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The United States has a longstanding policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorist organizations. It does not, however, always adhere to this stated policy. During the Reagan Administration, for example, the U.S. not only met with members of the African National Congress (ANC), but it also removed the ban on negotiating with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). These actions outraged South Africa and Israel, respectively. Similarly, President Bill Clinton angered the British government by granting a visa to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. This presents an important puzzle: Why would the U.S. make concessions to a terrorist organization, especially one that is in conflict with its close ally? This project asks two specific research questions: First, what explains the shift between a strategy of isolating nationalist terrorist groups to a strategy of engaging them? Second, under what conditions will engagement succeed in integrating these groups into a political system? The significance of this study is that it will determine if NTOs will forgo violence and enter the political system and what role the U.S. can play in facilitating that transition. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the following question: can a policy of engagement help transform nationalist terrorist organizations (NTOs) into legitimate political parties, or will it encourage further violence? Today, for instance, the Bush administration has decided that engagement would only strengthen and embolden Hamas, and consequently has chosen to isolate the Palestinian organization. Though hard-line strategies often seem an appropriate response to NTOs, it is nevertheless important to understand why engagement is sometimes chosen, whether or not it can succeed, and if so, under what conditions this can occur. Building upon my dissertation, this paper will attempt to determine when the U.S. should engage an NTO by examining the effects of engagement on Sinn Fein and the PLO. In the former instance, a long-term policy of conditional engagement contributed to bringing peace to Northern Ireland; in the latter case, significant American engagement only led to renewed and increasingly violent conflict. Extant studies of this subject have two major failings: first, they do not provide a generalizable explanation and second, they overlook the role that third parties can play in convincing an NTO to permanently disarm. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, Israel’s conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah significantly escalated, as raids by both groups led the Israeli Defense Forces to resume large-scale military operations in the Gaza strip and conduct a month-long campaign in Lebanon. A notable and controversial aspect of both conflicts was Israel’s efforts to weaken these groups by targeting civilian populations and infrastructure with a combination of economic sanctions and military strikes, respectively, in addition to directly attacking Palestinian militants and Hezbollah fighters. In this paper, we examine the historical precedents for this strategy, its use during Israel’s 2006 operations, and its overall effectiveness. While pressuring the wider civilian population can have a deterrent effect, we argue that this strategy ultimately proved counterproductive. By further eroding the capacity of the Palestinian Authority and the Lebanese government to rule effectively and by increasing polarization within Palestinian and Lebanese societies, Israel’s response had the paradoxical effect of exacerbating the very underlying conditions that allowed Hamas and Hezbollah to grow in strength, and contributed to increased instability and civil conflict within those territories. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the dilemma posed by nationalist terrorist organizations (NTOs) that have a military and a political wing and offers an argument for when the U.S. will choose to publicly engage such an organization. Psychological, international, and ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does democratization exacerbate conflict between states and increase the risk of war? If so, how? According to Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder, incompletely democratized states are particularly dangerous, as competing elites use belligerent nationalism and diversionary foreign policies to mobilize public support and discredit their domestic opponents. Two recent eventsâ€"Israel’s military intervention in Gaza and its simultaneous war in Lebanonâ€"offer an opportunity to reexamine the connection between democratization and war.We argue that although democratization within the Palestinian territories and Lebanon played an important role in aggravating tensions, many of the key dynamics identified by Mansfield and Snyder were either absent, attenuated, or had long predated last summer’s wars. What role, then, did democratization play? We present an alternative perspective that focuses on the context in which democratization takes place. Specifically, both the Palestinian territories and Lebanon are defined by extremely weak state institutions and ideologically divided societies. Under these conditions, democratization exacerbates existing conflicts not by causing increasingly aggressive behavior on the part of the transitioning state, but rather by altering the threat perceptions of neighboring states, in this case Israel.These arguments build upon a paper to be presented at this year’s APSA meeting. In it we not only examine the role of democratization in these conflicts, but also look at the interaction of regime characteristics and state strength and their impact on international conflict. In particular, a key factor that influences the onset of conflict in these cases was democratization in the context of weak central institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]