Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: From February 1988 to 1994, ethnic Azeris and Armenians fought for control over the predominantly Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. The ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding region led to refugee flows of nearly 800,000 Azeris from the Nagorno-Karabakh region to other areas of Azerbaijan, and Armenians from other areas of Azerbaijan to either Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia. Theoretically, ethnic warfare in the former Soviet states is hardly a surprising development - the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, in essence, the fact that "state collapse" occurred in all 13 successor states to the Soviet Union at the same time, might indicate that an opportunity had opened to ethnic groups or elite interests in these states. The loosening of Moscow's grip on these states, the political power shift from Moscow to local capitals, and the removal of Soviet troops, all provided conditions that favored insurgency or made insurgency more feasible. More remarkable, perhaps, are the other successor states that did not experience any organized ethnic violence. Repression of ethnic minorities has certainly occurred in many of these states; however, they have not experienced an actual civil war. What macro-level factors made the difference between war and peace in the former Soviet states? State collapse may be a necessary condition for ethnic violence, but it certainly does not appear to be a sufficient one. This paper is an investigation into the macro-level necessary and sufficient conditions that led some Soviet successor states to war. In order to investigate these conditions, I use Ragin's (2000) qualitative comparative analysis tools to compare a cross-national data set of former Soviet states to several rival hypotheses found in the violence literature, with a particular aim of establishing conjunctural causation. The former Soviet cases are particularly useful for this type of analysis; studying this region allows one to control for certain variables, including state collapse, new statehood, and previous occupation by another state, while benefiting from variation on the dependent variable (ethnic conflict). Many of the former Soviet states, particularly those in the Caucasus and Central Asia, straddle the North-South divide. Considered for many years to be "Northern" states due to their incorporation into the Soviet Union, these successor states now suffer from many of the ills found in those states traditionally considered "Southern": ethnic strife, increased poverty, and government instability are but a few traits these states have in common with their southern neighbors. Exploration of this region may not only answer more narrow questions about the fate of collapsed Communist states, but may also shed light on the causes, and potential cures, for some of the ills found in the South. This paper attempts to address one particular ill, namely, ethnic conflict.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper analyzes neighbor on neighbor violence that occurred during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The paper seeks to understand the form that participation took, e.g., why some killed while others did not.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The author explored a model combining international news and visual communication concepts in a content analysis of 26 U.S. network television stories about Mexican President Vicente Fox from January 2000 through March 2005. Traditional international news extramedia factors were found to influence story topics and some aspects of narratives. However, the detailed qualitative data about news narratives and visual communication suggested that television reporter and photographer conventions influenced content. Visual measures included portrayals of persons and objects, paraproxemics, lighting, camera angle, shot distance, composition, and graphic elements. Contributing to Mexican stereotypes or incomplete portrayals of President Fox were reliance on file footage, lack of creativity in illustrating policy concepts, and the story package structure in television news. While television displayed innovation in graphics in the small sample, it fell short on employing innovation to create higher quality news content.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Residents of small, rural towns sometimes engage in intense debates with pork producers regarding the environmental consequences of operating large-scale pork production facilities. In Iowa, for example, citizens desiring greater local control over hog lot operations have been successful at initiating policy debates in the state legislature. This study examined the extent to which the quality of neighboring in small, rural towns has deteriorated in response to adversarial public discourse about the operation of hog confinement operations. At issue is whether community social cohesion has eroded as a result of increased negative environmental consequences of engaging in large-scale commercial agriculture.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper will investigate the conceptualization of small actors in International Relations Theory and neighboring disciplines. The paper thus hopes to make a contribution to a better understanding of what constitutes a small state as far as IR theory is concerned. The paper will attempt to draw on other scholarly disciplines and their conceptualization of what makes a small unit.The paper falls in three parts. First, the paper will analyze the existing specialized literature on small states with respect to definitions of size. This will be followed, second, by an examination of major traditions in IR theory in light of their respective understandings of size difference among actors and the theoretical implications. Third, the paper will investigate other disciplines of the Social Sciences in order to possibly draw upon their insights into how to conceptualize size – and in particular small size – of actors. For example, the paper will explore how economists define a ‘small company,’ how comparative political scientists define a ‘small party,’ etc.The paper will conclude with a first cut at integrating insights from the examination of specialized IR literature and of insights from relevant other disciplines in the Social Sciences with respect to unit size. Thus, the paper will, hopefully, contribute to a better understanding of (a) how to conceptualize the small state, and (b) what the implications of this are for IR theory.