There have been few attempts to empirically delineate
and assess the importance of "external" or "international"
factors in the study of comparative politics and political
development. The purpose of this thesis is to examine an
"international-national linkage" which has been the subject of
Considerable speculation butressed with anecdotal evidence.
The linkage is between the short term instability of export
proceeds of underdeveloped countries and the amount of political violence with in these countries. The independent variables
are export instability, export losses, export instability impact,
and the impact of export losses.
In the first section of the thesis, the external nature
of export instability is discussed. Export instability is not
always induced externally. The evidence linking export in stability to domestic economic disturbances and economic disturbances
to political violence is presented and discussed in the
next section. Domestic economic disturbance is an unmeasured
intervening variable in this study.
There are many methods of computing the instability
of export proceeds. Percentage deviations from annual trend
values are used in this thesis, with the trend values computed
using five year moving averages. The data sources and various
measures of political violence available are assessed in terms
of validity and reliability. A composite index of "the total
magnitude of civil strife," developed by Gurr and Ruttenberg,
is used to measure the amount of political violence. The results of across-sectional correlation analysis
for a sample of forty-seven underdeveloped countries indicate
zero relationships between the four independent variables and
political violence.
A lack of covariation within the total sample may
obscure significant correlations of opposite sign within specified subsamples. Accordingly, the sample is subdivided into
three relatively homogeneous socio-economic regions and four
political system types. The extent and direction of the relationships does vary according to region and type of political
system. The variation is not large. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/41883 |
| Date | January 1971 |
| Creators | Moul, William Brian |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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