Browsing by Subject "Comparative politics"
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Item Assessing public support of government in democratic countries(2012-12) Shockley, William; Mayer, Lawrence C.; Patterson, Dennis; Murray, GreggA characteristic of democratic citizens is cynicism of their governments. “Critical Citizens” theory accredits this behavior to increased awareness of government performance, but holds that citizens have strong attachments toward democracy. “Critical Citizens” theory has largely unexplained the role of religion and news politics on public support for democracies. This work seeks to explain how religion and news politics affect public support of governments. In doing so I find that religious worship increases attachments toward authority and political leaders, implying that religion increases support of government. Additionally, I find that support of democracy increases the likelihood of news politics consumption, while support for political leaders decreases the likelihood one consumes news politics. These findings contribute to “Critical Citizens” theory by answering how religion and news politics affect public support of government.Item Beyond repair : state-society relations in the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake(2014-12) Sorace, Christian Phillip; Moser, Robert G., 1966-; Hurst, William, 1975-My dissertation offers insight into the political epistemology of the Chinese Communist Party and state on the basis of their activities during the post-2008 Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction. By “political epistemology,” I mean how the Party thinks about the nature of politics, including but not limited to the role of the state in the economy. An important facet of this approach is taking seriously the CCP’s distinctive manner of thinking, writing, and talking about politics that is too often dismissed as empty jargon that means little in post-Mao China. I show how a Maoist conception of politics remains at the bedrock of how the CCP understands its own political identity and actions. Certainly, many of the salient features of Maoism have been discarded, such as the emphasis on class struggle, continuous revolution, and the role of the masses in political movements. Despite these trends toward de-politicization and technocracy, the Party’s confidence in the rationality of its planning apparatus and in its ability to mobilize politically to achieve the ends of market construction and biopolitical social transformation constitutes what I call Maoist neo-developmentalism. Each of my empirical case chapters examines a localized combination of post-disaster reconstruction with a national strategy for long-term, “great leap” development. Thus, each chapter traces how the Party’s plans to capitalize the countryside - by way of urbanization, tourism, and ecology – have become stuck in transitional processes. The spectacular market transitions and transformations envisioned by Party leaders became cycles of state investment in local economies that only function by virtue of continued state involvement. The Party’s massive expenditures of maintaining the appearance of success, however, generated local resentment at perceived waste, indifference, and corruption. Each case chapter shows evidence not so much of social resistance to the state (although of course that happened, too) but an intimate negotiation between state and society of high expectations, broken promises, and frustrations. I argue that these “perforations” deep within the tissue of the state-society relationship only make sense when viewed from the context of a Maoist social contact in which the Party’s legitimacy depends on its perceived ability to serve the people.Item Democratization theories and their applications to Ghana and South Korea(2011-05) Lee, Hyobin; Boone, Catherine; Maclachlan, PatriciaGhana and South Korea have experienced regime changes from politically closed regimes to liberal democracy since their independences from Britain and Japan. This study elaborates on important factors that affect regime shifts in both countries. After reviewing a vast array of literatures, I argue that economic reform and civil society directly influenced democratization in Ghana. Neo-liberal economic reform led by international forces created decentralization and social movements that gave pressures to President Jerry Rawlings to consider running for a democratic presidential election. Social movements from below directly caused the democratization in South Korea. The dictator Chun gave up his power in the face of massive demonstrations of students, labor, and oppositions and so on. Modernization indirectly contributed to democratization with social changes such as increasing level of education and urbanization in both countries. Political culture has affected democratic consolidation rather than democratic transition.Item The political economy of remittances : emigration, social insurance provision, and political behavior in Mexico(2010-08) Germano, Roy; Weyland, Kurt Gerhard; Freeman, Gary P.; Greene, Kenneth F.; Sassen, Saskia; Galbraith, James K.Why do international migrants send money home? What are the implications of these monetary flows for developing countries? Long debated by economists and sociologists, these questions have received very little attention in the political science literature. This dissertation argues, however, that remittances—money sent home or “remitted” by international migrants—have significant implications for the study of politics. My main contention is that international migrants assume a more significant welfare burden when their home government’s commitment to social insurance provision is in decline. Remittances, in other words, flow to compensate non-emigrating citizens for state retrenchment and the absence of a robust welfare state. I argue that this “transnational safety net” makes remittance recipients (RRs) less vulnerable to economic instability than neighbors who do not receive this money. All else equal, RRs should be more contented with their economic circumstances and have fewer economic grievances with which to politicize. The income-stabilizing and insurance effect of remittances, then, should reduce public pressure on the state, leaving RRs less motivated to mobilize against and punish incumbents for a poor economy when public safety nets are weak. Evidence comes from an original survey of 768 Mexican households, field interviews, and time-series data published by the Bank of Mexico. Statistical tests reveal that Mexicans abroad remit more to families that do not receive social benefits and send roughly $2.5 million more home for every $10 million reduction in spending on social programs by the Mexican government. Analyses furthermore reveal that despite being very poor on average, RRs tend to enjoy higher levels of income stability, are less likely to identify an economic matter as “the most important problem facing Mexico,” and make more positive and optimistic assessments of the national economy and their own financial circumstances. In the 2006 Mexican presidential election, I find that RRs were up to 15 percent more likely to stay home on election day at the expense of the primary opposition party and significantly less likely to punish the incumbent party with a vote for either of the major opposition parties if they did vote.Item The power of personality : candidate-centered voting in comparative perspective(2011-05) Slosar, Mary Catherine; Luskin, Robert C.; Shaw, Daron R.; Raul, Madrid L.; Moser, Robert; Greene, Kenneth F.More and more, elections around the world seem to be won or lost on the basis of the candidates’ personal qualities rather than their policies. Despite its prevalence in new and established democracies alike, we still know very little about what explains such candidate-centered voting. This study moves our understanding of this issue by examining variation in candidate-centered voting across individuals and electoral contexts in recent presidential elections in the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. I argue that candidate-centered voting is largely an information problem. At the individual level, I focus on the conditioning role of political sophistication, arguing that voters with higher levels of political sophistication engage in less candidate-centered voting due their increased capacity to manage the more cognitively demanding types of information related to policy and performance. Moving beyond the individual level, I consider how candidate-centered voting may vary across electoral contexts as well. In particular, I consider how the institutionalization and structure of political competition shape the cognitive demands on voters, making it more or less difficult for voters to evaluate candidates on bases other than their personalities. To test these arguments, I estimate models of voters’ electoral utilities and vote choices using electoral survey data from the U.S. (2008), Brazil (2002), and Mexico (2000 and 2006). Overall, the empirical analysis supports my individual-level argument regarding political sophistication’s conditioning role. As political sophistication increases, the dominance of candidate considerations in voters’ electoral decisions tends to decrease. Likewise, comparisons in the level of candidate-centered voting across the elections under study suggest that certain aspects of the institutionalization and structure of political competition may help explain contextual variation in candidate-centered voting.Item The politics of amnesty(2016-08) Navarre, Rachel Amanda; Leal, David L.; Givens, Terri E., 1964-; Freeman, Gary P; Jones, Bryan D; Tichenor, DanielWhat effects policy choice, especially when the policy chosen is widely held to be unpopular? This dissertation aims to answer why and when certain policy solutions are chosen over others by focusing on a specific policy area (immigration) and a specific policy solution (amnesty or regularization of unauthorized migrants). This work argues that narratives put forth by political entrepreneurs are essential in understanding how policy is made. These policy narratives create new interpretations or understandings of political problems by changing how issues are framed. Additionally, by connecting policy “problems” with larger belief systems, politicians and activists can use narratives to widen their coalition and explain why their preferred solution will resolve the “problem.” Quantitative data from the United States and European Union support the hypothesis that demographic, partisan, economic, and country level variables cannot explain immigration policy choice. Qualitative data, obtained from text analysis of debates in the U.S. Congress and Spanish Parliament are used to support the hypothesis that ideas are the missing variable in explaining immigration policy-making. This dissertation connects the immigration and public policy literatures by exploring how facts are presented and connected to existing ideologies via narratives and framing. This dissertation also makes further contributions by incorporating unsupervised content analysis methods into the study of immigration and policymaking. It takes up the challenge to show that content analysis can be a fruitful way to identify ideas and narratives, and when used to categorize text, these categories can then be used in a process tracing approach to trace the development, rise, and fall of specific frames in policy debates.