Browsing by Author "Büthe, Tim"
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Item Open Access Leaders, Perceptions, and Reputations for Resolve(2014) Lupton, DanielleFor scholars of international relations, reputation for resolve - the belief that an actor will stand firm in future disputes - has served as a seminal explanation for the outcome of interstate crises. Scholars studying state reputation remain divided as to which characteristics of the state determine reputation for resolve. Recent scholarship questions this traditional state-centric view of international relations, indicating leaders can be as influential as states in international affairs. My dissertation investigates whether individual leaders can develop reputations for resolve independently from the states they serve. In doing so, my dissertation bridges the state-centric and leader-centric literatures, contributing to our understanding of both reputations for resolve and the impact of individual leaders on international politics. My theory focuses on reputation development as I examine which information decision-makers use to make assessments of resolve. As leaders are the primary arbiters of foreign policy and interact substantially with each other during international crises and negotiations, I conclude that leaders should be able to develop independent reputations for resolve based on their behavior while in office. I further theorize that, due to the ways in which individuals access and process information, a leader's early actions while in office will matter more in assessments of his/her resolve, making initial reputations difficult to change.
To test my theory against alternative hypotheses, I employ a multi-methods research design using experimental surveys, statistical duration analysis, and a historical case study. The experiments focus on the internal causal mechanisms by which individuals process information to make predictions of a leader's resolve. To test the external validity of my theory, I employ a duration analysis to examine how the resoluteness of a leader's response to a crisis helps prevent that leader from being a target of future crises. Finally, the case study uses process tracing methods to investigate the extent to which individual leaders develop reputations for resolve over time. Through these multiple methods, I find robust evidence that leaders do develop reputations for resolve independently from their state's reputation. The experiments indicate that leader behavior is influential on perceptions of resolve even when accounting for state-based characteristics. Furthermore, I find that participants are more likely to seek out and prioritize leader-based information. I also find that early perceptions of resolve have a significant impact on later perceptions. The duration analysis indicates that the resoluteness of a leader's behavior can affect his/her risk of future crisis onset. Finally, the case study shows that potential challenger leaders do take leader-based information into account when making assessments of resolve and that a leader's early behavior is particularly influential to the development of his/her reputation for resolve. Based on this evidence I conclude that leaders can develop reputations for resolve. These reputations are primarily based on a leader's statements and behavior, even when controlling for state-based variables, and are resistant to change once formed.
Item Open Access Technology and Development: The Political Economy of Open Source Software(2010) Borges, Bruno de MouraThis dissertation examines the role of governments in adopting Open Source Software (OSS) for their needs and tries to explain the variation in adoption and implmentation, among both developing and developed countries. The work argues that there are different logics guiding developing and developed countries OSS adoption. As developed countries follow a pattern based on the Varieties of Capitalism model, the difference in OSS adoption in developing countries is a combination of the relation between the state and market forces (especially how business and firms are organized) and state capacity to overcome collective action problems and to reap the benefits of technological upgrade. This dissertation also presents a structured and focused comparison of two cases (Brazil and Mexico) and define which are the factors that matter for the outcomes.
Item Open Access The Politics of Food Safety(2017) Cheng, Cindy YawenAdvances in science and technology have laid the foundation for unparalleled economic prosperity but such breakthroughs have also precipitated the proliferation of unprecedented societal risks. Though the threat of nuclear war and climate change represent the most globally catastrophic of these risks, arguably no other risk has had as intimate and as direct effect on the lives of most ordinary people than risks to their food safety.
However, despite concerted political will, governments tasked with securing food safety face many challenges in doing so. Authoritarian governments in particular, often touted for their ability to spur economic development precisely because they ignore societal risks like food safety, face unique challenges in building the necessary regulatory regime to ensure it. Meanwhile, though public furor provides the fuel for regulatory reform, the ability of the public to translate that furor into effective regulation is stymied by existing political structures and their own cognitive biases. I investigate these issues with a special focus on China, where food safety problems have run rampant since the early 2000's.
In so doing, I argue that the inherent challenge in ensuring food safety stems from its extreme opacity. Although people have long known that consuming unsafe food can lead to negative health outcomes, the detection of which items are unfit for consumption is generally neither easy nor self-evident without substantial expertise, resources and time. Meanwhile even if outside institutions, such as the government or the media, step in to fill this gap, the necessity of such intermediation means that the populace's evaluation of food safety is also necessarily filtered by what these institutions choose to reveal on the one hand and public perceptions of these institutions on the other hand.
Building on this premise, I push forward our understanding of the general correlation between greater economic development and increasing risks to food safety by theorizing and testing a relationship between urban biased policies and food safety problems. In so doing, I argue that policies designed to increase food production may lead to the proliferation of food safety problems out of ignorance or indifference (Chapter 2). Meanwhile, I investigate the extent to which the politicization of food safety problems is sensitive to the existing political environment. To that end, I find that the extent to which people express grievances in response to food safety crises in authoritarian regimes is tempered by fears of potentially negative political repercussions (Chapter 3). Meanwwhile, given the importance of of ensuring food safety to political legitimacy, authoritarian leaders have every incentive to address the problem. However, enforcing food safety regulation is the responsibility of local government officials, not those in the central government. While I find that local officials are responsive to both bottom-up grievances and top-down monitoring, competing economic incentives seem to exercise far more sway over their governance decisions (Chapter 4). Finally food safety regulatory tools that manage to sidestep this central-local government conflict may still face challenges to ensuring food safety. That is, I find evidence to suggest that public trust in regulatory institutions forms an important component of regulatory buy-in and thus regulatory success (Chapter 5).
I test my hypotheses using a range of evidence and methodological strategies. I assess the argument that urban biased policies can increase risks to food safety using a panel dataset of agricultural inputs and food safety metrics. Meanwhile, I test whether the political environment affects how grievances over food safety are expressed using originally collected data of Weibo posts and newspaper articles about food safety at the Chinese sub-provincial level. I also use this dataset to investigate the types of incentives the local government respond to with regards to food safety regulatory enforcement. Finally, I evaluate the extent to which trust in regulatory institutions affects regulatory buy-in using original Chinese survey data.