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Department of Political Science

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This digital collection includes theses and dissertations from the Department of Political Science.

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Browsing Department of Political Science by Author "Betsill, Michele, advisor"

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    Accountability and legitimacy in transboundary networked forest governance: a case study of the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Jedd, Theresa, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member; Mumme, Stephen, committee member; Cheng, Antony, committee member
    Using a social constructivist ontology to examine key debates and areas of inquiry vis-à-vis the democratic nature of transboundary forest governance, this research examines the case of the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent, an instance of networked governance. Part I builds up to an examination of the movement toward conceptualizing transboundary networked governance, exploring the claim that government has given way to governance, blurring the lines between public and private, and moving beyond its antecedent models--systems theory and complexity, corporatism, state-in-society, new public management and privatization, inter alia--to reflect a more complicated and inherently collaborative relationship between state, society, and market-based actors. The dissertation project, then, investigates several key questions. At a basic level, it asks, what does networked governance look like, and in the case of the Crown Roundtable, how might these arrangements be adaptive given the absence of an overarching forests treaty? Looking deeper into the implications of networked governance, the project then moves to an investigation of the ways that these processes become legitimate modes of governing and how they allow actors to hold each other accountable. Evidence in the Crown Roundtable suggests that the state is simply one actor among many. In this sea of various players, without the traditional forms of accountability, how do we ensure that governance retains its democratic qualities? The second part (chapters 4, 5, 6, 7) builds from the initial observations in the first part (chapters 1, 2, and 3) that state boundaries in the Crown of the Continent are transected by landscape identities and norms. It examines the implications for maintaining democracy in governance. Given the lack of institutions (such as the juridical, legal, and electoral channels) available at the domestic level, how can actors be held accountable? What do shifts toward a flattened and fragmented forest governance landscape represent in terms of both the ability of diverse actors to relate to one another and also for the participants to see NG as a worthwhile process to engage? In answering these questions, Part II examines whether NG architectures are able to incorporate channels for accountability while simultaneously drawing upon a broad base of participation and maintaining social legitimacy. Finally, the dissertation concludes with thoughts on institutional design. In so doing, it hopefully contributes to an understanding of how to build collaborative networked arrangements that are better able to address transboundary environmental problems.
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    China and transparency norm development in global extractives governance
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Park, Hyeyoon, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Harris, Pete, committee member; Duffy, Robert, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member
    Growing global demand for extractive resources, such as metals and minerals, particularly to produce low-carbon products, requires international society to develop effective global governance mechanisms to mitigate some of the environmentally and socially negative impacts of mining operations beyond national borders. Since early 2000, several transnational extractive governance initiatives (TEGI) have been established, and these initiatives commonly emphasize a transparency norm to cope with these new global challenges. At the same time, the influence of Chinese actors in global extractive sectors has been increasing along with China's rapid economic growth and rising natural resources demands. Notably, Chinese actors have started engaging in TEGIs and recently appear to take a more active role in global extractives governance. This dissertation examines whether China is a norm-taker or a norm-maker in transparency norm development processes of global extractives governance to understand this new phenomenon. In addition, this research seeks to answer under what conditions China is a norm-taker or a norm-maker and how power matters in transparency norm development. To date, there has been limited research on transnational extractives governance as an independent governance architecture within the system of global environmental governance. In addition, few International Relations (IR) and global governance scholars have examined China's normative role in global governance. In particular, there is a lack of understanding of China's normative role in "re-shaping" existing norms in global governance. This dissertation aims to fill the gaps in existing scholarship. By applying Acharya's (2018) norm-circulation model emphasizing two-way socialization processes, this dissertation find that Chinese actors take a global transparency norm, localize the norm based on China's local context, then universalize the localized transparency norm at the global level. Based on qualitative document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and process-tracing, this research includes a mapping exercise of 48 TEGIs and a case study of the Responsible Cobalt Initiative (RCI), a TEGI established by China in 2016 to improve the responsibility of upstream and downstream companies in the cobalt supply chain. The major findings show that Chinese actors act as both a norm-taker and a norm-maker. The mapping analysis shows that they more actively participate in TEGIs emphasizing a thin transparency norm that lacks the disclosure of information about decision-making processes to the public, the presence of an independent third-party auditor in monitoring processes, or the disclosure of the verification information to the public. The RCI case study reveals that the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemical Importers and Exporters (CCCMC) acted as a local idea-shifter by localizing a global transparency norm and developing Chinese versions of transparency guidelines. CCCMC is trying to universalize their locally constituted norm at the transnational level through the RCI. China's role in facilitating a thin transparency norm could lead to green- or white-washing of extractive companies, given the less stringent characteristics of a thin transparency norm. I argue that CCCMC's efforts to universalize the localized Chinese version of transparency is based on their institutional and structural power supported by the Chinese government's sponsorship and its close ties with powerful business actors. These findings, notably, suggest that power facilitates or constrains agency of certain groups of actors seeking to play a norm-maker's role, particularly in a universalization process in Acharya's norm-circulation model. These findings resonate with realist constructivists' understanding of world politics, emphasizing both norms and power, beyond the fragmented paradigmatic debates in IR between realists and constructivists. Collectively, this dissertation contributes to the broader debates in IR and Global Environmental Politics about the rise of China in global governance, global norm development, and legitimacy and accountability of global environmental governance.
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    Conceptualizing transnational democratic networks: a case study of world wide views on biodiversity
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Fiske, Desirée, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Stevis, Dimitris, committee member; McIvor, David, committee member; Taylor, Peter, committee member
    Democratic theory has most recently found itself in a 'deliberative turn.' Extending beyond the capacity maintained by state institutions, the deliberative turn may be understood as necessary for conditions of democracy to move beyond the bounds of the nation-state and to incorporate conditions of a globalizing world. As global governance literature recognizes nuanced abilities to regulate through private and public interactions, the democratic voice of citizen input is in a shift. Deliberative democratic theory has found its way into International Relations discussions, as it proposes methods for transnational democracy. World Wide Views on Biodiversity (WWVB) is the second transnational citizen deliberation to be held on a global scale, allowing a window of opportunity to bridge the normative theories with empirical observation. Identifying WWVB as a transnational democratic network, this analysis simultaneously seeks to inform the project of its pragmatic successes and limitations while placing WWVB within theories of transnational democracy. Results find Transnational Discursive Democracy best explains and understands the phenomena of WWVB. Furthermore, the theoretical findings inform practical implications for the WWViews Alliance to support network expansion through inclusion and dissemination practices. Specific recommendations are made to the network based on the analysis of theory and praxis.
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    Environmental security: a source of legitimacy and contestation in global environmental governance
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Liebenguth, Julianne, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Harris, Peter, committee member; Macdonald, Bradley, committee member; Malin, Stephanie, committee member
    Environmental security is an increasingly popular concept though which various actors seek to understand and articulate the urgency, risks, and vulnerabilities associated with dangerous socio-environmental changes. Such urgent shifts include rising temperatures, droughts, floods, intensifying weather-related disasters, land-use changes, and the expansion of exploitative and extractive practices, all of which can be said to pose significant dangers to a vast range of political communities and systems under the broader rubric of environmental security. The consequences of turning to the logic of security, however, are heavily debated among those who both espouse and reject this conceptual linkage. Thus, this dissertation seeks to dig deeper into the ways security is conceptualized, leveraged, and contested across certain domains of global environmental politics. Specifically, I contribute three empirical studies that each employ critical discourse analysis to highlight distinct connections between the environment and security as they emerge across different state and non-state actors, including governments, IGOs, NGOs, TNCs, and resistance movements. I focus on the Food, Energy, Water (FEW) security nexus as an over-arching arena of global environmental politics in which such actors frequently draw upon securitized language to describe environmental problems and their potential solutions. I find that 1) elite actors including state representatives, NGOs, and IGOs designing the FEW security nexus agenda position scarcity as the main threat and private sector actors as key agents of environmental security; 2) environmental security is leveraged in unique ways as a source of legitimacy by TNCs operating across the FEW nexus; and 3) resistance movements can generate contradictory and alternative visions of environmental security and legitimacy that challenge prevailing and unequal systems of governance. I conclude that the emergence of the FEW security nexus as global development paradigm presents a particularly important opportunity to interrogate processes and performative implications of securitization (both oppressive and emancipatory), build upon alternative, bottom-up visions of environmental security, and reflect upon the changing role of the state in relation to both security and global environmental politics more broadly.
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    Gender, security, and the environment: lessons from the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna water basin
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Detraz, Nicole, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor
    Environmental security has come to represent a way for scholars and policymakers to link the concepts of traditional security scholarship to the environment. Within academia, scholars use the concept of environmental security in several different ways, as well as using alternative terms to convey a relationship between security and the environment. While there has been some scholarly work conducted that seeks to identify the ways that academics link these concepts, there has been little systematic work done that examines the intersection between approaches to environmental security and gender. This dissertation argues the necessity of including gender into the discourses on security and the environment. In the project I address the theoretical and practical implications of ignoring the gendered aspects of security and the environment and the possibilities for introducing gender into theoretical and political debates linking environment and security. The key questions that this project explores are (1) How are the issues of security and the environment linked in theory and practice; (2) To what extent is gender a part of these discussions; and (3) What are the implications of how these issues are linked? I undertook three research steps for the dissertation. Step 1-discourse analysis of the academic literature linking environment and security. This step involved examining the academic literature using discourse analysis to identify three distinct discourses linking environment and security. Step 2-gender analysis of the three major discourses linking environment and security. This step consisted of tracing the presence and absence of gender in the security and environment debates in order to understand the place of gender currently, and the possible inclusion of gender into the discourses. Step 3-case studies of water issues in South Asia. These case studies explore some of these ideas in the context of real world policy discussion to see whether these same discourses inform policy debates; whether and how gender is considered in these policy debates; and refine some of the ideas/concepts about how gender matters and could be incorporated in the academic discussions.
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    Native soil: contest and control for land and resource rights in the Arctic
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Hodgson, Kara, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Velasco, Marcela, advisor; Schultz, Courtney, committee member
    The Arctic is a dynamic region that over four million people in eight different countries call their home. Many of the residents belong to indigenous groups who have lived there for millennia. These groups have retained their traditional cultural practices, values, and livelihoods while also having had to adapt to contemporary realities. Since the mid-twentieth century, the region has been increasingly seen as an appealing option for the exploitation of vital natural resources. As such, there has been contestation between industrial actors and Arctic indigenous groups over control of the land and its resources. States have played a pivotal role in mediating the tensions arising from interests in extractive industry development and indigenous groups' rights. In each of the cases presented in this paper, the states have chosen to incorporate their indigenous populations as the solution, although each has done so in a decidedly different way. This paper traces the ways in which indigenous peoples have been incorporated and how their rights to their ancestral lands have been recognized in three different Arctic countries, particularly in situations where there are conflicting interests over the land usage. It posits that the unique historical evolution of institutions in each country, with their idiosyncratic path dependencies and critical junctures, explains why they, and why countries in general, vary in the methods of incorporation they choose.
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    The role of the United Nations General Assembly in the norm life cycle
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Lowring, Teal Buckner, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Daxecker, Ursula, committee member; Fiege, Mark, committee member
    In the last few decades the study of norms coupled with a constructivist approach has brought new insights into the area of international relations. The UNGA is the premier global IGO making it an important and interesting topic of study in terms of global legislation. This research fills a gap in the literature, which does not sufficiently cover the relationship between norms and the UNGA. The case studies here yield individual and comparative results which may help to answer broader questions dealing with both global governance and international relations. This research finds that the UNGA is able to play an influential role in the norm life cycle, which is expanded from Finnemore and Sikkink's (1998) iteration. The type of issue, the type of promoting state, and the type of state benefiting from the norm all seem to play a role in the level of UNGA participation as well as how and when the UNGA participates in the norm life cycle.