Geographical perspectives on international cooperation and conflict

This study is a quantitative and spatial analysis of international cooperation and conflict. Using geographic concepts and spatial analysis, this research revisits two sets of existing research questions 1) UN general assembly voting patterns and 2) the escalation of territorial disputes. Political geographers have emphasized the need to look at political issues using key concepts developed in geography. In this dissertation the concepts of context and scale are applied to revisit existing studies. First, the support to the U.S. in UN general assembly votes is examined at a regional scale. Previous studies on UN voting did not take spatial dependency into consideration despite the common inclusion of spatial dependence in the study of electoral geography. The research design in this dissertation uses spatial regression models to explore the spatial context and the scale at which the politics of UN voting is constructed. Second, previous studies of territorial disputes are revisited through the lens of contextual analysis. Building on theoretical and methodological developments in political geography and peace science, local spatial statistics are implemented and the results are compared to those of previous global scale analysis. Geographically weighted regression was used to take spatial heterogeneity into consideration in the model. The results of the analysis show that a contextual understanding provides different empirical results from the dominant approach of political science that was designed to identify universal political processes. The dissertation draws the broad conclusions that the application of regional and local scale analysis significantly changes the explanations provided by global scale analysis. The application of spatial analysis can make it possible to incorporate geographical concepts into the study of international cooperation and conflict. This dissertation confirms that geographical concepts and spatial analysis are useful in providing a better understanding international politics, one that focuses on contextualized rather than universal political processes.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geography

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2012

Author dc:creator

• Chi, Sang hyun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Flint, Colin
• McLafferty, Sara L.
• Vasquez, John A.
• Cidell, Julie

• political geography
• geopolitics
• scale
• context
• spatial analysis

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2011 Sang hyun Chi

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/29830

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/29830