Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1996. / "February 1996." / Includes bibliographical references. / by Lawrence L. Best. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-246). / This study is an analysis of the forces that shaped the overall character of a new US television system, high definition or HDTV, between the early 1980s and 2010, with a primary focus on the period leading up the Federal Communications Commission decision on the new standard in 1996. The study tries to answer the question: how did we get the system we got? The analysis uses the model of an ecology of games that Norton Long developed and William H. Dutton refined. It shows that two camps, or "games," competed to define the new system. One game, consisting of the traditional television broadcast industry, saw HDTV as a standalone system, at first using the traditional analog technologies and then, midway through the process, switching to digital technologies. The second game, consisting of a lose group of academics and computer company representatives, saw HDTV as part of the emerging digital network. The result of the analysis shows that although the FCC was the legitimate forum for determining the standard, the technological system that finally emerged was the result of unplanned, uncoordinated political, social, and market forces. / by Suzanne Chambliss Neil. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-194). / by Jeffrey Byron Lewis. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1992. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-312). / by María de Lourdes Melgar Palacios. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-105). / Recent research suggests that heavily mechanized armies perform worse in counterinsurgency campaigns than those that use fewer vehicles. The U.S. military's 2007 operations in Iraq, however, present an empirical quandary for the mechanization hypothesis: a vehicle-heavy army proved able to suppress an insurgency, allowing Iraqi leaders to work towards a long-term political solution. This paper argues that force employment, not mechanization, drives counterinsurgency outcomes-what matters is not that armies have many vehicles or soldiers, but how they choose to use them. When heavily mechanized forces change their tactics and doctrine to line up with counterinsurgency principles, shifting from an enemy-centric to a population-centric approach, outcomes dramatically improve while military-wide mechanization levels remain constant. Using an original dataset, this paper conducts a large-n regression analysis of the impacts of mechanization at the provincial level in Iraq, and finds little support for the mechanization hypothesis. A subsequent comparative case study, of the heavily mechanized 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's operations in Tall Afar and the light infantry 82nd Airborne Division's operations in Fallujah, indicate that force employment rather than mechanization is a key indicator of counterinsurgency outcomes. The finding has important implications for force structure policy, as it indicates that mechanized forces can indeed conduct successful counterinsurgency campaigns. / by Raphael E. Moyer. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 332-378). / Using a combination of historical case studies and insights from formal modeling, this study proposes and tests a new theory to explain one piece of a poorly understood phenomenon, namely the strategic use of population flows as political and military weapons. Specifically, after first demonstrating the existence and relative pervasiveness of this phenomenon, this study tackles the question of how-and under what conditions-outflows may be exploited to facilitate a kind of unconventional coercion, which I have termed politicaljujitsu. Politicaljujitsu may be thought of as a "coercion by punishment" strategy, whereby weak, often undemocratic, actors turn the strengths and virtues of their more powerful adversaries on their heads, in such a way as to make possible coercion of the strong by the relatively weak. The theory posits that perpetrators seek to place their targets' values and/or normative commitments in direct conflict with their (usually) competing and heterogeneous political imperatives, in the expectation that targets will choose to concede to perpetrators' demands rather than suffer the anticipated political costs of resistance. Perpetrators do so, in part, by imposing "hypocrisy costs," i.e., those symbolic political costs that arise when there exists a real (or perceived) disparity between a professed commitment to liberal values and/or international norms, and demonstrated actions that contravene such a commitment. A further implication of the theory is that, ironically and tragically, as humanitarian norms have grown in strength, so has the power of those who would exploit them, both for virtuous and nefarious purposes. / (cont.) While this study examines this kind of coercion in the context of refugee flows, the proposed theory is more widely generalizable, i.e., to any issue where states' values and or normative commitments may come into conflict with their material interests. To test the theory-, I have conducted four in-depth, longitudinal case studies, drawing upon a variety of primary and secondary sources, fieldwork, and interviews. Specifically, I examine outflows from Cuba (965, I980, 994); Kosovo (998-99); Haiti (I979-8I; I99I-94); and North Korea (mid i990os). Additional cases from central Africa; Southeast Asia; and central Europe are also utilized, where appropriate, to provide constructive comparisons. / by Kelly M. Greenhill. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 129-149). / This dissertation examines variation in the immediate and long-term success of nonviolent resistance movements. It consists of three discrete papers. The first introduces three "organizational technologies of resistance:" a loose confederal, or "umbrella" administrative structure; a robust "operational core," or cadre of mid-level leaders; and access to levers of economic or political disruption. I argue that these attributes are important determinants of a campaign's probability of success and are most likely to be acquired through collaboration with civil society organizations in which they inhere naturally. Two bodies that satisfy this criterion with high regularity are industrial labor unions and structured religious communities. In the final section of the paper I posit that partnerships between these organizations and extant nonviolent movements are typically characterized by concerns about the consequences of victory and aggregate capabilities. To illustrate these hypotheses I conduct an historical case study of the African National Congress and the black labor movement. The second paper enclosed herein centers on three empirical tests. The first is intended to evaluate the prevailing theory in the study of nonviolent resistance today: that unarmed methods of struggle succeed at a greater rate than violent ones because they tend to elicit mass participation. Using causal mediation analysis, I estimate a robust null effect along this causal pathway. A subsequent test focuses on the unmediated relationship between a nonviolent movement's scale and its likelihood of success. Using an instrument for mass participation I find that this "power-in-numbers" hypothesis also lacks veracity. However, the third and final inquiry shows that if one models participation as a function of a movement's access to organizational technologies, mass participation does exert a robust positive effect on the likelihood of campaign victory. The last paper in this dissertation pertains to the aftermath of successful nonviolent resistance. Contra much of the extant literature, I find that only some of these campaigns yield a stable and democratic political dividend. Those that achieve victory in one year or less are substantially more likely to experience democratic slippage, coups d'état, and episodes of violent conflict. / by Stephen Bernard Wittels. / Ph. D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 34-40). / Retrospective voting studies typically examine policies where the public has common interests. By contrast, climate policy has broad public support but concentrated opposition in communities where costs are imposed. This spatial distribution of weak supporters and strong, local opponents mirrors opposition to other policies with diffuse public benefits and concentrated local costs. I use a natural experiment to investigate whether citizens living in proximity to wind energy projects retrospectively punished an incumbent government because of its climate policy. Using both fixed effects and instrumental variable estimators, I identify electoral losses for the incumbent party ranging from 4-10%, with the effect persisting 3 km from wind turbines. Voters also discriminate by correctly punishing the level of government responsible for the policy, providing evidence that voters are informed. I conclude that the spatial distribution of citizens' policy preferences can affect democratic accountability and exacerbate political barriers to addressing climate change. / by Leah C. Stokes. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 581-601). / by Jennie Purnell. / Ph.D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2015. / "September 2015." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 58-63). / This study explores the puzzle of why Australia and Canada have followed significantly different paths in national-level child care policy despite their otherwise similar welfare state structures. Australia has developed a relatively generous system of public subsidies to support the provision of care for young children, while at the same time relying increasingly on the market to deliver child care. In contrast, Canada has extremely low levels of public spending and service provision, resulting in a less expansive system of regulated child care. I trace these divergent outcomes to the impact of post-WWII child care policy legacies in these countries and the way that these legacies interact with the changing politics of the welfare state to produce variation. In Canada, child care policy was first established within a social assistance framework as a service intended to combat poverty, while in Australia, child care was introduced as an economic policy to facilitate women's workforce participation. The differences in the intended goals of these policies affected the subsequent patterns of child care politics and policy development in these two countries, leading to the divergent outcomes observed today. / by Kelly E. Pasolli. / S.M.