This research has analyzed how the institutions of the merit-based bureaucratic system in the Korean Government changed from 1948 to 1963, applying the gradual institutional change theory of Mahoney and Thelen (2010). Though copious research has been produced on Korean economic …
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The incidence of violence and the configuration of areas of instability, which have accompanied rapid urbanisation processes in the global South, have led to a wide range of responses by state authorities at different levels. These responses include attempts to control, prevent …
The thesis examines the practice of corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA) from the period of its establishment until the death of Arafat. Palestinian elite formation from the late Ottoman period until the establishment of the PA was assessed in order to identify the elite…
In the aftermath of the Liberian civil war, groups of ex-combatants seized control of natural resource enclaves in the rubber, diamond, and timber sectors. With some of them threatening a return to war, these groups were widely viewed as the most significant threats to Liberia's…
The dissertation addresses the troubled relationship between authoritarianism and public goods. Political scientists have mixed expectations about the incentives of dictators to provide public goods that foster economic development. I argue that authoritarianism is not the main …
Can civil war build states? Since the end of World War II, civil war has eclipsed interstate war as the most dominant form of conflict. Yet, although the destructive consequences of civil war are fairly well-documented, we know little about its social and institutional legacies.…
Prevailing approaches in the comparative historical study of peasant mobilization assume the relationship between peasants and state institutions to be inherently antagonistic. By contrast, this dissertation argues that locally embedded legal cultures are crucial in mediating an…
Military interventions in the post-Cold War era—including both multilateral humanitarian interventions during the 1990s and American actions in Afghanistan and Iraq—have brought to the forefront of public debate and political analysis questions of "nation-building." These interv…
This dissertation explores how various actors in Kazakhstan have constituted the state's sovereign authority since gaining independence in 1991, and it contributes to a broad range of literatures, from political and urban geography, to post-Soviet and Central Asian regional stud…
The collapse of the Soviet Union provides several situations where the presence of Russian-speaking minorities produces a potential challenge to the consolidation of former Soviet Republics as independent democracies. My dissertation examines ethnic relations in two former Sovie…
International Radio Broadcasting (IRB) has been used as a mass communication tool of the state since its inception in the early 1920s. Following its historic use in programs of propaganda, public diplomacy, psychological operations, and international development communication, t…
Located at the meeting ground of North China, Mongolia, Central Asia, and Tibet, the province of Qinghai is one of the largest and poorest administrative regions in China. With the recent advent of the PRC's northwestern development project, Qinghai and its neighbors now figure …
Capable and accountable public authority has proven elusive throughout the developing world, but not entirely unattainable. Southeast Asia exhibits as much if not more cross-case variation than any other region in terms of both state capacity and levels of democratic accountabil…
This dissertation explores the role that the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been playing in Palestinian state-building since the 1970s. UNRWA's role is examined by assessing the impact of the organization's socio-economi…
Most studies of post-colonial political development focus on the reasons why states in the developing world typically have not generated high levels of state capacity akin to those found in Europe. This wrongly implies relative uniformity in outcomes. In fact, there is substanti…
Political scientists studying the United States usually limit their explanatory variables to those that can be found within the nation's borders. This standard approach omits an important causal factor: foreign wars. The under-appreciation of major U.S. wars as a causal variable…
Since the end of the Cold War, violent ethnic conflict has coincided with an increase in the number of failed or collapsed states and the emergence of more muscular and intrusive forms of external intervention by the United Nations. This dissertation explores the relationship be…
The peace agreements ending the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia partitioned the territory between the warring parties. It also made Bosnia an international protectorate, creating a complex government structure involving myriad interactions between different levels of domestic government…