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(1 - 10 of 10)
- Title
- Welcome to the Club: IGO Socialization and Dyadic Arms Transfers.
- Creator
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Dimino, Joseph, Dolan, Thomas, Kinsey, Barbara, Vasquez, Joseph, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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This thesis examines whether intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) can socialize member states by testing the effect of shared IGO memberships on dyadic arms transfers. IGO socialization is one of many proposed causal mechanisms by which IGO memberships might reduce interstate conflict. This thesis argues that the institutional socialization hypothesis (ISH), which asserts that shared IGO memberships will lead to interest convergence between member states, uses an invalid conceptualization...
Show moreThis thesis examines whether intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) can socialize member states by testing the effect of shared IGO memberships on dyadic arms transfers. IGO socialization is one of many proposed causal mechanisms by which IGO memberships might reduce interstate conflict. This thesis argues that the institutional socialization hypothesis (ISH), which asserts that shared IGO memberships will lead to interest convergence between member states, uses an invalid conceptualization and measurement of socialization. Instead, socialization is re-conceptualized as increased trust between member states, and re-operationalized using dyadic arms transfers as a proxy for trust. The study uses linear regression with cross-sectional panel data from the years 1960 to 1965 to test if the number of shared IGO memberships a dyad has five years prior leads to an increase in the number of arms transfers in a given dyad-year. The results are suggestive of a positive relationship between the number of shared IGO memberships and dyadic arms transfers, but are not conclusive at a 0.05 level of significance.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005605, ucf:50236
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005605
- Title
- THE EFFECT OF UNEMPLOYMENT ON DEMOCRATIC WARFARE.
- Creator
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Rakower, Andres, Vasquez, Joseph Paul, Kang, Kyungkook, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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This study was done to see the effects of a war on the economy and the internal politics of the United States. In selecting the engagement, we would study we agreed the Iraq War would be aided by a large amount of sampling of public opinion that was more nuanced than in previous wars. The Iraq War was a very complicated war, as it was controversial from the beginning and became a political issue while continuing to be a war fought by Americans abroad. Based on the literature, there were many...
Show moreThis study was done to see the effects of a war on the economy and the internal politics of the United States. In selecting the engagement, we would study we agreed the Iraq War would be aided by a large amount of sampling of public opinion that was more nuanced than in previous wars. The Iraq War was a very complicated war, as it was controversial from the beginning and became a political issue while continuing to be a war fought by Americans abroad. Based on the literature, there were many starting effects and assumptions that were accounted for such as the 'rally round the flag effect.' As a historical landmark, the Iraq War is important for being a significant conflict after the Vietnam War, another very controversial conflict in the eyes of the American public. The hypothesis that I presented were not supported by the data. The impact of the war on the economy was not strong enough that it would create pressure for the sort of model I created to apply. In this model the economic problems faced domestically could lead to more unemployment and therefore to higher military recruitment rates. While this was partially true in 2008, the consequence was not a significantly higher amount of people in the military. Ultimately, this project requires to be done in a more thorough setting where effects may be compared with those of other similar countries in similar scenarios.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2018
- Identifier
- CFH2000435, ucf:45816
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH2000435
- Title
- Maritime Pirates and Foreign Terrorist Organizations: Complicit Against the United States and NATO?.
- Creator
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Lusk, William, Morales, Waltraud, Knuckey, Jonathan, Vasquez, Joseph, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Maritime piracy, a phenomenon which has plagued free maritime trade for thousands of years, has entered a new age of sophistication and global reverberation. These acts of illegal criminal activity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries yield a significant profit margin for the perpetrators while creating considerable cost for ransom payments, security measures, capital, and human life. The classification of maritime pirates, as either criminals hoping to gain financial income...
Show moreMaritime piracy, a phenomenon which has plagued free maritime trade for thousands of years, has entered a new age of sophistication and global reverberation. These acts of illegal criminal activity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries yield a significant profit margin for the perpetrators while creating considerable cost for ransom payments, security measures, capital, and human life. The classification of maritime pirates, as either criminals hoping to gain financial income or terrorists hoping to usher in political change, is warranted and compelling. If maritime pirates conduct their operations to institute political change, it is possible that flags of the United States and its allies can be more susceptible to pirate attacks than others. The author argues that although the definitional separation of (")maritime piracy(") and (")terrorism(") is becoming increasingly blurred in the twenty-first century, pirates will attack ships based on convenience and opportunity rather than based on the flags of vessels. Testing of this theory will be based on quantitative data produced by the International Maritime Bureau to test pirates' ideologies as a variable. To test if deprivation is a variable to consider, the author will also compare Indonesian economic performance with the frequency of attempted pirate attacks off its waters.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- CFE0004573, ucf:49201
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004573
- Title
- When do comprehensive peacekeeping operations succeed? The case of the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) and the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA).
- Creator
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Stein, Sabrina, Morales, Waltraud, Sadri, Houman, Vasquez, Joseph, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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United Nations (UN) Charter Article 42 authorizes the Security Council to take military action by air, sea or land if non-armed solutions fail to restore international peace and Article 43 states that UN members will keep troops and equipment available for the use of the Security Council. However, Article 43 never went into effect, leaving the UN without an alternative to diplomatic solutions. Canada's UN representative, Lester Pearson Bowles, proposed instituting peacekeeping missions to...
Show moreUnited Nations (UN) Charter Article 42 authorizes the Security Council to take military action by air, sea or land if non-armed solutions fail to restore international peace and Article 43 states that UN members will keep troops and equipment available for the use of the Security Council. However, Article 43 never went into effect, leaving the UN without an alternative to diplomatic solutions. Canada's UN representative, Lester Pearson Bowles, proposed instituting peacekeeping missions to address this handicap and Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold established a peacekeeping framework, which included: agreement from the Security Council, agreement by parties involved, readiness of UN members to support mission, and the existence of a peace agreement. However, the UN's peacekeeping framework is often violated to address complex threats to international peace. This thesis will present an analysis of the UN peacekeeping framework and the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) and the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) to establish how the conflict in El Salvador and Guatemala determined ONUSAL's and MINUGUA's missions and how these deviate from the UN peacekeeping framework. The purpose of this study is to establish specific modifications that must be made to the classic UN peacekeeping framework based on conflict specifics to prevent UN peacekeeping failures.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- CFE0004446, ucf:49342
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004446
- Title
- Determinants of Terrorist Target Selection: A Quantitative Analysis.
- Creator
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Haywood, Taylor, Handberg, Roger, Dolan, Thomas, Boutton, Andrew, Vasquez, Joseph, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Existing research on the subject of terrorism is vast, spanning causes of terrorism, the membership of terrorist groups, types of terrorist attacks, and more. One area of terrorism research, though, has received only limited consideration: terrorist target selection. What research does exist explains target selection almost exclusively as a function of ideology (Asal et al. 2009, 270 and 274; Drake 1998b, 54-56 and 58). However, such a limited causal focus obscures other possible, and...
Show moreExisting research on the subject of terrorism is vast, spanning causes of terrorism, the membership of terrorist groups, types of terrorist attacks, and more. One area of terrorism research, though, has received only limited consideration: terrorist target selection. What research does exist explains target selection almost exclusively as a function of ideology (Asal et al. 2009, 270 and 274; Drake 1998b, 54-56 and 58). However, such a limited causal focus obscures other possible, and probable, explanations of terrorist target selection. This paper proposes an alternative explanation of terrorist target selection that includes ideological and terrorist group capability variables, as well as a variable measuring the security levels in the geographic areas in which terrorist attacks take place. A research design employing multiple ordinary least squares regression is utilized. The findings demonstrate the importance of the independent variables, as well as the significance of the effects of the two-way and three-way interactions of variables from the three categories. Furthermore, the multiple regression models explain a greater percentage of the effects of the independent variables on the percentage of attacks against civilian targets when the three-way interaction variable is included than when this interaction variable is not included. From these findings, two primary policy implications are derived.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2017
- Identifier
- CFE0006744, ucf:51853
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006744
- Title
- African Regional Organizations and Democracy.
- Creator
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Schoppert, Stephanie, Morales, Waltraud, Turcu, Anca, Vasquez, Joseph, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Instability and political repression are two reasons why many states in Africa are unable to develop. African regional organizations have the potential to encourage democracy, stability and development within their regions if they have the right tools. Using case studies of two major interventions by African regional organizations this thesis will determine what those tools may be. Both the intervention of ECOWAS into Liberia and the SADC into the DRC were rife with problems but they were...
Show moreInstability and political repression are two reasons why many states in Africa are unable to develop. African regional organizations have the potential to encourage democracy, stability and development within their regions if they have the right tools. Using case studies of two major interventions by African regional organizations this thesis will determine what those tools may be. Both the intervention of ECOWAS into Liberia and the SADC into the DRC were rife with problems but they were able to bring some stability and even democracy to states in crisis. This thesis finds that African regional organizations can promote democracy and stability, but the focus is always on stability for the region. With strong institutions and mandates, policy agreement and strong leadership, African regional organizations can bring stability, development and even democracy to their regions.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- Identifier
- CFE0004750, ucf:49778
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004750
- Title
- Explaining State Crisis Behavior Using the Operational Code.
- Creator
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George, William, Schafer, Mark, Dolan, Thomas, Vasquez, Joseph, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Does the operational code of a state's leadership have an effect on its behavior during foreign policy crises? Specifically, do states with more conflictual operational codes opt for a more conflictual response to crises, or do systemic and structural variables intervene to limit their significance? While the study of individual level psychology in international relations has been gaining momentum, the causal links between beliefs and behavior have yet to be solidified. This study used...
Show moreDoes the operational code of a state's leadership have an effect on its behavior during foreign policy crises? Specifically, do states with more conflictual operational codes opt for a more conflictual response to crises, or do systemic and structural variables intervene to limit their significance? While the study of individual level psychology in international relations has been gaining momentum, the causal links between beliefs and behavior have yet to be solidified. This study used ordered logistic regression across three models to determine the effect of the operational code on state crisis behavior while controlling for key domestic and crisis dimension variables. Predicted probabilities were also used to better demonstrate the variables' substantive effects. The 50 cases used in this research are drawn from the International Crisis Behavior Dataset composed by Brecher and Wilkenfeld, and they focus on the United States as the major crisis actor. Operational code data were derived from computer-based content analysis using the Verbs In Context System (Walker, Schafer, and Young 1998). The theoretical goal of this paper was to explain variance in state crisis behavior through variations in the operational codes of US Presidents. The results demonstrate that the operational codes of leaders do affect state crisis behavior. Specifically, the operational code indices P1 and I1 show that a leader with a more conflictual view of the nature of the political universe and a conflictual direction of strategy is more likely to employ escalatory crisis behavior.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005336, ucf:50528
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005336
- Title
- The Effects of State Leader Psychology on Civil War Lethality.
- Creator
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Kelley, Brandon, Vasquez, Joseph, Dolan, Thomas, Schafer, Mark, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Does a state leader's psychology influence lethality in civil wars? This thesis analyzes the aforementioned question during post-1945 civil wars. This particular subject, paying close attention to individual psychology at the state level, is gaining traction amongst scholars, though limited scholarly attention has addressed whether leader psychology is an indicator of conflict severity in terms of lethality. The psychology of the state leader in this thesis is assessed from leadership traits...
Show moreDoes a state leader's psychology influence lethality in civil wars? This thesis analyzes the aforementioned question during post-1945 civil wars. This particular subject, paying close attention to individual psychology at the state level, is gaining traction amongst scholars, though limited scholarly attention has addressed whether leader psychology is an indicator of conflict severity in terms of lethality. The psychology of the state leader in this thesis is assessed from leadership traits and operational code indices, specifically direction of strategy (I1) and interpretation of the nature of the political universe (P1). The data and cases used are pulled from datasets by Dr. James Fearon and the Correlates of War Project. The leaders' speech content is derived primarily from prepared material and analyzed using verbal content analysis via Profiler Plus. In measuring the effects of the predictors on my dependent variable, I chose the methodological approach of count data models, specifically, zero-truncated negative binomial regression. The results from the eight models I ran show that specific psychological traits, particularly a leader's I1 and P1 scores, level of distrust, and need for power, do play a significant role when determining the causes of civil war lethality.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005358, ucf:50469
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005358
- Title
- From American Service to Disservice: An Exploration of the Impact of Military Experience among an Incarcerated Population.
- Creator
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Brooke, Erika, Gau, Jacinta, Paoline, Eugene, Jordan, Kareem, Vasquez, Joseph, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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This dissertation research examines the impact of military service among an incarcerated population. It addresses the gaps identified within the prior literature by taking a closer look at the association between service experience and criminal justice outcomes. Specifically, the present study explores whether branch type, combat exposure, age of entrance, service length, and discharge status impact the number of lifetime arrests, current offense type, and institutional misconduct. This...
Show moreThis dissertation research examines the impact of military service among an incarcerated population. It addresses the gaps identified within the prior literature by taking a closer look at the association between service experience and criminal justice outcomes. Specifically, the present study explores whether branch type, combat exposure, age of entrance, service length, and discharge status impact the number of lifetime arrests, current offense type, and institutional misconduct. This research uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics' 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities. Multivariate analyses indicate that different elements of military participation influence criminal and deviant behaviors. Length of service significantly impacted the quantity of lifetime arrests, whereas age of entry, combat experience, and service length were important conditions in offense types. Inmates with military experience were found to be more likely to participate in institutional misconduct. The following service elements were predictors of prison misconduct as well: age of entry, length of service, branch affiliation, and discharge status. The findings in this study have theoretical implications for the use of criminological theory in military service research, and they provide suggestions for future military and criminal justice policy development.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005766, ucf:50079
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005766
- Title
- Phonological Working Memory Deficits in ADHD Revisited: The Role of Lower-Level Information Processing Deficits in Impaired Working Memory Performance.
- Creator
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Raiker, Joseph, Rapport, Mark, Beidel, Deborah, Mouloua, Mustapha, Vasquez, Eleazar, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Working memory deficits in children with ADHD are well established; however, insufficient evidence exists concerning the degree to which lower-level cognitive processes contribute to these deficits. The current study dissociates lower level information processing abilities (i.e., visual registration, orthographic conversion, and response output) in children with ADHD and typically developing children and examines the unique contribution of these processes to their phonological working memory...
Show moreWorking memory deficits in children with ADHD are well established; however, insufficient evidence exists concerning the degree to which lower-level cognitive processes contribute to these deficits. The current study dissociates lower level information processing abilities (i.e., visual registration, orthographic conversion, and response output) in children with ADHD and typically developing children and examines the unique contribution of these processes to their phonological working memory performance. Thirty-four boys between 8 and 12 years of age (20 ADHD, 14 typically developing) were administered novel information processing and phonological working memory tasks. Between-group differences were examined and bootstrap mediation analysis was used to evaluate the mediating effect of information processing deficits on phonological working memory performance. Results revealed moderate to large magnitude deficits in visual registration and encoding, orthographic to phonological conversion, and phonological working memory in children with ADHD. Subsequent mediation analyses, however, revealed that visual registration/encoding alone mediated the diagnostic group status/phonological working memory relationship and accounted for approximately 32% of the variance in children's phonological working memory performance. Diagnostic and treatment implications for understanding the complex interplay among multiple cognitive deficits in children with ADHD are discussed.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005694, ucf:50141
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005694
