"Power and Patronage examines the unwritten rules and inner workings of contemporary China's local politics and government. It exposes how these rules have helped to keep the one-Party state together during decades of tumultuous political, social, and economic change. While many…
This thesis examines the contribution of James Scott, British country trader in the late eighteenth century, who alongside Francis Light played a major role in the establishment of a British settlement on Penang. Country traders, who worked independently of the East India Compan…
This thesis explores the dynamics of artistic patronage in the mid-seventeenth century in Rome, focusing on Prince Camillo Pamphilj and the sculptor Melchiorre Cafà. Cafà travelled to Rome from Malta around 1658 to train in Ercole Ferrata’s bottega, although he quickly surpassed…
This thesis introduces a new method for data collection on political elite networks using non-obtrusive web-based techniques. One possible indicator of elite connectivity is the frequency with which individuals appear at the same political events. Using a Google search scraping …
My dissertation examines popular support for democratic institutions in Africa. Democratization on the African continent continues to capture the interest of scholars and policy maker alike, not only because of democracy's association with economic wellbeing, but also because of…
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a recently formed state has undergone a transition, the speed of which has brought the country to the forefront of promoting a global sustainability discourse. Through the introduction of numerous sustainable development initiatives, a self-cont…
This dissertation examines the development of an Indo-Islamic capital city in the age of colonialism. Between 1750 and 1950, Hyderabad served as the capital of the Asaf Jahs (known more popularly as the Nizams), a dynasty whose sovereignty was constrained by the pressures of Bri…
The assertion that corruption is not favorable for business is not new. In our research we concentrate on the opposite question: can business benefit from corrupt environment? We answer this question using firm-level data from Indonesia and use firm political connection as the p…
Numerous art historians and anthropologists such as Rudolf Wittkower, Michael Baxandal and Alfred Gell have addressed the question of how art reflected the people by and for whom it was produced in the context of different cultures and periods. In my dissertation, I intend to co…