Using Quantitative Methods to Explore Political Leverage, Trade Policy, and Food Security: A Case Study of the Middle East

This dissertation explores why some states consistently secure food imports at prices higher than the world market price, thereby exacerbating food insecurity domestically. I challenge the idea that free market economics alone can explain these trade behaviors, and instead argue that states take into account political considerations when engaging in food trade that results in inefficient trade. In particular, states that are dependent on imports of staple food products, like cereals, are wary of the potential strategic value of these goods to exporters. I argue that this consideration, combined with the importing state���s ability to mitigate that risk through its own forms of political or economic leverage, will shape the behavior of the importing state and contribute to its potential for food security. In addition to cross-national analyses, I use case studies of the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Jordan to demonstrate how the political tools available to these importers affect their food security. The results of my analyses suggest that when import dependent states have access to forms of political leverage, they are more likely to trade efficiently, thereby increasing their potential for food security.

Development Begins at Home: Women and the Domestic Economy in Brazil, 1945-1975

A number of historians of twentieth-century Latin America have identified ways that national labor laws, civil codes, social welfare programs, and business practices contributed to a gendered division of society that subordinated women to men in national economic development, household management, and familial relations. Few scholars, however, have critically explored women's roles as consumers and housewives in these intertwined realms. This work examines the Brazilian case after the Second World War, arguing that economic policies and business practices associated with ���developmentalism��� [Portuguese: desenvolvimentismo] created openings for women to engage in debates about national progress and transnational standards of modernity. While acknowledging that an asymmetry of gender relations persisted, the study demonstrates that urban women expanded their agency in this period, especially over areas of economic and family life deemed "domestic." This dissertation examines periodicals, consumer research statistics, public opinion surveys, personal interviews, corporate archives, the archives of key women���s organizations, and government officials��� records to identify the role that women and household economies played in Brazilian developmentalism between 1945 and 1975. Its principal argument is that business and political elites attempted to define gender roles for adult urban women as housewives and mothers, linking their management of the household to familial well-being and national modernization. In turn, Brazilian women deployed these idealized roles in public to advance their own economic interests, especially in the management of household finances and consumption, as well as to expand legal rights for married women, and increase women���s participation in the workforce. As the market for women's labor expanded with continued industrialization, these efforts defined a more active role for women in the economy and in debates about the trajectory of national development policies.

���DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF HIS RACE���: BLACK OFFICEHOLDERS AND THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF FREEDOM IN WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA, 1865-1877

This dissertation examines black officeholding in Wilmington, North Carolina, from emancipation in 1865 through 1876, when Democrats gained control of the state government and brought Reconstruction to an end. It considers the struggle for black office holding in the city, the black men who held office, the dynamic political culture of which they were a part, and their significance in the day-to-day lives of their constituents. Once they were enfranchised, black Wilmingtonians, who constituted a majority of the city���s population, used their voting leverage to negotiate the election of black men to public office. They did so by using Republican factionalism or what the dissertation argues was an alternative partisanship. Ultimately, it was not factional divisions, but voter suppression, gerrymandering, and constitutional revisions that made local government appointive rather than elective, Democrats at the state level chipped away at the political gains black Wilmingtonians had made.