Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-115). / This thesis considers electronic countermeasures as well thought-out signals sent by the "attacker" to a recipient, the "defender" in order to create uncertainty, and argues that tactics that incorporate the judicious use of bluffing further such uncertainty. I discuss two forms of bluffing, bluffing to create uncertainty as to the location of an attack (bluffing in space), and bluffing to create uncertainty as to the time of attack (bluffing in time). Two electronic warfare tactics used by the Allied air forces during World War II, representing an example of each, are modeled as dynamic zero-sum games with incomplete information. I show that in most instances, Perfect Bayesian Nash Equilibria dictate that the defender delay cuing his interceptors longer than he would so otherwise, and that in those situations where he should cue his interceptors, he must do so at random. Furthermore, except where the cost to bluff is prohibitive, the attacker always benefits from the use of tactics that incorporate bluffing, though bluffing in space is generally more effective than bluffing in time for a given set of detection probabilities. / by David M. Blum. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 396-406). / This dissertation, an in-depth empirical study of Brazilian racial discrimination law, examines the trends in complaining and surprising variation in official decisionmaking over the past decade. I collected more than 300 racial discrimination complaints, police investigations and court proceedings filed since 1989. I claim that Brazil's racial ideology and its theory of racial discrimination as an act of racial prejudice have been jointly constituted and, in turn, fully shape the making and the using of anti-discrimination law. I show that Brazil constructed racial discrimination narrowly compared to US theories of racial discrimination and the Brazilian understanding of other forms of discrimination, such as gender and age. Brazilians disproportionately file racial discrimination complaints about insults by a neighbor or co-worker. Officials treated these and most allegations as private, interpersonal disputes, even for allegations of firing and other problems protected in the law. I located approximately 40 findings for the plaintiff, a small fraction of the tens of hundreds of allegations, and analyze the variation in judicial inquiry and outcomes. Brazil's racial ideology and weak rule of law strongly influenced litigation. Defendants destroyed evidence and threatened plaintiffs and witnesses. Officials often erased the testimony of Black plaintiffs and witnesses in their holdings. Defendants often claimed to be Mulato or to have treated the plaintiff cordially as evidence of being Brazilian and inherently unprejudiced. Many officials accepted that defense. I hold the Brazilian theory of racial discrimination as overt prejudicial acts responsible for the use of the law. / (cont.) The law has focused attention on the mind and attitude of the aggressor. Although all judges invoke their ideology in their findings, Brazil's anti-discrimination law has increased that tendency by requiring judges to decide whether a defendant was prejudiced. Instead of providing clear standards to try cases, the law has encouraged judges to consult their own racial ideology. / by Seth Racusen. / Ph.D.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science. Thesis. 1966. Ph.D. / Bibliography: leaves 306-322. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1987. / Bibliography: v. 2, leaves 396-422. / by Sharon Stanton Russell. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-225). / This empirical study examines the political significance of religious leaders-known commonly as sadhus-in a huge and mature democracy like India. During the late '80s and the '90s, a flurry of sadhu activism coincided with the dramatic rise of a previously insignificant political party, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). As a conservative Hindu nationalist party, the BJP allied with many sadhus, came to power at the center and in many states, breaking the monopoly that the relatively secular Congress party had held for more than four decades. The sadhus and the BJP came together over the controversy of whether a Hindu temple had been destroyed to build a 16th century mosque (the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute). It propelled a few sadhus-who I describe as spiritual agents, whose essential identity is based on individualism, freedom from making long-term commitments, and yet committed to transcendental causes-to band together under contingent conditions and the availability of a platform to voice their discontent. However, both the coalition between pro-BJP sadhus and the BJP, as well as the desire to build the temple, unraveled over the next decade. Not only did the newly emergent BJP broaden its political base by distancing itself from a single issue, but the unity among sadhus also splintered. This thesis is an empirical and agent-centered approach to examine nationalism and a particular strain of religious fundamentalism. It examines the commonalities and differences among sadhus themselves as factors that explain both the unity among sadhus in one period and the splintering of that unity at another time. / (cont.) Sadhus are individualistic, free-floating, religious individuals who became sadhus not to pursue any social cause, but to live a life free of responsibilities and in tune with their inner callings. Aside from the role of outside forces and differences among sadhus over key political issues, I argue that essentially it is the elements common to the identity of sadhus as sadhus that temper their fundamentalist tendencies. Looking forward, the crouching Hindu serpent, like the famed kundalini in yoga, best characterizes this strain of sadhu-led Hindu fundamentalism, ever poised to rise and recoil. / by Rajesh Pradhan. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 369-394). / by David H. Guston. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-241). / by Andrew Emanuel Tauber. / Ph.D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2016. / Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 43-48). / This thesis proposes a theory mapping emotional reactions to political information onto a theory of vote decisionmaking and then further onto measurable survey response. Using on-line processing based in emotion, voters form affective summaries about candidates, which store previous information as an emotional response. The act of voting is treated as a single realization of a probabilistic event, with the relative probabilities of each vote option being an expression of the affective summary. These summaries are expressed as warmness or feeling towards each candidate, which can be captured using the ANES Feeling Thermometer scales. A metric of the difference between the scores given to the Republican and Democratic candidates is used, based in the work of William Mayer. This metric suffers from significant survey error, but is related to party ID and expressed vote choice, as well as demographic factors and perceived efficacy. Feeling thermometer responses are found to carry meaningful information about a respondent's relationship to the election and candidate preference. / by Charlotte Swasey. / S.M. / S.B.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation specifies and tests rationalist mechanisms of war. Why would rational states fight each other despite their incentives for peaceful bargains that would avoid the costs of war? In the rationalist theory of war, private information and the commitment problem are the key causes of war. I study the effects of these factors - and the mechanisms regulating their effects - through randomized experiments, historical analysis of the decision processes in three wars, and a comparative study of all international wars fought in East Asia in the last century. This is the first integrated study of rationalist causes of war that combines randomized experiments with historical cases. Despite a wide theoretical literature, there are few empirical tests of rationalist explanations for war. I use experimental and historical evidence to show that the commitment problem has strong positive effects on conflict. The effects of private information are less clear. Next, I specify six mechanisms that regulate the effects of the commitment problem and the private-information problem: three mechanisms (exogenous, endogenous, and inadvertent enforcement) for the first problem and three mechanisms (signaling with sunk cost, implementation cost, and salient contradiction) for the second. The experimental and historical evidence largely converge. Each of the three enforcement mechanisms calms the commitment problem and reduces the risk of conflict. Evidence for the three signaling mechanisms is mixed. Finally, I use the case universe of East Asian wars to assess the relevance of the mechanisms, suggest theoretical refinements, and infer alternative theories of war. / by Ch-yuan Kaiy Quek. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-372). / Where and how does innovation take place in contemporary high-technology sectors? Theories of innovation presume a division of labor between firms in industrialized economies that invent and commercialize new technologies and those in developing economies that focus on production. Even as global supply chains have allowed firms to outsource and offshore manufacturing activities, such literatures assume that innovation itself still takes place within firms in advanced economies. This study develops a framework to understand innovation in high-technology industries through a comparative analysis of wind and solar sectors in China, Germany, and the United States. I find that the rise of global production networks has altered the ways in which the range of engineering capabilities required for technological innovation are combined and established in high-technology sectors. First, in contrast to prevailing theories of innovation, I show that the fragmentation of production has distributed innovative capabilities across highly specialized firms in global supply chains, including manufacturing firms in developing economies. Skills that were once organized within large firms are now coordinated in global networks in a process I call networked innovation. Second, new options for specialization have mitigated pressures for convergence in the types of skills required to advanced to the technological frontier. As a result, firms are able to incrementally build on existing strengths and industrial capabilities as they participate in networked innovation through specialized capabilities, often repurposing governmental resources and institutions established for prevailing industrial sectors in the process. In this context, sectoral industrial policies for emerging industries no longer fully determine variation in firm specialization, but divergent industrial legacies, firm practices, and governmental resources provided for the broader economy shape how firms participate in networked innovation. The findings build on more than two years of field research, including 224 interviews in wind and solar sectors and extensive analysis of archival documents and government yearbooks. In addition to contributing to literatures on the political economy of innovation, this study speaks to broader debates about the nature of economic development, industrial upgrading, and the role of sectoral industrial policy in shaping industrial capabilities under conditions of globalization. / by Jonas M. Nahm. / Ph. D.