Child soldiers continue to be regular participants in modern conflicts in many different parts of the world. This dissertation addresses several interrelated questions about child soldiering employing large-N statistical analyses, process-tracing, and in-depth interviews. First, it asks how foreign state support and the characteristics of these donors influence rebels' recruitment of child soldiers. An important finding is that rebels supported by democratic states are less likely to employ child soldiers. It then investigates the factors and conditions that lead some groups to diversify their demographics in the types of recruits and others to not. Specifically, it considers why a rebel group would recruit children, but refrain from recruiting women. It examines theoretical arguments that contend group ideology, desires for patriarchal preservation, societal gender inequalities, and the location/type of rebellion (rural vs. urban) can each significantly contribute to groups' recruitment behavior. Third, it considers a question that speaks directly to the first two questions. What factors lead to the initial recruitment of children and how conflict conditions may impact the dynamics of rebel recruitment over time? An in-depth analysis of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) and the employment of a unique dataset on deceased Kurdish militants allows for an exploration of the temporal variation in the group's recruitment patterns over four decades. It illustrates that inter-rebel rivalries, conflict intensity, and the evolution of human rights norms shape rebels' recruitment behavior. The final section reorients the focus of the dissertation from rebel child soldiering to government child soldiering. It surveys the conditions under which the United States holds foreign governments accountable for their child soldiering practices through the restriction of certain forms of security assistance. In depth analyses of four norm-violating states and interviews with policy experts show that the strategic importance of a state and the systemic nature of child recruitment are strong predictors of when security assistance waivers will be granted. Together, this dissertation advances scholarly understanding of the causes, dynamics, and implications of child soldiering.

This dissertation explores the role of altruistic punishment, the act of punishing outsiders perceived to harm members of one's group at a personal cost, in explaining individual motivations to participate in inter-group violence. It first develops a social theory of this type punishment. This theory argues that an egalitarian social logic may be key to understanding motivations of parochial altruism, and that one's social environment may influence thresholds of anger needed to induce punishment behavior. Empirically, it conducts two survey-experimental studies. The first experiment utilizes subject partisan identity in the context of American politics and hypothetical acts of violence to study altruistic punishment behaviors among two different populations in the US. The second experiment utilizes a comparative sample of American, German, and Kurdish participants to assess whether priming for anger tied to acts of political violence by outsiders against their respective in-group increases support for a hypothetical in-group "punisher" of these outsiders. The results of these studies offer two key findings: (1) anger induced costly punishment of outgroup perpetrators may be conditional on egalitarian attitudes; (2) this relationship is contextual and varies across population. The findings cautiously suggest two conclusions. First, there may be evolutionary and neurological mechanisms that promote participation in inter-group conflict and that superficial characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, and ideology may work in tandem with biological factors. Second, it suggests that social and political environments may be useful for modulating, or exacerbating, the role of anger in the decision to participate in inter-group conflict activities.

Under what conditions do women become more resilient and empowered in post conflict settings? Utilizing data from multi site fieldwork in northern Iraq, Germany, and the U.S. involving over 160 in depth interviews, this dissertation addresses this question by studying the experiences of Yezidi women who were subject to genocidal violence by the Islamic State in Iraq in 2014. By adopting an intersectional approach, it contributes to feminist research on post conflict dynamics and suggests that how women cope with trauma and achieve positive changes in their lives depends on a variety of factors. Age, history of sexual violence and displacement and immigration experiences of Yezidi female survivors as well as the intersection of these factors, emerge as main determinants of their post genocide resilience and empowerment. Older women and widowed women, especially when they have no educational or work background, show less resilience and are not likely to experience empowerment post conflict. While survivors of sexual violence and abduction undergo high levels of traumatic stress, they can also show the highest levels of post traumatic growth when they are supported by their families and communities. Moreover, since they have greater access to sources compared t o the rest of the community, they are also more likely to experience empowerment. Displacement is mostly a disempowering experience for survivors. In contrast, immigration may bring positive changes, depending on the conditions of immigration, host country politics, community support in settled places and individual background. In conclusion, the dissertation questions generalized assumptions about women's post conflict experiences as well as the established categories of victimhood and calls for a more effective and inclusive policymaking for women in post atrocity settings.

Which strategies contribute towards a belligerent's ability to shift territorial control in its favor more quickly than others? This dissertation advances a theory of territorial control dynamics in conventional civil war that places the civilian population at the center of the analysis. Existing scholarship explaining territorial control in conventional civil war has emphasized the role of relative military capabilities, direct military confrontations aimed at territorial conquest, and the existence of established zones of control, with civilians generally residing in areas clearly dominated by one party or another, not in contested areas. As such, theory holds that this makes the civilian population 'less consequential'. I argue that as a strategy in conventional civil war aimed at increasing territorial control, displacement serves a direct and indirect purpose suited towards these ends. Beyond using strategic displacement as a means of clearing out civilians to facilitate territorial conquest and consolidating territorial control, belligerents can strategically displace civilians into enemy-held territory as a way of geographically concentrating the civilian population. This can serve to undermine the enemy's capacity to govern. Beyond the frontlines, strategic displacement is employed in part as a strategy of exhaustion. Using indirect violence to promote the repeated civilian displacement within the enemy's rearguard serves as indirect mechanism by which to exhaust the enemy by eroding the enemy's ability to maintain territorial control, both in the short and long term. As opposition groups are faced with the meeting the demands of the local civilian population in an increasingly concentrated geographical expanse, and the more civilians are randomly displaced within enemy-held territory, the more pressure the opposition group has placed on its governance capacity and the more exhausted the enemy becomes. This in turn weakens the ability of the enemy to maintain territorial control. However, I argue that these effects vary across armed groups, dependent upon each group's respective governance capacity. This effect is also amplified when the enemy does not represent a unitary movement.

This dissertation examines three aspects of peacekeeping research within the overall framework of peacekeeping effectiveness and its impacts on troop-contributing countries (TCC). This dissertation comprises three different papers that employ three different methodological approaches. The first paper investigates why the military failed to achieve its primary mandate of the protection of civilians (POC) in the wake of continued killings of civilians despite the presence of peacekeepers. The general expectation from the military is to contain or eliminate violent incidents and civilian deaths in areas of responsibility (AOR). Utilizing a case study of Beni, DRC —a highly violent and militarized area in Eastern DRC— a novel dataset is created based on the daily situation reports from one battalion deployed in Beni DRC from January 2014 to September 2017. The spatial analysis at the village and AOR levels found that night patrolling effectively reduces civilian deaths. However, in a highly contested area, military operations leave the civilian population in the vicinity more vulnerable as they are more prone to retaliatory actions from armed groups. The second paper examines the effects of peacekeepers' fatalities on troops' contributions to UN peacekeeping missions. It is hard to justify the killings of soldiers in a conflict with no imminent national security interest/threat, which can create domestic resistance and might pose challenges regarding troops' contributions to UN peacekeeping missions. This study seeks to uncover why countries are increasingly contributing troops to UN peacekeeping missions despite suffering casualties and deaths using large N cross-sectional data between 1990 to 2022 across different regime types and countries with varying levels of development. The findings suggest no evidence for casualty sensitivity arguments. Once deployed, TCCs increase their contribution in response to fatalities, more so in the peacekeeping mission with an enforcement mandate. Developing countries continue to provide peacekeepers in response to fatalities. The third paper examines the impact of peacekeeping dependence on the domestic civil-military relationship in troop-contributing countries, explicitly asking the question about the preference of military officers regarding military intervention in responding to the domestic political crisis. It does so with a survey experiment among the military officers within the Nepalese Army. The evidence suggests that military officers are generally less supportive of military intervention in domestic crises but when future participation in UN peacekeeping missions is at stake, military officers do support intervention in domestic politics.

Regional cooperation is widely acknowledged as a crucial element in fostering peace and prosperity among nations, yet few systematic studies have investigated the forces that promote and sustain it. This dissertation examines regional cooperation through the lens of states, state-led institutions, and non-state actors. In order to achieve this, the study first aims to undertake a systematic analysis of the correlates associated with regional cooperation, using country pairings to analyze where cooperation takes place. Second, I explore the role of international civil society in promoting regional cooperation. To gauge international civil society, a new dataset on International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) is constructed and introduced. The first part of my dissertation constructs two datasets on International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs). There is no ready-to-use, publicly available data source in the literature for researchers wishing to analyze INGOs systematically. There are a variety of online data sources, but none are based on identified inclusion criteria. I identify as INGOs all United Nations- accredited NGOs and construct two datasets: one of the INGOs and the other of INGOs at the state-year level of analysis. Both datasets can be integrated with other datasets, facilitating engagement with a broad range of research questions. While the INGO-level dataset provides information for 6,595 INGOs from 1816 to 2022, the state-level dataset includes 15,024 state-year observations from 1946 to 2022. The second part of the dissertation investigates the conditions under which regional countries engage in cooperation. Analyses of memberships in 76 regional organizations from 1945 to 2012 yield several factors as significant forces of regional cooperation. In order of importance, these are joint democracy, joint language, equal material capability, and trade interdependence. I found that weaker countries are more hesitant to cooperate with stronger ones within regions. At the theoretical level, this research supports a liberal explanation for regional interstate organization, emphasizing factors such as trade and democracy, over a hegemonic realist explanation that centers on power asymmetry. The third part of the dissertation examines the role of international civil society in regional cooperation. Drawing on the new INGO dataset, I found that the more international non-governmental organizations shared by two countries in a dyad in a year, the more likely the two countries share common memberships in Regional Organizations (ROs), Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), and Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). Even after accounting for such factors as democracy, economic status, and alliances, the results yield a robust correlation between the engagement of INGOs and the advancement of regional interstate cooperation.

Do cash transfers shift gender norms of economic relations within households and communities during crises? This study explores the effect of social protection programs like cash transfers on women's economic empowerment in contexts where climate change and violent conflicts co-occur. Cash transfers have become a policy of choice for governments and development agencies seeking to alleviate poverty, address economic and political grievances, and build individual and community resilience to climate change. Due to the recent popularity of cash transfers, there needs to be more scholarship on its effect on women's intra-household economic agency and voice in communities. Therefore, this study put forth a theory that implores scholars to reassess many of the prevalent frames and lenses used in exploring women's economic empowerment topics. As cash transfer programs become more popular, researchers and development practitioners must pay more attention to how cash transfers and structural conditions interactively shape opportunities for women's economic empowerment. This study uses secondary data from the gender analysis of the Nigerian National Social Safety Nets Program (NASSP), the Ghanian Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) project, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Datasets (ACLED), and climate data from the World Meteorological Service. Findings from the Nigerian case study show that women receiving cash transfers may exercise increased intra-household economic agency during crises such as drought, flooding, or escalation of armed conflicts. Women may also be able to express their voice in community leadership during crises due to high out-migration of men and forced conscription and killing of male household leads. In the Ghanaian case, women's economic empowerment is often an artifact of their socioeconomic status pre-crisis. Across both cases, it is uncertain if women's acquired economic agency and voice persist post-conflict or when climate impacts abate.

This dissertation examines three research questions related to Muslim minorities in Western Europe. The first chapter explores the question why some countries in Western Europe suffered terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamist extremists whereas others did not. I argue that there is a positive association between level of discrimination towards Muslim minorities and number of terrorist attacks: the presence of cultural and religious networks in discriminated communities can enhance the socialization of grievances, resulting in the radicalization of a small portion of the community. I conduct a comparative analysis of the cases of Italy, France, and the U.K. In the second chapter, I examine factors that contribute to discriminatory laws against Muslims in Europe (laws like the hijab ban). I argue that more secular countries are more likely to pass such laws as they aim at a more comprehensive separation of the state from religion. On the other hand, less secular countries are less likely to approve this kind of legislation, because in doing so they might open the door to the regulation of the country's "favored" religion (or the majority religion, depending on the institutional architecture of the country). I use a multimethod approach consisting of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Lastly, the third chapter explores two questions; it seeks the effects of (1) geographical proximity of voters to terrorist attacks and (2) number of Muslim immigrants in a geographical area, on the vote share of far-right parties. I use a statistical model that incorporates alternative explanations and focus on the 2017 French Presidential elections. The findings of this dissertation yield relevant policy implications related to integration of Muslim minorities in the European host countries and makes a substantial contribution to the literature in this area of research.

Information security programs are instituted by organizations to provide guidance to their users who handle their data and systems. The main goal of these programs is to protect the organization's information assets through the creation and cultivation of a positive information security culture within the organization. As the collection and use of data expands in all economic sectors, the threat of data breach due to human error increases. Employee's behavior towards information security is influenced by the organizations information security programs and the overall information security culture. This study examines the human factors of an information security program and their effect on the information security culture. These human factors consist of stringency of organizational policies, behavior deterrence, employee attitudes towards information security, training and awareness, and management support of the information security programs. A survey questionnaire was given to employees in the Florida College System to measure the human aspects of the information security programs. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were used to investigate the relationships between the variables in the study using IBM® SPSS® Amos 24 software. The study results show that management support and behavior deterrence have a significant positive relationship with information security. Additionally, the results show no significant association between information security culture and organization policies, employee commitment and employee awareness. This suggests a need for further refinement of the model and the survey tool design to properly assess human factors of information security programs and their effects on the organizational security culture.

The National Data Exchange (N-DEx) System is the central informational hub located at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Its purpose is to provide network subscriptions to all Federal, state and local level law enforcement agencies while increasing information collaboration across all domains. The National Data Exchange users must satisfy the Advanced Permission Requirements, confirming the terms of N-DEx information use, and the Verification Requirement (verifying the completeness, timeliness, accuracy, and relevancy of N-DEx information) through coordination with the record-owning agency (Management, 2018). A network infection model is proposed to simulate the spread impact of various cyber-attacks within Federal, state and local level law enforcement networks that are linked together through the topologies merging with the National Data Exchange (N-DEx) System as the ability to manipulate the live network is limited. The model design methodology is conducted in a manner that creates a level of organization from the state level to the local level of law enforcement agencies allowing for each organizational infection probability to be calculated and entered, thus making the model very specific in nature for determining spread or outbreaks of cyber-attacks among law enforcement agencies at all levels. This research will enable future researchers to further develop a model that is capable of detecting weak points within an information structure when multiple topologies merge, allowing for more secure operations among law enforcement networks.