Theory and Methods Sample Clauses

Theory and Methods. Existing accounts of the legislation against child marriage focus on country- specific factors in explaining the legislative reforms, or lack thereof, as well as the success or failure of such legislative reforms in actually changing marriage-age patterns. By contrast, my research question entails a macro-level comparative approach, both theoretically and methodologically. Sociological theories of globalization, particularly sociological institutionalism, help us investigate such questions (Xxxxxxxxx 1999, Xxxxxxx and Boli 2005, Xxxxxxx et al 2012). Following the form of global institutionalism known as world polity theory, I emphasize the importance of world cultural constructs such as modern childhood, love- based marriage, individual consent, and individual agency in understanding both the spread of legislation concerning the marriage age and the growing global concern about child marriage in recent decades. I conceptualize both nation-states and other organizational forms such as INGOs as part of a broad world culture. In this way I show that, to understand what leads states to pass laws against child marriage, we should look beyond national borders and focus on the global scripts that relate to laws about child marriage. Accordingly, this project assesses global patterns of marriage age legislation mainly through the lens of world polity theory. In order to test for factors influencing individual states’ legislation, I also utilize theoretical arguments regarding state capacity, religion, economic development, state population policies, and so on. With “legislation that sets the minimum age of marriage at 18” as the dependent variable, I analyze time- series data for 167 countries from 1965 to 2015. My research addresses two aspects of the rising trend in legislation against child marriage. By means of survival analysis techniques, I examine factors that help explain which countries were early adopters of legislation. Second, by using logistic regression, I analyze factors that help explain whether or not a country ever adopted a minimum-18 marriage law in the 50 years of my analysis. The diffusion of legislation against child marriage is one part of the story that I tell in this dissertation; the other is the formation and development of the global movement against child marriage. The literature about child marriage usually treats the phenomenon as an independent variable, discussing its health, human rights, and development effects. The core matter ...