Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 576-590). / by Daniel Leo Byman. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Harry Milton Marks. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 362-372). / Globalization has transformed the markets in which agricultural goods are traded, placing new demands on farmers around the world. In developing countries, smallholder and peasant farmers lack many of the resources needed to upgrade their production capacities and meet new global quality standards, making them vulnerable to marginalization and exploitation. This dissertation seeks to discover the conditions that permit smallholders to upgrade in global value chains while also enhancing the voice and autonomy they exercise within their communities. To do so, it examines global niche markets for environmentally and socially responsible products. Organic agriculture favors smallholders' labor-intensive production, and Fairtrade certification explicitly attempts to leverage globalization for smallholder development. Paraguay's smallholder sugarcane farmers have been the unlikely beneficiaries of these new global market niches, as the world's largest exporters of Fairtrade and organic sugar. Two Paraguayan cane farmer organizations share similar socio-economic characteristics but have had varied success in taking advantage of Fairtrade's upgrading resources. To explain the variation between these two cases and to describe the conditions that favor smallholders' success in global niche markets, this dissertation puts forward the concept of a clientelist production network: the set of unequal social and political relationships that structure economic exchanges between farmers organizations, their leaders, and the buyers or processors that serve as their patrons. I also point out the role brokers play as "switches" for collective action and upgrading within clientelist networks. Under pluralistic clientelism multiple brokers compete with one another and are more likely to mobilize farmers collectively. This permits farmers to build new commercial and institutional relationships and to improve the accountability of their organizations, creating a basis for autonomous upgrading in global value chains. Under monopolistic clientelism farmer groups depend on a single broker. This makes brokers more likely to support a process of dependent upgrading, in which farmers confront new production costs but are less likely to enhance their share value added, to elicit greater accountability from their leaders, or to increase their autonomy from the buyers or processors that serve as their patrons. / by Gustavo Setrini. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 388-400). / This dissertation explores the role of native activists in the incorporation of new immigrants. Motivated by concerns that this process would be limited in countries with no tradition of immigration, it focuses on Spain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. Despite similar patterns of growth and in-migration, there are significant differences in the trajectories of political incorporation. Given Spain's persistently high unemployment rate, and Northern Ireland's dark history of social conflict, we would expect to see the most political outreach to immigrants in Ireland, yet we see quite the opposite. What explains this variation? Drawing from archival research and interviews, I find that differences in how native activists respond to immigrants in the present are due to how they settled past conflicts. In places where past native minority demands for civic inclusion were accommodated, institutions were changed to be more open to minority participation. Later, with new immigration, not only may newcomers have access to civic life through institutions designed for native minorities, native groups may repurpose the same historical narratives used to address their marginalization in the past, to prevent the marginalization of new immigrants in the present. While places that do not have access to this legacy of conflict may attempt to establish new, migrant serving institutions, because these new structures are often targeted rather than universalistic, they are vulnerable to retrenchment. Therefore, while Ireland may have had immigrant-friendly institutions early on, because these did not have vested native constituencies, their remit was limited and unstable. Spain and Northern Ireland's recent conflicts meant that their minority-friendly institutions could not be cut back - and were actually extended - when confronted with new immigration because they also benefited natives with an interest in maintaining them. These findings raise serious questions about approaches to incorporation that focus solely on programs targeting immigrants. They also suggest that societies with a legacy of conflict may be better equipped to handle incorporation than their more tranquil counterparts: if the grievances of previously marginalized native minorities were addressed through the establishment of more inclusive civic institutions, there can be unintended positive spillover benefits for immigrants down the line. / by Erica Rose Dobbs. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-189). / by Steven Michael Schneider. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 422-444). / by Antonius Notermans. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-258). / Does interstate economic competition result in states weakening their environmental regulation? Scholars have long been interested in this question. Of particular concern, is whether this type of behavior leads to a "race to the bottom" in U.S. state environmental regulatory behavior. Although there is a mature theoretical literature investigating the conditions under which regulators will use environmental measures as competitive instruments vis-a.-vis other states for attracting economic investment, the empirical literature has lagged far behind in testing the direct predictions of the race to the bottom argument. The purpose of this project is test the applicability of the race to the bottom argument in U.S. state environmental regulation. To test the race to the bottom argument, I examine both behavioral' and attitudinal evidence. Specifically, I estimate a series of strategic interaction models which aim to detect whether state enforcement of three federal pollution control programs - the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act - follows a pattern consistent with regulatory competition theory generally, and the race to the bottom argument specifically. I also conduct a nationwide survey of senior officials working in state environmental agencies. / (cont.) This elite level survey helps to validate the behavioral evidence studied in the statistical analysis, as well as elucidates the mechanisms of regulatory competition within states. My research finds strong evidence that state environmental regulatory behavior is interdependent - that is, state regulatory agencies respond to the regulatory behavior of the states with which they compete for economic investment. Evidence from both the statistical analysis of state enforcement data and the survey of state environmental regulators supports this conclusion. The evidence for a race to the bottom is less clear. While I do find that some states weaken their environmental regulatory effort in response to interstate economic competition, I also find that other states strengthen their regulatory effort, which supports an alternative race to the top argument. In the final part of the dissertation, I reconcile these results by identifying the factors that make particular states more susceptible to race to the bottom-type behavior. / by David M. Konisky. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / When can the international community build strong state institutions - such as security forces or electoral institutions - in post-conflict societies? An influential technical perspective argues that authority, resources, and expertise enable the international community to build its preferred institutions. In Bosnia, East Timor, and Kosovo, the international community established international administrations with executive powers and a state building mandate. Each international administrations had extensive authority, resources, and expertise, which make them crucial test cases for the technical perspective. I examined seventeen reform efforts in these societies related to security, representation, and revenue. While some institution-building efforts succeeded, many failed and provoked violence or undercut political development. To explain this variation, I propose a theory that specifies the mechanisms of the reform process. The theory is based on the interaction between the international administration, local elites, and the mass public of the post-conflict society. The mass public will protest when demands threaten nationalist goals, such as independence. Local elites, on the other hand, will privately obstruct reform to protect their informal patronage and corruption networks. International officials are ideologically committed to human rights and bureaucracy, which lead them to make overambitious demands. Moreover, competing goals and political friction among international organizations causes disagreement about which demands to make to local elites. The theory predicts that reform efforts only fully succeed when the international administration is unified and its demands threaten neither nationalist goals nor informal networks. I test the theory by conducting causal process tracing in the seventeen reform efforts. The case studies draw from fieldwork in each of these societies, as well as primary and secondary sources. Within these seventeen efforts, I identify fifty-seven stages of reform. Of these, forty confirm the theory's predictions and thirteen partially confirm the predictions. The case studies also demonstrate that the technical perspective, and other alternative hypotheses, cannot consistently explain state building. The dissertation has implications for broader state building efforts by the international community, and urges the adoption of an incremental approach to institution building that takes account of the realities of local politics and the corresponding limits of international authority. / by Andrew M. Radin. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M. and S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 150-156). / We implement techniques of graph theory to international trade in order to empirically inspect the international system of trade. Examining macro and submacro levels of the international system of trade from 1962-2003, we find the presence of a Scale-Free Network with a Multiscalar Hierarchy. Such structures are resilient to bottom-up economic collapse, but are susceptible to top-down and horizontal economic failures. Our findings are based upon an especially novel approach for examining submacro systems, applying latent community identification analysis to identify trading communities that are not necessarily formalized or institutionalized as trading blocs. Following this analysis, we examine the role of international institutions in the international trade network, specifically considering macro level institutions for stability solutions and examining the effects of joining a trade bloc. We find evidence that supports the intergovernmentalist framework, whereby certain types of trade blocs seem to succeed while others fail, leading to different results in integration and unification. / by Dinsha Mistree. / S.M.and S.B.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 390-422). / by Joel Genuth. / Ph.D.