According to mainstream theories, democracy improves human development because electoral competition strengthens accountability of politicians to citizens: If politicians do not improve citizen welfare, they risk losing power. These approaches, however, neglect pathologies of po…
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Currently the Department of Defense (DoD) does not use exposure biomarkers to measure environmental exposures to chemicals. Blood and urine exposure biomarkers for volatile organic compounds (VOC), selected heavy metals, depleted uranium (DU), and chemical warfare agents are cur…
This study examines the role of literature and history in the construction of postcolonial cultural identities in two African and two European societies. I examine in detail the works of one writer from each of these societies. Nuruddin Farah is a Somali writer who explores his …
The dissertation examines U.S. policy towards partition in the 1990s. Partition is defined as the division of a sovereign state into one or more sovereign states, representing the successful culmination of one or more secessionist or irredentist movements. The author utilizes th…
This thesis began as an attempt to understand why the war in Bosnia was allowed to unfold in the fashion it did. Why in spite of the widespread reports of genocide and ethnic cleansing (carried out in this bloody war) did we in the West stand by and do nothing? My initial questi…
From the Mai Lai Massacre to the Slaughter of Sarajevo examines a progressive decrease in the quality of press coverage as reflected in contemporary U.S. military involvements from Vietnam to Bosnia. The thesis is that the press has progressively become more dependent on the rul…
This research project explores and refines the applicability of just war principles to third-party interventions. Primary and secondary documents indicate a growing trend towards third-party intervention, particularly by the United States. These interventions create a problemati…
This dissertation investigates the way in which institutions shape the contours of contemporary state violence. It does so by asking why Serbia supported “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia during 1992, the first year of Bosnia's independence, while Israel engaged in a policy of “ethni…
The number of United Nations interventions in civil conflicts has increased since the end of the Cold War. Traditional peace-keeping has proved ill-suited to deal with them; second-generation, multi-task peace-keeping operations have emerged as a substitute. These new operations…
The end of the Cold War and the dawn of the information age have been characterized by increasing communication and decreasing cooperation among different interest groups (ethnic, political, religious, etc.) around the world. Internal conflicts like the recent Bosnian and Rwanda…
This thesis examines the Contact Group as an institution, and its role in the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts in the 1990s. The thesis aims to explain what the Contact Group is, how it was composed and how it worked. Its roles in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo are compared throughou…
During the 1990s, observers noted that American responses to foreign humanitarian crises were inconsistent. This project examines the American choice to intervene in humanitarian crises through the lens of civil-military relations. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that mili…
This dissertation explores the nature of religious militancy---in particular, the mechanics of the decision that a potential militant makes to embrace or reject violence in pursuit of his or her aims. To situate this project, it is worth comparing it to the two general sets of a…
This dissertation addresses the relationship between majority nationalism and state legitimization in the context of an externally-imposed peace settlement which ended a violent ethnic conflict. Using the case of post-Dayton Bosnia, the project demonstrates how state practices o…
This comparative study of two post-conflict "islands of achievement" in failed or fragile states---Somaliland, and Brčko in northern Bosnia---shows that indigenously-driven participatory peacebuilding is less costly and more effective in concurrently building governance and reco…
This dissertation tells the story of Sarajevo during the Second World War. Beginning with a sketch of the city on the eve of war—when Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox Serbs, and Jews lived and worked together—it traces how these communities interacted with one another through variou…