My dissertation uses several different methods to examine the role of compassion in politics, both at the citizen and elite level. I explore elite appeals to compassion through a content analysis of a selection of congressional and presidential speeches, finding that politicians often appeal to concern for others in need but that the parties differ widely in their use of these appeals. I combine this with an analysis of several waves of the General Social Survey to understand how individuals connect compassion to their political preferences. I find that proclivities toward compassion do not differ between partisans in the public but that partisan differences emerge in the effects of compassion. I find that highly compassionate Democrats have more liberal views on issues for which Democratic elites have made compassion more relevant, as outlined in my content work, such as capital punishment and help for the poor. Likewise, highly compassionate Republicans have more pro-life views, in accordance with the messages of compassion for unborn children by Republican elites. Highly compassionate individuals of both parties are more charitable in the private sector, indicating that compassion has similar effects on partisans when it is not tied to politics. I link these approaches with a sequence of experiments that reveal that compassionate rhetoric by elites activates individualsâ compassion. Perceptions of controllability might also influence whether or not people connect compassion to their preferences. I begin to test this hypothesis in my second experiment, and I find some evidence suggesting that perceptions of controllability are also influential in explaining political divisions.

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One of the most consistent findings, to date, in the human rights literature asserts that democracy decreases the likelihood of state repression. Several studies have noted the pacifying effects of democratic norms, competitive elections, and institutional checks on the executive as aspects that make democracies less repressive. However, the basic dichotomous measures that are commonly used in the literature only capture the presence or absence of these democratic characteristics and cannot account for the variation that exists between countries within these democratic institutions. In this paper, I suggest that electoral outcomes resulting from variation in institutional choice may have certain implications for a state's likelihood of using repression; one such electoral outcome is disproportionality. I argue that the level of consensuality of a democracy, represented as vote to seat disproportionality, should have different implications for state repression depending on how secure the government officials feel in their political survival. Using paneled data I create an ordered logit model and find that when job insecurity is high, high levels of disproportionality will encourage the most extreme levels of repression. However, when job insecurity is low, majoritarian systems are more likely to not repress their citizens.

The lack of consensus on the significance of ethnicity on civil conflict derives from the measures used, not from the concepts lack of merit. Current measures, such as the ethno-linguistic fractionalization index (ELF), examine differences in demographics rather than how the diversity becomes politically relevant or when the diversity leads to conflict. By using Horowitzs (1985) theory of ethnic voting and a measure for how closely a states political parties are aligned with ethnic groups, one can better assess how countries ethnic groups are politically organized and how this organization is associated with civil conflict. Using an original measure derived from Round 5 of the Afrobarometer indicating the extent to which a states political parties are aligned ethnically and the UCDP/ PRIOs Armed Conflict Dataset, the following study finds that states with high levels of ethnic political parties are associated with an increased probability of civil conflict, while those states with a proportional legislative electoral system are associated with a decreased, though not statistically significant, probability of civil conflict.

<p> In this dissertation I develop a theory of how the distribution of power across organized interest groups explains why some democratic transitions deliver governments that abide by constitutions, while others do not. Empirically, I consider the disadvantageous case where "census" voting &ndash; situations where a social identity seems to determine who votes for whom &ndash; diminishes an incumbent party's anticipation of electoral competition (what I call "democratic accountability") and thus the likelihood of losing an election due to abuses of power. I argue that under these conditions, the most important forces pushing a newly democratic country toward rule of law are powerful, self-interested organizations, especially in business and labor. The influence of such organized interest groups is a double-edged sword though: even as such organizations can promote constitutional compliance, they eventually also work to undermine it.</p><p> My theory begins from general microfoundations about how three independent variables (the preferences and distribution of power of organized interests and democratic accountability) bear on a new ruling party's constitutional compliance (which determines a general level of "rule of law" over time). Democratic accountability and organized interests that prefer rules to "deal-making" with the government (for example, due to the nature of the country's political economy) both naturally enhance rule of law. However, the effect of a concentration of power among organized interest groups is <i>conditional</i> on the other two independent variables. Where those other factors are weak, powerful business and labor organizations can support at least the institutions designed to protect their productive pursuits and members. When the other two factors already support constitutional compliance, organized interests do not have to carry that burden and only their destructive edge &ndash; eliciting special favor from government &ndash; is on display.</p><p> My empirical work focuses on the challenging case where democratic accountability is low. First I explore the effect of a concentration of organized interests under these conditions. I then examine the process by which democratic accountability might endogenously increase in the long term.</p><p> My research design explores variation across institutions and time within South Africa and between South Africa and Iraq at a country level. First, within South Africa, a case study of the Competition Tribunal shows how powerful business conglomerates (that developed before the transition) and the ruling ANC first backed the new institution, which then gained enough independent credibility to later constrain them. In contrast, a case study of the "Arms Deal" scandal &ndash; a large military purchase in 1999 widely seen as corrupt &ndash; demonstrates how organized interests pay less attention to public oversight bodies (and even benefit from their subversion), such that the ruling party will only defer to oversight bodies if the <i>public</i> demands it. Because the ANC faced no electoral threat, there was little cost to the party when it changed the composition and purpose of an important parliamentary committee.</p><p> In addition to explaining variation across institutions in South Africa, I compare South Africa to Iraq. Despite many differences between the countries and their transitions, both countries had weak democratic accountability due to ethnic census elections after transition. Under these conditions, I show how a concentration of organized interests in South Africa but not in Iraq led to stronger rule of law in South Africa as the theory predicts. I associate the differing rule of law outcomes with two different more general paradigms. South Africa, even with a mixed institutional record, reflects a higher "plan-sharing"1 paradigm: where powerful groups observe other actors using institutions out of self-interest, it diminishes their need to monitor, bargain, and coerce other actors to ensure predictable official behavior. In contrast, even under propitious moments of low violence and strong national identity in Iraq in 2008-2010, Iraqis and American advisors alike never emerged from a "power-sharing" paradigm: without any powerful actors with productive interests outside of the state, the very defmition of success remained a bargain over power-sharing rather than a set of rules to make bargaining unnecessary. As a result, when the American withdrawal and exogenous regional factors changed the anticipated balance of power, the bargain unraveled and the country descended back into civil war.</p><p> Finally, I return to the case of South Africa to understand the conditions under which democratic accountability might strengthen over time, correcting for the weakness of public oversight. Through two experimental tests, I show that voters are turning against the ANC due to the party's abuses, but they are reluctant to support a white party like the DA. I conclude that democratic accountability is increasing as racial census elections incrementally give way to competition. </p><p> 1 This idea comes from Shapiro (2011).</p>

This dissertation is a study of the dynamics and direction of contemporary Islamic activism. It examines why some Muslims turn to Islamic activism and what determines the direction of this movement. It focuses on the Jamaat-e-Islami of Bangladesh, one of the most influential Islamic activist movements in South Asia. The study particularly explores the factors that contributed to the rise of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh, and the subsequent transformation of this movement. The basic premise of this study is that the appeal of the contemporary Islamic activism is primarily religious, but wherever and whenever it participates in a democratic system, moderation is critical to its wider appeal and political success. By examining the historical roots, ideological discourse, organizational mechanism and the strategy of the Jamaat-e-Islami based on both primary and secondary source materials, the study uncovers that while at the core of this movement is a religious reawakening and rhetoric that were generated by new kind of Islamic discourses and sustained by a well-knit organizational network, this awakening being the result of one particular reading of Islam has attracted only a limited number of adherents. Having failed to win the hearts and minds of the majority as reflected in repeated electoral showings, the Jamaat has turned to redefine its ideology and socio-political agenda by adopting a “pragmatic” and relatively “liberal” approach in the political arena. While it is still experiencing dilemmas in reconciling and re-interpreting much of its agenda, the transformation the party has gone through in Bangladesh is significant, for it demonstrates its flexible character and a trend toward further moderation. Empirical findings of this study have wider theoretical implications. First, contemporary Islamic movements are not necessarily fundamentalist, reactive or radical, as they are often portrayed in the literature of this subject. In contrast, this study finds that while a degree of nostalgia is at work in Islamic activism in that it often refers back to the early history of Islam, it nevertheless embraces modernity. Second, this study unveils the diverse character of the Islamic activism that can be radical as well as moderate. It also shows that the character of an Islamic movement is shaped not just by a particular reading of Islam, but also by the context in which it operates. In other words, the nature of contemporary Islamic activism is largely contextual. Third, the ideological position and character of Islamic movements are still evolving. Fourth (and finally), pluralist democracy helps moderate the character of an Islamic movement, especially when the latter becomes the part of this process.

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on institutions, aid, and conflict. The first essay uses a formal model of revolution to argue that non-state aid can undermine the incentive of political opposition groups to challenge authoritarian regimes. A variety of empirical tests show that as a greater proportion of aid is delivered outside government channels, the frequency of political unrest decreases in authoritarian countries. The second essay uses a formal principal-agent model to argue that banning earmarking in multilateral aid organizations can be counterproductive from the standpoint of helping those most in need of humanitarian aid. The third essay argues that the effect of natural disasters on the risk of international conflict depends on states' domestic institutions of leader survival. I show that leaders of large-coalition governments initiate more international conflicts as deaths from disasters increase, while small-coalition leaders' behavior is unaffected by disasters.

The thesis investigates the institutional change in the case of the same-sex marriage referendum in Ireland. By using theories of discursive opportunity, framing and institutional change the study traces the public discourse on homosexuality, and analyzes which opportunities for progressive gay rights policies it presented. The focus is particularly on three informal institutions: marriage, family and religion which are at the center of controversy in the case of same-sex marriage. The first part of the paper conducts a frame analysis on the public discourse surrounding homosexuality as presented in newspaper articles of the Irish Times. In the second part of the study, the discourse of three prominent gay rights movements is analyzed in order to see how they used the opportunities presented by the public discourse and achieved a yes vote in the marriage referendum. The paper concludes with a discussion on how institutions both offer opportunities for change or reframing of current institutionalized meanings, but also constrain the framing processes of actors.