Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references. / by David Gardiner Victor. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 119-134). / If the Chinese government is trying to reassure the US that China's rise is not threatening, why does China diplomatically support adversaries of the US such as Iran, Sudan, Libya, and Syria? This thesis shows that soft balancing against the US in concert with Russia best explains China's foreign policy towards these states. Economic interest and a number of other alternative theories, in contrast, do not explain the observed variation in China's policy. Critics of soft balancing have overstated their case; concrete instances of soft-balancing behavior are present in the international system. / by Peter Goodings Swartz. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 461-493). / Donors versus Dictators examines the "exporting democracy debate" and the related issue of "nation-building" as manifested in the foreign aid relationship in the post-Cold War era. This dissertation centers on two in-depth case studies of countries where all major donors froze aid on a multilateral basis in order to pressure authoritarian regimes to legalize opposition parties and hold democratic elections. Through careful historical process-tracing, hypotheses drawn from both sides of the debate and from the academic literatures on democratization, aid and economic sanctions are assessed with respect to the attempts at democratization in Kenya and Malawi from 1989 to 2003. Conclusions include the finding that aid conditionality is generally effective in producing multiparty elections and pushing the reform process forward in aid-dependent countries where incumbent regimes have historically been pro-Western and desire to remain engaged in the global economy. However, the ultimate effectiveness of donor policy in producing democratization in these cases has been limited by the patterns of ethnic cleavage within the recipient countries and the relative ability of the emerging constitutional and electoral systems to channel ethnic and clientelist politics in democratic directions, factors which have so far been beyond the scope and level of coherence of donor policy. / by Steven E. Clinkenbeard. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 295-317). / by David M. Fairman. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 391-413). / This dissertation argues that the disintegration and collapse of empires cause wars and crises by creating some of the conditions and causes of war commonly identified by scholars. When empires disintegrate and collapse, the metropole withdraws its power from its peripheral territories and newly independent successor states emerge. This new situation gives rise to several problems: a power vacuum develops forcing successor states to provide for their own security and leading them and other states to try to fill the vacuum; successor states engage in state-building, which occurs at different rates for different states; ethnic groups are divided from their homelands; multi-ethnic states are created; and, territorial borders become issues of dispute. As a result of these problems,. five causes of war develop, which can lead to wars an crises. International rules of the game become unsettled and ambiguous because a new balance of power develops and new issues of international concern arise. Power shifts as successor states build institutions for self-rule, and alliances form and collapse in response to the ever changing situation. Third, the new situation that occurs as the empire disintegrates increases uncertainty about the capabilities of the successor states, about the alliances that exist, and about the intentions of states, making it difficult to determine the new balance of power and the intentions of other states. Fourth, nationalism grows as states seek to unite with their diaspora and protect them from the discrimination of the multi-ethnic state's government. Fifth, competition for leadership in successor states cause leaders to have a weak hold on power. To test this argument, I look at the seven wars and two crises that occurred when the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans disintegrated in the nineteenth century. This study serve three purposes. First, it studies the causes of war that result from the disintegration and collapse of empires. Second, and more relevant for today's policy-makers, this study can help us understand the consequences of the disintegration of multi-ethnic states and, in the process, provide guidance for policy-makers. Third, this dissertation tests several hypotheses about the causes of war. / by Jonathan E. Ladinsky. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1996. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references. / by A. Trevor Thrall. / Ph.D.

In these three essays, I study important facets of the transition to peace after Burundi's 1993-2005 civil war. The first essay studies the effects of quota-based ethnic integration within Burundi's army on expressions of prejudice and ethnic salience among soldiers. Exploiting a natural experiment within the army, I find that exposure to quota-based integration reduced prejudice and had no effect on ethnic salience, countering a prevailing view in the literature that quota-based integration is likely to exacerbate ethnic tensions. The second essay studies individuals' preferences over transitional justice alternatives. I find that support for punishment and truth-seeking is more tepid than the advocacy literature has suggested, that ethno-political motivations seem to dominate expressed preferences for punishment and truth-seeking, and, using a persuasion experiment, that simple forms of deliberation may actually polarize people. The third essay, co-authored with Michael Gilligan and Eric Mvukiyehe, examines the impact of Burundi's ex-combatant reintegration program on the economic and political reintegration of demobilized rebels. Exploiting another natural experiment, we find that the program provided substantial economic benefits, but that these economic benefits did not seem to contribute to political integration, at least in the short-run. The essays enrich our understanding of Burundi's difficult transition to peace. They also essays just how one may bring high scientific standards to study policies in the otherwise challenging context of post-conflict transitions.

Once described as a "diligent apprentice," China has emerged in the early 21st century as an active and sometimes contentious participant in the UN Security Council. For the U.S., China has complicated decision-making on a range of issues, including North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe and Libya. China's material interests in several of these "pariah states" has raised problems for attempts to target such regimes through the Council and its powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Yet China's positions on these cases have been mixed. It has sometimes aligned with the U.S. (as it did on Libya), and has, at other times, stood in opposition (as on Burma). This study seeks to explain the variance. Drawing on an array of sources, it weighs five hypotheses against the empirical record. These explanations are centered on two sets of factors. First are the strategic risks of cooperation, i.e. the chance that coercion will harm China's interests. Second are the political ramifications, i.e. the potential costs to China's relations with the U.S., regional stakeholders and others associated with particular positions. Prefaced by a historical narrative of China's changing role in the Council from 1971 through 2011, the analysis covers eight cases, spanning China's diplomacy on North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Burma and Zimbabwe. Five are positive cases, insofar as Beijing supported U.S.-backed resolutions. These include the issues of North Korea and Iran. Three are negative cases, in which China maintained opposition. These include proposed sanctions on Sudan in 2007, and draft resolutions on Burma and Zimbabwe. The primary conclusion is that both strategic and political explanations can provide insight into the development of China's positions. Specifically, China's bargaining power is at its greatest when credible outside options exist and when there is a division in attitudes towards the legitimacy of the preferences of the U.S. and its allies, and weakest under the opposite conditions. From a policy point of view, the U.S. will have to craft nimble diplomatic strategies and carefully assess when to proceed versus when to yield. However, Washington can assume that China will remain a status-quo oriented, and relatively predictable, participant within the UNSC.

The chapters in this dissertation all explore a single set of questions, applying them to a variety of different historical and political contexts. The questions are: how are exceptional emergencies distinguished from quotidian political events? What is the vision of political "normalcy" in relation to which a state of exception can be declared, and in light of which the legitimate ends of exceptional, emergency powers defined? How do the background conceptions that define an "emergency" also shape the political dynamics of emergency powers? As I argued in chapter one, these questions push beyond the two predominant approaches in the contemporary literature: the first was the "naïve realist" view that emergencies have a self-evident, objective character, so that identifying an event as an "emergency" is a straightforward matter of accurately perceiving some factual state of affairs. The second was the decisionist or "deconstructive" view, which argues that emergencies can never be identified or verified factually, but rather are constituted independently of any "facts," for example by a valid legal procedure for declaring a state of emergency, or by a sovereign decision on the exception. Neither of these two approaches, however, can provide us with an adequate account of the politics of emergencies, that is, the sense in which the definition of what counts as an emergency can be a dynamic arena of persuasion, justification and conflict, not only over the temporary consequences of emergency powers, but over the identity and content of normalcy as well. Distinguishing between normalcy and a state of emergency is not just a matter of perception (as in the realist account) or decision (in the skeptical account); it is also, crucially, an act of interpretation and a process of political judgment, where the determination of an emergency is at the same time an evaluative claim about the identity of political normalcy. In other words, the definition of what counts as an emergency is simulations a way of defining what is the state of affairs that is being threatened, which also implies a judgment about the value of preserving a state of affairs that would justify exceptional measures. Thus, while the realist approach obscures this political realm of interpretation and judgment by reducing the definition of to a self-evident determination of facts, the skeptical approach dissolves the concrete political content and stakes of the definition of emergencies by abstracting and isolating the subjective decision on the exception from the broader ideological or normative context that determines whether such a decision will be considered authoritative, or legitimate. Thus, the historical and contextual approach adopted in these chapters is motivated by two basic theoretical claims of the dissertation: first, that the definition of what counts as an emergency is neither a self-evident fact nor the product of an unconstrained decision, but is constructed through a set of background assumptions and political judgments about the identity and value of normality. Secondly, the different ways that emergencies are defined and understood play a decisive role in shaping the political outcomes of emergency powers, so that for example the same institutional framework of emergency powers may produce very different political outcomes as the underlying conception of an emergency shifts. The first section of this dissertation, comprising the first three chapters, explore these questions through an interrogation of theoretical literatures: the first through an interrogation of twentieth century and contemporary works on emergency powers, the second through modern republican thought and the third through theories of modern constitutionalism. The final three chapters focus more narrowly on a case study: the transformation of legal and political theories of emergency powers in the United States. Chapter 4 analyzes 19th century theories of martial law; Chapter 5 looks at the theme of emergency and security during the New Deal period, and Chapter 6 investigates how the 20th Century concepts of War Powers and National Security impacted the idea of emergency powers.

Over the past few decades, the field of political science has become increasingly sophisticated in its use of empirical tests for theoretical claims. One particularly productive strain of this development has been the identification of the limitations of and challenges in using observational data. Making causal inferences with observational data is difficult for numerous reasons. One reason is that one can never be sure that the estimate of interest is un-confounded by omitted variable bias (or, in causal terms, that a given treatment is ignorable or conditionally random). However, when the ideal hypothetical experiment is impractical, illegal, or impossible, researchers can often use quasi-experimental approaches to identify causal effects more plausibly than with simple regression techniques. Another reason is that, even if all of the confounding factors are observed and properly controlled for in the model specification, one can never be sure that the unobserved (or error) component of the data generating process conforms to the assumptions one must make to use the model. If it does not, then this manifests itself in terms of bias in standard errors and incorrect inference on statistical significance of quantities of interest. In this case, one can either turn to standard error "fixes" that are robust to generic forms of deviance from standard assumptions or to non-parametric solutions that do not require such assumptions but may be less powerful than their parametric counterparts. The following essays, I develop the use of some of these techniques for inference with observational data and explore their limitations. Collectively, these essays challenge the conventional application of quasi-experimental techniques and standard error fixes. They also contribute to important substantive debates over legislative organization by producing more cleanly identified effects of the power of Congressional representatives as individuals and as members of parties to bargain over distributive goods.