Thesis advisor: Stephen Hudson / This paper analyzes the intellectual rift in the contemporary American conservative movement, focusing on the differences of opinion between classical liberals and national conservatives on economic policy and economic philosophy. Given the precipitous economic malaise of the domestic American economy, and the attendant decay of social cohesion and quality of life for many Americans, the paper proposes that domestic manufacturing offers a distinctively important way of life that is inclusive of the largest possible segments of American workers. This paper finds that nations compete as economic actors, and that sovereign nations have an interest in promoting certain economic outcomes, similar to how other market actors participate in the global market. This paper concludes by affirming that on these grounds, America has an interest in pursuing an industrial policy through the tools of law and public policy. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Philosophy.

<p>My research examines the political role of unions, as the collective voice of Canadian cultural workers, in connection to the cultural policies that shape their memberships’ personal and professional lives. I examine the policy advocacy strategies of Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists; the Directors Guild of Canada; the Writers Guild of Canada; the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada; and the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees IATSE, as members of federal and provincial cultural policy networks.</p> <p>I argue that changes in cultural policy influence the level of participation and the political strategies of the unions and guilds in federal and provincial cultural policy networks. Shifts in organizational and political strategies affect the ways that unions articulate their interests as policy problems; this, in turn, affects the ways in which issues and problems are understood and acted upon by decision-makers in policy reforms. While most of the unions and guilds, particularly at the federal level, have been active in cultural policy networks for several decades, unions at both federal and provincial levels are increasingly partnering with the employers – the independent producers – in their policy interventions. Analysis of my case studies leads me to conclude that this strategy is paradoxical for unions. While a partnership approach from a “production industry” standpoint arguably increases union access to and credibility with policy decision-makers, it can compromise or obscure how unions articulate cultural policy problems as <em>labour</em> problems. When unions engage in policy advocacy either independently or as a labour coalition, the direct relationship between cultural policy and its specific impact on labour markets and working conditions is most evident.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>In the thesis, we examine the effects of alternative income redistribution schemes on the optimal pattern of allocation of resources. We also identify the sectors in the economy which are under strain when these redistribution schemes are implemented and the years in which the strains are felt most. We find that the redistribution of income between the lower and middle income groups in the rural sector leads to the maximum value of the objective function, which is a discounted sum of gross outputs. Alternatively, the redistribution of income between the upper and middle income groups in the urban sector consistently leads to low values of the objective function.</p> <p>We also conduct tests to determine how sensitive these results are to changes in the values of the parameters assumed. The results regarding the relative desirabilities of various redistribution schemes are found to be rather insensitive to changes in the values of the social discount rate and the savings rate. A higher availability of foreign aid increases the desirability of urban redistribution schemes. Modest requirements of post-terminal growth lead to infeasibilities for most redistribution schemes, as well as the reference solution, which assumes the status quo distribution of income. The only feasible redistribution schemes are those which redistribute incomes between the upper and middle classes, and the middle and lower classes in the rural sector. This leads us to recommend rural redistribution as not only a desirable policy, but as a necessary prerequisite to obtaining modest growth rates in the post-plan period.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The mid-1970s was a turning point in the history of New York’s Asian/American communities. As the city stood on the brink of economic collapse, the broader labor movement’s membership declined, but many Asian/American New Yorkers demonstrated their labor activism in worker centers, grassroots organizations, as well as unions. This was also a moment, as the Cold War waned, when tens of thousands of Asian migrants resettled in New York City. With the influx of migrants in a tightening economy, the nature of the city’s workforce changed, adding to the growing labor surplus, just as work was disappearing. My dissertation titled “One Rise, One Fall: Labor Organizing in New York’s Asian Communities, 1970s to the Present,” is a study of labor activists’ strategies to deal with the economic crisis and reconcile their racial difference. Through oral histories and archival research, my dissertation bridges the fields of Asian American Studies, urban studies, and labor history. While historians have examined the intense economic transformations of the 1970s, noting the changes in the labor market and decline in trade unionism, few have examined the varied attempts to organize durable unions and labor organizations in this period. My dissertation contributes a class analysis to the literature on racial formation, examining the strategies of New York’s Asian communities in harsh economic times. Dominant discourses about race and class, like yellow peril and model minority narratives, became a barrier for Asian/American labor activists looking to build worker power and remake their city. In some instances, Asian/American workers were perceived as dangerous foreigners who were taking white working-class jobs, and in other contexts, they were docile and deserving subjects in contrast to black and brown Americans. These two poles – of yellow peril and model minority narratives – informed Asian/American labor mobilizations. This study examines how race and class were inextricably intertwined, affecting modes of labor organizing in every industry. Opening with a study of Asian/American building tradesmen and their fight for jobs in the mid-1970s, “One Rise, One Fall” examines the multiple strategies that Asian/American workers deployed in order to cope with economic changes and racial discrimination. In my study, Asian/American organizers struggled to organize new immigrants in the Chinese restaurant industry in the 1980s, and rank-and-file garment workers fought for fair piece rates despite the logics of a global supply chain in the 2000s. Each chapter is a case study of organizing strategies in midst of Asian/American laborers’ varied circumstances of citizenship, race, class, and gender. As labor organizing became increasingly difficult in an era of increased migrations, weakened labor laws, and globalized production, labor mobilizations in Asian communities occurred in and outside of unions. My research reveals the capacity and creativity of labor activism in grassroots organizations, worker centers, and labor unions, since the 1970s. Through this case-study approach, my dissertation analyzes the experiences of organizers and workers, in order to investigate how Asian/Americans navigated the politics of work, difference, and the radical restructuring of the urban-based global economy. / History

A frequent question in academic and non-academic research is how particular systems are formed, maintained, and potentially, changed. This dissertation explores the question above through the intersection between political economy and public policy, specifically on accumulation: how economic and social relations come to be, endure, adapt, or fail. This is reflected in a slew of theories, paradigms, and research programmes, yet most utilize a macro or meso lens and rarely look at ‘micro’ level phenomena and processes – those involving everyday interactions and people. At this level, a significant, yet absent, component is the way individuals may come to automatically think and act through receiving information conveyed in ways that promote internalization or automaticity. The ongoing question, then, is what regimes communicate and how they do so. I will examine the role of active labour market policy (ALMP) in sustaining contemporary accumulation trajectories in Canada by analyzing what it communicates to policy recipients in terms of how they should conceive of themselves as workers, their expectations of the market, and of the state. However, what public policy communicates does not, in and of itself, explain how people come to internalize particular ways of thinking and acting. As such, I combine policy analysis with cognitive psychology to examine what ‘everyday’ public policy components – such as websites, forms, and job search systems - communicate, and crucially, whether they do so in a way which is conducive to ‘automatic thought’ (e.g. ‘common sense’). / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation explores how public policy can shape how individuals automatically think and act, thereby informing their ‘common sense’ and rational thoughts. I will examines what Canadian active labour market policy (ALMP) communicates to policy recipients in terms of how they should conceive of themselves as workers, their expectations of the market, and of the state. I combine policy analysis with mechanisms derived from cognitive psychology to examine what ‘everyday’ public policy components – such as websites, forms, and job search systems - communicate, and crucially, whether they do so in a way which is conducive to ‘automatic thought’ (e.g. ‘common sense’). This approach fills in gaps political psychology, public policy, and the political economy of regimes.

Over the past decade academics and policymakers have increasingly recognised the growing importance of diasporas. While diasporas have been variously defined, an important common element is continued identity with the ‘home’ country even when many years have been spent in the ‘host’ country (Lyons, 2004b: 3). Some may even not have visited their ‘home country’ but offer valuable political support. For example, even though many of the Jewish diaspora in the United States have never been to Israel, let alone been born there, they nevertheless mobilise support for the Jewish ‘homeland’ (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2006). For the academic community, diasporas thus offer a challenge to the traditional ‘inside/outside’ conception of social life whereby socio-political activities are defined as either purely ‘domestic’ or purely ‘international’ (Al-Ali and Koser, 2002). Diasporas are, at one and the same time, both and neither. As suggested by Shain (2002), diasporas form a distinct ‘third level’ between interstate and domestic politics — a type of transnational actor that is becoming increasingly important due to the globalisation of markets, politics and culture. How, through what mechanisms and with what impact diasporas express themselves as ‘transnational actors’, therefore, is currently a matter of intense research. While there is an expanding literature in this area, there has been less research on diasporas in the field of conflict and peace studies. Here research has tended to emphasise the role of diasporas as ‘peace-wreckers’, though work has emerged emphasising the role of diasporas as ‘peace-makers’ (Smith and Stares, 2007).

Multilateral interventions for regime change are not new, but their mutation has been congruent with an aggressive attempt to introduce liberal values into peacekeeping and related operations discernible from the 1990s. While recognizing non-coercive, needs-based elements of interventions for peace, this article contends that regime change wars have harmonized with the UN's facilitation of aggressive peace missions and coercive peacebuilding. In the 1990s the perceived failures of, and demands on, the UN, led to a general policy of permissiveness for Western states to pursue regime change, accompanied by reconstruction and development opportunities to promote neoliberal ideas of political economy in war-torn societies. This article focuses on two aspects of international operations fostered through or by the UN: the militarization of peace missions and peacebuilding through neoliberal political economy. It commends further research into the networks of power and resistance that have populated aggressive peace.

yes / International tourism is now the predominant industry driving growth in many small island developing states (SIDS). Governments of small islands in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean and Pacific have seemingly put most of their eggs into one development basket – the all-inclusive holiday in a luxury hotel, resort or cruise ship. While this industry generates employment, foreign direct investment, and income for island governments and the private sector, it also brings with it dependencies which are borne from the transnational ownership of these all-inclusive accommodations, the risks from exogenous factors – many of which are tied to the wider security of the global system – as well as the domestic economies in the source markets in Europe and North America. We reflect upon these dependencies and risks through a case study of the Seychelles based on fieldwork research conducted in 2012. Our findings highlight that the international tourism industry in the Seychelles – even in a situation of high or growing demand – creates structurally driven precarity for tourism workers who are predominantly low paid, low-skilled, and increasingly recruited from overseas. These findings provide new evidence that contributes to the growing research into tourism in IPE. Our findings highlight the precarious condition of labour in this fast growing service sector of the world economy and in so doing also adds much needed empirical insights from the South to recent debates about an emerging precariat in contemporary capitalism.

The purpose of this dissertation is the delineation of a new approach, or, more precisely, a new "role" and "methodological system," for those persons engaged in building and managing multi-actor structures, or "networks," for the purpose of policy implementation. As policy formulation and implementation can be viewed increasingly as taking place inter-organizationally, and consisting of individuals, special-interest groups, public organizations, private organizations, non-profits, etc., none of whom have the individual power to autonomously determine the strategies and actions of all the other actors, policy processes can no longer be viewed as the implementation of ex ante formulated goals, but instead must be seen as an interaction process in which actors exchange information about problems, preferences and means, and trade-off goals and resources. That is, the context of "getting things done" in the public sector is changing from a singular organizational context to a multiple-organization network context. Managerially, we must respond accordingly. While there has been an increasing recognition in the literatures of at least three distinct fields of enquiry [political science, organization theory, and policy science] that such networks are becoming the "reality" of daily operation, much less has been written attempting to aid the acting administrator to function successfully within this new setting. Even less has been written concerning how to actually build and use a network setting to one's advantage in an implementation endeavor. We are left in need of a new way to successfully approach implementation through complex multi-actor settings. As it becomes increasingly difficult to administer policy implementation through a single, public organization, the need for new tools and understanding that will enable us to achieve public ends in such complex settings becomes apparent. Such an approach must work to successfully accommodate the increased role of extra-organizational actors, a new role of the administrator as "network facilitator," and still afford the ability to plan for and carry out project implementation. Because the invention of such an approach will require the accommodation of a different view of the administrative world (i.e. a more dynamic context, ephemeral definitions, new roles and responsibilities, and a new method to approaching work life), its development cannot constitute a straightforward reshuffling of the boxes of the administrative process, or the simple adoption of some new buzzwords. It demands, instead, that we begin by asking some fundamental ontological (what is reality) and epistemological (how can we know it) questions. It is after addressing these fundamental concerns that this volume will work to build a new approach to functioning proactively in a network setting. Following a discussion on what the role of "network facilitator" means in relation to current understanding of public management, this treatise will describe a new methodological system for use by the administrator playing such a role. The "methodological system" for building implementation networks that is advocated here is composed of three overlapping methodologies: 1) "Contextual Assessment" - Mapping a Network's Political-Economy; 2) "Stakeholder Analysis & Management" — Understanding Who Should be at the Table and Furthering the Conditions for Cooperation; and, 3) "Joint Visioning" " The Facilitation of Project Planning in a Network Setting. In the chapter on "contextual assessment," the reader will be introduced to a method that uses the political economy framework of Wamsley and Zald to derive an interview instrument for use by a recently appointed network facilitator (somebody appointed the responsibility of "getting something done" cross-organizationally). Combining the political economic framework with other standard qualitative methods, including gaining entrance, selecting interview type, snowballing, and quota sampling, one should be able to assess the existing political and economic environment surrounding a potential implementation network and, further, begin to select from that environment a first set of stakeholders in the budding implementation network. This method will result in a "conceptual mapping" of the environment from which one may begin to select potential resources to build an implementation network. Following that, the reader will be introduced to two methods, that when used together, will allow for the analysis, categorization, and selection of network stakeholders. Taken together, these methods can be referred to as "stakeholder analysis." It is the successful selection and management of these stakeholders that will result in the formation of a young implementation network. Finally, the reader will be introduced to a method of "joint-visioning," a process for working with a set of stakeholders to create a shared understanding of the social/organizational and technical/functional systems required for a new implementation network to function. While the theoretical conception here of joint-visioning is new, the techniques suggested to support this method are probably the least original of the techniques associated with the three methods introduced in this volume (in that they are based on recognized methods of group facilitation). The joint-visioning method proposed here is probably most remarkable for what it is not, corporate strategic planning. A discussion about the problems of adopting corporate strategic planning in the public sector will begin this section, followed by a discussion of why something else, like joint visioning, is probably more appropriate. Each methodology has been constructed from the ground up by appropriating parts of different methodologies that have been advocated in different areas of application. Specifically, methods, approaches, and understandings have been appropriated from the literatures of corporate management, stakeholder analysis, action research, political economy, community facilitation, knowledge engineering and management, and strategic planning. These methods have been combined and modified to better serve as tools for network establishment and management. This methodological system has been developed as much from experience as from scholarly analysis. Accordingly, a case study, one that has directly led to the development of many concepts in this system, will be discussed and used for "real-world" elaboration of the concepts described. Specifically, each of these methods will be accompanied by an in-depth discussion on how it was applied in the "Travel Shenandoah" case study. Benefits, as well as problems with the proposed methods will be highlighted. Where appropriate, possible modifications to a method will be suggested. / Ph. D.

The advent of interactive and humanistic sex robots signifies a shift in the sex technology industry. Where objects such as sex dolls require an imagined personality, sex robots operate through artificial intelligence systems, allowing the user to communicate with the robot and shape its personality more directly. Even as stigmatization and fear revolve around the emergence of sex robots, the technology has implications for social robots and companion technologies. Discourse surrounding sex robots manifests across institutions with stakeholders attempting to guide the industry toward their vision of the future. The sex robot industry remains niche and its cultural impact is unclear; yet, social and legal regulations may have farther-reaching implications. This political-economic study examines how corporate (RealDoll), advocacy (Campaign Against Porn Robots and Prostasia Foundation), and government (local, state, national, and international) stakeholders envision the current and future standing of sex robots and their place in society. The analysis demonstrates the ways stakeholders draw on moral, capitalist, and androcentric language to celebrate or condemn the sex robot industry. This study’s data includes a critical discourse analysis of business and marketing materials, press releases and interviews, ownership details, and government legislation, a total of 442 artifacts. Through this examination, I argue that moralism and absolutism dominate the discourse, while the robots’ sexual functions obfuscate the ramifications of robotic artificial intelligence. Contextualized by broader discourses on technology and feminist inquiry, I additionally argue that sex robots are utilized as a focal point to debate broader issues of child abuse, rape and objectification, sexual privacy, and loneliness. Through ownership and lobbying facets, data reveals interconnections between stakeholder segments, indicating power and influence outside of the sex industry. In particular, Realbotix, the technological avenue of RealDoll, is attempting to expand its bespoke social robot offerings, the Campaign Against Porn Robots and Prostasia continue to lobby U.S. legislators to ban and reduce restrictions respectively, all while U.S. states implement restrictions on childlike sex robots without any regulatory advice on the AI privacy risks. I conclude the study with policy recommendations to clarify Supreme Court precedent and fortify consumer data protections. / Media & Communication