Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 277-292). / Contrary to longstanding of predictions of nuclear tipping points, the number of states interested in nuclear weapons has sharply declined in recent decades. In contrast to existing explanations, this dissertation argues that the decline is largely attributable to US nonproliferation policies, in particular the threat of sanctions that was instituted in the late 1970s. By credibly threatening to cut off economic and military support to countries pursuing nuclear weapons, I argue that this threat of sanctions deters states within the US sphere of influence from proliferating, reducing the overall rate of proliferation and also explaining why recent nuclear aspirants have exclusively been "rogue" states outside the US sphere of influence. Because states that depend on the United States have been deterred from proliferating in recent decades, the observed success rate of sanctions should be low, since they will generally be targeted at states that do not rely on US resources. This dissertation also offers a theory of the sources of US nonproliferation policy, arguing that fears of nuclear domino effects are necessary to explain (1) why US policy strengthened so dramatically in the wake of Chinese and Indian nuclear tests in the 1960s and 1970s, and (2) why the US abandoned a selective nonproliferation policy and decided to enforce nonproliferation across the board. To test these two arguments, this dissertation employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. First, I draw on archival documents to show that fears of nuclear domino effects motivated US nonproliferation policy advances in the 1960s and 1970s, and that this motivation was prominent in individual cases of nonproliferation. Second, I show quantitatively that states dependent on the United States have been less likely to pursue nuclear weapons since sanctions policies were instituted in the late 1970s, that observed cases of sanctions have been largely ineffective, and that the deterrent effect of sanctions largely accounts for the temporal decline in proliferation. Case studies of US policy toward Pakistan and Taiwan demonstrate that a credible threat of sanctions can arrest ongoing nuclear programs when the proliferator is dependent on the United States and underestimated the likelihood of sanctions. / by Nicholas L. Miller. / Ph. D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 234-250). / The social organization of working time profoundly shapes the lives of workers, families and societies, and has historically been the subject of intense social and political contestation. Yet work time has been relatively rarely studied by political scientists. This dissertation seeks to correct this neglect by drawing attention to the important connections between work time and two much more widely studied phenomena: the growth of income inequality and the persistence of gender inequality. Using a mixed method approach, it first traces the historical development since the 19th Century of the work time regimes - the combination of work time regulations and practices - of three developed democracies: France, Germany and the United States. In three subsequent chapters, quantitative analyses of a range of surveys, in particular labor force surveys, demonstrate the ways that changes in these regimes have contributed to growing income inequality and persistent gender inequality, as well as shaping the politics of economic inequality. In particular I draw attention to a profound long term shift in the relationship between work time and social class what I refer to as a "great reversal" - whereby individuals at the top of the social hierarchy today work longer hours than those with lower status, in contrast to the work time regime described more than a century ago by Thorstein Veblen, defined by the contrast between a high-status "leisure class" and a low-status "working class". This shift has both compounded growing income inequality and helped legitimate and activate the self-interested opposition of the "working rich" to redistribution, by bolstering their sense of their own deservingness. While the "great reversal" and its consequences are shown to have occurred in each of the three cases studied, it happened earlier and went further in the United States than in Germany and, in particular, France. The study concludes that France's more highly regulated work time regime has helped limit both the rise of income inequality and the level of gender inequality on the French labor market, relative to other countries. / by James Conran. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [577]-[592]). / by Brian M. Burgoon. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 333-362). / Advanced industrial countries provide over $120 billion annually on various terms and conditions to support exports and investments abroad. The regime governing these official trade finance (OTF) flows has puzzling features. The legal basis of the regime, officially known as the Arrangement on Guidelines for Officially Supported Export Credits (Arrangement), is ambiguous. Its proceedings are secret. Its membership is restricted to a relatively small number of states. Finally, some sectors and modes of finance are more tightly regulated than are others. Some are not regulated at all. My research goal was not only to explain the unusual institutional features and scope of the regime as it currently stands, but also to explain why this regime emerged. I argue that the Arrangement is best understood as a cartel comprised of the leading suppliers of state- backed trade finance. Supplier states comprise the rich industrial countries that "produce" official export finance or "give" foreign aid to finance the exports of capital goods, military equipment and agricultural products sought by buyer states. Buyer states are generally developing countries, which have limited ability to pay in cash or self finance these imports. / (cont.) The cartel serves the collective interest of supplier states in: 1) controlling the predatory use of export finance to shift rents from one supplier state to another; 2) controlling the unintentional transfers of wealth from supplier states to buyer states. By colluding to limit competition through jointly agreed upon rules, supplier states increase their market power vis-A-vis buyer states. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) became the forum of choice for the Arrangement because it permitted secrecy and selective membership that better aligned the interests of supplier states against buyer states. However, cartels, whether market distorting or market correcting, are imperfect arrangements. To succeed they require the control of a large market share., the presence of weak and disorganized buyers, and access to information on financing terms on a timely, ex ante basis. The body of evidence gathered for this dissertation shows this to hold true for official trade finance, explaining the variation in rule formation across sectors and across modes of financing. / by Peter C. Evans. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 463-489. / by John Victor Gano. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-208). / Where do party systems come from? The first part of this dissertation argues that party system formation depends on the rule of law, which is defined as the extent to which the state uniformly implements and enforces its laws and policies. When the rule of law is weak, voters form attachments primarily over politicians, and voters cast their ballots for whichever party their preferred politician chooses to establish or join. Consequently, politicians ultimately shape party system formation, since their decisions about party affiliation determine whether a political party succeeds or fails. By contrast, when the rule of law is strong, voters form attachments directly over political parties; voters therefore determine which parties constitute the party system. The second part of the dissertation applies the argument about party system formation under weak rule of law to the case of regional political parties in India. This project explains the success of regional parties in a weak rule of law democracy such as India by focusing on why so many politicians choose to establish and join regional parties. The two factors that explain the extraordinary success of Indian regional parties are 1) the geographic concentration of caste groups (and to a lesser extent, other types of politically salient groups) and 2) frequent coalition government at the national level. The geographic concentration of caste groups raises the costs associated with establishing a national party by forcing politicians from various caste groups to coordinate with one another. Meanwhile, frequent coalition government increases the benefits associated with membership in a regional party by allowing regional parties to participate in national-level government. Empirically, this dissertation is based on 17 months of field research and over 550 interviews with state- and local-level politicians across three Indian states: Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. / by Adam W. Ziegfeld. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-129). / Theories in international relations posit, and empirical evidence has verified, that unwilling states can be compelled by another state or by an international institution to enact domestic policy reform. However, these theories ignore the important follow-on question of whether such externally imposed reforms can be expected to stick. Using intellectual property rights (IPR) reform as a policy case, this dissertation seeks to explain why imposed reform stabilizes in some states but not in others. Here, stable policy means a government demonstrates credible and ongoing commitment to the reform after enacting new law. For example, the state passes additional legal measures to extend the reform, and provides ample support for domestic institutions necessary for the law's implementation. This dissertation presents a comparative study of IPR reform in Brazil and South Korea, covering seven years in the former case and sixteen years in the latter. The Korean government acquiesced to U.S. pressure in 1987 and strengthened its national IPR regime. Brazil undertook IPR reform in 1996, owing in part to its obligation to abide by the directives of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Accord). / (cont.) The argument put forward is that states commit to imposed reforms once they capture or create reform benefits, and that it is the state itself, not interest groups, that is the principal architect of domestic policy reform. Though states often yield to external pressure and enact policy reform, they are conceding formal compliance (via ratification) but may be feigning functional compliance (i.e., on-the-ground enforcement). In short, the decision to commit to, or backtrack on, imposed reform is made after enactment. Relative gains concerns figure prominently in a state's calculation of what to do post-ratification. Given that the welfare effects of IPR reform are zero-sum in the short term and indeterminate in the long term, states will backtrack on IPR reform to avoid absorbing the concomitant welfare losses. If the state is able to turn unwanted reform to national advantage, then the state commits and the policy stabilizes despite the fact that the reform lacks widespread local acceptance. Principally an empirical study, this research adds needed depth to the current literature on IPR reform in emerging economies. / by Trudy M. Wilcox. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-209). / This dissertation considers three implications of collective self-government for just foreign policies in an imperfect world. Individuals are the appropriate moral unit of analysis, constrained to govern themselves justly, together with compatriots. First I derive limits to state autonomy that follow from states being mere aggregations of rights-bearing individuals: human rights constrain treatment of individuals, and government must include all citizens. States are governed well-enough that others should not interfere if all citizens have effective political powers without risking their dignity. These states are collectively self-determined. Second, the fact of citizenship constrains redistribution of wealth among countries. Shared wealth should presuppose shared governance, and if one wants to limit the latter, one should limit the former, to that needed for collective self- determination. Providing clear limits on aid, as well as interference, helps avoid abuse. While participation, representation and accountability do not guarantee good government, they are prerequisites; the primary international obligation is to develop well-ordered institutions. Third, I derive constraints on national autonomy that follow from the need to secure international cooperation. Reasonable disagreements about fairness are sometimes indistinguishable from rational-interest pursuit, giving others reason for distrust. Since collectively self-determined citizens put their interests first, how are countries to agree on a single cooperative solution? If they agree to follow a single course of action when new problems arise, before they know which countries will in fact benefit, and with the knowledge that risks, costs and benefits would be distributed fairly over / (cont.) time, countries would find it reasonable to trust one another as long as they are all seen to comply. Citizens would find it rational to cooperate because long-term security is in their own long-term interests. Equivalently, countries could agree to join a transnational institution that is run democratically, with authority to issue binding decisions on problems over which it has jurisdiction. This limits what each country can decide for itself, while enabling greater cooperation and trust on sub-national and international levels. This encourages flexible, complex solutions to global collective-action dilemmas, and allows costs to be distributed among countries and over time. / by Karen Rothkin. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-288). / The region has emerged in the last two decades as a new field of trade-union activity. There is increasing interaction across Europe between unions, employer associations, and state actors at the subnational territorial level. These practices take different forms and cover a wide range of issues, with training and labor market policies being the most common. Some scholars see in the regional trade union the promise of union revitalization, providing a more adaptable alternative in today's flexible economy. Yet others consider it a recipe for weakness and fragmentation. This thesis argues that the region is an important site for trade unions because it is well suited for addressing employment problems and reaching out to "outsiders:" the unemployed, temporary workers, and others in the more insecure parts of the labor market. My research, which compares the experience of different Spanish regions, links successful intervention to two conditions. One is that the union fully connects its efforts in the region to collective bargaining. The other is that it works within the framework of national agreements and institutions, rather than in opposition to them. Contrary to the academic tendency to view the regional and national union in competing terms, these findings underscore the complementarities between them. Moving into this new field requires unions to develop local capacity in labor market policy, regional development, etc. But it also calls for the national level of the organization to provide coordination and to diffuse, compare, and evaluate regional practices in order to promote learning. / by Lydia M. Fraile. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-84). / The goal of this dissertation is to aid our understanding of how electoral institutions in the United States affect political participation and, in turn, shape policy outcomes. I investigate this relationship by analyzing the all-mail balloting method known as Vote By Mail. Using a data set of 3310 cases representing elections in 7 states, I show that the use of Vote By Mail produces an overall effect of a 10 percentage point increase in turnout across all types of elections. This finding is consistent with past research, which states that the increase in turnout occurs because Vote By Mail, similar to other "ease of voting" reforms, reduces the cost of voting. As an alternative hypothesis, I propose that the turnout increase from Vote By Mail is a more nuanced effect, moderated by the salience of a given election. I then organize these elections into low salience and high salience categories, and demonstrate that the turnout effect is more nuanced than previously thought. The implementation of Vote By Mail produces turnout effects that increase in magnitude as the salience of the election decreases, with a range from 3.4 percentage points increase in the high salience category of presidential general elections to an increase in turnout of 15 percentage points in the low salience category of local special elections. I then examine whether an increase in voter turnout results in an shift of the electorate's policy preferences. Comparing the outcomes of school bond measures in Vote By Mail elections with traditional elections, I show there is no statistically significant difference in the likelihood of passage of school bond measures. Furthermore, there is no statistically significant difference in percentage of "Yes" votes received on these measures. This analysis demonstrates that the increased turnout resulting from the use of Vote By Mail elections does not produce a shift in the policy preferences of the median voter. / by Sarah Marie Sled. / Ph.D.