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Browsing by Author "Thomas, Courtney Irene Powell"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Evolution of Tech-Assisted Repression in Putin's Russia
    Erickson, Landon Guy (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-15)
    This thesis is an examination of the evolution of tech-assisted repression in Putin's Russia. The thesis uses a novel analytical framework called the T.E.A. table framework, which organizes repression into three categories: techniques (the repressive acts themselves), effects (short-to-medium term individual and communal effects), and arcs (large-scale societal shifts over long periods of time). This framework is "tested" against two influential texts in the study of non-democratic politics: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt and Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes by Juan Jose Linz. The following chapters look at the techniques, effects, and arcs of television-based repression, social media-based repression, and finally artificial intelligence-based repression. As these technologies have been introduced, there has been a consisted trend toward centralization, control, and increasing the granularity, or the personalization and adaptability, of repression.
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    Lagom: Intersects of nationalism and populism in Swedish parliamentary elections
    Ferguson, Vernon Neil (Virginia Tech, 2017-05-05)
    This thesis examines the unique set of circumstances which led to the rapid rise of a supposed right-wing populist party in Sweden. The Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats) are not the first nationalist party to enter the Swedish parliament, but are the first to survive multiple parliamentary elections and are currently the third largest party in parliament. This thesis argues the Sverigedemokraterna do not constitute a political party, but remain a populist movement within Swedish politics, are not right-wing but rather a lagom-inspired hybrid, and the stabilizing effects of the culture of lagom prevents the permanence of extremism in Swedish politics. The increase in immigrants from predominantly Muslim states due to the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war stoke the anti-Islamic rhetoric of this nationalist group, but did not cause their rapid ascent and neither did the entry of Sweden into the European Economic Community. The Sverigedemokraterna are a single-point culmination of a century of nationalist and fascist groups splitting and merging within Sweden, but as other groups continue to appear the SD cannot be the only culmination.
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    De oeconomia ex natione: An Examination of the Role of Nationalism in Estonia's Transition from Socialism to Capitalism
    Denson, Thomas Marvin IV (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-01)
    This thesis explores the role played by nationalism in Estonia's transition to capitalism in the post-Soviet era and the way it continues to impact the Estonian economy. I hypothesize that nationalism was the key factor in this transition and that nationalism has placed a disproportionate economic burden on the resident ethnic Russians. First, I examine the history of Estonian nationalism. I examine the Estonian nationalist narrative from its beginning during the Livonian Crusade, the founding of Estonian nationalist thought in the late 1800s with a German model of nationalism, the conditions of the Soviet occupation, and the role of song festivals in Estonian nationalism. Second, I give a brief overview of the economic systems of Soviet and post-Soviet Estonia. Finally, I examine the impact of nationalism on the Estonian economy. To do this, I discuss the nature of nationalist economy, the presence of an ethno-national divide between the Estonians and Russians, and the impact of nationalist policies in citizenship, education, property rights, and geographical location. I find that there is a disproportionate difference in these areas between Estonians and ethnic Russians which affect the economy. I conclude by examining the problems and potential solutions to citizenship law, the use of neoliberalism in assimilation, and proposing a framework which could be used to examine disparities between differing groups in other economies.
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    Politicization, Deadlock, and Dispute: The Impacts of Post-1995 Linkages Between Codex Alimentarius Commission and the World Trade Organization
    Thomas, Courtney Irene Powell (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2011-04-01)
    The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) is an institution created from a vision shared by the administrations of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop science-based food safety standards and guidelines designed to protect consumer health and ensure fair trade practices. The Commission was established to develop “international scientific evaluation mechanisms that could provide the best possible science-based advice to member countries with periodic update[s] to assure that new scientific information was always taken into account in FAO/WHO recommendations” (Lupien 2000, 193). Therefore, the Codex Commissionʼs Statutes and Procedures are designed to ensure that it pursues risk assessment, management, and communication in order to minimize food-related health risks.
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    The Problem with Purity: Market Failures, Foodborne Contamination, and the Search for Accountability in the U.S. Food Safety Regulatory Regime
    Thomas, Courtney Irene Powell (Virginia Tech, 2010-02-22)
    One of the great myths of contemporary U.S. culture is that America's food supply is the safest in the world. Another is that government agencies have the ability and authority to guarantee food safety and to enforce accountability standards upon food producers, processors, and distributors. But the U.S. food safety regulatory regime is as it has been for more than a century: embedded in the notions of food purity and wholesomeness that framed the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection Act. Although changes in food production, processing, and distribution that occurred throughout the 20th century have rendered this regulatory regime ineffective and inefficient, efforts to amend its regulatory scope and power have been largely unsuccessful. Current proposals to transform this system, including the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 and the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, however, would expand the power of government agencies to require process-based food safety systems, to test for contamination, to issue recalls, and to institute traceability protocols for all food products. Yet much of the economic literature critiques this top-down approach to regulation. Beginning with an overview of U.S. food safety and its regulation, this dissertation examines the relative effectiveness and efficiency of "top-down" "command and control" versus "bottom up" "market driven" regulatory regimes designed to resolve market failures and promote accountability relative to food safety. It includes an analysis of the impact and influence of food producing, processing, and distributing firms upon the policy process, examining when, why, and how large agri-food corporations support or oppose changes to the food safety regulatory regime and accountability framework, and concludes with an investigation of food safety crises as a catalyst for political change.
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    Shaping Identity: The National Health Service and Britishness after World War II
    Kluck, Genevieve Margaret (Virginia Tech, 2022-02-03)
    This thesis argues that the creation of the NHS inadvertently created an institution that is fundamental to current British national identity. The NHS exemplifies the core values of the UK, in a way that previous national institutions – the Church, the monarchy, and the Empire – could not due to the societal makeup of the country. The NHS was created for all citizens, regardless of class, and the democratic nature of the institution embodies the ideals at the heart of the nation. The institution pushed the UK to become faithful to its founding ideals of fraternity, community, democracy, and it allowed Britons to have another world-renowned institution. Furthermore, the NHS's creation coincided with one of the last great eras the UK clings to – World War II – therefore, the NHS continually pulls from that the achievements of that period and connects itself to the national pride after victory.
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    Syrian Refugees' Access to Education in Lebanon: Obstacles to Implementation
    McCarter, Laura Margaret (Virginia Tech, 2018-07-13)
    Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, an estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes. The conflict within Syria dramatically increased population flows to neighboring countries, especially Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. Of these, Lebanon hosts the largest per capita number of Syrian refugees with over 1 million Syrians living in Lebanon as refugees as of June 2017. This thesis asks why Syrian refugee children in Lebanon have limited access to education. Given that over half of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon are school-aged children, the main question behind this research is: what factors explain the low enrollment rate of Syrian refugees in schools in Lebanon? Though the Lebanese Ministry of Education issued a memorandum instructing all public schools to allow Syrians to enroll, approximately 250,000 school-age Syrian refugees were out of school during the 2015-2016 school year. Why is this? Based on a local case study of dynamics impacting refugees within the Bekaa governorate of Lebanon, I find that Syrian refugees do not suffer from a lack of international attention or even an overall lack of aid. Instead, actors at the local level, particularly an unofficial authority known as the Shawish, most heavily influence Syrian refugees, their access to aid, and their access to education.
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    Understanding the Relationship Between Poverty, Education and Child Labor: An Analysis of Child Labor in Nigeria
    Clott, Timothy Alec (Virginia Tech, 2015-12-09)
    Two major ideas dominate past literature on child labor. First, past literature continues to support the well-developed relationship between poverty and rates of child labor. Second, past literature continues to associate school attendance as the primary opportunity cost of child labor and juxtaposes the variables as a mutually exclusive trade off. The following project investigates both these ideas. By conducting several logit regression models between school attendance and participation in family-affiliated agricultural practices in Nigeria, the paper investigates a specific aspect of poverty (school attendance) while also providing empirical evidence to support the assumed relationship that education and child labor represent a trade off. The findings support the notion that school attendance correlates with a decreased likelihood of participation in moderate forms of child labor. Children in Nigeria who attend school are less likely to also have worked in a family affiliated agricultural capacity. The project concludes by discussing the potentially positive policy implications for eliminating exploitative child labor. By framing moderate agricultural labor as the most engrained form of child labor, the theoretical implications of the impact of school attendance on child labor becomes even greater.