The global economic processes often abbreviated as "globalization" play a significant role in hastening state collapse in weak, post-colonial states where regime legitimacy is undermined by patrimonial politics and the emergence of rivals to state power. The case studies of Libe…
This is a study of state culture and ethnicity in West Africa, particularly Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria. These countries represent the diverse cultures and major economies of the West African region. State culture is a polarizing political culture originally created to achieve n…
This dissertation on the missionary activity of the Roman Catholic and Assemblies of God churches in four English-speaking West African countries: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, and Ghana, presents the theologies of mission and evangelization of the two churches, their interpre…
Historical fertility studies and recent world demographic surveys have been kind to researchers who view contraceptive adoption as a diffusion mechanism. In the last decade, major theoretical breakthroughs have been achieved in helping us understand how such diffusion may occur;…
The research project that produced this dissertation is motivated by two concerns, one analytical, the other methodological. Methodologically, I conclude that machine-coded event data produce valid representations of political phenomena in Africa. Additional information for this…
Current approaches to post-war state reconstruction are primarily dominated by the liberal peace thesis. These approaches tend to ignore the indigenous institutions, societal resources and cultural agencies of post-conflict societies, although such entities are rooted in the soc…
This project seeks to answer the question to what extent do specific individual, domestic, and system level variables affect the U.S. decision to intervene in intrastate conflicts from 1948 to 1997? Using the Correlates of War intrastate war dataset and a newly constructed datas…
The biomedical model explains onchocerciasis as a disease caused by Onchocerca volvulus, a nematode transmitted to humans through the bite of the blackfly Similium. Physical symptoms of onchocerciasis include vision impairment, total blindness, severe itching, skin lesions, and …
This dissertation uses approaches and concepts from conflict resolution literature to answer two related questions concerning civil war peace agreements. First, it seeks to explain why some peace agreements are signed while others do not get signed, and second, why some agreemen…
This dissertation is about state foreign responses to violations of international humanitarian law in African civil wars. Its central concern is with the extent to which international humanitarian law obligations shape state foreign policy decisions, as opposed to calculations o…
Intragroup church conflict developed in the Liberia Annual Conference (LAC) of the United Methodist Church (UMC) in the 1980s. Therefore, this study sought to find out the causes of the conflict and recommend strategies for resolving group conflict within the conference. The res…
In 2003, thousands of Liberian women participated in a nonviolent protest action named Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace (WOLMAP). This movement gained international credit for its significant role in ending Liberia's fourteen year civil war and the mobilization for the ele…
The study reviews and assesses Nigeria's contributions to ECOMOG peace support operations in Liberia and finds that the contributions indeed positively impacted on the success of the mission. The study reviews all available evidence and finds that without any doubt Nigeria's con…
This dissertation examines historical rhetoric about Africa in British and American writings between the beginnings of the Abolition period and the 1884 Berlin Conference at which the continent was divided by colonial powers. Tracing rhetorical trends of travel writers and their…
My dissertation strives to understand the conditions under which peace operations in intra-state wars succeed or fail. I address two main questions: What is peace operation success, and what contributes to such an outcome? I define the success of a peace operation based on two d…
The African language of Bandi has little written about its grammar. This thesis analyzes discourse structure based on a folk tale, an historical narrative, and a procedural text. The data was gathered while working for The Institute for Liberian Languages in Liberia, West Africa…
This thesis explores the tension between scientific and portrait photography in nineteenth-century United States through an examination of the daguerreotypes of African Americans who emigrated to Liberia under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. Through an analysi…
This dissertation explores the impact of the American Civil War on the Liberian nation-building project. While the American Civil War serves as an end point in most studies of colonization and the making of Liberia, this dissertation argues that the war was a pivotal moment in t…
Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a deadly disease with no known cure and it caused an outbreak from 2014-2016 in Western Africa. Liberia had the highest morbidity and mortality; its capital city, Monrovia, was the focus of this study. The purpose of this research was to explore the …