Browsing by Subject "Comparative politics"

Urbanization in the global south has made the relationship between ethnic proximity and politics increasingly important. The literature mainly studies either the social or the political effects of proximity, without distinguishing between them or exploring their relationship to one another. I reconcile the two sides of this literature by developing a theory about the relationship between the social and the political consequences of ethnic proximity. To measure heterogeneity and proximity in dynamic and data-poor urban environments, I develop novel measurements of individual outgroup exposure and neighborhood-level segregation. To test my theory, I apply the exposure metric to original data from slums in three Indian cities, and find support for my claim that proximity has distinct effects on social and political relations between groups. I then explore the relationship between neighborhood-level collective action and social mobility. I find that collective political mobilization has a substantial impact on lived outcomes, through the mechanism of services.

How are voters’ perceptions of party positions affected by the formation of coalition governments? Voters perceive parties that form coalitions together as more ideologically similar than they would have had otherwise. This framework endogenizes perceptions of parties to the coalition formation process. Instead of relying exclusively on the policies that parties are advocating in election campaigns, voters assess partners relationally based on their mutual interactions. This dissertation extends the existing literature by examining various aspects of how coalition formation impacts voters’ perceptions.

Chapter 2 explores whether voters’ perceptions of opposition parties are altered by coalition formation. Using survey data from the European Election Study 1989-2019, I find that the impact of coalition formation on voters’ perceptions of opposition parties is comparable in size to that of coalition members. However, when distinguishing between different opposition relationships the effect is much larger. Voters perceive two opposition parties divided by a centrist coalition as further apart and opposition parties located in the same bloc as closer together, holding everything else constant. Unlike previous accounts of coalition heuristics, I find that highly sophisticated voters appear more sensitive to coalition signals.

Chapter 3 analyses how cooperation between mainstream and niche parties af- fect voters’ perceptions of party positions on specific policy issues. I compare the perceptions of Dutch parties before and after collaborating with the radical right: the coalition with the List Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and the support agreement with the Freedom Party in 2010. Furthermore, I examine the long-term effects of the Danish government relying on the support of the Danish People’s Party in 2001-2011. I find that mainstream parties are perceived as more restrictive towards immigration and multiculturalism after cooperating with the radical right than they would have been otherwise.

Finally, chapter 4 tests whether coalition formation has a causal effect on the perceived ideological distance between the coalition partners. Observational studies are insufficient to establish a causal relationship between coalition formation and changing perceptions. I present four survey experiments with variation in context, measurement, and treatment. I mainly find an effect of coalition formation when voters have no other information about parties.

This 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.

Political factors play a big role in influencing the ebbs and flows of corruption. The literature seems unanimously in agreement that, even in places where corruption is entrenched and systemic, the political calculations of individual politicians can still have an impact on corruption outcomes. On the other hand, while canonical research has delved into the divergent inner workings of different types of corruption for decades, studies on the link between politics and corruption have not paid sufficient attention to these distinctions. This dissertation speaks to the idea that politics influences different types of corruption differently in different settings. I seek to shed some light on how types of corruption and political contexts matter by studying wrongdoing at local governments in Vietnam. A contribution of the dissertation is the data collection efforts to acquire novel datasets. I got access to fine-grained data on bribery behavior at Vietnamese firms by working on the survey team for the Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI) for four years. On the politics side, I constructed a dataset on the career paths of Vietnamese provincial leaders since late 1990s, using information from newspapers, administrative almanacs, and various Internet sources.

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on the political economy of the Philippines. It combines a variety of methods---historical and qualitative analysis, interviews, and statistical analysis---to examine various aspects of the interaction of politics and economics in the country. The first chapter examines the relationship between horizontal political dynasties and economic outcomes. I argue that horizontal dynasties---more than one member of a political family holding office simultaneously---allow members of the dynasties to coordinate over policy by circumventing veto points in the policy processes. This leads to higher spending on public goods. I further show that this increase in spending is not associated with improved development, suggesting that the increased spending is used inefficiently. The second chapter examines the interaction of rank and gender norms in dynastic politics. I argue that male candidates are more likely to replace higher ranking female, candidates, but the inverse is not true. This rationalizes existing strategies by dynasties such as benchwarming. The third chapter argues for the positive long-run effect of the colonial Catholic mission. Municipalities that had a colonial mission are more developed and have higher levels of state capacity today. This is because missions functioned as de facto states and vehicles for the establishment of local government. This chapter emphasizes that missions were not merely religious or educational institutions but vehicles for governance.