Mass demographic changes in the ethnic and racial composition of the United States since the 1960s are commonly considered a force driving major transformations in contemporary American politics. In political science, there are longstanding research traditions that examine the political implications of demographic change: how demographic change leads to growing intergroup political contestation over political power and public policies; how demographic changes lead to shifts in the group bases of partisan support; how demographic changes are associated with changes in the demographic composition of politicians and elected officials; and how the changing face of America affects the political responsiveness of elected officials to historically underrepresented but increasingly prominent segments of the population. Despite the proliferation of empirical studies on these topics, numerous causal claims central to broader arguments about the political implications of demographic change deserve greater theoretical and empirical scrutiny. In this dissertation, I make use of novel datasets and methods for descriptive and causal inference to contribute more credible evidence that test these claims and develop new avenues of research.

This dissertation presents the early work of Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula and Fred Lonidier as an attempt to intertwine political and aesthetic practice that was fundamentally distinct from the dominant, contemporaneous models of politicized avant-garde art. Throughout the first half of the 1970s these artists were in constant, close dialogue with one another, and, for the first time, this dissertation attempts to read their work during this period as a shared project. Considering the initial few years of their careers, it is an effort to understand how their practice emerged, and how it set itself apart from predominant forms of Conceptual art, post-Minimalism and institutional critique. In particular, it will explore how these three artists conceived of a relationship between political and aesthetic practice that was not dependent upon a self-reflexive investigation of their own art work's conditions of possibility. Drawing on realist and documentary traditions from the first half of the 20th century, Sekula, Rosler and Lonidier sought to create art that was always related to something beyond itself, developed in relation to the social world in which it existed. These artists neither assumed dependence on a given institutional, discursive formation, nor held out for an absolute escape from the institutions of the art world. Instead, they moved strategically between various locations, various publics and various discourses in a continual attempt to speak intelligibly within those sites most relevant to the political struggles they addressed. In order to understand this strategic movement, it is necessary to read these artists’ works as utterances within momentary, contested discursive fields. As a result, this dissertation will provide close readings of several works through a detailed consideration of the particular situations in which they were created, displayed and received. Whether as flyers handed out at protests or self-consciously gallery friendly photo-text works, every piece will be read as a precise intervention within a specific location. Following this approach, each chapter focuses on a small number of works and reads them within the social and political events they both instigate and enter into, whether those are, as in the first chapter, a public dispute over the nature of art between two academic departments, or, as in the second chapter, the protests against the Vietnam War. Through each of these analyses this dissertation outlines these artists' shared attempt to produce art that only emerges through the discourses into which it enters, but is never entirely home wherever it might find itself. By describing this fundamental premise of Rosler, Sekula and Lonidier's work, this dissertation both seeks to provide a more adequate accounting of this group’s shared project, and an alternative model for conceiving of the relation between political engagement and the post-war avant-garde.

This study uses the analysis of communication practices and strategies to argue for a new understanding of papal power in the years 1050 to 1250. Historians frequently argue that the high medieval papacy increased the scope and effectiveness of its authority through the creation, maintenance, and use of centralized governmental institutions. According to this view, legates, councils, delegated justice, legal codification, and a remarkable production of letters all allowed the bishops of Rome to reach into the far corners of Christendom to shape in profound ways the spiritual, political, and economic trajectories of medieval Europeans. But how effective were those institutions? To what degree was the papacy able to implement policy at the local, national, and international levels? The following study attempts to answer this question by considering the specific communicative mechanisms and strategies that the papacy employed in a variety of policy realms. Four case studies analyze the papacy’s efforts to: 1) resolve the York-Canterbury primacy dispute at the turn of the twelfth century; 2) mobilize political support during the papal schism of 1159; 3) reform the Church in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215; and 4) convene the Council of Rome to fight Emperor Frederick II in 1240. Each case reveals innovations in papal communication practices while simultaneously highlighting key limitations in the papacy’s ability to implement its will. The papacy, once a model of institutional centralization for medieval historians, suddenly appears much less centralized—and, in many cases, much less effective—of an institution than many scholars had led us to believe. This conclusion forces us to rethink what we know about one of the single most important institutions in European history.

This dissertation shows that ideas of science and religion are not transhistorical by presenting a longue durée study of conceptions of science and religion in the Ottoman Empire. I demonstrate that the idea of science(s) was subject to a tectonic change over the course of a few centuries, namely between the early modern and modern period. Even within a specific epoch, conception of science and religion were in no way monolithic, as evidenced by the diversity of approaches to these categories in the early modern period. To point out continuity and change in the ideas of science and religion, I study classifications of sciences in the early modern Ottoman Empire, by comparing two works; one by Yahya Nev‘î and the other by Saçaklızâde Muhammed el-Mar‘aşî. Nev‘î wrote from the context of the court in Istanbul, while Saçaklızâde represented the madrasa environment in an Anatolian province, thus providing a contrast in their orders of knowledge. In addition, the dissertation includes a study of the concept of "jihat al-waḥda" (aspect of unity) of science, as discussed by commentators from the early modern period. After first providing a textual genealogy, I argue that this concept reveals the dominant paradigm of scientific thinking during this period. The last two chapters of the dissertation deal with modern Ottoman history. The third chapter analyzes Ahmed Cevdet Pasha's (d. 1895) translation of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah into the Ottoman Turkish in order to show the shift in the conception of science in the mid-nineteenth century. I demonstrate both continuity and a break between the thought of Ibn Khaldun and Ahmed Cevdet Pasha. In the fourth chapter, I draw upon archival documents, a scientific journal, and a correspondence between two intellectuals namely Fatma Aliye and Ahmed Midhat, to point out that science, religion, and politics were separated as a consequence of state regulations over publications and civil societies together with other institutional reforms and educational policies. The dissertation raises questions about the historiography of science in the modern period, which takes the modern idea of science for granted and projects it back on to the earlier periods. Noting the anachronistic and presentist approach to the early modern period, the dissertation calls for a new kind of historiography that not only goes beyond our modern biases but learns from past experiences by seriously engaging them.

This dissertation consists of three related essays on the motivations and behavior of individual political donors. These essays test theoretical predictions from the campaign finance and political behavior literature using field experiments and a natural experiment, bolstering the causal interpretation of the findings. The first essay reports the results of a field experiment examining the effect of political information on the decision to contribute. In advance of the November 2014 election, postcards with information about the major party candidates for Ohio governor and secretary of state were mailed to nearly 40,000 randomly selected likely donors in Ohio. The messages in these mailings, seven in all, provided factual information regarding campaign fundraising and endorsements, as well as a simple election reminder. Notably, the messages did not include encouragements to donate or partisan cues. The experimental results show that partisan donors respond to electoral threats as well as electoral opportunities under different conditions. Donors are more likely to give to the stronger candidate when they receive a simple election reminder with no fundraising information. But when donors see which candidates are ahead and behind in total fundraising, donors give more to the candidate who is behind while donations to the candidate with more money are unaffected. The results show that donors respond to objective information about fundraising weakness in order to help their preferred candidate. The second essay (co-authored) uses experimental designs to explore two possible paths to expanding the number of small donors. First, we examine whether nonpartisan appeals, of the kind that nonprofit groups or governments could use, expand the donor base. The results suggest that one type of nonpartisan message represents a promising fundraising appeal: encouraging subjects to contribute in order to keep elected officials focused on policy issues of importance to the potential donor. Second, we determine whether informing the public about existing incentives for making small contributions increases the number and size of contributions. We report the results of two field experiments that randomly provided information to likely donors about municipal- and state-level incentives for making political contributions. Across the two experiments, we find little evidence that information about contribution incentives increases giving. The third essay examines the effect of presidential political advertisements on contributing to the presidential campaigns of the major party candidates. I examine the effect of aggregate political advertising on aggregate contributing at the media zone level, and also estimate the effects of each party’s advertisements separately on giving to the party’s presidential campaign. I find that aggregate advertisements may have an effect on aggregate giving, but this effect is substantively small (much smaller than previous scholars have found) and inconsistent across different model specifications. In addition, I find that examining aggregate amounts may mask differences between the parties. During the 2008 election, Democratic presidential advertisements had a small, but detectable, positive effect on giving to the Democratic campaign. By contrast, Republican advertisements did not significantly increase giving to the Republican campaign in 2008.

Since the end of the Cold War, the international system has become more cosmopolitan, communicative, and connected. These changes have taken place against a backdrop of intensifying processes of globalization, the unevenness of which has helped redefine possible fields of political action. This dissertation offers an interpretation of how we might go about understanding and representing the intercultural dynamics and forms of politics that constitute the transnational Tibet Movement.

This dissertation, “Group Identity in American Politics: A Multidimensional Approach to Study and Measurement,” offers novel measurement strategies and theoretic insight toward the study of group politics. My research examines how best to explain group political preferences in a society that is becoming more culturally pluralistic while at the same time experiencing an increase in within-group heterogeneity. The first chapter frames the dissertation as an exploration group politics with both critical and positive implications. I outline the intellectual lineage of theories in group politics, addressing the tension between research in political behavior which often links behavioral outcomes to fixed categorical identity variables, and research in political psychology which often treats identity as fluid and malleable. I argue that a full understanding of relationship between an individual’s self-identification and sense of shared outcomes with the identity group requires us to understand the different ways individuals may self-categorize and link their identities to political attitudes and behavior. In chapter one I introduce the type-predictor framework, a theoretical contribution that rests on the notion that it is not ascriptive identity that we should think of as being tied to particular trends in attitudes and behaviors, but the way individuals understand their relationship to group identity when group membership becomes individually salient. I argue that different types of individuals may process group consciousness in a variety of different ways when group membership becomes salient at the individual level, leading them to express different conclusions about the notion of shared fate with in-group members. The type-predictor typology consists of five “types” that describe how individuals self-categorize (non-affiliation, abstract conceptualization, non-conformist identification, multiple identification, and strong identification) that correspond with four “predictors” of how an individual will conceptualize and respond to questions about group consciousness (disassociation, group membership, group identity, and group attachment). My typology clarifies the theoretical discussion by providing a framework that considers the subjective nature of the relationship between demographic characteristics and their political correlates, which can vary by groups. Drawing on a series of 40 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, the second chapter of this thesis presents support for the type-predictor framework, and demonstrates how individuals link their sense of identity to their political attitudes and behaviors when given the opportunity to explain the process in their own words. One contribution of my work has been to provide an analysis of a linked fate measure based on an open-ended question that allows interview subjects to respond in reference to the group with which they primarily self-identify rather than having subjects answer the linked fate question in reference to an ascribed social category such as race or gender. The linked fate measure is frequently cited to explain the seemingly homogenous political attitudes and behaviors of African Americans and has been used increasingly in the past two decades to argue for a sense of shared outcomes leading to political solidarity among other groups such as Hispanics and Latinos, women, and the LBGT community. The question asks, “Do you think what happens to [people in your group] will have something to do with what happens in your life?” My interviews reveal that people interpret the linked fate question quite differently, with a wide degree of variation the range of responses. These findings are consistent with existing empirical research showing consistent statistical support for linked fate, yet substantial variation between and even within groups. Moreover, the open-ended responses to group consciousness questions in my interviews provide support for the type-predictor framework. I find examples of all five “types” and all four “predictors” in the typology, and the relationships between types and predictors are consistent with the directions I expected. Thus, my analysis of the interview data emphasizes the theoretical underpinning of the type-predictor framework: it is not ascriptive identity that we should think of as being tied to particular trends in attitudes and behaviors, but rather the way individuals understand their relationship to group identity when group membership becomes individually salient. In other words, among the interview sample, a sense of shared outcomes is related to the different degrees of group consciousness individuals may hold at the individual level depending on the group categories with which they do (or do not) self-identify. The third thesis chapter further explores the multidimensionality of identity by using survey data to examine how group identity matters to individuals across policy areas, with particular attention paid to the politics of immigration and welfare policy. In the 2015 Identity Measurement Survey (IMS) (N=3,010) I introduce a point allocation system for measuring identity that allows subjects to allocate a fixed number of “identity points” to a number of socially relevant identity categories and compares this new approach with conventional survey methods by randomly assigning respondents to one of six methods of identity measurement and assessing the differences in policy-related attitudes across the six randomly assigned groups and across identity categories. Existing empirical work relies almost universally on a set of fixed, categorical measures that fail to reflect the multidimensionality many scholars associate with racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and other forms of identity. The identity point allocation system allows survey respondents to identify with multiple group identities and to weight the strength of their association across groups. In addition to racial categories, the identity point allocation design includes class, religion and gender as categories to which respondents allocate points, and the random assignment of individuals to different measurement conditions allows us to understand how different approaches to measurement may reveal different outcomes on important identity-related questions. The design also allows us to explore whether the attitudes observed when individuals select a primary identity are different from the attitudes we observe when using conventional measures of demographic correlation. Data from the IMS reveal that attitudes across policy areas differ according to the primary identity offered by respondents, and differ for some groups from what we might observe using the conventional “checked box” measure of ascriptive group identity. In particular, individuals who primarily identify as white, male, or Protestant consistently stuck out as having distinctive views from the population average, but also as having stronger views than what we would observe under conventional correlation between ascriptive categorization and attitudinal outcomes. Those who ascriptively identified as Protestant, male, or as a white person are most likely to have colder feelings toward immigrants and more conservative views toward providing welfare than people who more strongly associate with other groups. These attitudinal differences were even more pronounced when the analysis considered policy views according to the primary identity offered by respondents rather than through ascriptive categorization alone. These results underscore the opportunities afforded by alternative measurement strategies to reveal additional information about the links between identity and expressed policy attitudes when we allow individuals to tell us which identities matter most to them. Taken together, the chapters of this dissertation provide perspective on individual thresholds for self-identification, and offer a novel measurement strategy to understand how individuals subjectively relate to group identities. Continued work will shed light on the relationships between individuals, their subjective identities, and the empirical correlates of identity such as inequality, intergroup conflict and violence, coalitional politics, and descriptive representation. The implications of these, to be sure, are not limited to the study of American politics.

This dissertation studies a critical turn in Southern European discourses on urban form, one that shaped new approaches to political engagement in architecture and urbanism in the 1970s. Beginning in the 1960s, a group of left-leaning architects and intellectuals in Italian academia, concerned with the effects of speculative development on urban populations, theorized a new political approach to the city based on critical histories of urban form. I argue that this discourse on urban form carried an “historical imperative”—a demand to analyze the history of a city prior to any plan or project. Essential to this imperative was the idea that the history of modernity, in its processes of development and social relations, was inscribed in urban form. Accessing this knowledge via urban analysis meant accessing tools to reposition the architectural profession and critically engage with the development of the city. This study examines the discourses on urban form in the context of the Spanish and Portuguese transition to democracy, and how Iberian architects translated and deployed the central concepts of typology and urban morphology toward democratic processes such as decentralization, social preservation, and urban rights. While the history of modern architecture and politics has been typically associated with visionary utopias and state technocracy, this dissertation challenges this perspective by concentrating on the translation of discourse into the reform of professional institutions. In a circular movement between Italian theories—of Carlo Aymonino, Aldo Rossi, and Manfredo Tafuri, among others—and their Iberian translations, this study traces four institutional fronts reshaped by this critical approach to urban form: the reform of urban pedagogy and planning led by Manuel Solà-Morales in Barcelona; the introduction of typology in the preservation of historical centers; the creation of a decentralized housing program in the Portuguese SAAL process; and the revision of modern architectural historiography by Ignasi Solà-Morales, Josep Quetglas, and Víctor Perez Escolano. Interweaving the histories of Italian and Iberian architectural discourse in an expanded intellectual map, this study offers a critical reflection on the intersection of conceptual and institutional frameworks of architecture, politics, and urban form, and repositions architecture in relation to democratic processes pertaining the city.

This dissertation investigates how economic expertise influences development governance by examining how state economists establish methods for decision-making in global development finance. It contributes to debates over expert power by taking a science studies approach to address two problems in existing theories and accounts of experts. First, social reformers, heterodox planning theorists, and development critics from both the left and the right treat rationality and politics asymmetrically. When experts fail, politics has triumphed. When experts succeed, the credit goes to rationality, not politics. Second, within this asymmetrical approach, investigations and explanations of expert power neglect a principal conduit of expert influence: their methods. This dissertation turns the focus to economists’ efforts to establish their methods as governing rationales and the effects these methods engender. Doing so allows us to approach particular forms of state rationality such as neoliberalism or managerialism not as processes of depoliticization, of intellectual rationality prevailing over political interests and values, but as explicit political accomplishments with both the power to bring about political effects and the susceptibility to being challenged. State economists’ efforts to establish three paradigmatic development economic methods in particular—governance indicators, growth diagnostics, and randomized controlled trials—and these methods’ effects on power relations, decision-making, and the distribution of resources were assessed using an embedded case study design of their use for decision-making in administering a new development finance fund, the United States Millennium Challenge Account. A mixed methods approach using interviews, documents, and various datasets found that economists could not realize the power of their intellectual rationality without exercising power thought to be the reserve of politicos. Economists had to employ various strategies of power both to gain autonomy from bureaucratic authorities and overcome opposition from expert groups holding alternative rationalities. This involved enrolling bystanders and opponents in their entrepreneurial efforts to establish methods. The more opposition economists faced, the more power they had to exercise and allies they had to enroll. Once enrollment was successful, economists’ status was elevated and their methods became indispensable to particular decision-making processes. These new ways of making decisions introduced different biases that elevated economists’ concerns, objectives, and ways of knowing. They also impacted the distribution of development finance in ways that exacerbated inequality in at least the short to medium term. This dissertation’s focus on economists’ political work and methods has implications for planning practice because it opens up new political possibilities. Rather than treating state expertise and public participation as antagonistic, zero-sum confrontations, planners can pursue democratic values by both “opening up the state” and “getting inside” methods. If orthodox economists had to overcome opposition from groups of opposing experts with competing rationalities then other experts can likewise use political strategies to establish their methods as governing rationales. Even in situations where this is not possible or desirable, understanding methods’ political effects can instigate reflective practice and possible change.

This dissertation argues that a particular—and often overlooked—strand of natural law theory played an essential role in arguments for the secularization of political power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Between the start of the Protestant Reformation (1517) and the English Restoration (1660), European conceptions of political and legal authority underwent a series of sweeping changes. Among the most drastic of these changes was the secularization of the idea of civil authority, which consisted of three developments. First, the legitimacy of civil sovereigns was no longer dependent on religious qualifications. Heretics and pagans could hold legitimate civil authority over Christian subjects. Second, civil authority came to be seen as the product of human agency rather than divine will alone. Kings were placed on their thrones by their subjects and were thus accountable to the communities they governed. Third, civil jurisdiction was limited to the pursuit and enforcement of temporal goods: civil peace, personal security, and the public virtues necessary for these ends. Civil sovereigns no longer had the right to determine citizens’ religious, spiritual, or supernatural obligations. My dissertation demonstrates that these three developments were made possible by the philosophical framework of natural law, which was deployed by both Catholic and Protestant political thinkers of this period.