Regardless of where refugees are hosted, they require political knowledge of rights, restrictions, responsibilities, and the governance actors and processes who decide and uphold these. This knowledge enables refugees to comply with national laws, benefit from rights and protections, avoid rights-based exploitations and harms, and pursue life with dignity in...
In a wide range of political systems, political parties and politicians deliver special favors and material benefits to their constituents as a means of mobilizing their support during elections. This phenomenon, called patronage politics, is the focus of this dissertation. Although existing research has uncovered important variations in the patterns...
Does race matter globally, beyond national and regional contexts? If yes, then how exactly? I argue that race matters globally and develop an account for understanding that significance. I call the account “global racial capitalism.” In chapter 1, I offer background to motivate and defend the thesis that race matters...
This dissertation interrogates the quality of sincerity as it appears throughout John Locke’s work on religious toleration and Christian theology. Sincerity, and the framework it provides, offers a means to draw together his political and theological works, as well as to appreciate both his radical potentialities and conservative impulses. The...
This dissertation reorients political theory to the concepts of use and utility for a more critical and emancipatory perspective on contemporary communal life. The reorientation entails a recovery of Aristotle’s and Marx’s overlapping approaches to use, whose contemporary reception indexes the surprising alignment of critical political theory with economics. That...
This dissertation addresses inter alia the problem of certain intertextual discontinuities across Thomas Hobbes’s oeuvre regarding the issue of ecclesiology. I find that these disparities did not result from a change in Hobbes’s private opinions, but from the regicide of 1649 as an event that liberated Hobbes to unveil his...
Popular and scholarly arguments state that uncivil discourse is bad for democracy because it hampers political trust and sharpens polarization. These same scholars see uncivil discourse as contrary to a good democratic society. However, their arguments could be overstated because incivility may be so contextual that elites can frame certain...
How do ever-changing international systems and rapidly emerging technology shape counter-systemic revolutionary insurgent (CSRI) behavior and outcomes? The purpose of this publication is to identify causes and develop a conceptual typology of CSRI survival and behavior in a Post-9/11 era. I argue three global shocks acted as junctures for new...
On 14 January 2017, President Donald J. Trump described the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as obsolete. During the first six months of his administration, President Trump discussed not honoring Article 5 commitments for NATO members who had not met the financial responsibilities outlined in the 2014 Wales Summit. His...
Economic growth in contexts of state weakness presents a puzzle. If the state’s provision of property rights is necessary for financial investment and related pro-growth behaviors, then why do we observe private investment and commercial transactions in settings where state institutions are far from reliable property guarantors? This study addresses...