http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7872 Wed, 22 May 2013 00:36:57 GMT 2013-05-22T00:36:57Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77830 Asymmetry of will : the effect of religious radicalism on state military doctrine Lewis, Patrick (Patrick Joseph) How is a state's military doctrine affected by the presence of radical religious ideology in its military? Using analysis of satellite imagery, recent military exercises, and a series of source interviews, I examine the evolution of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In particular I explore the effect of religious radicalism on Iran's acceptable casualty rates for its naval operations. A successful ideologically based strategy appears to have three necessary components: terrorism as a tool for pursuing political objectives, religious ideology as a generator of potential violence, and a regime which exercises tight control over the military. Combined, these factors allow a military to mobilize a large cadre of troops that are willing to sacrifice themselves in suicide operations. Ideology overcomes conventional acceptable casualty rates for sustained military sorties. Finally, I compare the Iranian case to similar militaries in the Sudan and Yugoslavia to determine how the presence and absence of each factor affects the military's development. Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2012.; DVD-ROM contains .mp4 video files, PDF and Word doc. files.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77830 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/74464 Organizational images : towards a model of organizations Krishnan, Neel This study develops a general theoretical framework for the analysis of organizational behavior by focusing on the notion that organizations develop unique information-processing frameworks, which it labels "organizational images" or "images of operations," that strongly determine their behavior. The model is then used to draw inferences about the forms of counterinsurgency strategies practiced by the US military in the second war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. The paper argues that militaries tend to view the tasks they undertake in terms of the coercive application of force, and that this tendency tends to determine the forms of counterinsurgency strategies they chose, leading them to eschew strategies that rely on bargaining with enemy forces. The purported dominance of this coercive "image of operations" is then investigated in military field reports from the war in Afghanistan. Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, June 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-94). Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/74464 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/70607 U.S. strategic force structure and employment planning, 1959-1979. Lewis, Kevin Neil Thesis. 1979. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.; MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY.; Includes bibliographical references. Mon, 01 Jan 1979 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/70607 1979-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68968 The Toppler Effect : irregular leader transitions and the rate of state failure recovery Wahedi, Laila A State failure is becoming increasingly prevalent across the globe, creating human suffering, black markets, lost economic opportunities, and safe havens for militant actors. It is imperative that the international community find a way to combat state failure. This study investigates the effects of irregular leadership transitions on state failure recovery. Irregular leadership transitions occur when the executive of a state comes to power through unconstitutional means. Regular leaders are more likely than irregular leaders to have personal experience as a ruler, beneficial domestic and international ties, and familiarity among the population. Irregular transitions may damage bureaucracies, damaging government functionality and halting development projects that had already been underway. Regular leaders benefit from a legacy that was likely able to pass spoils onto an elite group. This elite group is likely to resist relative losses to power more than lower status groups would fight to gain power because of the cognitive principles of risk aversion, and the sensitivity to status inherent to social identity theory. Regular leaders also have traditional legitimacy, while irregular leaders are more likely to have to gain legitimacy. State failure and failure recovery are overdetermined, so it is impossible to be able to confidently determine the direction of causal flow. Every determinant of failure is related to every other, and it is difficult to separate their effects. The role of leadership regularity is therefore investigated as a proxy that can predict variation on the rate of failure recovery. The quantitative analysis consisted of multi and bivariate regressions investigating the effects of leadership regularity on failure duration, as well as the relative explanatory power held by several factors associated with leadership regularity. Robustness checks were performed using Bayesian statistics, and survival analyses. Irregular leadership transitions were found to predict a roughly five year increase in state failure duration. The Afghan Civil War was used as an illustrative case, describing the ways in which Daoud, Taraki, Amin, Karmal, Massoud, Hekmatyar, and Mullah Omar all overcame, or failed to overcome, different obstacles associated with their irregularity and how these obstacles affected their relative levels of success attempting to extend governance. Thesis (S.M. and S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science; and, (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2011.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-86). Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/68968 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z