history is illustrated along with Indian policies concerning agricultural trade. In terms of the Uruguay Round Agreement a synopsis of the major issues and areas of conflict is provided. Thereafter, an analysis of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture is outlined. With this information, an assessment of the agreement is made which addresses the impact of the implementation upon India within the outlined period of six years. The paper thus concludes with its findings regarding the impact of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture upon Indian agricultural trade. / A Thesis submitted to the Program in International Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: April 18, 2005. / GATT, Indian Imports, Tokyo Round, Kennedy Round, OECD Countries, Export Subsidies, AMS Reduction Commitments, URAA Reduction Requirements, Benfits Of Green Revolution, Green Revolution, Agricultural Development, Five Year Plans, Reduction Of Import Tariffs, Qrs, Removal Of Quantitative Restrictions, Domestic Support, Indian Exports, Globalization, Common Agricultural Policy, Developmments In The Doha Round, Peace Clause, Market Access / Includes bibliographical references. / James Cobbe, Professor Directing Thesis; Lee Metcalf, Committee Member; Ljubisa S. Adamovich, Committee Member.

This dissertation examines three enduring questions for the study of conflict. First, I consider how domestic institutions affect threat credibility, arguing that audiences can either help or hinder a leader during bargaining. Second, I show that the success of third party guarantees of civil war treaties is conditional on the guarantor's credibility. Finally, I argue that the willingness of a leader to nurture a reputation depends on their time horizons, and that long time horizons can allow a leader to deter conflict. The first essay considers how leaders communicate in a crisis. Scholars frequently use audience costs to explain how accountable leaders communicate, but these have received mixed empirical support. I argue this apparent disconnect between theory and evidence is due to simplistic assumptions about how audiences use their sanctioning power. I contend that supporters balance concerns over consistency and policy outcomes. As such, accountable leaders' ability to credibly communicate depends on their supporters' policy preferences. I apply this insight using casualty sensitivity as a conditioning policy preference. I expect, and find, that audiences only help a leader commit to fight when fighting is low cost, and actually prevent commitment when fighting is high cost. Audiences have countervailing effects on credibility due to their preferences for leaders who are both consistent and avoid costly conflict. The second essay addresses a puzzle regarding outside enforcement of civil war peace agreements. Instead of fighting, domestic belligerents could have agreed to outside support for a peaceful resolution to their underlying dispute, avoiding war and its costs. Existing theory cannot explain why third parties can end but not prevent conflict. I argue that war breaks out if third parties cannot credibly promise to enforce a peacefully negotiated agreement. Subsequent military intervention serves as a sunk cost signal of the third party's resolve to enforce an agreement, facilitating peace. I test this theory using a new dataset of treaty terms and duration for civil wars that began between 1944 and 1997. Consistent with the theory, guarantees only prolong the post-war peace when the guarantor intervened in the conflict. Guarantees that were not associated with an intervention do not improve the prospects for peace. In the final essay I argue that reputation formation is a type of investment. Leaders pay the costs of fighting in the present, in return for future gains in the form of deterrence. The investment decision depends on whether leaders survive in office to reap the future benefits of their reputation. I formally show that, while long time horizons increase a leader's willingness to fight, this alone does not make reputation formation more likely. As reputations form through the strategic decision to go to war, the chance to form a reputation is determined by the opponent's bargaining strategy. Opponents can "pay'' a leader to forgo the chance to earn a reputation through fighting by making greater concessions. However, an opponent might instead offer small concessions that risk war to learn a leader's resolve. Knowing a leader's resolve gives the opponent an advantage should they bargain in the future. As a result, when both a leader and their opponent have long time horizons, they forgo bargaining concessions that would be acceptable without reputation concerns, leading to war. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / July 13, 2018. / Includes bibliographical references. / Mark A. Souva, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jonathan Grant, University Representative; William D. Berry, Committee Member; Robert J. Carroll, Committee Member.

Advances in computing and machine learning have enabled researchers to use many different tools to learn from data. This dissertation is devoted to using predictive modeling to learn from existing data in international conflict studies with the aim of offering new measures and insights for applied researchers in international relations. In the first chapter, I explore the expected cost of war, which is a foundational concept in the study of international conflict. However, the field currently lacks a measure of the expected costs of war, and thereby any measure of the bargaining range. I develop a proxy for the expected costs of war by focusing on one aspect of war costs - battle deaths. I train a variety of machine learning algorithms on battle deaths for all countries participating in fatal military disputes and interstate wars between 1816-2007 in order to maximize out of sample predictive performance. The best performing model (random forest) improves performance over that of a null model by 25% and a linear model with all predictors by 9%. I apply the random forest to all interstate dyads in the Correlates of War dataverse from 1816-2007 in order to produce an estimate of the expected costs of war for all existing country pairs in the international system. The resulting measure, which I refer to as Dispute Casualty Expectations (DiCE), can be used to fully explore the implications of the bargaining model of war, as well as allow applied researchers to develop and test new theories in the study of international relations. In the second chapter, I use these expected costs of war to explore another foundational concept in international relations: foreign threats. Researchers commonly theorize about the impact of a state's international security environment - that is the extent to which a state is threatened by other states - yet the field currently lacks a measure which can effectively proxy for expectations of conflict. In order to create a new measure of threat, I train a number of machine learning algorithms on fatal militarized disputes over the years 1870-2001. I aggregate the predictions from these models at the country level to create a new measure of international conflict expectations for all states. In so doing, I am able to revisit the causes of international conflict via a data-driven approach, as well as provide a new measure of foreign threat for applied researchers. Finally, in the third chapter, I make use of this new measure to assess how international security affects a state's human rights behavior. International relations scholars have increasingly relied on domestic institutions to explain international conflict but less work has focused on reversing the arrow. To this point, political violence scholars have principally relied on domestic factors to explain the conditions under which leaders use coercive means to maintain power. But, political leaders do not exist in a vacuum; their decision making is informed by international and domestic factors. Therefore, I rely on both a predictive and inferential approach to assess whether foreign threats matter for state repression. The measure of foreign threats does emerge as an important variable in predicting state repression, which suggests that there is a meaningful relationship between international security and human rights behavior. Additionally, I find some (limited) evidence that the measure is negatively related to human rights behavior: states with high levels of foreign threat are associated with higher levels of state repression. But this finding is sensitive to model specification and merits further inspection. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2018. / November 16, 2018. / International conflict, Machine learning, Predictive modeling / Includes bibliographical references. / Mark Souva, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jonathan Grant, University Representative; Robert J. Carroll, Committee Member; Sean Ehrlich, Committee Member.

Thesis advisor: James E. Anderson / The world is still far from flat today. A large literature finds that there is too little international trade and too much intra-national trade. The vast majority of country pairs even do not trade at all. Borders and distance impede trade by much more than tariffs or transports costs can explain. Although other sources of resistance, such as taste, information, culture, and so on, have been discussed, it is difficult to measure and model them. My doctoral research examines the big question "What various resistances lead to the wide gap between reality and full globalization?" The first chapter focuses on how important the home-biased preference is for the home-biased consumption. In the second chapter, which is joint work with James Anderson, we study which of the iceberg and fixed trade cost accounts more for the international trade zeros. Finally, in the third chapter coauthored with Ben Li, we study how the country geographical heterogeneity affects international trade, as well as the global geopolitics. Chapter 1 relaxes the assumption of the representative consumer to heterogeneous ethnic consumers in terms of taste biases. More specifically, any given consumer has a taste biased towards the good produced by her country of origin wherever she currently resides in the world. Thus consumers are heterogeneous in terms of how large their taste biases are. I extend the structural gravity model by building and estimating a structural component of home-biased preferences. The gravity model generates bilateral trade shares with three distinct components: ethnic composition of resident population, bilateral trade cost, and per capita income. Market taste depends in part on the ethnic origin of consumers. When ethnicities are home-biased in tastes, migration promotes trade with countries of origin. Using international trade and transnational migration data among 40 countries, this paper estimates the home bias of each ethnic group in tastes. The results show that consumers' tastes for products from their country of origin deviate from unbiased levels by 40 percent on average. Large and poor ethnicities are more biased in their tastes. Ethnic taste bias is found to explain 64 percent of the home bias in trade. Chapter 2 identifies the extent to which zero trade flows is explained by variable and fixed trade cost, respectively. This job is important because variable and fixed trade cost play different roles in shaping zero trade flows and thus imply different trade policies to stimulate the trade to occur. Despite the enormous growth in global trade, most countries still do not trade with one other. Choke prices that shut off demand are suggested by the prevalence of zeros in disaggregated bilateral trade flows. We find the variation of price elasticities is even larger than income elasticities. On average, VC's effect on trade probability is much larger than FC's effect. The variable trade cost is more important than the fixed trade cost to explain the international trade zeros. Chapter 3 finds that since the Age of Discovery, the world has become economically integrated while remaining politically disintegrated as a collection of nation-states. The nation-state system is robust because borders, which divide the world landmass into states, interact with economic integration to absorb shocks. We build a tractable general equilibrium model of international trade and national borders in the world. Over a long time horizon, declining trade costs alter trade volumes across states but also incentivize states to redraw borders, causing states to form, change, and dissolve. Our model has significant implications for the global economy and politics, including trade patterns, political geography, state-size distribution, and the risks of militarized disputes. These implications are supported by modern and historical data. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.