Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis will assess influential guerrilla doctrine advising optimal insurgent (1) operational environment, (2) organizational structure, (3) logistical capacity, and (4) dependent tactics - items of consistent, yet incomplete analysis in counter-insurgency (COIN) analytics and civil war scholarship. Following a review of five of the most infamously disseminated guerrilla doctrine and training manuals, this thesis derives a model of advised guerrilla war production. The derived model illustrating the strategic and operational principles of reviewed doctrine presents an organizational hybrid between guerrilla hierarchies and networks, positing optimal organizational structure as a function of operational environment. Logistical capacity, tactics, target set, and military classification are in turn best determined by organizational structure. An otherwise unobserved operational dynamic relating each of the above four enumerated strategic considerations is thereby illustrated, with implications for COIN theory and praxis. To present a more systematic evaluation of reviewed guerrilla doctrine, the derived model is evaluated against a qualitative case-study of Peru's Shining Path insurgency. Case-study empirics are drawn from the Uppsala/PRIO Armed Conflicts Dataset (ACD) on dyadic conflict (Cederman, Min, Wimmer 2010), Arc Geographic Information Systems (GIS) spatial analysis software, declassified Peruvian intelligence reports, and captured Shining Path documents and directives from the Peruvian insurrection between 1969 - 1989. This study finds that evaluated guerrilla doctrine accurately reflects the material conditions of insurgency. There is one caveat: The global trends of increasing urbanization, dissolution of state power, and decline in politically motivated insurgency, may contribute to an observed shift in non-state actor war production from rural to increasingly urban and civilian-centric economies of violence. Lessons on strategically important considerations like sanctuary, terrain, state capacity, network evolution, and weapons proliferation, attend. / by Joseph Ovid Adams. / S.M.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-200). / Middle capability countries have over the last few decades implemented a range of reforms to improve their service delivery systems - and yet have made only marginal progress. Despite better macroeconomic conditions, service delivery outcomes are still lagging behind. This is more than a puzzle, it has been a cause for revolt. Millions and millions have risen in protest-demanding improvements in the quality of basic services. When the state is unable to deliver on its core functions, then it highlights a fundamental crisis of the state in these countries. My dissertation aims to unravel a piece of this puzzle by examining variation in the implementation of a comparable type of reform across the policing, education and industrial policy sectors in Brazil. It does this in particular by looking at intermediate outputs of front-line service delivery units (police units, schools, and innovation institutes), using this as a proxy for bureaucratic administration, which has been shown to be associated with service delivery outcomes. My research finds that there is much variation in these intermediate outputs and that this variation cannot be easily explained by structural factors. For instance, while some schools do very well on these bureaucratic administration metrics in poor neighborhoods, others do poorly in rich neighborhoods. What lies behind this variation in bureaucratic administration in front-line service delivery units? Drawing on extensive fieldwork over the course of three years, I find that there is a particular behavioral profile among middle-tier bureaucrats - what I call the fringes of formality behavior - that is associated with more positive bureaucratic administrative- outputs in the front-line units. Middle-tier bureaucrats practicing this behavior exhibit three main characteristics: initiative, a focus on strategic functions, and an ability to identify and make use of bureaucratic zones of opportunity. I detail in the dissertation the different categories of action of how the fringes of formality behavior manifests itself in practice. I demonstrate how these categories are consistent across sectors, and then, drawing on case studies and surveys, I show the positive association between the fringes of formality behavior and bureaucratic administrative outputs both within and across sectors. Ultimately, I argue that the way the fringes of formality bureaucrats behave differs from the "best practices" often advocated by the development and public policy communities. My findings suggest that there may be an alternative path to building a higher capability bureaucracy that does not necessarily involve adherence to top-down rationalistic approaches. Rather, they provide support for identifying those behaviors that are already meeting the genuine needs of the local units on the ground - even if they do not seem to adhere to preconceived notions of effective bureaucratic administration - and then nurturing and promoting those behaviors. These findings will have significant implications for how best to improve service delivery by bureaucracies in middle-income countries. / by Susana Leite Ribeiro Cordeiro Guerra. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, February 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 505-529). / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / In the wake of September 11th, policy analysts, journalists, and academics have tried to make sense of the rise of militant Islam, particularly its role as a motivating and legitimating force for violence against the US. The unwritten assumption is that there is something about Islam that makes it bloodier and more violence-prone than other religions. This dissertation seeks to investigate this assertion by considering incidents of Islamically motivated terrorism, violence, and war, and comparing them to examples of Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu bellicosity. In doing so, it aims to evaluate if religious violence is primarily the product of beliefs, doctrine and scripture, or if religious violence is the result of other factors such as cultural, political, social and economic circumstances. This dissertation focuses on religious wars--wars, terrorism, and violent conflicts that have saliently religious goals, specifically battles to defend holy nations, sacred spaces and revolutions aimed at creating religious governments-and tests three variables for their ability to explain the conditions under which religious wars arise: threat perception, the intertwining of political and religious authority, and the amount of resources available to a given religious group. / (cont.) It argues that religious violence is the result of specific interpretations of a religion's beliefs and scriptures, not the religions per se, and that violent interpretations of a religion are the product of individuals-usually religious leaders-who are grounded in specific circumstances. Therefore, in order to understand the conditions under which these violent interpretations of a religion occur, one needs to identify, first, who is interpreting the religion and by what authority; second, the social, political and economic circumstances surrounding these violent interpretations; and third, the believability of these interpretations by members of religious communities. / by Heather Selma Gregg. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-351). / This dissertation proposes and evaluates the performance of three theories that aim to explain Russia's nuclear force posture choices since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Two are rooted in concepts of inter-state competition. Of these, one begins with a central hypothesis that nuclear weapons, being more destructive than other weapons, are sufficient to deter a broad range of threats and will be preferred for doing so. The second argues that nuclear weapons contribute to a state's overall power and prestige, but are not sufficient to define it. They are preferred to deter nuclear, but not conventional, threats. The third theory postulates that strategic culture shapes which government actors will be most successful at garnering resources, resulting, in Russia's case, in a proclivity for offensive, ground-based weapons. I develop these theories and test them against the reality of Russia's nuclear rhetoric and force structure from 1992-2012. I find strongest support for the explanation rooted in cultural and bureaucratic factors. However, this theory predicts only force structure. In contrast, the theory that predicts states will treat nuclear weapons as one contributor to power and prestige appears to successfully predict Moscow's declaratory policy, but not its force structure (except between 2009 and 2012, when force structure is compatible with both this theory and the culture and bureaucracy theory). My analysis indicates that cultural and bureaucratic factors appear to play an important role in Russia's force structure choices, and help explain a continued emphasis on silo-based systems. Systemic factors appear crucial to Russian declaratory policy, but their impact on force structure is less pronounced, with the exception of Russia's desire for prestige driving larger force size. The divergence between declaratory policy and force structure is a notable finding not predicted by my theories (although allowed for by the culture and bureaucracy theory). Finally, I hope that with my culture and bureaucracy theory, I have proposed a useful way forward in operationalizing cultural factors for testing and analysis. / by Olga Oliker. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 411-426). / Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia has attracted a minuscule proportion of global FDI-only 1 percent of inflows to developing countries. Worse, most of Russia's FDI is "market-seeking"-geared to the domestic market-rather than the more productive export-oriented variety which dominates global FDI flows. Well over half of Russia's FDI goes to Moscow and St. Petersburg, a disparity which aggravates the developmental dislocation between the national center and the rest of the vast country. In this dissertation, I examine variation in regional-level FDI policies-a key factor in attracting FDI to the regions. The empirical work focuses on FDI in the export-oriented industries of three regions in the Russian Far East--Primorskii krai, Khabarovskii krai, and Sakhalin oblast--all of which have been the object of intense interest from foreign investors. The three developed widely variegated FDI policies: During the 1990s, Primorskii krai grew increasingly hostile to foreign investors, Khabarovsk largely ignored foreign investment, while Sakhalin, actively sought out foreign investment. The dissertation finds that policy variation is a product of gubernatorial power. It shows that regional governors wielded decisive power in policy areas which directly affected FDI inflows-foreign acquisition of stock in privatizing Russian enterprises, joint-ventures, the development of legislation governing.foreign investment into new "greenfield" ventures. Examining a wide range of explanations for regional policy variation, the dissertation finds that objectivist theories can not adequately explain variation in the govemors' FDI policies. / (cont.) Focusing on the role of ideas, the dissertation develops an ideational model of causation which argues that the disparate ways in which the governors defined the post-Soviet crisis, explained its origin, and understood the concepts of a new era-democracy, reform, "Subject of the Federation," and patriotism-determined which FDI policies they considered legitimate. Ultimately, the policies of those governors who effectively "sold" their ideas in the locality-by cultivating support among regional elites and embedding their ideas into regional institutions-endured. / by Katherine G. Burns. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 387-398). / by Steven Ian Wilkinson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-205). / by Randall Caroline Watson Forsberg. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [461]-492). / by Mary Astid Segovia Tuminez. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2007. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-187). / Ethnic civil wars are the most abundant form of large-scale, deadly conflict in the world today, yet the dedicated study of ethnic civil war is relatively new within political science. One empirical observation repeated in the literature is that civil wars are less likely than interstate wars to end in negotiated settlements, and more likely to end in military victory for one side. Recently, scholars have employed expected utility theory and the security dilemma to construct models of how ethnic combatants choose between settling their differences at the bargaining table or on the battlefield. Rooted in the rational choice paradigm, these models draw upon utility calculations and security concerns to describe ethnic combatants' decision processes and explain the low rate of ethnic war settlement. Two problems with these rational choice models, however, are that they cannot account for cases of ethnic war in which combatants elect to continue fighting losing battles when a normatively "rational" settlement is available, and that they do not seem to accurately describe the decision-making behavior of ethnic combatants. In this thesis, I draw upon the principles of prospect theory, a descriptive theory of choice under conditions of risk and uncertainty, to construct a psychological model of ethnic war termination. I argue that ethnic combatants do not behave as rational choice theories suggest; rather, they choose to settle or fight by framing the possible outcomes as gains or losses relative to a subjective reference point. I analyze my theory by comparing it to three prominent rational choice models: Mason and Fett's expected utility theory, Walter's credible commitment theory, and Kaufmann's demographic separation theory. I then perform a first-brush test of my theory by applying all four models to two case studies, the Ethiopian-Eritrean War and the Bosnian Civil War, to determine which model best explains the behavior of the combatants. / (cont) I then perform a first-brush test of my theory by applying all four models to two case studies, the Ethiopian-Eritrean War and the Bosnian Civil War, to determine which model best explains the behavior of the combatants. I find that prospect theory provides added value over the rational choice models. I then review the implications of my prospect theory model for humanitarian interventions into ethnic conflict. Finally, I conclude by suggesting potential directions for future research in this area. / by Robert Davis Butts. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 194-208). / by Bruce A. Bimber. / Ph.D.