Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-83). / This thesis examines the nature of political representation of the American poor from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. A normative framework, based on the major theories of representation, is used to examine the empirical mechanisms through which the poor can obtain representation. "Formal" mechanisms include voting, formal participatory activities and membership in political institutions. The primary "informal" mechanism examined is the public opinion survey. The normative framework is grounded in the notion that being poor in an affluent nation is an attached, personal interest--a substantive understanding of the interests of the poor cannot be determined through intellectual deliberation alone. Social and economic closeness (or similarity in relevant descriptive characteristics such as income and race) informs poverty advocates about the nature of poverty and the impact of anti-poverty policies. A significant amount of evidence suggests that the poor are underrepresented (relative to other groups with more economic and political resources) in formal participation mechanisms. There is less evidence about how well and to what extent the poor are represented in the primary "informal mechanism"--public opinion. Preliminary evidence suggests that the political voice of the poor and their advocates may be muted in opinion polls. This research motivates the original empirical analysis in this thesis that examines who is advocating for the poor in public opinion surveys and what those advocates are saying. The original research produces two key findings. First, over the longer term period (1980s-2002) descriptive similarity of poverty advocates declined. . / (cont.) Second, in the more recent time period (mid-1990s-2002) descriptive similarity increased amongst poverty advocates in open-ended survey questions (which measure salience of opinion) yet declined amongst poverty advocates in close-ended questions (which measure direction of opinion). The disconnect between the results of the salience and directional analyses suggests that while descriptively similar survey respondents have found poverty to be a more salient issue since the mid-1990s, increased salience did not translate into preferences for expansion of existing anti-poverty programs. These findings raise questions about competence of representation of our nation's poor and have meaningful implications for the future of U.S. anti-poverty policy in an age of inequality / by Erin Flaherty Hardy. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-235). / In this dissertation, I ask four inter-related questions about state-sponsored terrorism. First, under what conditions do states choose to support foreign terrorist groups? Second, when do sponsor states stop supporting terrorism? Third, how can states which are the targets of terrorism best persuade sponsor states to cease their support? Fourth, how can sponsor states best avoid being held accountable for the actions of their terrorist agents? Building on Byman and Kreps' theoretical model of state-sponsored terrorism as a principal-agent relationship, I propose four hypotheses to answer these questions. First, states sponsor terrorism because they meet three necessary conditions: motivations for conflict, constraints against open conflict, and a perceived lack of accountability. Second, states cease supporting terrorism when any of these conditions changes. Third, states that are the targets of state-sponsored terrorism can best persuade state sponsors to change their behavior by holding them accountable for the actions of their terrorist agents. Fourth, states that sponsor terrorism will be more likely to avoid accountability if they sacrifice both control over their terrorist agents and credit for their agents' successes. These hypothesized answers are tested by examining two in-depth case studies of state-sponsored terrorism, Libya and Cuba during the Cold War. The evidence from these cases is generally congruent with the four hypotheses, with the first and second hypotheses demonstrating the best fit. The cases also yield five prescriptions for policy makers. First, economic sanctions may be more effective than military action at holding sponsor states accountable for the actions of their terrorist agents. Second, multilateral diplomatic and economic sanctions may be more effective than unilateral sanctions, although a single state may be capable of spearheading a successful international policy response. Third, the sponsor state's peers are crucially important in determining the success of target states' efforts. Fourth, better relations with sponsor states mean better leverage. Fifth, politicized application of the labels 'terrorist' and 'state sponsor' robs the terms of their condemnatory power and decreases their utility as rhetorical weapons. States that follow these prescriptions may be successful in persuading state sponsors to cease their sponsorship. / by John David Payne. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-252). / by Sharon Kay Weiner. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-234). / Theories of the developmental state assume astute bureaucratic interventionism protected from organized societal interests by authoritarian regimes; close bureaucracy-business ties supposedly facilitate prescient policy-making. In Malaysia, the bureaucracy did feature prominently in developmental policy-making, in an alliance with the political leadership in the seventies. Legitimated by a state ideology of ethnicity, this alliance created a Malay middle class through a legal, open, and centralized system of rents distribution to the Malay majority. In addition, ethnic quotas ensured extensive Malay participation in Corporate Malaysia and in the largest state-owned enterprise program outside the centrally-planned economies. This process also began the atrophy of ethnic Chinese capital. From the mid-eighties, through a carefully targeted program of privatization that divested state- and party-holdings of equity to co-ethnic proxies, the political leadership insinuated itself into the market. In the process, it sidelined the bureaucracy, forming an alliance with a consolidated Malay big business class instead. While proxies legally own these privatized entities, ultimate control inheres with the political leadership. However, day-to-day corporate life is not subject to the politician's micro-management. Thus, the political leadership has been able to bypass bureaucratic structures without relinquishing its control of the economy. While the bureaucracy prefers more regulation, policy controls, and state planning, the politician-businessman alliance is determined to negotiate these constraints. Because these corporations are subject to market discipline, this .. privatized statism" tracks market structural changes; the ethnic capitalism so wrought has proven robust despite expectations of an enervating cronyist dissipation of rents. Mainstream developmentalist perspectives fail to anticipate the creation of an ethnic bourgeoisie, the intentional withering of a contending ethnic fraction of domestic capital and, crucially, the bureaucracy's role-inversion. Bureaucratic capacity cannot be assumed to define fully state power. To explain how the state structures domestic markets, state capacity must be characterized empirically by attending to historically determined coalitions and conflicts. Privatized statism also suggests a new mix of property regimes, and implies that each system of economic arrangements is historically constructed with resources and within contexts bequeathed from the past. But that endeavor is always constrained by politics; that is, markets are shaped by considerations of, not only, economic efficiency but, also, political power. / by Andrew Chinpeng Ho. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-289). / This dissertation aims at accounting for labor responses to globalization in France. It addresses this issue through a comparative study of two labor organizations-the French Democratic Labor Confederation (CFDT) and the General Confederation of Labor (CGT)-that today respond differently to globalization even though they held common positions in the past: while the CGT opposes globalization, the CFDT sees it as an opportunity for French workers. I call the former response the resistance strategy and the latter the adaptation strategy. This dissertation claims that responses to globalization are formed and transformed over time as the environment of organizations changes and intraorganizational struggles unfold. More specifically, it argues that in France the formation of labor responses to globalization stemmed from a path dependent process constituted by three different steps. First, organizational failure, illustrated by union decline, implied a critical juncture that fed intraorganizational struggles and opened the way for a reorientation of labor organizations. Second, once the crisis was acknowledged, whether organizations would take the path to adaptation or resistance depended on three factors: (1) resources inherited from the past that limit the range of options that actors can conceive and choose; (2) the presence and content of two mechanisms of change-bricolage and identity shift-that describe how actors used their inherited resources; and (3) the ability of leaders to articulate a narrative that would appeal to enough people inside their organizations so as to induce cooperation. The third and last step of this path dependent process refers to the stabilization of the new path that the CFDT and the CGT had taken. The central mechanism that stabilized these paths was a shift in the organizational opportunity structure. Although labor organizations were not completely locked in the new path, once the organizational opportunity structure had shifted it was very difficult to return to the previous path or engage in a substantially different one. / (cont.) Therefore, unless another critical juncture takes place, the CFDT and the CGT are likely to stick with their current responses to globalization for many years. / by Marcos Ancelovici. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-439). / The United States and other members of the international community have expended billions of dollars and thousands of lives confronting insurgent organizations across the globe. Strikingly, however, there has been little analysis of how some groups have developed the military capacity to challenge superior forces. The importance of this question has been illustrated by the recent rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Yet, existing research provides limited insight as (1) it has not conceptualized military effectiveness in a sub-state context, and (2) it is focused on structural determinants of insurgent behavior. Thus, I construct a conception of insurgent military effectiveness capturing distinctions such as insurgents' (in)ability to keep ceasefires or to control who is targeted by violence as well as a theory arguing that it is not the resources organizations have that determine effectiveness, but how well their organizational structure allows them to leverage those resources. In particular, the theory focuses on both informal structures of social support and formal military structures such as logistics, command and control, and personnel management systems in explaining how some insurgent organizations achieve relatively high levels of military effectiveness and others do not. After using a large-N analysis to demonstrate that structural factors are poor predictors of organizational structure and conflict outcomes, I test the theory with in-depth case studies of groups from Vietnam (1940-1975) and Iraq (2003-2016) using archival documents, interviews, and secondary sources. These two countries represent promising areas to study organizations as there is a high-degree of variation in structural and organizational factors as well as in military effectiveness. The empirical chapters provide strong support for the theory, demonstrating the importance of my organizational approach. In addition, the empirical analysis untangles puzzles such as how, in Vietnam, the Viet Minh and People's Liberation Armed Front (also known as the Viet Cong) became so successful while other nationalist and religious groups did not or, in Iraq, how the Islamic State has operated with such military prowess. The findings also help to clarify existing research-such as the study of fragmentation and the role of factors such as external support and community structure while providing precise suggestions about managing sub-state violence by helping to better identify and train partners, to craft and maintain peace agreements, and to address poor governance that perpetuates conflict. / by Alec Worsnop. / Ph. D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science. Thesis. 1969. Ph.D. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 274-320. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / While undoubtedly the most powerful nation in the world, the U.S. is constrained in its ability to further its national interests by the attitudes and actions of foreign governments and, more importantly, foreign publics. The growing ability of individuals and small groups to threaten the security and vital interests of the United States necessitates improved cooperation and empathy on the part of foreign publics as well as their governments. Moreover, the concurrent decline in the utility of military statecraft due to both higher costs and decreasing international legitimacy means that policymakers are forced to consider alternative means of influencing the behavior of others. Public diplomacy is a critically important example of such an alternative means. Unfortunately, understanding public diplomacy and its effects is hampered by a lack of conceptual tools used to develop and evaluate various strategies of public diplomacy. Consequently, the following paper seeks to combine existing theoretical arguments regarding strategic communication and mass persuasion to develop an analytical model that can be used to critique the United States' current public diplomacy strategy. According to the model developed and tested herein, strategic directionality and the level of elite orientation are the two primary causal factors that determine the outcome of a particular public diplomacy campaign. Target audience predisposition and the degree to which the campaign itself is concealed from the audience serve as two intervening variables that may retard the progress of a campaign. Thus, the diagrammatical structure of the model is as follows: Directional Message + Elite-Oriented Message --> Successful PD Campaign Intervening Variables: Predisposition Concealment of Campaign. When tested against Britain's efforts to recruit the U.S. as an ally prior to the end of 1941 and Kuwait's efforts to retain the support of the U.S. after Iraq's invasion in August 1990, the model is found to be sound. The model predicts that the current U.S. public diplomacy campaign in the Middle East will fail due to a lack of strategic directionality, limited elite orientation, and poor concealment of the campaign itself. By way of conclusion, several policy prescriptions are offered to improve the levels of each of these variables. / by Ryan Michael Crow. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-264). / This dissertation examines the adoption of new work organization practices in the small firm, manufacturing sector through an in-depth examination of the metalworking industry in western Massachusetts. An original survey of 46 firms was conducted as were detailed firm-level case studies. Four key questions were addressed through the research: 1) what does the new work organization look like in the small firm sector? 2) how widely have new forms of work organization diffused? 3) what explains variation in workplace innovation outcomes? 4) what are the most effective mechanisms of diffusion? Survey and case study results show that new work organization practices have diffused widely in the small firm sector but that adoption levels vary dramatically among similarly situated firms. Detailed review of data indicates that whether and when firms embark on a path of organizational reform must be analyzed in the context of each firm's market environment and overall strategy. The extent and rate of adoption is determined by two key variables: the nature of market pressure a firm experiences (shaped predominantly by the industry sector the firm supplies to and customers relations); and the strategic orientation of firm leadership. The presence of cooperative customer-supplier relations and/or innovative, investment-oriented firm leaders appears to facilitate adoption of new work practices. The current policy approach to small firm modernization encourages piece-meal change that fails to address far more fundamental issues of firm strategy. / (cont.) The research suggests that public programs should build from the powerful mechanisms of change indigenous to the small firm economy. A concerted focus on management education, and development and promotion of customer supplier 'partnerships' across key industry sectors is a more promising way to encourage long-term adjustment strategies in the small firm sector. / by Erin Kathleen Flynn. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 622-679). / States respond to rebellion differently, often shaping the intensity, duration, and outcome of the conflict as well as prospects for stability and state consolidation. Puzzling cross-national variation in counterinsurgency-sometimes brutal, sometimes minimalist-has drawn some inquiry, but sub-national variation by the same state incumbent has largely been neglected. This study develops a core-periphery theory to explain why states choose different strategies to fight rebellions based on what is at stake and who is rebelling. The theory identifies the variation in state strategy along two dimensions of effort and violence and contends the sub-national variation can best be explained by the value of the contested territory and the identity of the rebelling group. First, the contested territory's value, in economic, strategic, and ideational terms, will shape the strategy of effort the state is willing to deploy. When a rebellion, regardless of its size, threatens core territory, the state is likely to employ a strategy involving significant effort to decisively defeat the rebellion and regain control. Peripheral territory offers comparatively lower incentives resulting in minimalist containment strategies. Second, the positional status of the identity group composing the rebel base will shape the state's incentives and constraints for the strategic use of violence. Core social identity groups with high group worth and embeddedness within the state will motivate greater restraint as co-identity serves to limit state violence through affective mechanisms of empathy and trust and strategic mechanisms of vulnerability and information. Peripheral rebel groups are less likely to trigger such restraint and are therefore met with strategies of greater violence. The theory is tested with 29 cases of rebellion from India and Pakistan to leverage within-country variation with macro-structures of state capacity and institutions fairly constant. The study draws on extensive fieldwork, including over 150 interviews, as well as primary and secondary sources to examine state counterinsurgency through a medium-N analysis for each country's set of campaigns, as well as structured, focused comparisons of a select number of cases along specific dimensions of these conflicts and strategies. The two approaches provide strong support for the theory relative to competing explanations. / by Sameer Prem Lalwani. / Ph. D.