Browsing by Author "Siegel, David A"

When do recruitment windfalls strengthen organizations while threatening their leader’s perception of success? This paper introduces a theory of grassroots-driven organizational change that is broadly applicable when leaders balance short-term survival with long-term mission focus.

I introduce the concept of the \say{personnel resource curse} in which recruitment windfalls simultaneously strengthen an organization while undermining the leader’s ability to achieve their goals. I argue that upward- driving internal pressures caused by incomplete socialization of grassroots members can transform the priorities and operational focus of resource-constrained organizations. When this happens, leaders experience pressure to reorient their organization towards the preferences of the base, even if these preferences are not the same as the leader’s vision. The process and outcome are surprising, as the theory identifies contexts in which even strategic leaders will recruit cohorts that exceed their socializing capacity and who will subsequently initiate this change process. An undertheorized avenue of organizational change, grassroots-driven, and bottom-up transformational pressures can constrain group operations, produce internal stressors, and influence the trajectory of political and social movements.

The dissertation uses a multimethod approach to build a general theory of organizational transformation. I introduce the theory and frame the dissertation using case studies and a simple formal model of leader-recruit negotiation. The heart of this theory is a negotiation-centric view of organizations, in which leaders require at least some degree of consent from the rank-and-file to adopt specific actions. This approach leads to a model of organizational decision making that is sensitive to changes in leverage and introduces avenues through which leaders can be induced to accommodate the preferences of members whose presence is critical to the organization’s effectiveness. The model of organizational transformation developed in this dissertation is applicable in a wide range of contexts, from militant groups struggling to operate and expand, to issue-based organizations that seek an influx of resources and skills, to decentralized political organizations that lack strong mechanisms of control and socialization. To demonstrate generality, this dissertation presents the results of a survey of United States-based non-profit leaders and managers, finding that experience with these dynamics is prevalent in the sample.

Understanding the impact of grassroots-driven and bottom-up transformational pressures on the evolution of organizations has a wide array of implications, from philosophical questions about how organizations maintain their identity and priorities to tactical conclusions about how to best nurture or combat organizations undergoing internal transformations. The research makes theoretical and empirical contributions to social scientific theories about organizational dynamics and the evolution of organizations.

What is the utility and relative efficacy of positive inducements and sanctions in international politics? Are inducements and sanctions actually different or just the two sides of the same coin? How have inducements and sanctions been used and how effective have they been? My dissertation examines the effect of carrot and stick-like foreign policies in international relations. Dominant works on risk-taking and decision-making—like loss aversion – have shown that people are more sensitive to potential losses than gains, which would suggest that sanctions should be utilized more in order to achieve preferred outcomes. I find, however, that inducement policies that require concessions from the target state can be framed to gain the target state’s public support and allow target state leaders to “save face.” In contrast, I find that sanctions provoke nationalism, creating a rally around the flag effect, resulting in negative consequences for the sender state. Using a presence-absence framework of positive and negative outcomes, utilizing experimental methods to study the micro-foundations of inducement and sanction perceptions, as well as a case study of the Six-Party Talks based on field work consisting of archival work and interviews, my dissertation aims to bridge the policy-academy gap by translating a perennial policy-level problem of “carrots vs. sticks” to an academic question assessing the utility and relative efficacy of positive inducements versus sanctions.

Causal inference is a fundamental tool of empirical political science. The existing methodologies used to perform causal analyses are, however, sometimes hard to adapt to subfields of the discipline in which data is scarce, populations are hard to reach, and experimentation is impossible. In this work, we aim to extend the reach of causal methodology to such subfields by proposing methods aimed at addressing several existing shortcomings of causal inference tools. First, we introduce Credible Assumption Mixtures, a methodology for sensitivity analysis of observational results that enables researchers to assess the sensitivity of their results to many different assumptions, both separately and all at once, producing a complete and rich picture of sensitivity in applied cases. Second, we introduce a methodology for measurement of quantities of interest to political scientists in image data: our approach is based on contemporary deep-learning tools and can quickly and cheaply annotate large sets of images, thus enabling researchers in all subfields to take advantage of image data regardless of their resources. Finally, we propose Matched Machine Learning: a methodology that boosts the interpretability of non-parametric causal estimates by combining matching with powerful machine learning black-box models. In this way, causal estimates are very accurate but also easily interpretable and explainable. In turn, this interpretability should enable researchers in those fields in which causal inference is hard to better develop, test and assess models for their causal quantities of interest. Finally, we apply all our method to answering a causal question of interest in empirical political science: we study the effect of electoral success on public good allocation, whether violence can be measured from images, and whether presence of police makes violence more likely in civil protest settings.

There are various sources of moral hazard in IPE. In this paper, I contribute by examining whether bilateral swap agreements (BSAs) cause moral hazard in central banks and the private sector. Using an original dataset on BSAs signed by all countries from 2008 to 2020 and incorporating social network analysis, I find that BSAs lead to lower reserves-to-GDP ratios in central banks on the periphery of the BSA network, while the private banking sectors behave more cautiously to make up for this increased risk. This study answers the long-debated question of whether BSAs cause moral hazard and is in line with studies that find moral hazard in the IMF and other forms of financial cooperation. Policymakers in the creditor states, the IMF, and states protected by BSAs should be aware of the adverse effects of BSAs. Additionally, I find some suggestive evidence that states on the periphery of the BSA network may be more likely to have currency crises, while less likely to have banking crises. Finally, this study highlights an important source of moral hazard in IPE, and more broadly, in international cooperation: besides asymmetric dyadic relations, states’ latent roles in the full interaction network may shape their different roles and cause moral hazard. Hierarchical structures can induce moral hazard even when interactions are symmetric.

Today, the trend towards decentralization is far-reaching. Proponents of decentralization have argued that decentralization promotes responsive and accountable local government by shortening the distance between local representatives and their constituency. However, in this paper, I focus on the countervailing effect of decentralization on the accountability mechanism, arguing that decentralization, which increases the number of actors eligible for policy making and implementation in governance as a whole, may blur lines of responsibility, thus weakening citizens’ ability to sanction government in election. By using the ordinary least squares (OLS) interaction model based on historical panel data for 78 countries in the 2002 – 2010 period, I test the hypothesis that as the number of government tiers increases, there will be a negative interaction between the number of government tiers and decentralization policies. The regression results show empirical evidence that decentralization policies, having a positive impact on governance under a relatively simple form of multilevel governance, have no more statistically significant effects as the complexity of government structure exceeds a certain degree. In particular, this paper found that the presence of intergovernmental meeting with legally binding authority have a negative impact on governance when the complexity of government structure reaches to the highest level.

Why do some civil conflicts simmer at low-intensity, while others escalate to war? When and why do some civil conflicts experience cycles of escalation and de-escalation? This dissertation challenges traditional approaches to intrastate conflict by arguing the need to distinguish both theoretically and empirically between the onset and escalation of civil conflict. I start with a formal model with incomplete information and a two-stage informational updating process. The model develops a novel, strategic argument about three causal mechanisms that differentially drive low-intensity violence (LIV) versus full-blown war: the information environment, the type of rebel group, and the state's capacity. Violence yields information on group identity and type, but differentially so over time; this inter-temporal variation in formation colors the state's strategic response, conditional on state capacity. For example, stronger groups become relatively more common past LIV, whereas before LIV, states have limited information on challenger type and so less ability to bargain. Empirical implications are tested in the third chapter using data on self-determination disputes from 1960-2005, with strong support for my argument. Results highlight the changing role of state capacity: stronger states are less likely to face LIV, but if they do, they are more likely to escalate to war. The fourth chapter expands on this analysis by using multi-state survival modeling to assess how the conflict evolves from start to finish, yielding nuanced findings about how key covariates affect a conflict's transition from (and cycles through) LIV to war to peace. This approach therefore forces a reexamination of the seminal findings in civil war.

Economic sanctions are a potent tool of coercive statecraft for states wishing to induce change in their targets' behavior. However, the sanctioning state and its target are not the only relevant stakeholders or strategic players in the dynamic. Third-party actors, be they other states, corporations, or international institutions, have outsized influences on whether and how economic sanctions are imposed and enforced. This dissertation, a series of three papers, examine the roles of third parties in economic sanctions. Each chapter touches on a different third party: cooperative state actors, non-cooperative state actors, and private and semi-private actors (corporations and state-owned enterprises).

In the first paper, I formally model and empirically test the argument that sanction-sending states select into multilateral sanctioning regimes, weighing the cost of coalition formation with the increase coercive power. I find that greater ideal point distance does lead to less willingness to form multilateral sanctioning coalitions on the part of the sanction sender, while the more that a potential partner is able to contribute to sanction coerciveness has the opposite effect.

The second chapter argues that geopolitical costs imposed by third-party states, which could stem from active sanction-busting or the imposition of costs on the sanctioning state by the third party along other foreign policy dimensions, affect whether the sanctioner implements economic sanctions. I model the argument formally and find that when the third-party state sanction-busts for geopolitical reasons, the sender is less likely to impose economic sanctions. Similarly, when a third-party state is likely to retaliate along other foreign policy dimensions, the sanction-sending state is less likely to impose economic sanctions. I test the implications through a novel method by integrating time series matching method with triplet matching.

In the third and last chapter, I examine the effects of non-state actors on the target's ability to evade and resist economic sanctions. Specifically, I look at how the economic structure of the target state, especially the industries it is engaged in, affects the ease with which it is able to maintain economic relations with third parties post-sanction imposition. The impact is aggregated to the state level. Nightlights data is used to estimate sanction evasion. The theory also carries implications for regional variations with the target state. These implications are also empirically tested using nighttime luminosity.

Power derived from personal relationships especially based on school ties and local ties has become accepted as a source of human capital, and has been shown since the 1960s to be an effective tool for attaining upward social mobility in South Korea. Many researchers have largely focused on public behavior or the role of political elites, not individual members in the National Assembly. Since social network analysis is an effective research tool for examining influence of relational attributes, it has the potential to be very helpful in understanding the behavior of members in the National Assembly. This study maps relationships among members of the leading opposition party in South Korea to determine whether they affected political events occurring in early 2016—specifically the split of the leading opposition party, NPAD, into two parties, MPK and PP. Mapping a network could be helpful to find a new way to analyze actions of political leaders in a certain political event as well. I used personal information about members of the opposition parties, including their hometowns, educational institutions attended, and previous achievements to map their social networks extant at the time of the split. I used values of centralities to determine who was the hub of the network and what relationships exist between and among its members. Examining the network connecting members of the opposition parties shows that, contrary to expectations, Chun Jung-bae was the hub not Ahn Chul-soo or Moon Jae-in unlike many expectations. Determining the relationships based on school ties and local ties between members can provide researchers with new perspectives on their research into political events in South Korea.

The international linkages between autocratic regimes have gained increasing attention in recent years but remain poorly understood. This literature is often limited by a selective focus on a specific set of international networks and a lack of systematic empirical analysis of linkages across time and space. In this paper, I seek to contribute to our understanding of international linkages amongst autocratic regimes by using changes in state-owned airline patterns to capture the shifts in the underlying geopolitics of the Middle East. I will focus on the 2017 GCC-Qatar diplomatic crisis to illustrate how changes in flight patterns offer broader insights into states’ perceptions, strategies, and alliances in the region.