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Non-state actors in international politics: a theoretical framework

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning of studies related to international
terrorism, many related to and resulting from current events and occurrences. However, the enterprise of terrorism scholarship within the framework of political science
and international relations poses some interesting dilemmas for the discipline. While
other topics in the field have received increasingly rigorous examination, the study of
terrorism, comparatively, remains in a nascent stage. Though many of the tools of
analysis from other areas of international relations scholarship can be re-applied tfi
the study of terrorism, it appears that some must be modified and others discarded
altogether. Instead of seeking to fit terrorists, and, indeed, other state actors, into the
common rubric of international relations scholarship, I argue here that it is important
to reconceptualize international interaction in light of the problems that such actors
pose to traditional research. Thus, in the following thesis, I will explore the challenges
the study of terrorism poses to researchers in the fields of international relations and
political science. After discussing the theoretical foundations and quandaries of the
study of international terrorism in political science, I will utilize these remarks as a
groundwork for developing a game-theoretic model that incorporates some of these
challenges and an econometric model to test some of its implications.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2365
Date15 May 2009
CreatorsPaley, Abram Wil
ContributorsTarar, Ahmer
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text
Formatelectronic, application/pdf, born digital

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