The incredible rise of so-called "anti-establishment" parties in Europe has left scholars scrambling to define and classify the movement. Much scholarly attention has been paid to radical right wing parties, and the sources of their electoral support. While important and intriguing, the current literature has yet to develop a cohesive definition of the anti-establishment, and has too heavily used terms such as "populist," "anti-establishment," and "radical right-wing" interchangeably. Further, extant research has based theories of these parties' electoral support largely with the radical right-wing in mind, potentially ignoring theories that could explain support for these parties from the left, right, and center of the political spectrum. Finally, current research has not substantially explored how these parties, traditionally excluded from policy-making, behave once they are seated in parliaments. This dissertation aims to remedy these three shortcomings. First, I develop a conceptual definition and measurement scheme that encapsulates both ideological positioning and anti-establishment sentiment. Then, I explore how political trust in influences electoral support for anti-establishment parties positioned at all areas of the classic left-right spectrum. Finally, I analyze their parliamentary behavior, assessing their level of activity and their preferred policy domains. My findings underscore the importance of conceiving anti-establishment parties as existing along a unique dimension, separate from ideology, whose electoral viability can be explained via a unified theory, and who behave uniquely in parliament. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2018. / July 11, 2018. / Anti-Establishment Parties, Legislative Behavior, Voting Behavior / Includes bibliographical references. / Sean Ehrlich, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jonathan Grant, University Representative; Carol S. Weissert, Committee Member; Brad Gomez, Committee Member; Quintin Beazer, Committee Member.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1988. / Title as it appeared in M.I.T. Graduate Lists, February 1988: Ethno-national movements of Pakistan: domestic and international factors. / Bibliography: v. 2, leaves 314-330. / by Tahir Amin. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2002. / "February 2002." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 412-441). / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / This dissertation presents a new type of theory about the impact of increased transnational capital flows on state building processes. Most of the political science literature about globalization has been focused on debating the question of deterritorialization where the powers of territorial nation-states are viewed as being eroded by the increased transnational mobility of capital. This dissertation, in contrast, demonstrates how international tourism development-like many other aspects of globalization--can also produce "reterritorialization" characterized by the increased relevance of "place" for global economic activity. With increased globalization firms often seek to locate themselves in specific territories in order to capture what I call locational rents and external economies. In contrast to the dislocating effects of deterritorialization, reterritorialization can increase the political influence of state, societal, and transnational agents able to create localities that generate locational rents and external economies. The dissertation explores how states in the Middle East have promoted reterritorialization through tourism development in an attempt to enhance their control over capital and cultural flows as they promote economic liberalization and the incorporation of their economies into global markets. My fieldwork explored two national case studies with different configurations of territorial control. In Tunisia, I found that centralized state control over the territorially defined resources and institutions driving the reterritorialization process allowed the state to extend its control over transnational capital flows, the local private sector, / (cont.) and the location of tourism development within Tunisia. In Jordan, by contrast, control over tourism spaces has been highly fragmented between rival state organizations, private firms and land holders, non-governmental organizations, and transnational actors such as environmentalists and heritage preservation experts. This situation has required the state to contend with societal resistance, organizational obstacles, and unfavorable bargains with societal actors. / by Waleed Hazbun. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 278-294). / This dissertation examines how the National Organization for Women (NOW) survived the vagaries of both the political environment and its intraorganizational problems and controversies over its thirty-five year history. It considers the role that patrons, the state, mobilizing structures, leaders, organizational structure, strategic flexibility, and collective identity played in NOW's creation and maintenance. Little support is found for the role of patrons or of the state in NOW's origination and sustenance. Mobilizing structures, in the form of social networks, however, proved crucial factors supporting NOW between 1966 and 1971, its founding period. NOW's organizational structure, particularly its (limited) professionalization and its federalization both assisted NOW in overcoming potentially crippling information gaps between members and leaders. However, federalization has not had an entirely benign effect. In addition to allowing a great deal of autonomy, NOW's federal structure also permitted the development of strong intraorganizational factions. Leaders positively influenced organizational stability by enhancing NOW's collective identity and by stewarding the group towards new strategies. However, NOW's strong identity acts as a constraint upon leaders' ability to change the organization's goals or tactical approach. NOW's longevity and institutionalization over time suggests a second set of issues which are examined in this study. How has NOW's aging affected the organization's attention to its founding principles? / (cont.) How is NOW different from interest group organizations who rely mainly on checks, rather than member involvement, for their sustenance? The ways in which NOW is different from the average "interest group" are outlined, as is its continuing commitment to radical politics and to its founding principles. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1988. / Bibliography: v. 2, leaves 478-489. / by Craig Adams Decker, Jr. / Sc.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-42). / The provision of goods and services is thought to be a key way that groups are able to gain political power. However, current work has offered a highly fragmentary view of what specific gains can be made with what type of goods provision, and what potential interaction between strategies might exist. This paper integrates key rational actor and electoral models, and tests the resulting predictions against empirical data on Hezbollah's provision of goods and services. Two basic types of models link success in violent contestation to the provision of goods to a restricted community and success in electoral contestation to provision of broadly accessible goods and services. However, across several major types of goods and services Hezbollah consistently provided easily accessible good far before they considered participating in elections, provided more accessible goods relative to restricted goods then can be explained by the importance of electoral and violent contestation, and expanded or contracted the scope of provision at points in time that do not correspond to strategic shifts. As an alternative, I suggest that goods may be geographically rather than temporally strategic, a need to create compliance among the population, and the need to create a sense of agency within the Shia population to increase proactive support for the resistance may be greater drivers of goods provision then has been explored. / by Elizabeth M. Bartels. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1985. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Bibliography: leaves 274-284. / by Christine Furstenberg Ridout. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-204). / The deliberative turn in recent political theory ties legitimacy to public deliberation about reasons, offered for and against exercises of authority by informed and sincere citizens, who share a commitment to finding mutually acceptable terms of social cooperation. But even such reasonable citizens may disagree on important matters, and some citizens will only rarely, if ever, see their sincere reasoned judgements reflected in democratic outcomes. I argue that, to be widely perceived as legitimate in plural settings, fair deliberative procedures must not only be inclusive and self-evidently grounded in a commitment to reasonableness and mutual respect; they must further ensure that dissenting parties have a reasonable expectation of eventually transforming features of the public sphere to better accommodate their distinctive values and interests. The result is a fair deliberative pluralism that reflects the cacophonous and variegated character of the public sphere in modern democracies. But I caution that this ideal requires conditions that can sustain spatial patterns of wealth and control over land uses that undermine the interests of certain spatially fixed groups. I draw on the experiences of U.S. cities to illustrate this tension. These cities feature profound and enduring inequalities of wealth and political influence, and urbanization generates patterns of industry and habitat that reinforce these inequalities. Municipal and state politics rarely alter the prevailing incentives for home and industry location that perpetuate these patterns, / (cont.) and when efforts are made to do so - for instance, urban growth boundaries, or new taxation schemes to fund public services - the result is often increased antagonism between central cities and their regions. I suggest that these problematic features of cities emerge from political processes that determine how urban spaces are valued, resulting in boundaries and behaviors that undermine the democratic credentials of much political activity in urban settings. I evaluate two classes of solutions to these urban pathologies in light of class-specific constraints on mobility that originate in political strategies of control over urban spaces. / by Loren A. King. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 476-503). / by John J. Coleman. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-190). / Electoral participation is at the heart of democratic politics. Who comes to the polls, who does not, and why? In three essays that leverage natural experimental research designs, I advance new explanations for individual turnout, focused on citizens' access to, and experiences with the core electoral institutions of democracy. In paper 1 I show that policies focused on increasing access to elections can increase the size of the electorate, but also that they may carry compositional costs. Using new administrative data from South Africa and a difference-in-differences design, I show that the Independent Electoral Commission's large scale expansion of access to voting stations has increased national turnout by between 2.3 and 4.7 percentage points over the period 1999 to 2014. I then demonstrate, in the context of an administrative quasi-experiment, that those of high socio-economic status and those who are older are much more sensitive to electoral access than others. In paper 2 I explore whether differential representation in government shapes political behavior. I leverage the fact that the size of local government councils in South Africa follows a population-based formula with cutoffs that alter the degree of local representation. The results from a regression kink design suggest that at the margin the degree of representation is not particularly important for informing voters' decision to vote. Finally, paper 3 considers the effect of voting in South Africa's first democratic election in 1994 on future voting, and present evidence of the lasting behavioral effects of past participation using a regression discontinuity design. Eligibility to participate in 1994 affects future voting by 3 percentage points, with an average treatment effect of actually voting between 3.5 and 8.5 percentage points. I argue that persistence (or habituation) in voting behavior is at least partly driven by the creation of associations between first time voting and positive emotional states. If those who have positive electoral experiences are more likely to be particular types of voters, this can influence the trajectory of democracy. / by Daniel N. J. de Kadt. / Paper 1: How electoral access encourages turnout but exacerbates political inequality -- Paper 2: Does local representation influence turnout? -- Paper 3: The long term consequences of participation in a first democratic election -- supplementary material for each paper. / Ph. D.