Browsing by Author "Leventoglu, Bahar"

This dissertation consists of two main chapters studying different topics in politicaleconomy with a specific focus on interactions between citizens and their government.

Political economists have long been puzzled that growing levels of inequality inthe U.S. have had little effect on income redistribution, especially when compared to European countries that have adopted more redistributive economic systems. The lack of electoral support for greater income redistribution goes against the predictions of the fundamental median-voter theorem in political science. My work contributes to a large body of work in preference for redistribution literature by studying the role of private economic benefits on individual voting decisions. Using new causal machine learning methods with the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I identify structural differences in the provision of welfare benefits between Republican and Democrat presidents for various demographic groups. Combining these estimates with voting data from the General Social Survey, I can identify how people vote with respect to their private economic benefits. The results in this chapter support the idea that economic benefits positively affect individuals’ probability of voting for a particular candidate.

In another question, I study the interaction between citizens and a political leader.A government led by the political leader implements a policy, and the outcome of the policy is uncertain. There is a number of reasons why the policy outcome can be uncertain. It can be due to the impossibility of conducting a meticulous study or an experiment. Also, it can be caused by the misalignment of incentives which is inherent in policy-making (e.g., lower-level officials are not accountable to the electorate in the same way the leader is). Although the policy to be implemented is common knowledge, neither citizens nor the leader can predict its outcome due to a lack of expertise. Once a policy is implemented, citizens, not the leader, directly observe its outcome. I show that a leader driven by a desire to get reelected can impose wasteful signaling on citizens (interpreted as protests to replace a biased official or bad outcomes).

This dissertation employs game theoretic techniques to examine various topics in international relations and law. Chapter 2 uses a crisis bargaining model that accounts for prior bargaining agreements to study the conditions under which states choose to engage in multiple wars over different issues. I find that a proposing state is willing to risk war with multiple states when they are overly optimistic about the state they are currently bargaining with being weak.

Chapter 3 uses a game theory model of complete information to study the conditions under which a third-party state will intervene in a civil conflict when it must account for a potential retaliation by another external state. I find that when choosing to intervene or not, the potential intervening state must weigh the costs of military action by the retaliating state and the political ramifications of issuing an empty threat against each other.

Finally, Chapter 4 uses a game theory model of asymmetric information to analyze how a criminal defendant's ability to crowdfund legal fees can impact a prosecutor's plea bargaining decision. I find that a prosecutor will offer a relatively lenient plea deal to defendants whom they perceive to have a high ability and can make the trial costs high, or who they believe are low ability defendants while facing high political costs. On the other hand, they will offer relatively harsh plea deals to defendants whom they perceive to have a high ability and the trial cost is low, or who they believe have a low ability while facing low political costs.

Recent studies have revealed that the inequality between different ethnic groups can better explain and predict the onset of ethnic civil conflicts than traditional inequality indicators do. Based on their findings, this article uses the modernist theory on nationalism to further illustrate the mechanism of the horizontal inequality on ethnic civil conflicts. Introducing the modernist nationalism’s dimension, this article finds that with the increase of the degree of modernization, the positive effect of political horizontal inequality on the possibility of ethnonationalist civil conflict onset increases, while horizontal inequality’s effect diminishes in the less modernized countries. This finding matches the expectation of the modernist theory on nationalism, providing a better understanding about ethnonationalist civil conflicts in the context of horizontal inequality.

Turkish-Western relations have undergone a tremendous transformation over the last five years. This relationship has at times produced vast amounts of cooperation, while at other times, tension and non-cooperation has occurred. Recently, as Turkey has risen economically, politically, and militarily, there has been much concern that the "model of democracy" in the Middle East" is moving towards political Islam, which has created speculation that Turkey is leaving behind its "Western" allies to pursue a foreign policy of "neo-Ottomanism". To achieve an understanding for the conditions where cooperation should occur in Turkish-Western relations, this paper will first correct the term "neo-Ottomanism" in the literature on Turkish foreign policy by updating it with the "new" audience costs of "neo-Ottomanism" and upgrading it to "neo-Ottomanism 2.0". A decision-model will be created using a comparative historical analysis that designates the new audience costs associated with "neo-Ottomanism 2.0" by reimaging contemporary Turkish politics and constructing a theory around how audience costs at the domestic level of politics incurs costs on the current Turkish government that makes cooperation at times less likely given the intensity of an issue. By doing such, this paper will demonstrate when cooperation should occur between the West and Turkey and when the audience costs associated with "neo-Ottomanism 2.0" are not high enough that they will weaken the government's hold on power