After the influx of Central American unaccompanied child migrants to the U.S. southern border in 2014, the Northern Triangle governments of, Honduras, and Guatemala, and El Salvador, partnered with...Show moreAfter the influx of Central American unaccompanied child migrants to the U.S. southern border in 2014, the Northern Triangle governments of, Honduras, and Guatemala, and El Salvador, partnered with the Obama administration to implement the Alliance for Prosperity plan, a development initiative introduced by Northern Triangle governments to stem irregular migration through promoting regional economic growth and security. To support the Plan, the U.S. financed $1 billion in foreign aid assistance and programming. In reality, the Alliance for Prosperity plan was a continuation of the same neoliberal economic model in existence between the U.S. and Northern Triangle region for decades, which has been found to secure national security and business interests over that of inclusive growth among Central American societies. Considering President Biden’s $4 billion commitment to build on this model, the case study that follows seeks to explore through qualitative analysis the hypothesis that the previous Alliance for Prosperity plan was used to perpetuate neocolonial mechanisms of economic dependency, resource extraction, and territorial control, to undermine the Plan’s objective to inspire inclusive growth among the Central American people. The findings reveal that the Plan perpetuates neocolonialism by consistently implementing policies that exacerbate local inequalities and neglecting to enforce measures of transparency and accountability. Maintaining the status quo affords the U.S. favorable economic and security interests while at the same time ensuring the dominance of a Central American elitist class. Both partners lack an incentive to change development approaches, serving as an explanation to why foreign aid to address the Central American migrant crisis has undermined its own efforts.Show less
Procedural environmental justice is mostly studied using the framework provided by the Aarhus Convention. However, both the concept and the framework are of Western origin, which has generated...Show moreProcedural environmental justice is mostly studied using the framework provided by the Aarhus Convention. However, both the concept and the framework are of Western origin, which has generated resistance when it comes to applying it to non-Western contexts. Such is the case of China, where scholars and authorities ascribe environmental injustice to the urban/rural and east/west divides, rather than ethnic and race factors. Many of them thus argue that environmental justice, and its derived concepts, are not applicable to the Chinese context, as they are intrinsically linked to race. The present thesis contends that the applicability of the PEJ model in China can be ensured by incorporating the element of recognition into it. Following this theory, the author develops an improved, four-pillar PEJ model and tests it by applying it to the case of the Tarim Basin Uyghurs. This model adjusts the three original PEJ pillars established in the Aarhus Convention (access to relevant environmental information, participation in environmental decisionmaking, and review procedures to challenge environmental government decisions) to the Chinese context. The application of each of these pillars is accompanied by a comparison of the Convention text and the relevant Chinese legislation to demonstrate a converging trend between the two. A new, fourth pillar is also applied, focused on authority recognition of inequality. The application of the four-pillar model highlights the existence of a gap between the literature and the thesis findings, which highlights the value of using a model that is more sensitive to ethnic factors in non-Western contexts.Show less
The Milk Tea Alliance (MTA), an online pan-Asian movement, generated unprecedented participation in the region through an interplay of benefits and a constructed relative deprivation that was...Show moreThe Milk Tea Alliance (MTA), an online pan-Asian movement, generated unprecedented participation in the region through an interplay of benefits and a constructed relative deprivation that was capable of overcoming different grievances. Literature emerging from the Arab spring has brought about several benefits that applied to the MTA, namely invitation of social movements, sharing of information and tactics, solidarity, social capital, mobilization, and motivation. However, the MTA was not able to initiate social movements contrary to expectations. The other benefits are found to apply. By combining constructivist theory and relative deprivation theory I argue that the MTA experienced this unprecedented participation because a constructed relative deprivation partly created by Hong Kong and adopted by participating countries such as Myanmar which was able to create shared grievances that inform participation. The grievance was with authoritarianism and China which was often equated and thus allowed for a perception of a shared grievance, ideology, and identity. Additionally, the MTA expanded on the benefits by having an internally unifying power in Myanmar and building an alternative to ASEAN. Another reason for participation is a demographic aspect. However, so far, the MTA has not managed to have the desired success.Show less
Foreign aid policies vary greatly in their means and ends. Long-term development policies, aiming to promote development and welfare, distinguish from short-term humanitarian policies that respond...Show moreForeign aid policies vary greatly in their means and ends. Long-term development policies, aiming to promote development and welfare, distinguish from short-term humanitarian policies that respond to humanitarian emergency crises. Politicians seem to differ in their preferences, leading scholars to question how these preferences emerge. Existing literature has been focusing on theories of elite competition in explaining why states construct and implement certain policies. However, these theories seem to ignore the concept of political agency, and grant no primacy to the role of ideas and values. This thesis aims to fill this gap by asking how party ideologies influence foreign aid policy preferences. It employs the discursive legitimation model of Van Leeuwen (2008) to analyze Dutch parliamentary debates. Here, it is found that conservative values affect politicians to refer to authorization and rationalization when legitimizing their preferences, while liberal values work through to moral evaluation and story-telling strategies. This confirms that ideas and ideologies do matter for policy preferences.Show less
