Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 328-364). / The spread of civil war due to refugee crises has occurred repeatedly throughout history. In some refugee crises, the sending state pursues the refugees, subjecting them to military attack. In other cases, militant exiles use the refugee camps as rear bases in their attacks on the sending state. As the cross-border attacks escalate, the risk of international war grows. The refugee crisis spawned by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda provides the most extreme example of this phenomenon. The militant actions of the Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire eventually sparked two international wars that led to further massive population displacement in the region. The recurring pattern of violent refugee crises, prompts the following three questions: 1) How widespread is the phenomenon of political violence involving refugees? 2) Under what conditions do refugee crises cause a civil war to spread across borders? 3) What role can international actors, such as the United Nations or the United States government, play in preventing the spread of violence? To answer the above questions, this dissertation presents new time series data on refugee-related political violence and also systematically compares violent and non-violent crises involving Rwandan, Bosnian, and Afghan refugees. This dissertation advances a political explanation for the spread of civil war in refugee crises and tests it against the prevailing socioeconomic explanation. According to the political explanation, three factors combine to cause the spread of civil war. 1) Strong political cohesion among the group before exile determines initial refugee militancy. / (cont.) 2) A refugee hosting state that lacks the capability and/or willingness to secure borders and demilitarize refugees facilitates the spread of war. 3) Third party states and non-state actors that intentionally or inadvertently contribute resources to combatants expand the conflict. The humanitarian assistance literature and the policy community routinely offer socioeconomic explanations that ignore the political context of the crisis. According to those explanations, camps near the border, large populations in camps, the presence of bored young men, and poor living conditions cause cross-border violence. This dissertation finds that none of those four socioeconomic propositions satisfactorily explain the spread of civil war. / by Sarah Kenyon Lischer. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-80). / by Kelly Marie Greenhill. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [318]-331). / One of the most unexpected changes of the 1990s is that firms in a number of emerging economies not previously known for their high-technology industries have leapfrogged to the forefront in new Information Technologies (IT). Surprisingly, from the perspective of comparative political economy theories, the IT industries of these countries use different business models and have carved out different positions in the global IT production networks. Of these emerging economies, the Taiwanese, Israeli, and Irish have successfully nurtured the growth of their IT industries. This dissertation sets out to establish that emerging economies have more than one option for developing their high technology industries. Moreover, it advances a theoretical framework for analyzing how different choices lead to long-term consequences and to the development of successful and radically different industrial systems. Hence, this dissertation strives to give politics - the art and profession of creating alternatives and the social struggles of choosing between, and acting on, them - the importance that it seems to have lost in the social sciences. The research focuses on the role of the state in shaping the structure of the IT industry in Israel, Ireland, and Taiwan. / (cont.) It argues that the developmental path of the IT industry is influenced by four critical decisions by the state. First, decisions about how to acquire the necessary R&D skills influence which organizations - public or private - play a leading role in innovation. Second, state decisions about financing significantly affect both the R&D resources available to the industry and the scope of R&D activity. Third, state efforts to develop local leading companies have long-term consequences for the industry's opportunity structure. Fourth, state decisions regarding foreign firms and investors within and outside national borders affect the resources and the information that the industry receives from its customers, as well as the diffusion and development of specific innovative capabilities. Of particular importance are state decisions that develop specific links between local and foreign companies, investors, and financial markets. Overall, the dissertation utilizes this framework to explain the divergent development of the IT industry in Taiwan, Israel, and Ireland. / by Dan Breznitz. / Ph.D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science. Thesis. 1973. Ph.D. / MICROFICHE COPY ALSO AVAILABLE IN DEWEY LIBRARY. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves [385]-399. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 417-435). / Practitioners, journalists, and historians believe that leaders play a crucial role in determining events. Social science theories, however, generally argue that leaders are unimportant. This dissertation proposes a two-stage theory of leader impact called Leader Filtration Theory (LFT). In the first stage, leaders are usually chosen from among a pool of candidates by a filtration process that homogenizes the pool. This makes actual leaders highly similar to those who almost got the job, rendering individuals fungible. Sometimes filtration is bypassed. When this occurs, leaders can gain power who are very different from potential alternates. In the second stage, leaders face constraints from within their organization and outside it. If these constraints are sufficiently weak an unfiltered leader can have a very large impact on outcomes. Such leaders are likely to display a high degree of variance in their performance. The theory is tested quantitatively using historians' rankings of U.S. Presidents. Unfiltered leaders should be disproportionately represented among the best and worst Presidents. LFT's prediction of higher variance in performance is very strongly supported by this test. The theory is also tested by examining three American Presidents and two British Prime Ministers. Jefferson, a Filtered President, made decisions with regards to the Louisiana Purchase very similar to those that alternative Presidents would have made. Lincoln and Wilson, by contrast, both Unfiltered Presidents, made decisions that were radically different from those that would have been made by alternative Presidents. Chamberlain, a Filtered Prime Minister (PM), made decisions with regards to appeasement of Germany before the Second World War very similar to those of alternative PMs. When his preferences diverged from those of potential alternate PMs, British policy followed the alternates' preferences, not his. When Churchill, an Unfiltered PM, gained office, his unique preferences determined British policy. The theory should have power outside democratic politics as well. Eight leaders from other domains - dictatorships, the military, business, and scientific research - who are commonly believed to have been highly consequential are examined. All eight would have been classified as Unfiltered by LFT. Finally, five approaches to choosing better leaders suggested by LFT are described. / by Gautam Mukunda. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Charles H. Ferguson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 479-509). / by Daniel A. Lindley, III. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 407-420). / This dissertation assesses U.S. presidents' incentives for diversionary war. The political benefits of the use of force were measured and compared to the benefits of other dramatic foreign policy activities. Gains from force were modest, not unique, and discounted in many circumstances of political need. Statistical tests measured the changes in presidential approval ratings following uses of force, major diplomatic events, presidential speeches, and foreign travel by presidents, in the period 1953-2000. Historical sources and newspaper archives were used to identify and characterize uses of force and diplomatic events. Uses of force provide only modest and short-lived approval gains (average 6% increase with 3 month half life for major uses). Approval changes were greater with more media coverage, Congressional support, or popular goals (e.g., protecting American lives, not humanitarian intervention). Approval gains were higher during recessions, but losses occurred when prior approval was low for non-economic reasons (e.g., scandals). Diplomatic events produced slightly smaller benefits, conditioned by similar variables except for retaining their popularity during scandals. Foreign travel and speeches had little impact. The frequency of presidential activities changes in response to political variables, in ways that are consistent with maximization of political benefits. Uses of force became slightly more common during recessions, less common when approval was low for non-economic reasons. / (cont.) Elections reduced the rate of all activities. These results may explain previous negative findings for U.S. diversionary war: presidential incentives for diversionary force are weak because potential gains are small, other tools are available, and they are discounted during times of need. Diversionary use of force would be attractive during economic slowdowns, however. / by David T. Burbach. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. / Since the end of the Cold War, 'coercive diplomacy', that is the strategic use of threats aimed at convincing an adversary to stop or undo 'hostile' actions, has become a principle crisis management tool of the Western powers. Yet as a strategy it has a relatively poor track record of success; a record that theorists have struggled to explain. Despite the fact that the majority of such engagements have been undertaken multilaterally, little work to date has focused on the impact that employing a coalitional 'coercing agent' has on the ability to craft a potent package of threats. This study aims to contribute to the debate by testing empirically the impact of coalitional dynamics on the ability of Western powers to employ coercive diplomacy. More specifically, it explores the theoretical tension between the anecdotal assumptions held by certain theorists regarding coalitional action problems (CAP) on the one hand and Jakobsen's four-point ideal policy of coercive diplomacy on the other. I explore this tension through two case studies: the employment of coercive diplomacy by NATO and the Contact Group aimed at halting Serbian aggression in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995 and the Western coalition's attempt to roll back the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The study finds that although CAP do arise as predicted, coalitions have effective mechanisms for overcoming them and thus are able to effectively implement coercive threat packages that approximate to Jakobsen's ideal policy. / by Daniel Peter Burgess. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-57). / This thesis examines the relationship between legislative professionalism and institutionalization in the committee systems of six U.S. states. I examine whether increased professionalization, as defined by increases in levels of member salary, legislative staffing, and time in session, causes legislatures to institutionalize in a manner similar to the U.S. Congress. Specifically, this thesis focuses on the use (or lack thereof) of seniority as an automatic procedure for the assignment to, and transfer between, committees. I find that while it appears that all state legislators value service on committees, legislative professionalization is not an adequate explanatory variable to describe the variation in the institutionalization of committee systems that we see across states in the United States. This finding is especially evident in the analysis of California, the most professionalized state legislature in the U.S. / by Keith Malcolm Edwards. / S.M.