UCSD - Department of Political Science

Fields of Study: International Relations, International Security, International Organizations, Comparative Politics


Dissertation: “Nonproliferation Through Delegation”


Description of Work: My dissertation examines the use of international organizations to cooperate on controlling the threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons since 1945. Despite the many similarities of these weapons, states have collectively approached these weapons of mass destruction differently. For example, states in the late 1960s delegated authority to an international organization to monitor and enforce a bargain to stop nuclear proliferation but at the same time cooperated only minimally and without delegation to solve the threats posed by chemical and biological weapons. Why do states use delegation to an international agent for some NBCW issues and not others, and why at some points in history and not others?
In this dissertation, I answer this question using cartel theory to derive the potential barriers to cooperation on NBCW issues. I then use a principal-agent model to explain how delegation to an international agent can overcome these barriers. I argue states will delegate to international organizations for NBCW issues when the threat of their use is great, when the preferences of a critical mass of NBCW-capable states coalesces around a counter-NBCW strategy, and when the costs are low relative to alternative strategies for producing information about NBCW proliferation, for producing information about states' NBCW-relevant behavior, and for enforcing the NBCW bargain. This work is important because it sheds important light on international cooperation to fight the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, applicable to a wide range of international security issues. This work also tests underlying assumptions of a burgeoning field in the study of international organizations, namely the applicability of principal-agent models in international politics.
In addition to the dissertation, I have ongoing projects examining the applicability of deterrence theory to contemporary US security concerns, potential solutions to North Korea’s nuclear program, and the role of alliances in inter-state relations.


Dissertation Committee: David A. Lake (chair), Kristian Gleditsch, Miles Kahler, Robert Powell (U.C. Berkeley), Philip G. Roeder


Email:rlbrown@ucsd.edu


Homepage: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~rlbrown/

Fields of Study: American Politics; Voting, Campaigns, and Elections


Dissertation: The Strategic Use of Political Consultants in U.S. House Elections


Description of Work: I argue that politicians and political consultants make decisions observable to other political elites.  Challengers for congressional office have a demand for political consultants not only for the quality of their services (polling, advertising, etc.) but to signal to political elites (PACs, the news media, etc.) that they can wage competitive contests.  Challengers must persuade elites of their viability, not just the electorate.  Moreover, the demand for consultants is particularly high because there is a limited supply of the relatively few big-name firms whose signal is strongest in this regard and who hold a considerable market advantage over the majority of consulting firms.  This work broadens the literature into the constraints and incentives facing congressional candidates and other political elites within the Washington establishment.


Dissertation Committee:  Gary Jacobson (Chair), Samuel Kernell, Samuel Popkin, Michael Schudson (Communications), Garrett Glasgow (UC Santa Barbara)


Email:secain@ucsd.edu


Fields of Study: [Areas of Specialization] American Politics : Interest Groups, Corporate Political Behavior, Campaign Finance; Political Theory/ Philosophy [Areas of Competence] State and Local Politics and Policy; Voting, Elections, and Campaigns

Dissertation Title: A Political Theory of the Firm: Why Ownership Matters

Description: My dissertation explores variation in corporate political behavior. I develop and test an original hypothesis that illuminates theoretical and empirical puzzles. I argue that ownership structure helps explain variance in corporate political behavior and strategy, including variation in response to campaign finance reform and intra-industry variation in partisan contributions. Challenging the most common explanations for corporate political action, I find that ownership structure is a stronger predictor of political behavior than size of firm, industry, location, or whether or not the firm is publicly traded.

Dissertation Committee: Gary C. Jacobson (Chair), Mathew D. McCubbins, Samuel L. Popkin, Peter Gourevitch, Stephan A. Haggard, John W. Cioffi (UC Riverside)

E-mail Address: susancm@ucsd.edu

Link to homepage: http://clarkmuntean.us

Fields of Study: Comparative Politics-Europe, political parties, legislatures.


Dissertation: Examining the Determinants of Upper House Assertion


Description of Work: Legislative studies have tended to disregard the role of the upper chamber in the policy process. This decision to ignore the upper chamber when explaining policy outcomes is usually based on the composition of the upper house, or its relative weakness vis-à-vis the lower chamber. Recent research has suggested that even under circumstances where the legislative prerogatives of the upper chamber are relatively weak compared to that of the government, that policy outcomes are different under bicameralism than they would be under unicameralism. Discussion of when upper chambers use their authority, however, is rare, and has been limited to case studies or empirical testing relying primarily on one case. My research investigates the circumstances under which upper houses use their authority to obtain desired policy outcomes (what I refer to as assertion). Using an original dataset including votes on government legislation from 1993-2003 with over 50,000 observations in four parliamentary systems, my dissertation examines the role of institutional authority (veto strength) and legislative timing, party reach, and policy preferences in shaping upper chamber willingness to assert their institutional prerogatives. Statistical testing provides support for examining party composition within both the upper and lower chambers, as well as the policy preferences of the upper chamber in explaining upper house assertion.


Dissertation Committee: William Chandler (co-chair), Matthew Shugart (co-chair), Karen Ferree, Gary Jacobson, and Carlos Waisman (sociology).


Email:dfisk@ucsd.edu

Fields of Study: Political theory, liberalism, language and politics, public law

Dissertation Title: The Politics of Understanding: Language as a Model of Culture

My dissertation extends a criticism of political liberalism -- that groups are analytically important -- by developing a method of understanding group affiliations. This method is based in the work of Charles Taylor, but looks to developmental psychology as a necessary addition. Understanding a culture, I argue, is like learning a language; they are based in the same psychological
processes, because language is intimately tied to culture, in a way Taylor, among others, draws out.

Committee: Harvey Goldman and Tracy Strong (co-chairs), Mike Cole, Gerald Doppelt, Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Alan Houston

Email: dleitch@ucsd.edu

Fields of Study: Comparative/International Relations, State Capacity, Civil Conflict, Environmental Studiess

Dissertation Title: "Leviathan in the Tropics? Environment, State Capacity and Civil Conflict in the Developing World"

Brief Description: I investigate the impact of geography and the environment on state capacity. Moving past the traditional, war-driven story for the development of the modern state, I argue that the form of state institutions was determined by the particular environmentally driven economic context in which they developed: the agrarian, rural societies of pre-industrial North-West Europe. As colonialism, warfare, and the diffusion of international markets brought state-like institutions to the rest of the world, variation in the environmental context has led to variation in the scope and capacity of states, leading to an international system populated by states with uneven capabilities relative not just to other sovereign states, but to domestic actors as well. I test the argument in three areas: the ability of the state to collect taxes, the incidence of internal conflict, and the effects of environmental change on the onset of civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Dissertation Committee: Stephan Haggard and Kristian Gleditsch (co-chairs), Gary Cox, Clark Gibson, Barbara Walter, Eli Berman (Economics)

Email: chendrix@ucsd.edu

Homepage: http://cshendrix.wordpress.com

Fields of Study:  Comparative Politics, International Relations


Dissertation:  "Swords or Shields?  Implementing and Subverting the Final Solution in Nazi-Occupied Europe"


Description of Work: My paper explains why levels of Jewish victimization varied among Nazi-occupied countries during World War Two. I show that the ‘success’ of the German genocide program depended most importantly upon the relationship between Germany and each occupied country. I argue that where German rule was direct, its implementation of the Final Solution was unhindered, and therefore more effective. On the other hand, where Germany ruled through collaborators, the precise implementation of genocidal policies was the result of complex bargaining and negotiations: In return for their loyal cooperation in military or economic policy, collaborators could often get away with partial or simply ‘unenthusiastic’ implementation of the Final Solution. This was often a major factor in reducing rates of Jewish victimization.  This project constitutes a major contribution to the vast literature on the Holocaust, very little of which uses the tools of comparative political science or international relations. However, it also sheds light on more ‘traditional’ issues in contemporary political research, such as state-sponsored violence, ethnic conflict, international hierarchy and military occupations. 


Dissertation Committee:  David Lake and Ellen Comisso (Co-chairs), Victor Magagna, Gershon Shafir (Dept of Sociology)


Email: ejhollan@ucsd.edu


Link to Homepage: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~ejhollan


Fields of Study: Comparative Politics, Comparative Elections and Campaign Finance, Latin American Politics

DISS TITLE: Electoral Institutions and Campaign Finance

BRIEF DESCRIPTION: My dissertation studies campaign finance regulation and disclosure, the effects of money in elections, and campaign finance markets comparatively. I argue that all three of these are influenced in important ways by the electoral rules and institutions that govern the set of alternatives in competition for votes and the translation of votes to seats in legislative elections. I thus predict variation in the role and effects of campaign finance across democracies, which I support with three original studies: the most-thorough cross-national survey of campaign finance disclosure regulations to date, a statistical analysis of campaign income and spending using an original dataset of Chile’s legislative elections in 2005, and dyadic and 2SLS analyses of official campaign finance data from Chile and Ireland. This last study predicts variation in the effects of campaign spending for inter- and intra-team (coalition or party) contests, differences which stem from institutional incentives for candidates to coordinate their campaigns with their teammates. Empirically, the study is innovative because it is the first study of campaign finance to use dyadically-structured data and because it is the first multi-country quantitative analysis of campaign finance.

COMMITTEE:
Matthew Shugart (Chair, Political Science and IRPS)
Gary Cox (Political Science)
Gary Jacobson (Political Science)
Richard Feinberg (IRPS)
Scott Desposato (Political Science)

EMAIL: jwjohnson@ucsd.edu

WEB: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~jwjohnso/

Dissertation Committee: Gary Cox (co-chair), Matthew Shugart (co-chair), Mathew McCubbins, Scott Desposato, Vincent Crawford (Department of Economics).

Email:mpachon@ucsd.edu

Homepage: http://mpachon.googlepages.com
http://irps.ucsd.edu/faculty/faculty-directory/monica-pachon.htm

Fields of Study:  Comparative Politics, Political Development, Political Theory


Dissertation:  Dictators, Democrats, and Development in Nigeria 


Description of Work: see website -http://dss.ucsd.edu/~clevan


Dissertation Committee: Clark Gibson & Karen Ferree, (co-chairs) Philip Roeder, Matthew Shugart, Ivan Evans (Sociology), Peter Lewis (Johns Hopkins University)


Email: clevan@ucsd.edu


Homepage: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~clevan

Instructor, School of International Service
Co-Chair, Council on African Studies
American University
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20016-8071
(202) 885-2457

Fields of Study: Political Theory and Comparative Politics


Dissertation: “This Our Talking America:” Emerson, Public Opinion, and Democratic Representation


Dissertation Committee: Tracy B. Strong (Chair), Alan C. Houston, Harvey Goldman, Gary Shiffman, Michael O. Hardimon (Philosophy)


Link to Homepage:http://homepage.mac.com/rautenfeld/index.html


Fields of Study: Political Theory, Comparative Legal Institutions, Politics and Gender


Dissertation: "Liberty's Grammar: Of Sovereigns, Subjects, and the Concept of Constitutionalism" 


Dissertation Committee: Tracy Strong, Harry Hirsch, Alan Houston, Harvey Goldman, Judith Halberstam


Email:vsmith@latte.harvard.edu

Fields of Study: Comparative and American Judicial Politics, Politics of Legal Reform, Latin America

Dissertation Title: Comparative Criminal Law Reform: The Effects of Legislative Action on Lower Court Decision-Making

Brief Description: My research focuses on how legislative action affects judicial decision-making at the lower court level in the United States’ federal and state systems, as well as in lower courts in Chile and the United Kingdom. For federal district courts, I ask how changes in sentencing legislation affect the decisions that judges make on individual cases. Through quasi- experiments and time series analysis I find that legislators can effectively constrain judges if the law is highly specific. However, where the law or changes in the law allow judges to exercise their discretion this affects case frequencies, judicial and prosecutorial strategies regarding plea bargains, and average sentence lengths.

I also study the effect of legislative action on judicial decision-making comparatively by testing how criminal law reform affects case outcomes and larger societal concerns such as incarceration rates and case processing times.  For Chile, I ask how major criminal law reforms converting Chile's criminal law system from inquisitorial to an adversarial system have affected the work of police and judges in adjudicating criminal cases. I find that converting Chile’s system has slightly increased criminal reporting rates and decreased apprehension rates. In courts still operating under the old system, the reform has resulted in decreased conviction rates and increased acquittal rates. My dissertation will include further case studies of sentencing reform in Maryland, Washington, Pennsylvania, and the United Kingdom. My dissertation also includes results from interviews with U.S. district court judges and judges in Chile and the United Kingdom.

Finally, I am interested in the study of judicial independence and the rule of law.  I have analyzed existing measurements for these concepts and developed workable definitions and measurements for using these concepts in empirical research.

Dissertation Committee: Mathew McCubbins (Chair), Gary Cox, Stephan Haggard, Daniel Rodriguez (University of Texas Law School), Joel Watson (UCSD Department of Economics)

Email address: ltiede@ucsd.edu

Website: http://ltiede.googlepages.com/home

Fields of study: International Relations, International Political
Economy, Comparative Politics

Dissertation title: Depositing Credibility: Foreign Currency Deposits, Financial Liberalization, and Government Credibility

My dissertation, “Depositing Credibility: Foreign Currency Deposits, Financial Liberalization, and Government Credibility,”straddles the fields of international relations and comparative politics and analyzes national-level responses to increasing international capital mobility in the context of domestic bank regulations. Specifically, I investigate when and where governments allow their domestic residents to open bank
accounts denominated in a currency other than their own national currency. The proliferation of such bank accounts has allowed for extensive penetration of national banking systems by foreign currencies—usually the U.S. dollar—in many developing countries, infringing on national sovereignty and potentially increasing the chances of financial crises. Situated within current debates over the causes and consequences of increasing international financial integration, the sequencing of economic reform, and the design of domestic economic institutions, I argue that politicians can be divided into two groups: those preoccupied with establishing credible promises
of stable economic performance and those more concerned with providing specific, targeted benefits to their political supporters.

I find that those governments that face incentives to provide
broad-based public benefits, and that combine preexisting respect for property rights with unstable economic conditions, are most likely to allow these sorts of bank accounts without restrictions. Additionally, this group is more likely to be influenced by international actors like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). On the other hand, those countries where political institutions encourage politicians to provide narrowly-focused, targeted benefits to supporters, and that also possess a moderate level of property rights protection, are more likely to
reform partially, only allowing these bank accounts with restrictions, and to remain partially liberalized after the initial change.

Dissertation Committee: Miles Kahler and Lawrence Broz (co-chairs), Stephan Haggard, Thad Kousser, and Takeo Hoshi

email: kwurtz@dss.ucsd.edu
webpage: http://kwurtz.wordpress.com

Fields of Study: International Relations, Comparative Politics, China, East Asia

Dissertation Title:
Powerful Patriots: Nationalism, Diplomacy, and the Strategic Logic of Anti-Foreign Protest

Dissertation Committee:
David Lake (co-chair), Susan Shirk (co-chair), Branislav Slantchev, Lawrence Broz, Richard Madsen

Email address: jweiss@ucsd.edu

Link to homepage: http://weber.ucsd.edu/~jweiss/

Brief Description:

My dissertation, “Powerful Patriots: Nationalism, Diplomacy, and the Strategic Logic of Anti-Foreign Protest,” seeks to understand the international consequences of popular nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment in non-democratic states such as China, Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. Specifically, I address the puzzle: why are nationalist protests against foreign targets sometimes allowed and sometimes repressed by authoritarian governments?

Building upon the literature suggesting that domestic constraints provide leverage and credibility in international relations, I argue that autocratic leaders can gain bargaining advantage by allowing anti-foreign demonstrations that may turn against the government and are increasingly costly to suppress. Analogous to audience costs, anti-foreign protests enable leaders to signal resolve and credibly claim that their hands are tied in international negotiations. I extend the literature on domestic sources of bargaining leverage in two ways. First, I specify a new, non-electoral mechanism by which citizens can punish leaders for appearing to betray the national honor. I thus provide microfoundations for audience costs, which have largely been assumed rather than theoretically or empirically substantiated. Second, I suggest that anti-foreign protests enable autocratic leaders to negate or at least reduce the democratic advantage in generating endogenous domestic constraints as bargaining leverage.

To illustrate the logic and test its implications, I present a natural experiment and a series of case studies from the People’s Republic of China in the post-Mao era (1978-present). I draw upon qualitative and quantitative data gathered over 12 months of field research in China, with side trips to Hong Kong and Japan. I conducted more than 100 personal interviews with government officials, nationalist activists and webmasters, protest participants, diplomatic personnel, journalists, and foreign policy experts. Virtually all interviews in mainland China were conducted in Chinese; interviews in Japan and Hong Kong were conducted in English. Rich with anecdotes, these data—together with government documents, press reports, and internet archives—enable me to illuminate the role of state repression and facilitation in social movements and provide insight into the causes and consequences of nationalist protest in authoritarian states such as China.

Fields of Study: American Politics, Political Economy, Methodology and Experimental Methods Dissertation

Committee: Peter Cowhey, Gary Cox, Gordon Hanson, David Lake, Thad Kousser and Mathew McCubbins

Summary of Current Research: My current research is composed of three different projects. In the first project I address the standard public choice arguments about the determinants of public policy. In the second project I utilize a variety of experiments to test the effect that institutions and investment have on trust. The third projects tests through a variety of experiments the determinants of the formation of communication networks and the effect of networks on collective good provision.

The American politics literature suggests that parties are of central importance to policy making, but the trade policy literature largely ignores their role. I utilize one-to-one matching research designs to investigate if party has an effect independent of constituency demands. I find that political parties exert a significant effect on congressional trade policy votes. These results suggest that the political economy of trade needs to incorporate the effects of political parties.

In another paper I argue that to understand the contours of trade policy we must incorporate the role tariffs play in generating government revenue. To date our theories focus almost exclusively on the sale of public policy to the highest bidder. However, tariffs can also be a significant source of government revenue. In this paper we argue that to understand the contours of tariff policy over time and across countries we must take account of the role that trade taxes play in generating government revenue. We demonstrate that changes in tariff rates correspond to the government's ability to raise revenue through other forms of taxation. This approach sheds light on historical changes in U.S. tariff rates, debates about role of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in the United States, and the vast differences in cross-national tariff policy. Furthermore, by focusing on the political conditions that must exist for tariffs to be lowered our theory allows us to predict when countries will be willing and able to reduce tariffs.

In one of the papers on trust and institutions I study the conditions under which posting a bond (i.e. by signing a treaty) can affect investment. Empirical scholarship has found that Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) have only minor affects on investment, but the current research cannot tell why these treaties fail to have an effect. To shed light on the conditions under which treaties affect investment I develop a formal model of the relationship between posting a bond and investment, and then I test the model using laboratory experiments. The results suggest that it requires a large bond, relative to the amount invested, for bonding to affect the amount invested. This suggests that the existing treaties must contain larger bonding penalties if they are to influence investment decisions.

In the papers on networks I adopt an experimental approach developed by Kearns et al. (2006) that allows me to study the ability of a group to coordinate on the solution to a problem and provide a collective good. In the original experiment Kearns et al. found that the structure of the network did not affect group problem solving. I modify the experiment in two important ways that better capture elements of real-world activity: subjects must pay to change their choices in the experiment and/or subjects must pay to learn information about others’ decisions. In this more realistic experimental setting we find that network structure significantly affects the ability of groups to solve a collective problem.

URL: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~nweller

Fields of Study: Comparative Politics, Africa, State Building, Ethnicity

Dissertation: Ethnic Organization and State Weakness in Sub-Saharan Africa

Description of Work:My dissertation explains state weakness in Sub-Saharan Africa as a function of the distribution and organization of ethnic groups. I argue that as the number of significant, hierarchically organized ethnic groups within a state increases, state weakness increases.  Significant, hierarchically organized ethnic groups provide public goods and services that rival those of the state. Additionally, these groups are able to leverage resources against the state, and the groups’ members retain significant control over their leaders. Time-series, cross-sectional statistical analysis shows a strong correlation between the number of significant, hierarchically organized groups and low direct tax capacity. Comparative case studies of Ghana, Botswana and Gabon indicate that countries with multiple, significant, hierarchically organized ethnic groups are less able to construct monopoly institutions. Finally, statistical analysis of Afrobarometer survey data indicates that members of hierarchically organized ethnic groups prefer governance from the groups’ institutions significantly more than members of non-hierarchically organized ethnic groups. This dissertation makes significant contributions to our knowledge of Africa’s governance crisis, as well as our understanding of how ethnicity affects national politics.        

Dissertation Committee:Clark Gibson (co-chair), Karen Ferree (co-chair), David Lake, Victor Magagna, David Leonard, Edward Reynolds

Email:pyork@weber.ucsd.edu


Homepage:http://dss.ucsd.edu/~pyork 

Fields of Study: International Political Economy, Comparative politics, East Asian politics, China


Dissertation: Credibility and Flexibility: Comparative Institutional Advantage and Foreign Direct Investment


Description of Work: My dissertation aims at developing an integrated theory to explain how the variation of political institutions affects foreign direct investment. I argue that countries with different institutional arrangements have distinct comparative advantages to attract FDI, and that attractive institutional arrangements can exist even in authoritarian regimes. I test the theory using a variety of statistical models and an extensive case study of China based on fieldwork and collection of data at the level of special zones. The results demonstrate a significant nonlinear relationship between political institutions and FDI. While different types of foreign investors prefer different mixes of credibility and flexibility, institutions with too much credibility or too much flexibility are not favored by foreign investors. Also, different types of foreign investors favor different mixes of credibility and flexibility. Strong institutions are more attractive to large-scale, capital-intensive, and domestic market-seeking FDI.


Dissertation Committee: Susan Shirk (Co-Chair), Peter Cowhey (Co-Chair), Stephan Haggard, Lawrence Broz, Barry Naughton, Roger Gordon (Economics)


Email:yzheng@ucsd.edu