Browsing by Department "Political Science"
Now showing items 1-20 of 308
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A Decentralized Iron Cage: Do Chinese Local Officials Comply with the Central Government?
(2016)This paper contributes to the literature in nancial aid and authoritarian institutions.For a long time, scholars are debating whether nancial aid is able to facilitatedevelopment and governance. Though abundant evidence ... -
A New Chinese First Lady: Is There Systematic Development?
(2016)Examining the full set of leaders and their spouses in both China and the U.S. during the last quarter century, this paper explores how the first lady of China has become a more important position, why she has become a more ... -
A New Scramble for Africa? Chinese Aid and Africa’s Civil Conflict 2004 – 2013, An Instrumental Variable Approach
(2017)Does Chinese aid cause more civil conflicts in Africa? Doubts have been cast about Chinese development assistance finance. In this article, I argue that Chinese aid is likely to arouse more civil conflicts in Africa because ... -
A Party in the Conference Room: Partisan Politics and the Modern Conference Committee
(2009)Despite the crucial role that conference committees can play in the legislative process, relatively little is understood about the forces that influence conference outcomes and the priorities of conferees. In particular, ... -
Addressing the "Elephant in the Room": Rumor Rebuttal in China during the COVID-19 Outbreak
(2021)This study aims to explain the logic behind rumor rebuttal, a form of responsivepropaganda, in authoritarian countries during COVID-19, the story of which initially unfolded as ”rumor”. Taking China at the beginning stage ... -
Agents with Agency: How Subnational Officials Exercise their Autonomy Under Authoritarianism
(2022)Subnational officials in strong authoritarian states are often depicted as passive agents under central command or opportunists resisting central control. This dissertation rejects the former characterization by recognizing ... -
"All of My Business": Governmental Social Media and Authoritarian Responsiveness
(2017)How would authoritarian regimes react to the emergence of social media compared to traditional media? What role(s) would media play in authoritarianism? This study focuses on China, the largest existing authoritarian regime, ... -
Ambidextrous Regimes: Leadership Survival and Fiscal Transparency
(2012)How do political leaders strategically manage fiscal policy formation to enhance their political survival? What are the implications of the fiscal mechanics of survival for theories of redistribution and democratic transition? ... -
American Cyber Insecurity: The growing danger of cyber attacks
(2014-05-23)This paper aims to advise American policy makers on a correct course of action regarding the advent of cyber warfare. Cyber-attacks have become ubiquitous in the 21st century and pose a direct threat to the safety of American ... -
An Evolutionary Theory of Democracy: Dynamic Evolutionary Models of American Party Competition with an Empirical Application to the Case of Abortion Policy from 1972-2010
(2011)In this dissertation, I challenge the unitary-actor assumption of contemporary theoretical models of American politics and re-conceptualize party competition as an evolutionary process. I begin by discussing the assumptions ... -
An Internalized Spectator: Judgment in Arendt’s Kant Lectures
(2022)In this paper I revisit a perplexing question about Arendt’s theory of judgment: what is the relationship between the normative function of judgment and the perspective of the vita contemplativa in her Kant Lectures. Pace ... -
Antitrust Enforcement as a Cause of Google’s Innovation (2001-2013)
(2015-06-30)In this paper I consider the role of antitrust enforcement as a driver of innovation at Google. My hypothesis is that President Obama increased antitrust enforcement relative to his predecessor, George W. Bush, leading ... -
Asian-Black Political Relationships: Policy Voting of State Legislators in California and Maryland
(2014)Asian-black political relations in the United States have been most frequently examined in the arena of urban/local politics and especially in terms of the degree of conflict and competition. No previous study on Asian-black ... -
Assessing China’s Economic and Political Power Play
(2022)How effectively has China utilized its economic power to gain political support worldwide? This paper aims to answer this question, which is vital to understanding the new dynamics of the international order, through a more ... -
Assessing Credibility: A Qualitative Analysis of Public and Private Signals in the Cuban Missile Crisis
(2023)Credibility has long been a subject of interest in international relations. However, recent works minimize some of the earliest and most intriguing credibility questions. To what degree is accuracy related to credibility, ... -
At the Threshold with Simone Weil: A Political Theory of Migration and Refuge
(2012)The persistent presence of refugees challenges political theorists to rethink our approaches to citizenship and national sovereignty. I look to philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943), who brings to the Western tradition her ... -
Automated Learning of Event Coding Dictionaries for Novel Domains with an Application to Cyberspace
(2016)Event data provide high-resolution and high-volume information about political events. From COPDAB to KEDS, GDELT, ICEWS, and PHOENIX, event datasets and the frameworks that produce them have supported a variety of research ... -
Behavioral Traits and Political Selection in Authoritarian Ruling Parties: Evidence from the Chinese Communist Party
(2018)This dissertation investigates the role of behavioral factors in the personnel selection in authoritarian ruling parties. First, I argue that authoritarian ruling parties increase the weight of dispositional and behavioral ... -
BEHIND THE RUNWAY: A Global Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Apparel Export Competitiveness in the Last Fifteen Years
(2011-12)This Senior Honors Paper examines the recent and current changes in the fascinating and volatile apparel industry. Why have some countries increased their export market share while others have lost their competitive edge ... -
Belief Updating in a Biased Information Environment: Evidence From Hierarchical Government Satisfaction in Vietnam
(2020)People tend to hold more positive attitude to central government relative to local governments in east Asian single-party regimes. Drawing from political psychology literature, I argue the information environment biased ...
