Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, History

The Salvadoran Civil War of 1979-1992 transformed the nation's government from a military dictatorship into a liberal democracy. The United States was involved from the beginning to the end of the war, yet the superpower's role in the political outcome has been under-investigated. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to examine how the presence of the United States in the conflict shaped its eventual outcome. It argues that the United States' main role was to serve as a bulwark for the formal institutions and processes of liberal democratic government against the furies unleashed by the civil war. Salvadoran politicians, activists, party members and voters worked within these institutions to reform the politics of the country. The U.S. policy that unfolded in El Salvador was itself a product of historical development. This dissertation therefore describes the historical antecedents of the policies of the three U.S. presidential administrations that engaged with the Salvadoran Civil War: those of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. These antecedents included the legacy of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean Basin, the Cold War, and the rise of the human rights movement in U.S. politics. Furthermore, the Reagan and Bush administrations' El Salvador policy was the product of both administrations' interaction with a human rights constituency in the U.S. Congress.

Committee: Peter Hahn (Advisor); Stephanie Smith (Committee Member); Peter Mansoor (Committee Member); Joseph Parrott (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Political Science

This dissertation presents three papers exploring the nature of political participation in conflict and post-conflict settings, focusing on the issues of nationalization, militant groups, and sub-national democracy. The first paper contributes to the literature on post-conflict democratization by exploring a key dimension of party systems: nationalization. Using cross-national statistical analysis, the main insight is that the participation of former militants promotes nationalization. However, militant group participation after agreements actually limits it, due to the incentives for concentration offered by power-sharing institutions after territorial conflicts. This shines a light on the potentially negative effects of peace agreements. The second paper explains sub-national variation in the degree of former rebel group participation in Colombia during the 1990s. The theory and findings extend work in both long-standing traditions in comparative politics (the study of parties and electoral systems) and more recent developments in post-conflict studies (the promotion of democracy in the aftermath of civil war). An instrumental variables regression analysis suggests that the interaction between electoral rules and conflict-related violence drive rebel group participation. More specifically, increased district magnitude in conjunction with higher rebel violence is associated with more participation by these groups at the local level. Finally, the third paper analyzes the variation in local democracy in the context of civil conflict in Colombia. The key contribution of this paper is on the theory side: by understanding the relationship between national and local incumbents as one of potential collaboration under the threat of rebel violence and control, we can better explain the contrasts between national-level democracy and local-level nondemocratic regimes. This contrasts with the standard approach to sub-national limits to democracy, i.e. the "boundary control" mo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sarah Brooks (Committee Chair); Christopher Gelpi (Committee Member); Jan Pierskalla (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

BA, Oberlin College, 2017, Politics

This thesis examines U.S. democratization efforts in Haiti and Iraq: two instances where the United States used military intervention in its failed attempts to export democracy around the world. If the United States is to continue pursuing democratization, it is necessary for policy makers to modify their practices, as recent attempts have only resulted in failure. Thus, the study of how and why democratization attempts fail is critical in order to minimize the damage created by disastrous attempts at exporting democracy. So, in the Clinton and Bush administration's attempts to implement democracy in Haiti and Iraq, where did the democracy planners go wrong, and how did these mistakes further each country's failure to democratize successfully? Through a careful examination and analysis of the United States' democratization efforts in Haiti and Iraq, this thesis demonstrates that due to an inadequate understanding of universal characteristics of democracy, poor assessments of each country's historical, political, and social contexts as they relate to internal characteristics associated with democracy, and various obstacles to democracy, the Clinton and Bush administrations failed to successfully democratize Haiti and Iraq. Furthermore, these two cases suggest that the very practice of externally motivated and militarily enforced democratization cannot lead to a sustainable democracy.

Committee: Eve Nan Sandberg (Advisor) Subjects: International Relations