Browsing by Author "Niou, Emerson"
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Item Open Access Commitment Problem, Economic Inequality and Institutional Reform in Authoritarian Regimes: A Case Study of China(2013) Guo, Jason QiangUnder authoritarian rule, investors' fear that their assets will be arbitrarily confiscated by the government weakens their incentives to make an investment, unless the commitment that the authoritarian government will favor capital owners is credible. In the case of China, the reform comprising decentralized economic competition and career mobility within bureaucracy to some degree substitutes the commitment. The prospect of promotion based on the performance in economic competition induces local government officials to shelter the investors. This policy bias in a long run, however, gives rise to a new commitment problem as it triggers the economic inequality between factor owners. As inequality grows, for placating the suffering factor owners who may organize massive collective actions to overturn the regime, the government has an incentive to redistribute revenues between factor owners. Recognizing this risk, investors hold up investment, particularly in projects with significant exit costs that may result in being captured by the government. The novel mechanism proposed by the Chinese Communist Party to solve this commitment problem in order to stimulate the economy is to co-opt entrepreneurs, ensuring their stake in regime's long-term survival and development. This logic explains the dynamics of political and economic institutional reform and the development of the private sector in China.
Item Open Access Economic Voting and Regionalism in South Korea: A Statistical Analysis of the 2007 Presidential Election(2011) Lee, Sophie JiseonAlthough economic voting is a common phenomenon in most democracies, voters in young democracies do not necessarily vote based on the economy because at the early stage of democratization, the salience of political issues, regarding transition, overwhelms economic issues. Similarly, economic voting has not been observed in newly democratized South Korea since its first meaningful election in 1987. The absence of economic voting in Korea has widely been attributed to the overriding effect of regionalism, the phenomenon in which Jeolla and Gyeongsang natives vote for candidates born in their provinces. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that economic voting recently gained strength with 1) the consolidation of Korean democracy and 2) the traumatic experience of the IMF. In the meantime, the pre-democratic resource allocation political division, regionalism, has developed into the ideologies of native Jeolla and Gyeongsang voters today; liberal Jeolla natives tend to value distributive justice and freedom of speech, while conservative Gyeongsang natives value economic growth and security. To support this theory, the study provides empirical evidence for the rise of economic voting in Korea. The results of the empirical analysis are fourfold. First, a time series regression model shows that economic voting in Korea is not observed over time at the macro level. Yet, a correlation analysis shows that economic indicators have stronger relationships with recent presidential electoral outcomes. Second, a multinomial logistic regression model shows that both economic voting and regionalism are statistically significant at the micro level. Third, an estimated effect analysis of the same data shows that the variables in the order of the largest marginal effect on the electoral outcome are: party identification, economic voting, and regionalism. Although the overall impact of economic voting exceeds that of regionalism, the result is contrary among Jeolla natives. Finally, a subset analysis shows that Jeolla and Gyeongsang natives vote economically whereas those born elsewhere vote ideologically. This suggests that the regional division has become an ideological division among Jeolla and Gyeongsang natives. Taking all the results into consideration, both economic and democracy issues in Korea seem to have become valence issues, as in other consolidated democracies.Item Open Access Electoral Institutions, Party Organizations, and Political Instability(2009) Kselman, Daniel MaxA majority of formal theoretic research in political science treats political parties as unitary actors, and endows them with decision-making powers not unlike those of strategic individuals. This is true both of most research in the spatial-theoretic tradition, as well as most game theoretic research in the field of comparative political-economy. In contrast, my dissertation examines strategic equilibria which arise when competition takes place simultaneously within parties over organizational control and between parties over political office. I first distinguish between three intra-organizational elements: a party's parliamentary group, its activist cadre, and its executive leaders. Chapters 2-4 develop a set of foundational game theoretic models which identify the equilibrium balance of power among these 3 organizational elements as a function of a country's electoral institutions and voters' relative responsiveness to marginal policy changes. In turn, this more complete understanding of intra-party competition sheds light on a number of important questions in comparative politics and comparative political-economy. For example, it helps to identify conditions under which Downsian vote-maximization is in fact a viable assumption in spatial theoretic models; conditions under which Duverger's argument that proportional representation (PR) should tend to generate multi-party competition may not apply; and, in contrast to Lijphart's famous argument, conditions under which PR may instigate rather than mediate social conflict. Ten months of intensive field research conducted in Turkey provide both the quantitative and the qualitative data which constitute the dissertation's most basic empirical material. This data includes primary and secondary source material on the history of intra-organizational competition in Turkey; observational and informant-based information on contemporary Turkish politics and the events of 2006-2008; and a data set of over 4,000 observations on party-switching in the Turkish Parliament (1987-2007).
Item Open Access Essays on the News Media, Governance, and Political Control in Authoritarian States(2009) Huang, HaifengThis dissertation uses game-theoretic modeling, statistical testing, and case studies to analyze how authoritarian governments manage the news media to maintain regime stability, control local officials, and make reform. In the first essay, ``Regime Competence and Media Freedom in Authoritarian States'', I explain why some authoritarian regimes allow more media freedom than others, as they tradeoff increased rents when the media is suppressed with the reduced risk of being misjudged by citizens when the media is free. In the second essay, ``Local Media Freedom, Protest Diffusion, and Authoritarian Resilience'', I argue that media reports about citizen protests, which may lead to protest diffusion, do not necessarily destabilize authoritarian rule. If protests are targeted at local governments, the central government of an authoritarian regime can use media-induced protest cascades to force local officials to improve governance. In the last essay, ``Central Rhetoric and Local Reform in China'', I address the puzzle of why the Chinese government would furnish the state media with conservative and dogmatic rhetoric on the one hand and allow reform on the other, by showing that this strategy is used to control local governments' pace of reform.
Item Open Access In the Shadow of Rivalry: Rebel Alliances and Civil War(2013) Zeigler, SeanHow does competition and rivalry within alliances affect outcomes and processes in civil wars? Towards addressing this inquiry, this dissertation presents a formal theory of alliance formation that takes into account both internal and external threats. The theory, presented in Chapter 2, focuses on how allying parties make decisions regarding resource mobilization for conflictual purposes, in the presence of both internal and external hazards. The model indicates that intra-coalition division should serve not only as a source of instability but also as a wellspring of strength for aligning militant groups. This leads to a peculiar result, whereby the internal factors enabling groups to overcome the problem of collective action may also contribute to the "conflict trap." Testable implications are derived and examined empirically via a new dataset on alliances between rebel groups during civil wars from 1944 to 2001. The series of logistical models in Chapter 3 indicates that alliances marked by rivalry and competition are indeed more likely to lead to rebel victories. Yet, the analysis also demonstrates that these types of arrangements are also significant predictors of war recurrence. The latter result holds irrespective of how the original conflicts terminate. Additionally, Chapter 4 of this dissertation presents a comparative analysis between two cases of civil war marked by competitive alliances. In addition to other factors, the cases suggest the relative size of alliance members, the influence external actors, and the presence of electoral institutions may either exacerbate or mitigate competition issues within alliances.
Item Open Access Inequality in Education -- an Overview of Rural Extra-budgetary Education Funding in China(2011) Qin, LuThe purpose of this research was to analyze education inequality in rural China as reflected in government funding policy on education. Specifically, the research looks whether extra-budgetary income is a dis-equalizing factor in provincial level education spending or rather equalizes in education spending. Via analysis of existing data on education financing in more recent year, it was shown that the inequality of spending in total education expenditure per capita is greater than budgetary expenditure from government sources in the year 2006 and 2008 for elementary schools, and 2002 and 2006 for middle schools. More specific regression analysis has shown that extra-education levies exaggerate financial inequality between provinces. Gini coefficient calculations of education income per capita are slightly different from the expenditure calculations. Furthermore, regional comparison has shown that richer provinces would actually rely more of the share of their education revenue on extra-budgetary sources. This would suggests that extra-budgetary income is not used to compensate for the lack of budgetary funding and expectantly equalize education resources between regions, as assumed by the central government in China, rather, it actually sometimes widens the gap in financing education in rural China.
Item Open Access “Information and Heterogeneity in Issue Voting: Evidence from the 2008 Presidential Election in Taiwan,”(Journal of East Asian Studies, 2012) Lacy, Dean; Niou, EmersonA voter's capacity to acquire and retain information moderates the relationship between issues and the vote. Issues differ in their distance from the voter's personal experience. Proximate issues, such as personal economic conditions, affect the vote decisions of highly informed and less informed voters equally. Distant issues, such as national economic conditions and foreign affairs, affect the vote of highly informed voters but not less informed voters. The 2008 presidential election on Taiwan provides a critical test of the effect of information on issue voting. Unification with mainland China versus Taiwan independence is the most important issue in the 2008 election, and voters with higher levels of political information show a larger effect of the issue on their vote. The national economy is also a significant predictor of vote choice, but only for highly informed voters. Personal economic conditions and other proximate issues are not significant predictors of the vote at any information level.Item Open Access Protest Voting in Plurality Elections: A Theory of Voter Signaling(Public Choice, 2010-06) Kselman, Daniel; Niou, EmersonThis paper develops a model of protest voting in which unsatisfied voters may abandon their most-preferred candidate even though he or she has a good chance of winning, in the hope that this signal of disaffection will lead to downstream improvements in that candidate's performance. We use a spatial model to identify voters whose ideological profile makes protest voting an option, and an expected utility model to identify the conditions under which potential protest voters will in fact use their vote as a signaling device. Aggregate-level data provide suggestive evidence in the argument's favor. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.Item Open Access The Status and Perspective of Energy Cooperation in Northeast Asia(2011) Kim, KwonsungThe principle purpose of this study is to explore the significance of the concept of multilateral energy cooperation in the Northeast Asia.Northeast Asia is a region with increasing importance in terms of the world energy balance.Nonetheless, various political conflicts and embedded historical distrusts among these nations hinder any form of institutional cooperation framework. This paper argues that the nations in Northeast Asia must establish a new form of institutional vehicle with supranational characteristics in order to achieve effective and practical energy cooperation in this region. This analysis will provide a better understanding of how the Northeast Asian countries can establish a new form of an energy cooperative organization in the region.
Item Open Access Varying Means of Democratic Selection(2015) Winthrop, GrantGenerally historians posit that specialized and professional
positions are appointed while general political positions are elected.
This however, I argue is tautological and that in reality at the
inception of a democratic regime important posts are elected while
petty posts are selected by other means. Then over time power shifts
toward appointed positions obscuring the initial intent.
Item Open Access 日本地方财政的财源结构与地方自治的特征 [The Financial Politics of Local Self-Government in Japan](Fudan University Political Science Review, 2013) Song, Jianmin; Niou, Emerson