▼ While several studies have explored the impact of constituency opinion on representative behavior, few studies have adequately engaged the concept of subconstituency as first posited in Fenno (1978). His elaboration of the district as “a nest of concentric circles” provides a useful construct for thinking about how members can (and often do) sustain different relationships with different constituency subgroups. Relying on one of the few data resources available with sufficient sample sizes from each state to explore these ideas – the Senate Election Study – this study divides the district population into groups based on level of partisanship and income and investigates the influence of constituent opinion from these subgroups on Senator ideology. Though it is a closer representation of the concentric circles analogy presented by Fenno, the results of the partisanship model indicates that a Senator’s co-partisans are not any more represented than at-large district residents. The income model suggests that Senators better reflect the opinions of middle- and high-income constituents, while low-income opinion is largely ignored by Senators of both parties. Assessment of opinion differences across these different subgroups indicates that disparities in representation found for some citizens may be attenuated by a common opinion shared with groups that are more represented. Advisors/Committee Members: Volden, Craig.

Advisors/Committee Members: Odegard, Peter H.

▼ The role of scientific knowledge is often viewed instrumentally: science serves the interests of political actors. In a historical analysis of international politics I argue that scientific ideas are no mere means to ends because they have have transformed the goals and values of states and international organizations. Since the 16th century, experts and social scientists have imported what I call the “classical model of science” into international political institutions. This created pressure for changes in the means and ends of political discourses that privileged rationalist and modernist goals. The unintended naturalization of scientific values and goals poses serious problems for policy effectiveness, organizational learning, accountability, democratic control, and conceptualizing basic human needs. These problems pervade the world of global public policy. Why do scientific methods surreptitiously change the values and ends of political institutions? I argue that argumentation and communication in the everyday life of political institutions drives a discursive process by which means constrain and shape ends. Experts and social scientists import scientific concepts which alter the way the institutions can represent and intervene in reality. Scientific representations are naturalized when they are connected to cosmological concepts such as what the universe is made of and how to achieve objective knowledge. I find that normatively problematic naturalization is more likely to happen when institutions empower like-minded experts who favor abstract, calculable representations of reality. I begin my analysis before the emergence of modern science and trace the rise of scientific ideas through four case studies: power politics in early modern Europe (1550-1750), British colonialism (1750-1950), economic development in the World Bank (1950-2000), and peacebuilding in the United Nations (1990-2010). I conclude that the rise of scientific ideas supports growth oriented policies rooted in narratives of scientific and technological progress. While the causes of the growth imperative are complex, challenges to growth oriented policies depend on new policy tools rooted in alternative scientific and non-scientific discourses. Advisors/Committee Members: Wendt, Alexander.

▼ This study explores the phenomenon of party interaction in a new democracy. It seeks to provide a systematic understanding of the nature of the Indonesian party system created since 1999. It is widely accepted that a free election with more than one participant is a primary indication of a competitive party system. This study goes beyond the electoral arena to see whether political parties maintain a degree of competition after the election. The premise of the study is that parties may exhibit a different pattern of interaction in another arena. Competitiveness may disappear once the parties leave the election and enter a new arena of interaction. To capture this possibility, party interaction is examined in three arenas: electoral, governmental, and legislative. The key concept of the study, cartelization, is adapted from Katz and Mair's concept of cartel party. In their original application, they use this concept to describe the emergence of a new type of party. This study argues, the concept of cartel should be applied at the system level. Cartelization is thus understood as a collective decision made by parties to give up their ideological and programmatic differences. It is the opposite of competition. The primary finding of the study is that party competition ended after the election, and was followed by the creation of a cartel. The origin of the cartelized party system was the parties' collective dependence on rent-seeking to meet their financial needs. This, in turn, created a situation in which parties' fates were tied together as a collectivity. Their survival as individual parties is thus defined by their ability to maintain the existence of the cartel. This study offers a new context in which to evaluate the importance of electoral competitiveness for understanding the nature of party systems. It gives us a more complex framework in which to assess their contribution to the development of new democracies. Finally, it goes beyond Katz and Mair by specifying the source of cartelization in the state's non-budgetary funds, which encourage political parties to perform illegal rent-seeking activities because these funds are not intended for financing the parties. Advisors/Committee Members: Liddle, R. William.

▼ The president’s agenda and Congress’s support for the president’s programs are key drivers in American public policy and electoral politics. The study of presidential-legislative relations, however, lacks a broad and rigorous treatment of the normal legislative process, from initial presidential position taking on votes before the House to final veto override votes cast by Congress. This dissertation broadly examines two stages of the normal legislative process, presidential position-taking and House support for the president’s positions, using a data set consisting of more than 3,200 House votes representing the first terms of the Carter through Clinton administrations. The dissertation suggests that three temporal contexts—regime time; political, or intra administration time; and policymaking or discrete time—prominently shape the politics of presidential position taking and legislative support for the president. My analysis then employs a series of uniquely constructed variables to account for the personal and external context within which the president legislates and attempts to persuade members of the House. By doing so, this dissertation tests the degree to which the legislative or executive branch dominates the policy process. Drawing from a data set that treats presidential position-taking—and subsequent legislative action—as discrete decisions and using a series of binary cross-sectional probit models, the dissertation finds strong evidence suggesting that the waxing and waning of the president’s political capital over regime and political time is among the most critical factors to consider when examining legislative-executive relations. These findings call into question past analyses of presidential-congressional relationships that fail to account for the dynamic nature of presidential and/or legislative dominance of the policy process. The dissertation concludes by discussing directions for subsequent research. Advisors/Committee Members: Box-Steffensmeier, Janet M.

Advisors/Committee Members: Nemzer, Louis.

▼ Why are there different forms of ethnic violence? Why do violent actors choose to persecute ethnic others in different ways? Although the literature on ethnic violence is vast, there is precious little attention given to the question of why particular acts of ethnic violence take the forms they do. This paper proposes the "disaggregation" of the concept "ethnic violence" into 4 discrete kinds- Symbolic Violence, Lynching, Pogrom, and Massacre. Having established these four kinds, the question becomes what causes them, and I choose the case of contemporary skinhead violence in the Russian Federation as a place to test them.In the Literature Review, I then substantiate the claim that this question has attracted little attention but still draw testable implications from current works. Of particular note is Horowitz (2004) work on the deadly ethnic riot, which provides the foundation for my theory. Chapter 3 then recounts my ethnographic fieldwork with skinhead gangs in Moscow and develops what I term the "Theory of Ethnic Criminality." With this theory, I argue that skinheads use different forms of ethnic violence against different minorities because they hold them responsible for different crimes. Just as the law punishes acts proportionately, then, so too do skinhead vigilantes. Chapter four tests this theory and its competitors against the data of recorded skinhead attacks. The test reveals a characteristic association of particular forms of violence with certain ethnic groups. Jews are characteristically attacked using Symbolic Violence, Africans using Lynching, Caucasians using Pogrom, and Gypsies using Massacre. To be sure, the relationships are not determinative but the characteristic nature of skinhead attacks is developed through the qualitative analysis of particular cases of violence. The question thus becomes why skinheads use particular forms of violence against these particular ethnic groups. Chapter 5 then tests the theory and other possible explanations that link ethnicity and particular forms of violence with a content analysis of literature taken from skinhead and neo-Nazi websites and bookstores. I follow this by testing the theory and its competitors against interviews with skinhead perpetrators of ethnic violence conducted in 2006 and 2008 both in-person and through the internet. Both tests demonstrate that the Theory of Ethnic Criminality out-performs its rivals. The final test in the chapter is a content analysis of the Russian mass media to see how widespread the rightist worldview is. Chapter 6 then tests the generalizability of the theory with two case studies. The first is of the Meshketian Turks in Krasnodar Krai, where Cossacks have been "policing" a migrant community since the fall of the Soviet Union. The other is the Anti-Georgian campaign of 2006 undertaken by the Russian government against ethnic Georgians in Russia as retaliation for the arrest of Russian diplomats in Tblisi in 2006. In this case the state undertook purges of ethnic Georgians similar to the anti-Semitic campaign of 1951-52. Once again, the theory performs well promising wider application to other circumstances. Chapter 7 concludes. Advisors/Committee Members: Hopf, Theodore.

Advisors/Committee Members: Alger, Chadwick.

▼ This work was initially begun with the purpose of surveying Syria's civil upheaval of 1979-1982, the fundamentalist rebellion of the Muslim Brethren against the professedly progressive regime of 'Alawi president Hafez Assad, an episode which exploded in the aftermath of a decade of uncustomary stability in that turbulent country. It was to be a simple case study in comparative development, an example of the dialectic dichotomy between tradition and change using religion and sectarianism as the variables and focusing on the organizational level of rebels and incumbants. Four years and several changes of heart later, the study has taken on a different character. As the work progressed I grew wary of the notion of Islam as an integral part of tradition, a carry-over from a struggling past and an obstructive wall before the diffusion of modernization. The popularity of Islamic fundamentalism (political, redemptionist, or absolutistist Islam, however one might wish to identify it, as distinguished from moral guidelines and values) since the late sixties has posed critical questions concerning the process of modernization and concerning the sanctity of the theoretical models relating to it. On one hand it has indicated a "possible" reversal in the mechamics of development, if one accepts the premise that Islam – as tradition – is the anti- thesis of modernity. On the other hand, it has indicated a radical disenchantment on the part of a relevant social bloc, with the concepts, values, and processes involved in modernization. I have therefore decided to investigate the relevance of Islamic fundamentalism in terms of the country's socio- political culture. As it stands, this thesis argues that fundamental is a voluntary inovation and a cultural response to the process of socio-political development in Syria (and Middle East in general) over the past century, and not a mere carry over from bygone traditional era nor a parochial political phenomenon by fringe group in an otherwise conventional world. The two principle concepts here are dominant culture and alienation. By dominant culture, I mean that continuum of life styles, values, moral codes, attitudes, perceptions, and motivations that delineate the common social makeup of a particular community. As a continuum, dominant culture is the development and assimilation of contemporary and millenuum themes, indigenous and extragenous to any society put into contact with another. In other words, I am implicitly rejecting the notion of a "modern" (rational society following the model of the West) and "traditional" (metaphysical society as it still struggles to stand in the East) dichotomy. As for alienation, the concept has originated in Europe, notably in Germany with the Frankfurt school, to address the social mood of post-industrial societies since the 70's. The argument advanced by Jurgen Habermas and others is that the economic and political organization of post-industrial society has penetrated into the minute details of personal and informal social life. The restructuring of social relations in accordance with ever- expanding economic, technocratic, regulative, and juristical modes of organization has resulted in alienation that expresses itself in the cultural sphere. The symptoms of this alienation are depoliticization, withdrawal, ruthlessness, and disorientation, and general break down in the legitimacy of the social order. This is reflected in the disarray of the established forms of social and political expression and participation, and in the proliferation – and disarray – of "new" groups and forms of expression (e. g. the counter-culture, the Greens, etc.). Though far from advanced capitalism, fundamentals in the Middle East represents a similar alienation. It expresses societies frustration and disenchantment with its elites, with its organization, with its development over the course of the past century, and with its place in the world and its place in time. This is reflected in the theoretical tennants of fundamentalism which completely negate the legitimacy of the social order and not only the legitimacy of its elites, and in the movements success – irrespective of merit – in moblizing and dominating all forms of social and political expression outside officially sanctioned structures since the late sixties. In a nutshell, what this thesis stands for is an investigation into a particular society's "state of mind", so to speak, an analysis of its collective ambitions and designs, of the pressures imposed upon it by the implementation or the misimplementation of those designs, and of its reaction and response to its own performance through it all. The body of this work is divided into three parts. Part I, titled, "Socio-Politics of Syria," describes the social platform on which Syrian politics since independence have been staged. Part II, "Social Development under the Ba'ath," is devided into two chapters. The first elucidates the evolution and ascendency of the contemporary Syrian political elites. The second analyzes the impact of the Ba'ath's intervention into the country's socio-economic infrastructure and its political performance, which I shall be arguing had a regressive retraditionalizing and alienating effect upon the dominant Syrian culture. The expression of this alienation is to be found in the surge of Islamic fundamentalism, the subject matter of the Part III, in turn divided into three chapters. The first traces the ideological development of Syria's dominant Islamic movement (the Muslim Brethren) from a literal socialist orientation not radically different from the Ba'ath before 1967, to an autonomist and absolutist demagoguery that became the dominant mode of political expression and opposition to the status quo after 1967. The second chapter is an historical narrative of the events that culminated in the armed confrontation between the Ba'ath regime and its Islamic antagonists since the late seventies, the most vocal expression of .social dissaffection and social alienation known to Syrian society since the fifties. The third and final chapter adresses the social significance of Islamic fundamentalism and its implications with respect to Syrian (and Middle Eastern) socio-political development. Advisors/Committee Members: Herrmann, Richard.

▼ The study of Supreme Court decision making has been heavily influenced by the attitudinal model, which contends that justices’ decisions are dominated by their personal policy preferences. While scholars differ in their acceptance of the attitudinal model, most assume that policy preferences exhibit a uniform impact across all situations in which justices make decisions. This assumption has allowed scholars to make broad generalizations about justices’ behavior, but my dissertation argues that there exists systematic variation, or heterogeneity, in the impact of policy preferences that can be explained theoretically and tested empirically. The goal of the dissertation is to relax this uniformity assumption in order to identify and explain the extent to which the impact of justices’ policy preferences on their choices varies across different situations. Using a psychologically-oriented framework, I develop a theory specifying the mechanisms—-attitude strength and accountability—-that explain variation in the preference-behavior relationship. I posit that situational factors associated with each mechanism influence the magnitude of preference-based behavior. Employing a multilevel modeling framework, I execute three sets of empirical analyses. In Chapter 3, I test whether hypothesized case-level factors within the Court’s immediate environment have shaped preference-based behavior for portions of the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts. The results provide uniform support for some of the hypotheses across all three Court eras, uniform rejection for others, and mixed support for others. In Chapter 4, I examine the degree to which external strategic considerations—-public opinion and the preferences of the other branches of government—-shape preference-based behavior. The results reveal that public mood exhibits an effect contrary to expectations and ideological consensus within Congress and between Congress and the President is capable, under certain conditions, of constraining the magnitude of preference-based behavior. In Chapter 5, I test the impact of precedent-related legal considerations on the preference-behavior relationship. The results reveal that legal considerations are capable of shaping the magnitude of preference-based behavior on the Court. The theory and findings contribute to the literature by underscoring the idea that the preference-behavior relationship on the Court is shaped by the varying situations that confront the justices. Advisors/Committee Members: Baum, Lawrence.

▼ All political leaders represent the political authority of the state and are committed to state sovereignty. Yet some are also moved by a sense of perceived international legal obligation and defer to international legal rules and institutions. Why do some politicians develop a sense of legal obligation and defer to international law while others do not? This dissertation seeks to explain the psychological logic of legal obligation. Legal obligation entails a tension between commitment to the sovereign authority of the state and deference to international law, and imposes psychological “sovereignty costs” upon politicians. I explain the psychological logic of legal obligation by analyzing the effect of international superordinate identification on the resolution of this tension. My central claim is that political leaders’ degree of international identification critically shapes their sense of legal obligation by affecting the perceived legitimacy of international law’s authority. I argue that international identification, through the causal mechanism of reference group membership, prompts politicians to re-conceptualize their countries as members of the international community rather than view statehood separate from membership in the society of states. International identification helps actors assimilate state-concept into the prototype of international community member, shift their understandings of the state’s legitimate duties to the international level, and associate sovereignty with recognized member status rather than with supreme decision-making authority. As a result of these transformations, international identification increases the perceived legitimacy of international law’s authority, influences how politicians process the psychological “sovereignty costs” involved in legal obligation, and thus conditions actors’ ability to reconcile commitment to sovereignty with deference to international law. Therefore, I argue that the variation in individual levels of legal obligation is created by the strength of international identification. High international identifiers view deference to international law as a responsibility of membership in the international community, and thus could balance sovereignty with deference with relative ease, leading them to form a strong sense of legal obligation. Low international identifiers perceive deference as loss of sovereign capacity, and thus lack a viable sense of legal obligation. I also analyze the relationship between legal obligation and compliance. I posit that a strong sense of legal obligation strengthens politicians’ compliance resolve by acting as a self-imposed constraint and by heightening their sensitivity to social pressure to uphold international law. Therefore, legal obligation increases an actor’s propensity to favor compliance even when compliance is costly. Employing survey and experimental methods, I test for the effect of international identification on the degree of legal obligation as well as examine the direct influence of legal obligation on compliance preferences. I evaluate my hypotheses both in the context of European Union law and international law. Using data from an original survey of German Parliamentarians and laboratory experiments, and employing quantitative methods of analysis, I find a systematic relationship between international identification and legal obligation strength. I further discover that a strong sense of legal obligation raises the threshold of compliance cost tolerance and increases compliance resolve. Advisors/Committee Members: Herrmann, Richard K.

▼ This dissertation identifies bureaucratic discretion  – agents' leeway in making subjective determinations about when and how rules apply  – as a primary source of uncertainty that deters long-term investors by undermining the predictability of firms' regulatory environment. Using a principal-agent framework, I argue that where regulatory bureaucrats exercise greater discretion in interpreting and applying laws, economic actors experience greater uncertainty about how those policies will be put into practice. This unpredictability deters investment by making it difficult for economic actors to predict how the regulatory environment will affect their projects' future returns and costs. In arguing that bureaucratic discretion can be a source of uncertainty for investors, my argument challenges an existing literature based upon studies within developed democracies that emphasize the economic benefits of insulating state actors, such as bureaucrats, from the pressures of the political arena. Faced with this apparent conflict, I provide a theoretical framework for explaining why bureaucratic discretion might create more uncertainty in some locations than in others. Arguing that bureaucratic discretion should generate greater or lesser uncertainty depending upon the broader institutional context in which it is granted, I call attention to one particular conditioning factor: the level of political competition. I argue that political competition makes policy application more predictable by making politicians more responsive to constituents' concerns about bureaucratic discretion and by spreading the costs of monitoring bureaucrats across non-state actors and supporting institutions. In contrast, economic actors bear the full brunt of regulatory uncertainty in politically-uncompetitive regions  – investors face more unpredictable behavior from discretionary bureaucrats and fewer formal channels for handling disputes that may arise. I develop this argument by examining private investment across the regions of the Russian Federation. Using a survey of Russian firm managers (Frye 2006), I find that firm managers who perceive bureaucrats to have high discretion are less likely to plan fixed-capital investments for the immediate future, ceteris paribus. In addition, I rely on qualitative evidence from field interviews with Russian firm managers, business association leaders, and policy experts to provide insight into exactly how uncertainty over bureaucrats' application of regulatory laws shapes firms' decisions about where and how to invest. After finding that, on average, discretion corresponds with reduced incentives for firms to invest, I merge the firm-level survey data with regional data on political competition to demonstrate that the negative relationship between discretion and investment is most pronounced in regions of Russia where surrounding institutions limit political competition. Among firms that perceive bureaucrats to have high discretion, those located in politically-uncompetitive regions have a much lower probability of investing than their counterparts in regions with high political competition. Additional analyses bolster confidence that these results do arise via the theory's proposed causal mechanisms; in the final empirical chapter, I find evidence supporting the link between political competition on the one hand and increased government responsiveness and better-behaved bureaucrats on the other. Advisors/Committee Members: Nooruddin, Irfan.

▼ This dissertation seeks to explain why international investment agreements, despite being created with the same purposes and functions in mind, often display important variation in their degree of legalization. I posit that such variation exists because legalization creates a trade-off - between making credible commitments to foreign investors and retaining autonomous control over investment policies - that governments choose to resolve differently. Therefore, to explain the legalization of investment agreements, I develop a theory which explains how governments resolve the credibility-autonomy trade-off, leading them to conclude agreements with varying levels of legalization. My core argument is that governments' willingness to submit to extensive constraints on their policy autonomy is shaped powerfully by their time horizons. Governments with long time horizons prize having greater autonomy to modify policies that shape the effect that foreign investment has on their economies in response to shifts in economic and political conditions that can occur over time. Governments with shorter time horizons, on the other hand, do not anticipate being in power long into the future and therefore are less concerned about maintaining greater policy freedom. Therefore, I hypothesize that when BITs are signed by governments with long time horizons, their level of legalization will be calibrated to promote greater policy autonomy than when they are concluded by governments with short time horizons. In addition, I argue that domestic political and institutional variables such as regime type, party institutionalization, and autocratic regime structure are critical in framing leaders' time horizons, and thus establish a theoretical link between domestic politics and the legalization of international investment institutions. To evaluate my argument, I use original data on the design features of a random sample of 346 bilateral investment treaties (BITs). Using this data, I construct original measures of the degree of legalization with respect to its three dimensions - obligation, delegation and precision. Using quantitative methods of analysis, I find a robust relationship between the time horizons of governments and the degree of legalization of the BITs they conclude. Specifically, governments with long time horizons are more likely to conclude BITs at a level of legalization that promotes greater policy autonomy. In the case of obligation and precision, this holds with respect to net importers of dyadic FDI, and in the case of delegation, I find that the time horizons of net exporters display a statistically stronger relationship with legalization. These results hold across regime types and are robust to controlling for selection into BITs and a range of control variables. Advisors/Committee Members: Thompson, Alexander.

▼ Political interest (the degree to which citizens profess awareness of, are curious about, or pay attention to politics) is an essential topic in the study of democratic participation; however, many assumptions about political interest remain unexamined. Some of these assumptions deal with the impact of race on interest in politics. One way to study the effect of race is to observe differences in expressions of political interest among racial groups. This dissertation, therefore, uses public opinion surveys to compare the level of political interest between African Americans (or “Blacks”) and Anglo-Americans (or “Whites”). First, my research considers the conceptualization and measurement of political interest. Second, I analyze the impact of race on political interest as a dependent variable. Finally, my dissertation examines interest in politics as a racialized independent variable predicting political action. The results from the analyses point to intriguing racial differences in political interest. Chapter 2 examines the effect of subtle changes in questionnaire design on the interpretation of political interest over time. I find that such changes do not bias interest trends as much as the experimental literature suggests, and I devote the remainder of my dissertation to examining racial differences in the amount of political interest shown by Blacks and Whites. By analyzing interest levels over time, Chapter 3 reveals that Whites tend to be more interested in politics than Blacks are. This racial gap in political interest is attributable to societal-level shifts in racial tolerance. In Chapter 4, I study the interaction of race and political interest and its effect on political behavior. I find that race determines the strength of the relationship between political interest and political participation. Specifically, the link between interest and participation is stronger for Whites than it is for Blacks. Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation by discussing the implications of these findings for our understanding of race as a central concept in American politics, for the future of political interest scholarship, and for contemporary debates over how best to mobilize an allegedly apathetic society. Advisors/Committee Members: Weisberg, Herbert F.

Advisors/Committee Members: Hermann, Charles F.

▼ There is very little empirical research completed on the connection of rap music to ideology. Similarly, extensive research on rap and gender or Black Nationalist ideology and gender is also lacking. Research on rap music focuses on various aspects of rap qualitatively and quantitatively. These studies have included topics as wide as rap as a form of information exchange, the psychological effects of rap on perceptions of women, and the effects of rap on propensity for violent behavior. However, the quantitative research on the affects of rap on political attitude formation or acceptance is very limited.This dissertation broadens the current research by considering the impact of political rap music on the acceptance and support of Black Nationalist ideology. This dissertation examines if political rap has an impact on the support of Black Nationalism while exploring the differences of this acceptance between gender and other demographic characteristics. This study utilizes a multi-method approach combining experimental research and survey data. Using data from the 1993-1994 National Black Politics Study, the findings demonstrate a relationship between exposure to rap and support of Black Nationalist ideology. Specifically, these results display that those who listen to rap have a higher significant relationship with Black Nationalist than those who do not listen to rap. Overall, there exist relationships between support of Black Nationalist sentiment age, listening to rap, and gender. Experiments demonstrate causal relationships between political rap music and the formation of Black Nationalist attitudes. Specifically, Chapter Four details that listening to political rap lead to increased support of Black Nationalism compared to listening to pop music, mainstream rap or listening to no music at all. The study also includes content analysis that illustrates specific nationalist messages that displayed in political rap lyrics. This research expands the knowledge of public opinion and continues the debate about the voice of information networks and popular culture on the formation of political attitudes. For instance, in public opinion research it is often assumed that the public does not have consistent and stable opinions or attitudes about most political issues. Essentially, many political analysts believe that the majority of Americans are uninformed. This study speaks to this literature by establishing a direct connection between popular music, specifically, political rap and attitude formation. Advisors/Committee Members: Nelson, Jr, Dr. William E.

▼ There are several large bodies of political science literature that place either central or tangential importance on nonpolitical identities. Implicit in literatures on race, gender, and religion (hereafter “identity” literatures) is the notion that these identities have nontrivial political implications. Similarly, voting behavior scholars have long recognized that a myriad of demographic characteristics and primary and secondary group associations have a significant impact on partisanship, ideology, policy preferences, voting behavior, and political participation. Yet, despite the underpinnings of identity in each of these bodies of literature, I argue that there are several unsettled issues within and between these literatures that can be resolved only through a deductive theory of why and how identity operates to inform political behavior. Some of these issues include heterogeneity within demographic groups leading to differential political behaviors, a disproportionate emphasis on understanding the roots of party identification that has hamstrung the broader study of identity and political engagement, and the evolution of these bodies of literature in relative isolation from one another. In short, the lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework on identity and political engagement has left many theoretical and empirical questions unanswered and under-explored. My dissertation confronts these matters by developing the Identity Theory of Political Engagement (ITPE), which is rooted in three identity propositions that I derived from extant theories in sociology and social psychology. In short, they state that individuals have a salient identity that is hierarchically superior to all other identities, that this salient identity has a subjective meaning that is either group-based, personal, both, or neither, and that the salient identity and its subjective meaning serve as a schema that guides behavior. Borne out of these identity propositions, the ITPE develops a new concept, identity-based political efficacy, which is the idea that individuals believe they can make a difference regarding the political issues facing their salient identity, and that government is responsive to the issues of the salient identity. The ITPE hypothesizes that the subjective meaning of the salient identity and the level of identity-based political efficacy yield four different identity mechanisms of political engagement, each of which shows up in disparate political science literatures: group pressure, self-interest, group interest, and agnosticism. Finally, the ITPE predicts that these mechanisms are process variables that mediate the relationship between the salient identity and political engagement, broadly construed. In sum, the ITPE is a parsimonious theory of how and why identity operates to inform political behavior. It resolves many of the problems that exist within and between the identity and voting behavior literatures, while simultaneously building on and merging insights from these literatures. More specifically, while the ITPE calls into question the essentialization of identity groups, the non-contextualized categorization of individuals, and the disproportionate emphasis on party identification (as opposed to other identities in understanding political behavior), it also amply credits these literatures with providing the requisite foundational knowledge on which to build. To test this theory, I designed a unique survey and administered it to three sample populations, including a matched representative sample of 400 Americans. The goals of the survey were to operationalize new concepts, such as identity-based political efficacy and the mechanisms of political engagement, and develop a single survey instrument capable of testing the central hypotheses of the ITPE. In general, I find very strong support for the ITPE. First, I find that individuals do have a salient identity, which is subjectively defined as group-based, personal, both, or neither. Second, I find that the operationalization of identity-based political efficacy is valid, reliable, and distinct from traditional measures of political efficacy. Most importantly, the subjective meaning of the salient identity and varying levels of identity-based political efficacy do accurately predict the four identity mechanisms of political engagement. These mechanisms, in turn, largely determine broader levels and types of individual political engagement. Lastly, the mechanisms often mediate the relationship between the salient identity and political engagement. These results illustrate that in order to more fully understand the motivational factors behind political engagement, it is important to expand conventional understandings of identity and political efficacy. Advisors/Committee Members: McGraw, Kathleen.

▼ In this dissertation I identify a puzzle that was created, then largely ignored by behavioral scholars doing empirical work on the courts. The puzzle arises from the substantial disconnect between how judges characterize their reasoning processes and the demonstrated influence of policy preferences on the decisions they make. I discuss how the concept of motivated reasoning has been invoked to resolve the tension between legal and attitudinal accounts of decision-making and evaluate that claim in light of research on the role of motivation in other decision contexts. I question the dominant assumption in behavioral research that judges are primarily policy oriented. I offer an alternative characterization of motives based on the idea that people who are trained in the legal tradition come to internalize norms consistent with idealized models of decision-making. Consistent with psychological findings demonstrating limits on motivated decision processes, I suggest accepted norms of decision-making serve as a constraint on the ability of decision-makers to reach conclusions consistent with their policy preferences. I test two potential avenues of motivated reasoning in legal reasoning: analogical perception and the separability of preferences in cases involving multiple issues. Using an experimental approach I find that each is a potential avenue of attitudinal influence in legal decision-making. However, there is also substantial evidence of constraint in studies testing both mechanisms. I conclude in with a summary of main findings and a discussion of implications for future research. Advisors/Committee Members: Caldeira, Gregory A.

▼ Felon disenfranchisement laws prohibit current, and in many states, former felony offenders from voting. Of particular interest to my research, 36% of the citizens permanently unable to vote are African Americans. It is important to note that state laws determine who is eligible to vote. States have the option of disenfranchising felons while in prison, while on parole, on probation, or for a lifetime. This dissertation combines traditional democratic theory with elements of the racial group competition literatures to form a lens for understanding the historical use and contemporary consequences of criminal disenfranchisement laws. Using a multi-method approach combining archival research, experiments, and cross-sectional analyses, the findings of this research contradict much of the existing literature's assertion that racial minorities have successfully overcome the institutional barriers to full participation. In essence, these findings affirm the extent to which criminal control policies have become a powerful means of promoting the politics of exclusion. Using an original state-level data set, I find that the level of minority diversity and region are the most significant determinants of the severity of states' disenfranchisement laws. In particular, I find that southern states and states with more sizeable Black and Hispanic voting-age populations tend to have more severe restrictions on felon voting. I find that elite discourse surrounding disenfranchisement has evolved from an explicit focus on race and racial discrimination to a more subtle priming of racial group considerations and stereotypes. Combining these findings with the experimental data, I find that public support for felon disenfranchisement is influenced by the frames elites use to discuss them. When disenfranchisement laws are presented as a threat to democratic vitality, citizens' support for them tends to be lower. However, when disenfranchisement is presented as a means of punishing those who have broken the public trust, support is higher. These findings confirm the importance of political elites for helping citizens make sense of complex political issues. Taken together, the research presented in this dissertation supports the view that the racial group competition lens illuminates multiple views regarding the limits of citizenship as well as contemporary barriers to political equality. Advisors/Committee Members: Beck, Paul Allen.

▼ This dissertation seeks to determine the consequences of the use of visiting judges in the United States Courts of Appeals. Judges nominated to serve in the lower federal judiciary are appointed to positions divided vertically between trial and appellate courts and horizontally between geographically defined regional circuits. Regularly, however, judges transcend these distinctions and provide judicial services in a structural level or geographic region to which they were not appointed. A substantial number of cases disposed of in the United States Courts of Appeals now make use of these “visiting judges”. Court of appeals panels employing a visiting judge deviate from the court’s typical decision-making environment. I theorize that the use of these visitors will alter the behavior of court of appeals judges in ways currently unrecognized by existing theories of judicial behavior. Specifically, I hypothesize that the availability of visiting judges will lead some court of appeals judges to strategically pursue their most preferred legal policy. I also hypothesize that the presence of a visiting judge will affect the behavior of judges serving in the courts of appeals in ways consistent with psychological theories of small group behavior. To test these hypotheses, I perform three separate analyses. First, using data collected on the number of visits made in each regional circuit court of appeals from 1997 through 2009, I examine whether circuit chief judges strategically select visitors who share their policy preferences. Second, I examine the role of visiting judges in the decision-making process by analyzing their voting behavior in a sample of cases decided between 1997 and 2002. Third, I examine the normative consequences of the visiting judge process. Using citation patterns to measure judicial quality, I investigate whether cases decided using a visiting judge are cited differently than cases decided by panels that do not employ a visitor. The results indicate that visiting judges induce both strategic and psychological group effects in the courts of appeals. Circuit chief judges are more likely to select visitors who share their policy preferences. While the presence of a visiting judge does not appear to change the voting behavior of court of appeals judges, cases decided by panels employing visitors are cited differently than cases decided by panels composed of three court of appeals judges. The results suggest that visiting judges should not be treated as fungible with court of appeals judges from their home circuit, and that their continued use has important implications for the development of legal policy in this level of the federal judiciary. The results also demonstrate the need for scholars to expand current theories of judicial behavior to properly incorporate insights gained from psychological theories of small group behavior, particularly when examining judicial behavior in the United States Courts of Appeals. Advisors/Committee Members: Lawrence, Baum.

▼ This dissertation is motivated by the fact that race is understudied in the discipline, despite its historical importance in international politics, its ubiquity in adjacent disciplines, and its importance in the “real” world. It attempts to mitigate this problem by extending the study of race to the hard case of great power politics. The dissertation provides a two-step racial theory of international politics according to which racial prejudices embedded in racial identity can shape patterns of discord and cooperation. In the first step, racial prejudices embedded in different racial identities inflate threat perceptions, while prejudices embedded in shared racial identities deflate them. In the second step, racially shaped threat perceptions generate behavioral dispositions. Inflated threat perceptions predispose racially different agents towards discord, while deflated threat perceptions predispose racially similar agents towards cooperation. The theory works best when states have dominant racial groups, they hold activated threat-relevant racial prejudices, and when threats are ambiguous. Three empirical chapters assess the theory’s strengths and probe its limits. The first shows how racial prejudices regarding fundamental difference and aggressive intentions inflated American threat perceptions of Japan and, with British cooperation, led to the demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1923). The second traces how racial prejudices regarding aggressive intentions and irrationality inflated American threat perceptions of Chinese nuclear proliferation and, with Soviet cooperation, resulted in the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. The last one illustrates how racial prejudices of immorality and aggressive intentions inflated American threat perceptions of Japanese foreign direct investment in the 1980s and led to the 1988 Exon-Florio Amendment. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of race and the legitimacy of the liberal international system in the context of rise of the developing world. Advisors/Committee Members: Wendt, Alexander.

▼ The purpose of this study is to examine the residential housing patterns and preferences of middle to upper income African Americans. In particular, what effect does socioeconomic status have on residential housing preferences? I approach this research by investigating the influence of stereotypes and the high level of linked fate that Blacks in these income categories are thought to maintain. The general hypothesis suspects that middle to upper income African Americans, when faced with the choice between integrated or predominantly black neighborhoods, will opt for the integrated neighborhood despite their feelings of common fate and racial uplift. The findings suggest that stereotypes play a considerable role in the residential preferences of blacks prompting them to avoid predominantly black areas in favor of more diverse neighborhoods. Advisors/Committee Members: McGraw, Dr. Kathleen.

Advisors/Committee Members: Herson, Lawrence J.R.

Advisors/Committee Members: Nemzer, Louis.

▼ The electoral defeat of the Hindu nationalist party in the last two parliamentary elections in India, and the absence of widespread large-scale religious violence since the 1992 riots, have often been taken as evidence of the retreat of rightwing Hindu forces in Indian politics. This however ignores the network of powerful civil society organizations that constitute the Hindu nationalist movement operating outside the realm of electoral politics. They have strongly entrenched themselves amongst urban slum neighborhoods across Indian cities by filling gaps in social services, particularly since the rolling back of the state due to neoliberal reforms. My project addresses the empirical puzzle of variation in the success of such sectarian Hindu organizations across Indian cities. Neoliberal reforms since the 1990s have led to informalization of labor in urban areas. The state’s withdrawal from welfare provision creates a crucial need for welfare provision among the urban poor, yet the concomitant decline in labor union activism leaves them unable to mobilize for collective protest. They are forced to depend on alternative social networks, thus creating space for exclusivist Hindu organizations that recruit the urban poor through provision of crucial services such as education and healthcare. However, economic dislocations do not increase the appeal of such sectarian organizations everywhere. When do Hindu NGOs fail to resonate with the urban poor? I argue that they fail when local associations in urban slums function as efficient political patronage networks, inducing state political parties to meet welfare needs adequately. When “everyday” networks of engagement based around the local neighborhood are strong, as well as rooted in local politics with strong linkages to local party officials, the urban poor are able to bargain collectively for better service provision from political parties, thus decreasing their dependence on sectarian groups. I test my hypotheses using a Small-N comparison designed on the Most Similar Systems Design principle, focusing on the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Based on survey data analysis, and data from 75 interviews conducted with right-wing Hindu organizations, other NGOs, bureaucratic officials, and politicians, during six months of fieldwork (June-December 2009), I find that Tamil Nadu has informal local associations mediating between the urban poor and party representatives, whereas Karnataka is a case where patronage ties linking the parties and poor voters are on the decline, thus producing the variation in the success of Hindu nationalist organizations. In Karnataka, the proliferation of elite-dominated NGOs catering exclusively to the middle class, and centralization tendencies of the state government are examined in order to analyze how the local power structures have been overridden, causing informal patronage arrangements to break down and allowing Hindu organizations to fill that space. In Tamil Nadu, the legacy of the lower-caste movement not only created a distinct identity politics that was not receptive to calls for Hindu unity by rightwing forces, but the unique associational networks that emerged out of this movement created political incentives that induced parties to distribute services efficiently and inclusively, thus reducing the space for Hindu nationalists. Advisors/Committee Members: Nooruddin, Irfan.

▼ How could one explain and characterize relative peace, security and prosperity in Northeast Asia (NEA) for the last two decades? What have we missed out theoretically in terms of seeing the then future of NEA? The dissertation challenges the prevailing pessimistic arguments about NEA security by criticizing their analytical failure to assess the progressive trends of regional interactions. In this vein, the dissertation re-characterizes the 17 years of the Post Cold War in the region as the surprising peace where regional states have achieved a progressive, relatively well–coordinated, cooperative, and prudent regional order. This dissertation provides a new framework of explaining NEA’s regional order throughout the Post Cold War period. I argue that many different stimuli at structural level occurred for the last 17 years in NEA. But I also find the persistence of such ideas as war aversion, stability for development and regional prosperity throughout the region. And the overall outcome in Northeast Asian for the last 17 years is the avoidance of major harm and the progressive development of regional order. In order to explain the progressive regional order in NEA, I develop an analytical construct, Vision of Regional Order (VRO), to account for the unfolding of regional interactions for the past 17 years from a phenomenological approach. A VRO is states’ expectation and understanding about what constitutes suitable behaviors towards neighboring states based on historical memories, perceived threat and perceived economic opportunity. Each VRO provide insights into behavioral disposition, which I call a vector or orientation of the major policy behaviors. I examine the four empirical cases – the end of the Cold War, the 94 North Korean nuclear crisis, the 97 Asian Financial Crisis, the 2001-5 historical disputes. I find that the goals and preferences of NEA states have affected patterns of regional interactions and produced the surprising peace in the region. Regional orders are products of layers of multiple interactions by deliberately chosen strategies by regional states who implement their visions for the optimal regional order. This means that configurations of regional security dynamics are consciously pursued by states. Advisors/Committee Members: Herrmann, Richard K.

▼ Traditional democratic theory holds that the mark of a democracy is captured by citizens’ engagement with their government. Even in a representative democracy, such as the U.S.A., a modicum of political knowledge is necessary for citizens to elect officials who represent their interests. Yet political science has continually noted a drought of political sophistication among the masses. Thus the broad question is whether such a lack of information is indicative of a democratic deficit – and, more specifically, what effect this variance in information has on political behavior and what institutions exacerbate or mitigate such information shortcomings in the citizenry. This project focuses on the role of the media as the key institution in the dissemination of new political information during electoral campaigns. In particular, I look at the effect of televised campaign advertisements on individuals’ knowledge about campaigns, which campaign information they seek out, sentiments of sufficient information to make a vote choice, participation in the campaigns and voting in line with stated preferences. I find that the relationship between campaign advertisements and political sophistication is rich with complexity. Individuals generally learn about a particular aspect of the campaign when they live in advertisement saturated environments. However, the relationship between political attitudes, behavior and advertisements is often moderated by political sophistication. The results show how individuals’ varying exposure to campaigns and political sophistication combine to affect their processing of new political information and political behavior. Individuals with low sophistication use ads as substitutes for information seeking, feel they have enough information to choose a candidate regardless of exposure to ads, generally do not participate in politics, learn nothing directly from campaign ads and yet manage to vote more correctly when exposed to ads. Contrarily, high sophisticates seek out large amounts of campaign information and vote very consistently regardless of exposure to campaigns, appear capable of turning campaign ads into modest gains in real political information, have higher rates of participation in campaign politics and are less likely to feel they have insufficient information to make a vote choice when exposed to campaign ads. In sum, this project paints a fuller picture of how campaigns are interpreted and utilized by an information heterogeneous electorate within different electoral environments. Advisors/Committee Members: Weisberg, Herbert.

Advisors/Committee Members: Richardson, Bradley M.

▼ New States universally seek the recognition of their peers. Indeed, a critical mass of external recognition is required for full membership in the international community of States. Statesmen however, often disagree about what constitutes a legitimate claim to Statehood. In this project, I argue that the international legal criteria for recognition are rarely adhered to in practice. Instead, States often accept new members into their ranks based upon parochial political considerations. I use large N, quantitative analysis and comparative case studies to test my hypotheses regarding the determinants and dynamics of external recognition. Advisors/Committee Members: Herrmann, Richard K.

▼ In recent years regional parties have been hard to ignore. From the Lega Nord’s emergence in Italy, to regional parties’ role in coalition formation in Belgium, to their impact on policy in the United Kingdom, regional parties appear to play an increasingly important role in politics. Regional parties are parties that exclusively represent only a subset of geographic areas in a country. Previous research has primarily focused on structural factors (e.g., social cleavages, economic differences, and institutions) that produce and maintain viable regional parties. However if regional party success ebbs and flows while structural factors remain constant what else explains their success? While not to dismiss structural factors, parties, party strategies, and policies produce a dynamic effect that impacts regional parties. Voters operate in a world of incomplete information and uncertainty. How will their vote for a regional party affect public policy? Regional parties must have a competitive advantage over other parties in order to attract voters. They need a label and behavioral expectations that differentiate themselves from larger national parties. If voters are choosing between a small party and a larger party that is capable of winning elections, the smaller party is at a disadvantage. However, if the regional party is able to convince voters that its party platform, its ideology (i.e., its label), and its potential impact (i.e., behavioral expectations) are different and unique, it may be able to attract voters and remain viable. The impetus behind this unhappiness is when allocation of resources is net negative for a region and violates norms of equity. The core of the analysis centers on the Italian regional party, the Lega Nord. The Lega Nord was selected for study as it represents a paradox to current regional party theories. I, first, use extensive field research I conducted in Italy to trace the causal mechanisms and then test the hypotheses via statistical analysis of six electoral surveys which conducted between1985 and 2006. Finally, I assess the generalizability of the hypotheses through comparative case studies, specifically in Belgium, Canada and the United Kingdom. Advisors/Committee Members: Kurtz, Marcus.