Trojan horses: On the origins of national security concerns over foreign investments in the United States from 1919 to 2008

In this thesis I sought to explain the origins of national security concerns over foreign investments in the United States from 1919 to 2008. I identified and examined 29 cases of national security concerns over foreign investments in the United States during that period, and argued that in order to understand the circumstances under which foreign investments in the United States are perceived to be threats to the U.S. security we must rely on a combination of democratic peace theory and the version of political realism known as power transition theory. Thus, I tested the argument that national security concerns over foreign investments in the United States from 1919 to 2008 resulted from: (1) perceptions of international power transition, (2) perceptions of ideological and institutional differences between the United States and the home country of the investor, (3) perceptions of the strategic importance of the sector where the investment is made, and (4) perceptions of participation or control of the foreign investor by the government of the country of origin. I found that all these hypotheses have some explanatory power.

The state of emergency management 2000: The process of emergency management professionalization in the United States and Florida

This dissertation analyzes the current status of emergency management professionalization in the United States and Florida using a qualitative case study. I investigate the efforts of various organizations at the national and state levels in the private and public sectors to organize emergency management as a profession. I conceptualize emergency management professionalization as occurring in two phases: the indirect institutionalization of the occupation of emergency management and the formal advancement toward an emergency management profession. The legislative, organizational, and procedural developments that occurred between approximately 1900 and the late 1970s became the indirect institutionalization of the occupation of emergency management. Over time, as our society developed and became increasingly complex, more disasters affect the security of the population. In order to adapt to increasing risks and vulnerabilities the emergency management system emerged and with it the necessary elements upon which a future profession could be established providing the basis for the formal advancement toward an emergency management profession. ^ During approximately the last twenty years, the formal advancement toward an emergency management profession has encompassed two primary strategies—certification and accreditation—motivated by the objective to organize a profession. Certification applies to individual emergency managers and includes all training and education. Accreditation of state and local emergency management agencies is reached by complying to a minimum level of proficiency with established standards of performance. Certification and accreditation are the mechanisms used to create an emergency management profession and thus act as axes around which the field of emergency management is organizing. ^ The purpose of this research is to provide a frame of reference for whether or not the field of emergency management is a profession. Based on sociology of professions literature, emergency management can be considered to be professionalizing. The current emergency management professionalization efforts may or may not be sufficient to achieve the ultimate goal of becoming a legitimate profession based on legal and public support for the exclusive right to perform emergency management tasks (monopoly) as well as self-regulation of those tasks (autonomy). ^

Health beliefs and health care options of disparate black communities in the United States

According to the 1999 U.S. Census, there were approximately thirty-three million African Americans and approximately 1.8 million non-Hispanic black immigrants in the United States. The 1997 U.S. Census estimated that there were as many as 554,000 foreign-born Haitians and 505,000 foreign-born Jamaicans living in the United States, mainly residing in Florida and New York. The U.S. Census claims that blacks are one of the largest emerging ethnic groups in America constituting at least twelve percent of this country's population. Because of this increase, their specific health beliefs and health care options are increasingly nationally significant. ^ In the present intra-black and inter-ethnic study, two hundred seventy African Americans, Haitian immigrants, and Jamaican immigrants residing in South Florida were quantitatively and qualitatively surveyed in order to investigate their health beliefs and health care options. According to the reviewed literature, the three black ethnic groups researched in this study have not been compared or contrasted before in relation to these beliefs and health care choices. ^ As was discovered by the present research, differing health beliefs and health care options were the cultural products of the ethnic differences of the researched communities. It was expected that differing health beliefs among the researched black groups might indicate disparate patterns of health care utilization of either western or non-western models. Additionally, it was projected that by investigating the health beliefs and the health care options of these emerging black ethnic groups, western health care providers in the United States could become better versed in medically servicing growing ethnically-disparate black populations. The study yielded results about the researched groups that supported major findings in the reviewed literature. The data were reported and examined, and theoretical generalizations from the data were discussed. The most important of these findings was that, within a race, health beliefs and health care options were determined by specific ethno-cultural variables dependent on national origins. ^

An analysis of the themes of environmental sustainability in the United States curriculum science content standards

This study examined how the themes of environmental sustainability are evident in the national, state and local standards that guide k–12 science curriculum. The study applied the principles of content analysis within the framework of an ecological paradigm. In education, an ecological paradigm focuses on students' use of a holistic lens to view and understand material. The intent of this study was to analyze the seventh grade science content standards at the national, state, and local textbook levels to determine how and the extent to which each of the five themes of environmental sustainability are presented in the language of each text. The themes are: (a) Climate Change Indicators, (b) Biodiversity, (c) Human Population Density, (d) Impact and Presence of Environmental Pollution, (e) Earth as a Closed System. The research study offers practical insight on using a method of content analysis to locate keywords of environmental sustainability in the three texts and determine if the context of each term relates to this ecological paradigm. Using a concordance program, the researcher identified the frequency and context of each vocabulary item associated with these themes. Nine chi squares were run to determine if there were differences in content between the national and state standards and the textbook. Within each level chi squares were also run to determine if there were differences between the appearance of content knowledge and skill words. Results indicate that there is a lack of agreement between levels that is significant p < .01. A discussion of these results in relation to curriculum development and standardized assessments followed. The study found that at the national and state levels, there is a lack of articulation of the goals of environmental sustainability or an ecological paradigm. With respect to the science textbook, a greater number of keywords were present; however, the context of many of these keywords did not align with the discourse of an ecological paradigm. Further, the environmental sustainability themes present in the textbook were limited to the last four chapters of the text. Additional research is recommended to determine whether this situation also exists in other settings.

A comparative analysis of corporate finance in the United States and Japan from 1880 to 1930

This study explained the diversity of corporate financial practices in two nations. Existing studies have emphasized the reliance on equity finance in U.S. firms and bank loans in Japanese firms. In fact, patterns of corporate finance were much more complex. Financial institutions, which were created by national economic policy and regulation, affected corporate financial practices, but corporate financial practices often differed from what policymakers expected. Differences in corporate financial practices between nations also reflected differences in the mixture of industries in each nation. Many factors such as the amount of fixed capital, the process of production, the level of risk, the degree of innovation, and the importance of the industry in the national economy affected corporate financial practices. In addition, corporate financial practices within each nation differed from firm to firm due to managers’ considerations about stock ownership, which would affect their control power; corporate finance was closely related to control over management through ownership. To explain these complexities of corporate financial practices, the study linked corporate finance with the development of financial institutions in the United States and in Japan. While financial institutions affected corporate financial practices, the response of the firms to financial institutions and opportunities were diverse. The study also attempted to grasp variations in corporate financial practices by dealing with companies in three sectors: railroads, public utilities, and manufacturing. Finally, the study examined the structure of firm ownership. Contradictory to the widely held belief that U.S. firms distributed securities more widely to the public than did Japanese firms, many large American firms remained closely held, while some Japanese counterparts built publicly-held corporations.

Inter-subjective and transnational racial effects: The role of the United States in the formation and evolution of the collective perception and racial relations in Cuba, 1898–1902

Since the arrival of the first African slaves to Cuba in 1524, the issue of race has had a long-lived presence in the Cuban national discourse. However, despite Cuba’s colonial history, it has often been maintained by some historians that race relations in Cuba were congenial with racism and racial discrimination never existing as deep or widespread in Cuba as in the United States (Cannon, 1983, p. 113). In fact, it has been argued that institutionalized racism was introduced into Cuban society with the first U.S. occupation, during 1898–1902 (Cannon, 1983, p. 113). This study of Cuba investigates the influence of the United States on the development of race relations and racial perceptions in post-independent Cuba, specifically from 1898-1902. These years comprise the time period immediately following the final fight for Cuban Independence, culminating with the Cuban-Spanish-American War and the first U.S. occupation of Cuba. By this time, the Cuban population comprised Africans as well as descendants of Africans, White Spanish people, indigenous Cubans, and offspring of the intermixing of the groups. This research studies whether the United States’ own race relations and racial perceptions influenced the initial conflicting race relations and racial perceptions in early and post-U.S. occupation Cuba. This study uses a collective interpretative framework that incorporates a national level of analysis with a race relations and racial perceptions focus. This framework reaches beyond the traditionally utilized perspectives when interpreting the impact of the United States during and following its intervention in Cuba. Attention is given to the role of the existing social, political climate within the United States as a driving influence of the United States’ involvement with Cuba. This study reveals that emphasis on the role of the United States as critical to the development of Cuba’s race relations and racial perceptions is credible given the extensive involvement of the U.S. in the building of the early Cuban Republic and U.S. structures serving as models for reconstruction. U.S. government formation in Cuba aligned with a governing system reflecting the existing governing codes of the U.S. during that time period.

Use of structural equation modeling to examine the association between breast cancer risk perception and repeat screening mammography among United States women

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in United States women, estimated to be diagnosed in 1 out of 8 women in their lifetime. Screening mammography detects breast cancer in its pre-clinical stages when treatment strategies have the greatest chance of success, and is currently the only population-wide prevention method proven to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with breast cancer. Research has shown that the majority of women are not screened annually, with estimates ranging front 6% - 30% of eligible women receiving all available annual mammograms over a 5-year or greater time frame. Health behavior theorists believe that perception of risk/susceptibility to a disease influences preventive health behavior, in this case, screening mammography The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the association between breast cancer risk perception and repeat screening mammography using a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. A series of SEM multivariate regressions were conducted using self-reported, nationally representative data from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey. Interaction contrasts were tested to measure the potential moderating effects of variables which have been shown to be predictive of mammography use (physician recommendation, economic barriers, structural barriers, race/ethnicity) on the association between breast cancer risk perception and repeat mammography, while controlling for the covariates of age, income, region, nativity, and educational level. Of the variables tested for moderation, results of the SEM analyses identify physician recommendation as the only moderator of the relationship between risk perception and repeat mammography, thus the potentially most effective point of intervention to increase mammography screening, and decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with breast cancer. These findings expand the role of the physician from recommendation to one of attenuating the effect of risk perception and increasing repeat screening. The long range application of the research is the use of the SEM methodology to identify specific points of intervention most likely to increase preventive behavior in population-wide research, allowing for the most effective use of intervention funds.^

The Influence of Vegetation on the Hydrodynamics and Geomorphology of a Tree Island in Everglades National Park (Florida, United States)

Transpiration-driven nutrient accumulation has been identified as a potential mechanism governing the creation and maintenance of wetland vegetation patterning. This process may contribute to the formation of nutrient-rich tree islands within the expansive oligotrophic marshes of the Everglades (Florida, United States). This study presents hydrogeochemical data indicating that tree root water uptake is a primary driver of groundwater ion accumulation across one of these islands. Sap flow, soil moisture, water level, water chemistry, and rainfall were measured to identify the relationships between climate, transpiration, and groundwater uptake by phreatophytes and to examine the effect this uptake has on groundwater chemistry and mineral formation in three woody plant communities of differing elevations. During the dry season, trees relied more on groundwater for transpiration, which led to a depressed water table and the advective movement of groundwater and dissolved ions, including phosphorus, from the surrounding marsh towards the centre of the island. Ion exclusion during root water uptake led to elevated concentrations of all major dissolved ions in the tree island groundwater compared with the adjacent marsh. Groundwater was predominately supersaturated with respect to aragonite and calcite in the lower-elevation woody communities, indicating the potential for soil formation. Elevated groundwater phosphorous concentrations detected in the highest-elevation woody community were associated with the leaching of inorganic sediments (i.e. hydroxyapatite) in the vadose zone. Understanding the complex feedback mechanisms regulating plant/groundwater/surface water interactions, nutrient dynamics, and potential soil formation is necessary to manage and restore patterned wetlands such as the Everglades.

Foreign aid and the national interest : the cases of the United States and Japan

Developed countries give foreign assistance for many reasons, one of which is the protection of national interests. Foreign aid gives a donor country leverage in international relations and is used as a tool of foreign policy. The United States and Japan are the two largest aid donors in the world. Each of these countries exert influence over specific regions through foreign assistance. Although the national interests of each country are different, both use foreign aid to protect these interests. This thesis discusses the means by which the United States and Japan use foreign aid in foreign policy. It looks specifically at U.S. food aid to Central America and Japanese aid to Asia.

Rastafarianism and the Nation of Islam as institutions for group-identity formation among blacks in the United States: A case study comparing their approaches

This dissertation explores the Rastafari movement and the Nation of Islam as institutions that provide a group-identity for their adherents. The study seeks to determine the characteristics of the identity that is institutionalized by each movement, and the nature of the institutionalization process. The research was conducted primarily in South Florida where both movements exist. An extensive literature review in conjunction with in-depth field interviews were used as the primary research methodologies. What was of particular interest were the reasons that the members of the movements chose one movement over the other, also the similarities and dissimilarities between the movements in their role as institutions for group-identity formation. The research showed that both movements imbued their members with a sense of pride, high self-esteem and a strong sense of race consciousness. In addition, it showed that there was significant variation in identity orientation within the Rastafari Movement, which contrasted with the Nation of Islam where the identity variations within the movement were negligible. This was due largely to the difference in structure between the movements, the Nation of Islam being a centrally organized movement with one leader while the Rastafari movement is a decentralized polycephalous one. ^ Both movements were found to be millenarian in nature, essentially because of the significant utility of the concept that their members would rise to prominence through God's grace. Additionally, both movements were identified as expressive social movements, since they were determined as being primarily concerned with changing the attitudes of their members rather than effecting structural social change. ^

Influences on immigrant students' perceptions of the chances of making it in the United States

This study examined immigrant minority students' perceptions of race relations and of the chances for social mobility in the United States (U.S.) using cohort samples of West Indian (N = 173) and Haitian (N = 191) students. The Students' responses collected during the 6th and 7th, 8th and 9th grades were analyzed to determine whether perceptions of racial mistrust, teacher derogation and social mobility varied depending on the student's length of stay in the U.S. or self-concept. Quantitative methodology was applied to data extrapolated from a larger epidemiological longitudinal study consisting of 7,386 middle school students in Miami (Vega and Gil, 1998). ^ Results show that West Indian and Haitian students' perceptions of racial mistrust, teacher derogation and social mobility were associated more with student's self-concept than length of stay. Students with more favorable self-concepts reported greater optimism toward social mobility than those with less favorable self-concepts. Results also indicate that in the context of parental education and SES that racial mistrust is the strongest predictor of these students' level of optimism towards social mobility. ^

The United States Congress and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez

The Soviet Union's dissolution in December 1991 marks the end of the Cold War and the elimination of the United States' main rival for global political-economic leadership. For decades U.S. foreign policymakers had formulated policies aimed at containing the spread of Soviet communism and Moscow's interventionist policies in the Americas. They now assumed that Latin American leftist revolutionary upheavals could also be committed to history. This study explores how Congress takes an active role in U.S. foreign policymaking when dealing with revolutionary changes in Latin America. This study finds that despite Chávez's vitriolic statements and U.S. economic vulnerability due to its dependence on foreign oil sources, Congress today sees Chávez as a nuisance and not a threat to U.S. vital interests. Devoid of an extra-hemispheric, anti-American patron intent on challenging the United States for regional leadership, Chávez is seen by Congress largely as a threat to the stability of Venezuela's institutions and political-economic stability. Today both the U.S. executive and the legislative branches largely see Bolivarianism a distraction and not an existential threat. The research is based on an examination of Bolivarian Venezuela compared to revolutionary upheaval and governance in Nicaragua over the course of the twentieth century. This project is largely descriptive, qualitative in approach, but quantitative data are used when appropriate. To analyze both the U.S. executive and legislative branches' reaction to revolutionary change, Cole Blasier's theoretical propositions as developed in the Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America 1910-1985 are utilized. The present study highlights the fact that Blasier's propositions remain a relevant means for analyzing U.S. foreign policymaking.

The civil war of ideas: Ayn Rand, intellectual freedom, and the regulation of thought in the Soviet Union and United States, 1905-1943

The philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905–1982) is an icon of American culture. That culture misunderstands her, however. It perceives her solely as a pure market conservative. In the first forty years of her life, Rand's individualism was intellectual and served as a defense for the free trade of ideas. It originated in the Russian Revolution. In 1926, when Rand left the Soviet Union, she developed her individualism into an American philosophy. Her ideas of the individual in society belonged to a debate where intellectuals intended to abolish the State and free man and woman from its intellectual snares. To present Rand as a freethinker allows me to examine her anticommunism as a reaction against Leninism and to consider the relation of her ideas to Marxism. This approach stresses that Rand, as Marx, opposed the State and argued for the historical importance of a capitalist revolution. For Rand the latter, however, depended on an entrepreneurial class that rejected Protestantism as ideology – which she contended threatened its interests because Christianity had lost its historical significance. This exposes the nature of Rand's intellectual individualism in American society, where the majority on the entire political spectrum still identified with the teachings of Christ. It also reveals the dynamics of her anticommunism. From 1926 to 1943, Rand remodeled American individualism and as she did so, she determined her opposition first to the New Deal liberals and second business conservatives. To these ends, Marxism and Protestantism served Rand's individualism and made her an American icon of the twentieth century.

Politics at the water's edge: The presidency, Congress, and the North Korea policy of the United States

For all their efforts to avoid a nuclear North Korea, the Clinton and Bush administrations failed to achieve this goal, the most important policy objective of the United States in its relations with North Korea for decades, mainly because of inconsistencies in U.S. policy. This dissertation seeks to explain why both administrations ultimately failed to prevent North Korea from going nuclear. It finds the origins of this failure in the implementation of different U.S. policy options toward North Korea during the Clinton and Bush administrations. To explain the lack of policy consistency, the dissertation investigates how the relations between the executive and the legislative branches and, more specifically, different government types—unified government and divided government—have affected U.S. policy toward North Korea. It particularly emphasizes the role of Congress and partisan politics in the making of U.S. policy toward North Korea. This study finds that divided government played a pivotal role. Partisan politics are also central to the explanation: politics did not stop at the water’s edge. A divided U.S. government produced more status quo policies toward North Korea than a unified U.S. government, while a unified government produced more active policies than a divided government. Moreover, a unified government with a Republican President produced more aggressive policies toward North Korea, whereas a unified government with a Democratic President produced more conciliatory policies. This study concludes that the different government types and intensified partisan politics were the main causes of the inconsistencies in the United States’ North Korea policy that led to a nuclear North Korea.

Examining argumentative coherence in essays by undergraduate students of English as a foreign language in Mainland China and their English speaking peers in the United States

I conducted this study to provide insights toward deepening understanding of association between culture and writing by building, assessing, and refining a conceptual model of second language writing. To do this, I examined culture and coherence as well as the relationship between them through a mixed methods research design. Coherence has been an important and complex concept in ESL/EFL writing. I intended to study the concept of coherence in the research context of contrastive rhetoric, comparing the coherence quality in argumentative essays written by undergraduates in Mainland China and their U.S. peers. In order to analyze the complex concept of coherence, I synthesized five linguistic theories of coherence: Halliday and Hasan's cohesion theory, Carroll's theory of coherence, Enkvist's theory of coherence, Topical Structure Analysis, and Toulmin's Model. Based upon the synthesis, 16 variables were generated. Across these 16 variables, Hotelling t-test statistical analysis was conducted to predict differences in argumentative coherence between essays written by two groups of participants. In order to complement the statistical analysis, I conducted 30 interviews of the writers in the studies. Participants' responses were analyzed with open and axial coding. By analyzing the empirical data, I refined the conceptual model by adding more categories and establishing associations among them. The study found that U.S. students made use of more pronominal reference. Chinese students adopted more lexical devices of reiteration and extended paralleling progression. The interview data implied that the difference may be associated with the difference in linguistic features and rhetorical conventions in Chinese and English. As far as Toulmin's Model is concerned, Chinese students scored higher on data than their U.S. peers. According to the interview data, this may be due to the fact that Toulmin's Model, modified as three elements of arguments, have been widely and long taught in Chinese writing instruction while U.S. interview participants said that they were not taught to write essays according to Toulmin's Model. Implications were generated from the process of textual data analysis and the formulation of structural model defining coherence. These implications were aimed at informing writing instruction, assessment, peer-review, and self-revision.