Department of Government Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2152/14226

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Theoretical foundations of government ownership in a capitalistic economy
(1946) Foster, John Fagg, 1907-; Ayres, Clarence Edwin, 1891-1972; Montgomery, Robert Hargrove
Contesting Khalistan: the Sikh diaspora and the politics of separatism
(2001-05) Gunawardena, Therese Suhashini; Hardgrave, Robert L.
This dissertation examines the Sikh diaspora's role in the effort to carve a separate Sikh state--Khalistan--out of territory that presently constitutes the Indian Punjab. While many scholars note the involvement of overseas Sikhs in the Khalistan movement, the campaign for Sikh sovereignty has not been universally endorsed and a broad continuum of opinion exists within the diaspora regarding self-determination. Moreover, there have been various disputes regarding ideology and strategy even between pro-Khalistan factions that share the common goal of secession. Internecine conflict within the pro-Khalistan bloc has thus served to undermine its legitimacy within the larger diasporan Sikh community and in the international political arena. This raises the following inter-related questions that form the focus of this study: Why is the Khalistan coalition so weak, given its constituent members' consensus on the ultimate goal of secession? Why do pro-Khalistan groups that possess a common adversary (the Indian state) choose competition over cooperation given that the latter would be more expedient in realizing their political objectives? In addressing this, I draw upon the literature on exile politics and formulate a social movement type that I classify as a Separatist Diasporan Movement (SDM). I define an SDM as a coalition of political organizations comprising coethnics of migrant origin that: (1) sustains a strong attachment to their homeland, (2) maintains numerous networks among coethnics in other countries, and (3) seeks to create a separate homeland out of territory that forms part of an existing state because of real or imagined feelings of persecution. I further argue that because they lack institutionalized legitimacy and the instruments of state power, SDMs are intrinsically unstable entities whose authority is contested and re-contested from both within and without. In supporting my argument, I examine the rhetoric and political tactics employed by Khalistani groups in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Data was obtained through fieldwork in the three countries, a variety of primary sources, and pro-Khalistan websites. My findings indicate that the schisms that emerged within the Khalistan SDM result from this absence of a unanimously-recognized authority and the persistence of conflicting pre-coalition identities.
Making markets work in rural China : the transformation of local networks in a Chinese town, 1979-1999
(2001-08) Keng, Shu; Bennett, Gordon A.; Boone, Catherine
Personal networks (guanxi) have been central to Chinese business organizations. But how do these networks change in China’s economic transition? Based on the data collected in a small town (Beiyuan zhen) in north China, this dissertation seeks to examine the impacts of marketization on the social networks among rural entrepreneurs and between entrepreneurs and their local officials. In this study, I found the local business networks in Beiyuan have experienced a process of “creative transformation,” the adjustments that make these networks more capable of facilitating market transactions. Therefore, I claim that it is the transformation of these local institutions that contributes to “making markets work in rural China.” Being more specific, my findings regarding the network transformation can be summarized as follows. To begin with, even after the two decades of market transition, the local business networks in Beiyuan have not been replaced by impersonal price mechanism. Instead, they have gradually transformed into “weak ties” (involving limited mutual responsibilities). After such transformation, these new networks usually assume a more active and efficient role in mediating the business transactions of rural enterprises (TVEs). On the other hand, these networks have also gradually diverged from “vertical ties” (relationships between the un-equals). In other words, even though some enterprises continue to rely on local officials for state patronage, many others, especially those successful on the market, are no longer dependent on local officials. Nowadays, those entrepreneurs tend to seek alliances with other entrepreneurs to capture more market opportunities. For them, governmentbusiness relations are not that crucial and lopsided as they used to be. They have been growing out of clientelism.
From linguistic nationalism to ethnic conflict : Sri Lanka in comparative perspective
(2001-08) DeVotta, Neil; Hardgrave, Robert L.
Theories of ethnic conflict typically focus on primordialist (historical and psychological), constructivist (sociological), and instrumentalist (elite and rational choice) explanations, thereby under-emphasizing how politics impacts intraethnic and inter-ethnic relations. This work, by focusing on how linguistic nationalism led to ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, focuses on ethnic politics even as it incorporates primordialist, constructivist, and instrumentalist explanations. It argues that the Sinhala-Only Act of 1956, which made the majority Sinhalese community’s Sinhala language the sole official language and was brought about by the dialectic between majority rule and Sinhalese ethnolinguistic nationalism, was the catalyst for the numerous anti-minority policies that followed. The institutional decay these discriminatory policies wrought over two decades was what led to Tamil mobilization and the ongoing attempt to create a separate state.
A constructivist theory of international monetary relations : monetary understandings, state interests in cooperation, and the construction of crises (1929-2001)
(2001-08) Widmaier, Wesley William; Edwards, David V.
Public participation in bureaucratic policy-making :the case of the U.S.-Mexico Border Environment Cooperation Commission
(2001-12) Graves, Scott Herbert; Freeman, Gary P.; De la Garza, Rodolfo O.
This study explores the conditions under which citizens are able to integrate themselves into bureaucratic policy-making and influence decisions. It poses three key research questions: How do bureaucracies structure their interaction with citizens? Under what conditions are public participants able to influence decisions? Are all policy issues equally susceptible to influence? I investigate these questions in the context of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC), a U.S-Mexico agency established in 1993. The study adopts a theory of citizen-bureau interaction. The theory suggests agencies structure interaction with citizens according to their degree of tolerance for public intervention. It proposes that two key variables—(1) citizen resources and (2) stability of the political environment—affect agency responsiveness and influence citizens’ ability to penetrate and impact bureaucratic policy-making. The
Some conflicts may not end: the stability of protracted violence in Colombia
(2002) Ribetti, Marcella Marisa; Wagner, R. Harrison (Robert Harrison); Dietz, Henry A.
This dissertation explains why intrastate conflicts may persist beyond the point where agreements are expected. I argue that the prolongation of certain conflicts may be tied to the character of the groups involved in them, and ultimately to the source of their finances. All groups seek primarily to preserve themselves and to fulfill the aspirations of their members. In intrastate conflicts, groups exhibit one of two characters depending on their orientations: calculative or emotional. Calculative groups are primarily profit-oriented; emotional groups are driven primarily by the desire to demand redress of the grievances of the community to which they belong. Calculative groups may hinder the pursuit of any feasible agreement. There may be no agreements that would allow such groups to preserve themselves, and their members to continue to receive tangible benefits. Fighting remains necessary for groups to maintain control over what I call “profitable” and “strategic” territories, which are used for the extraction and commercialization of resources that have a high value in the international market (primarily because of their illegal nature). However, in the absence of viable formal agreements, informal and local agreements are sought, instead. These aim at minimizing the costs associated with fighting (between opponents), while increasing the violence against challenging members of the organization, and against civilians as a proxy, as a way to neutralize possible opposition, as a form of coercion, and as a means to financial gains. The corollary to the argument is that, if the costs of fighting are low and the benefits remain high for all the groups involved in the fighting, an “institutionalized” systemic incentive to preserve the status quo arises. Because every group and its members are at least content with the status quo, there are no strong incentives to reach any formal compromise. In sum, the solution to the puzzle of conflict duration is quite counterintuitive; certain conflicts, though prolonged, may not be costly for those that are involved in them. Contrary to common sense, violence and fighting in these cases are the norm rather than the aberration. I test this argument in the Colombian environment.
Liberalism's domesticity: the common-law domestic relations as liberal social ordering
(2002) Sullivan, Kathleen Susan; Ritter, Gretchen; Tulis, Jeffrey.
Political theory and the problem of American poverty
(2002) Vaughan, Sharon Kay; Seung, T. K., 1930-
This dissertation serves to expose ideas about poverty by systematically examining its treatment in foundational texts by some of the most significant theorists in Western philosophy. I explore the writings of Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick in historical sequence. These philosophers made significant and provocative contributions toward understanding the problem of poverty. I uncover some major themes in these theorists’ work. First, all but one philosopher thinks it disastrous for a society to have large numbers of poor people living in a state. Mass poverty threatens everyone’s happiness in the state as well as its political stability. Second, some theorists have oversimplified the problem and possible solutions. These oversimplifications add to the confusion and controversy surrounding the problem of poverty. Third, discussions about government support for the poor dominate much of the writing about poverty. Ought governments give aid to the poor? How can one morally justify taking money from the wealthy to provide aid for the poor? Philosophical and historical explorations of these themes and questions reveal that these same problems have vexed philosophers and politicians from John Locke to contemporary authors like John Rawls. These ideas continue to be relevant today after hundreds and even thousands of years have passed.
Judicial entrepreneurism and the politics of institutional change: an analysis of the recent judicial role transformation in the High Court of Australia
(2002) Pierce, Jason Louis; Higley, John; Perry, H. W.
This dissertation explores a fundamental transformation that occurred in the High Court of Australia’s institutional role over the last twenty years. From the mid- 1980s to the late 1990s, the Court embarked on a concerted, systematic effort to recast its role within the legal and political systems. It went from operating at the margins of politics to the political storm center. Principally through watershed decisions on indigenous people's land rights and on free speech protections, the Court also shed its legal positivist traditions and ushered legal realism into its jurisprudence. Using data collected from personal interviews with over eighty senior appellate judges, including a majority of current and retired High Court Justices, the dissertation analyzes the causes and consequences of this transformation. It advances that an interplay of individual, institutional, and political factors contributed to the transformation’s genesis and its ultimate failure. Throughout, it highlights the importance of individual judges’ choices and the historical and institutional contexts that shape and constrain those choices.
Anarchy, uncertainty, and dispute settlement : an endogenous-war model
(2002-05) Kim, Dong-won; Wagner, R. Harrison (Robert Harrison)
Belligerents are usually bargainers–they negotiate to reach an agreement and they fight to affect the negotiations. In general, a government at war considers a compromise peace when it has become sufficiently skeptical of its ability to subdue the adversary on the battlefield at tolerable costs. Thus even disputants that have started a war due to the collapse of prewar bargaining may not have to fight to the finish. The dissertation examines how dispute outcomes vary because even at war disputants can negotiate for a compromise settlement, and how treating war as a simple matter of military strategy can be misleading about the causes of war. If diplomacy does not stop despite the initiation of hostilities, then a belligerent can employ its forces more efficiently for conflict resolution by improving its bargaining strategy whenever it gains new information about the true state of affairs, and by holding out for the adversary’s concession until its assessment of the future development on the battlefield becomes sufficiently pessimistic. Thus an ironical situation can arise with two antagonists acting strategically against each other: a disputant which would not go to war if it should fight to the finish can decide to risk a war and a disputant which is actually resolved to fight long enough to coerce its terms on the adversary may not be able to demonstrate its determination without fighting long indeed. As a result, a monotonic relationship hardly arises between disputants’ expected war costs, their relative military strength, the scope of the stake at issue, or the status quo distribution of that stake on one hand and the probability of war initiation or dispute settlement on the other. The dissertation uses deduction to derive the main arguments and induction to test their empirical relevance. For deduction, it develops and analyzes a gamble engaging horse races and a two-person asymmetric bargaining game that encompasses prewar bargaining and the process of negotiating while fighting on the assumption that the conflict terminates whenever the players reach an agreement. For induction, it statistically analyzes the battles fought at the initial stages of the First World War and the militarized interstate dispute data (1996) and the Correlates of War interstate war data (1992).
Between success and survival : devolution and concentration in Latin America
(2002-05) Barr, Robert Rennie; Dietz, Henry A.; Madrid, Raúl L.
Several recent administrations in Latin America have implemented significant reforms that alter the relative balance of power between central and subnational governments. Some have devolved power to subnational governments, while others have concentrated power in the hands of the executive. This divergence is puzzling, especially since the reforms have appeared in similar circumstances, namely in democratic and presidential political systems and under the constraints of marketoriented economies. This project tackles the question of why governments facing similar macro-level constraints would pursue radically divergent paths of state reform. Since devolution can strengthen representative democracy whereas concentration weakens it, answering this question contributes to our understanding of the conditions for democratic institutional development. In this dissertation, devolution and concentration are analyzed side-by-side, as different values of the same dependent variable. Doing so highlights a critical gap in vii the literature: analyses of devolution and concentration are unnecessarily separated, and thus talk past one another. In other words, each of the literatures concerns reforms in one direction or the other, but not both. By contrast, this project offers an explanation of the range of reforms to central-subnational government relations. Bolivia and Peru provide the principal cases of devolution and concentration, respectively, while Colombia and Venezuela provide secondary cases. Nine administrations in these four countries changed the institutional arrangements affecting central-subnational government relations. The comparative analysis of these cases reveals that devolution and concentration can be understood as strategic responses by traditional and outsider parties, respectively, to low levels of political class legitimacy. Declining public confidence in the political establishment creates constraints and opportunities that vary according to party type. Traditional parties have a distinct incentive to resolve the legitimacy problems, in part through devolution, in order to curtail its negative impact on their electoral prospects and capacity to govern. Political outsiders, by contrast, have a strong incentive to pursue an anti-system strategy, including the concentration of power, in order to undercut their opposition and reap undivided political benefits
Party development and the depoliticization of interests
(2002-05) Ladewig, Jeffrey Wayne; Roberts, Brian E.
Since 1950, the strength of the American political parties has been a focus of much scholarly attention. General theories of party development must be able to account for the recent decline and resurgence of political and must be applicable to each of the three aspects of political parties. Most theories do not; my dissertation does by focusing on constituent interests. I create a theory of party development based on ‘demand-side’ causes and secular trends. In particular, I posit two prime hypotheses: fragmented constituent coalitions produce weak parties while majoritarian constituent coalitions produce strong parties. Trade and monetary policies had been most important to constituent. Despite being depoliticized during the Progressive reforms, these interests remain central. The interests are modeled by one of two economic theories: the Ricardo-Viner (sectoral coalitions) and the Stolper-Samuelson (factoral coalitions.) The coalitions are then characterized as fragmented or majoritarian, respectively. vii In Chapter 3, I explore party-in-government. First, I show that trade and monetary policies are not legislative outliers. Second, I show that sectoral coalitions dominate from 1963 to 1980 and that factoral coalitions do afterwards. Third, I test each economic model and demonstrate that Congresspersons vote according to the interests of their districts. Finally, I show that sectoral coalitions produced weak parties and factoral coalitions produced strong parties. In Chapter 4, I explore party-in-the-electorate. First, I show that individuals do not consistently use partisan labels in Congressional elections when core constituent interests are fragmented but they do when core interests are majoritarian. I also test party identification, salience and affect on the changing level of party unity in Congress. Finally, the economic models and pooled data show that citizens vote according to their economic interests and the parties mirror these interests. Therefore, the empirical data confirms the theoretical hypotheses in each chapter and also the prime hypotheses. Fragmented constituent coalitions produce weaker parties. Majoritarian constituent coalitions produce stronger parties. As such, the secular trends that had largely motivated the strong parties of the 19th century are still present and still central even though the Progressive and New Deal era reforms depoliticized these core constituent interests
American state supreme courts in the Jacksonian decade, 1828-1837 : an exploration of the role of early American court decisions in societal change
(2002-08) Nelson, Ronald Lee; Perry, H. W.
This dissertation concerns the relationship between the American state supreme courts and American society during the Jacksonian Era. Many scholars have emphasized a view of American courts during this period as institutions that were either pro-development instrumentalities or mirrors merely reflecting the changes of the times. I argue that the Jacksonian Era state high courts functioned as interactive players in the push-pull of events in a society undergoing the stress of pervasive change. These high courts operated in a dialectic with the societal forces around them. Through written decisions, the courts addressed the issues of the day and, through the resolution of routine disputes, affected American society. The courts’ decisions record the rationales for the results of these resolutions revealing some of the general premises accepted by the Jacksonian society. The decisions also explain factors considered by the courts in resolving the disputes before them. More specifically, my research demonstrates that the Jacksonian state high courts were significant participants in the early American state building process. Through their everyday decisions, the courts shaped the relationship between society and all levels government of the American state. These courts also addressed issues related to commercial and social changes. And despite scholarly opinion to the contrary, these courts did not decide cases in a manner that routinely offered favors to commercial or entrepreneurial interests. The decisions reveal consideration for the needs of society and certain social groups often at the expense of business concerns. Finally, my research shows that the Jacksonian courts were institutions imbedded within a society. The courts operated in an interactive relationship with society in which the institution of the courts was shaped by society but also, at the same time, helped shape society in return. I suggest that this view of the Jacksonian courts as interactive participants in the development of early American society has potential as a framework for understanding courts as societal institutions in general. This is a relationship that may extend beyond the Jacksonian period and be at work in the general relationship between courts and societies.
Political religion versus secular nationalism : a comparative analysis of religious politics in Israel and Turkey
(2002-08) Tepe, Sultan; Henry, Clement M., 1937-; Luskin, Robert C.
This dissertation addresses the questions of why a growing number of people support radical religious parties and how and with what implications these parties have established themselves as main contenders for political power in a wide range of countries. It argues that prevailing descriptions of religious ideologies, which reduce them to oppositional forces against secularism and secular nationalism, fail to recognize and incorporate political agendas and popular bases of religious parties in their assessments. The comparative design central to this study seeks to go beyond conventional understandings and assess the intricate relation between religious and secular in the political appeal of religious parties. To this end, Israel and Turkey, which exhibit strong sectarian traditions, a commitment to secularist nationalism and the presence of popular religious parties provide unique data to compare the characteristics and effects of two distinct forms of religious movements, political Judaism and Islam, on democratic processes. Comparison of these countries’ religious politics allows us to approach the conceptual problems posed by religious parties without referring to essentialist arguments attributing their expanding support to the beliefs inherent in Judaism and Islam. The competing agendas and popular support of four religious parties, Mafdal and Shas in Israel, the Virtue Party and the Nationalist Action Party in Turkey constitute the basis of the conclusions presented. Analyses of public opinion surveys of these parties’ supporters and a set of interviews with their political elites describes the competition among religious parties within each country and identifies the institutional and ideological factors driving their increasing support. This comparative reading of the findings establishes that Judaic and Islamic politics manifest similar features in both countries. Religious parties are not parochial parties rather they take novel positions on an array of issues by tailoring secular views to their interpretation of the religious in two distinctive forms: sacralizing politics and internally secularizing religion. They strategically present themselves as challengers of the dominant parties while successfully redefining the political center. The spatial analysis of the positioning of religious parties in their respective political systems illustrates that religious parties’ growing political appeal lies in their capacity to carve new policy options and fill an ideological gap left by the dominant parties.
Information, policy extremity, and democracy
(2002-08) Plane, Dennis Lowell; Luskin, Robert C.
Democratizing urban Brazil : voters, reformers, and the pursuit of political accountability
(2002-12) Setzler, Mark Hunter; Dietz, Henry A.; Graham, Lawrence S.
This study tackles a question of longstanding and central interest to political scientists: why have democratic transitions in some developing societies provoked profound transformations in mass and elite political behaviors, while the adoption of competitive elections elsewhere has done little to enhance democratic accountability? Most recent scholarship focuses almost exclusively on formal institutional arrangements in trying to answer this question. In contrast, I contend that the deepening of democratic practices in developing countries depends as much on these societies’ distributions of socioeconomic and social capital resources as it does on the design of their macropolitical institutions. In settings where most individuals lack the resources to knowledgeably evaluate candidates for political office on the basis of policy proposals or incumbent voting records, voters largely cast their ballots for politicians who provide private goods and benefits. Drawing from rational choice and collective action theories, my central line of line of reasoning is that social resource contexts decisively influence the extent to which individuals obtain the basic political information needed to hold politicians accountable in elections. Voter sophistication, in turn, shapes formal and informal political behaviors, and in doing so influences the campaign and governance ix strategies of elected public officials. The pursuit of political accountability in developing settings thus hinges critically on the resources and political sophistication of voters. I test my argument by examining various elite and mass political behaviors in three mid-sized state capital cities that collectively represent a cross-section of Brazil’s urban population. By investigating multiple subnational cases from a single country, I am able to hold fully constant institutional factors so that noninstitutional variables that shape subnational democratization can be systematically examined. Three distinct modes of inquiry—in-depth case studies, medium-n statistical analyses of city-regional data, and large-n statistical modeling that incorporates individual-level data—all confirm my main theoretical expectation: despite sharing identical party, electoral, and governance systems, dramatically different patterns of subnational governance have emerged across and within Brazil’s socially-diverse urban centers since the military left power in the 1980s.
Power from on high : the political mobilization of Brazilian evangelical Protestantism
(2002-12) Gaskill, Newton Jeffrey; Dietz, Henry A.
The resurgence of religion as a vehicle for mobilizing voters and influencing government policy has surprised those who assumed religion would become less important as nations modernized. This dissertation proposes a new explanation of religiously based political mobilization and tests the explanation with qualitative and quantitative data from Brazil. Religious behavior is shown to be the product of subjectively rational individual decisions constrained by organizational culture. The politicization of religion is shown to be a result of strategic decisions about how to maintain or expand the conditions and resources necessary to reproduce religion. Changes in social and political structure are shown to have a determinative effect on the decision to mobilize politically.
Ideological campaign rhetoric and its effects
(2002-12) Globetti, Suzanne; Luskin, Robert C.
Prior research has focused on how irrelevant ideology is to American politics. We know that people do not now, nor have they ever, thought about politics in ideological terms, if that means having a well-developed political belief system (Converse 1964; Luskin 1987; Smith 1989; cf. Nie, Verba, and Petrocik 1979). Yet political elites still use ideological terms and so, in lesser degree and with less meaning, do ordinary citizens. Broadly speaking, this dissertation examines the interaction between these phenomena: citizens’ limited ideological understanding of ideological terms and elites’ rhetorical use of them in campaigns. It begins with a theoretical discussion of mass ideology and then moves to an examination of a unique database of over 2,000 Senate ads from 1988-96. Merging the ad data with individual-level data from the 1988-92 National Election Study’s Senate Election Study, I argue and demonstrate that candidates have electoral incentives to misuse ideological terms, that such misuse leads to misperceptions of candidate ideology, “incorrect” voting, and diminished participation. In short, instead of providing clearer choices, as we might imagine, ideological campaigns confuse and frustrate American voters.
Has globalization changed U.S. federalism?: the increasing role of U.S. states in foreign affairs : Texas-Mexico relations
(2003) Blase, Julie Melissa; Trubowitz, Peter; Garza, Rodolfo de la
According to the U.S. Constitution, the states are prohibited from direct involvement in foreign affairs because the federal government is supreme in this area. This legal restriction forms the basis for the prevailing concept that states have no authority, capability, or even interest in foreign affairs. But globalization has transformed the nature of domestic policy, and states’ interests have changed. Today, state officials meet regularly with their foreign counterparts to discuss matters of mutual concern, ranging from economic development to law enforcement. Domestic policy now has international causes and effects, and states are expanding their domestic governing responsibilities to include foreign relations. But in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Massachusetts state law infringing on federal supremacy in foreign affairs. This preemption shows there are limits to the states’ growing international roles, prompting the question, when can states develop international roles and when does the federal government restrict them? By examining one case across a range of policy areas, patterns emerge that have yet to be identified by other scholars. The dissertation examines several venues the state of Texas has created to communicate directly with Mexico on matters of economic development, border relations, criminal justice, and family law. Generalizing from the Texas case, the dissertation finds that states are most free to develop an international role when they: 1) can exploit the legal ambiguity surrounding domestic responsibilities that have become internationalized; and 2) share common policy goals with the federal government. Washington is most likely to restrict states when: 1) a politically significant complainant challenges a state’s action; and 2) there is a need for a single national policy standard. It is important to consider the implications of internationally-active states in order to understand how both U.S. domestic and foreign policy are evolving. This dissertation’s findings offer important insights into this vital and current topic.

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