Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellows, 2005-2006

Mauricio Benitez, Political Science: Explaining Subnational Patterns of Interest Representation in Mexico. This project will seek to identify and explain divergent patterns of change in Mexican states' interest representation regimes. In Latin America, as decentralized authorities gain increased control over economic resources and new policy areas, pre-existing corporatist monopolies of representation are being weakened, and in their place we are seeing the rise of new interest representation regimes, that is, the institutional structures linking organized social interests with governmental authorities. In Mexico, state governments are today creating new institutions to govern their political linkages with organized social interests. Thus, while some governors have replaced corporatist arrangements for policymaking inherited from the PRI-dominant regime, others have reinforced them. Mr. Benitez's project asks: What are the types of interest intermediation regimes found across Mexican states? More importantly, what explains such patterns? With respect to organized social interests, how do they respond to authorities' attempts to reshape interest representation regimes, often against their preferences? This project will be based on the analysis of changes in the interest representation regimes of three Mexican states: Jalisco, Sonora, and Zacatecas. Each of these states is governed by a different party, and each of them features special socioeconomic characteristics, which makes the set of cases representative of the wide variety of configurations found in Mexican states. Data for this research will be extracted from three main sources: first, semi-structured elite interviews with government authorities; second, a questionnaire survey of state legislators; and, third, semi-structured interviews with leaders and representatives of the most important organizations in each state.

Bradley Erickson, Anthropology: Catalan Interculturality and Muslim Immigration: Implications for the European Union. Mr. Erickson will study the attitudes and responses of native Catalans in the town of Vilanova i Geltrú with respect to a new Muslim immigrant population. The study will focus on communicative practices, sensory epistemologies and folkloristic expression about the Catalan self and the Muslim other, including social performance in intimate or liminal social spaces such as the family, café, clinic and street festival. In this way, Mr. Erickson will document how Catalan folk ideology is both inflected by and departs from elite discourse on interculturality, the regional variant of liberal multiculturalism. By making the host population the primary ethnographic subject of a study about immigration, Mr. Erickson swims against the tide of scholarship in the region to illuminate the anxieties that animate xenophobic practices and the implicit exclusions of interculturalist doxa. This approach will produce a diagnosis of host-immigrant tensions in Catalonia as well as an evaluation of the social effects of interculturalist policy. While this study of a single locality is no sovereign key to resolving intercultural tensions in other parts of Europe, it will be a productive, replicable model for analyzing host community relations with immigrants throughout the European Union.

Candelaria Garay, Political Science: Social Policy Regimes in Liberalized Economies: Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. In the course of adjusting to a changing international economy, Latin American countries transformed the shape of their social policy regimes in fundamental ways. In contrast to the extensive scholarly attention paid to the reform of the welfare state in advanced industrialized countries, this topic has received far less attention in Latin America, with a few studies focusing mainly on pension privatization and on social expenditure. In order to address this gap, this project seeks to conceptualize and explain different social policy regimes taking shape in four middle income countries, namely, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, focusing on three policies: pensions, health care and income support, which are of crucial relevance in a context marked by changing labor markets and the sharp decline of formal employment. Indeed, one of the main contentions of this project is that a crucial question defining emerging social policy regimes concerns the ways in which social programs allocate resources across formal and informal sectors. Specifically, How do programs to each category interact? Do states face a trade off between formal and informal sectors in the allocation of public resources? And, how do these programs interact with labor organizations, employers interests and the organizations, if any, of the informal sector? This project will rely on extensive fieldwork in three of the four cases, and will build an original database of program characteristics over the past 25 years, aiming to trace the changing structure and targets of selected policies.

Jane Gingrich, Political Science: Whose Market is it Anyway?: The Politics of Market-Oriented Reform to the Welfare State. The language of competition, commerce, and consumerism, has entered many discussions of the reform of public social services. While opponents and proponents of market reforms often rely on relatively simple notions of the state, the market, and the impact of introducing market elements into the state, the empirical record suggests a more complex reality. Thus, while the introduction of school vouchers in the Swedish educational system, competition between health insurers in the Netherlands, and greater market forces in long-term-care in England have all profoundly changed both the delivery of these services and the political debate around them, these markets are not functional equivalents but vary in significant ways. In this project, Ms. Gingrich examines the introduction of market reforms in welfare services, asking three questions. What characterizes variation in the introduction of market forces in the provision of public social services? Why has the market emerged as such an important tool in the reform of welfare state services? What explains differences in how markets are structured? In order to answer these questions, she has conducted research examining market-oriented reforms in education, health care, and long-term-care services in England, the Netherlands , and Sweden . She argues markets vary systematically in how they structure the allocation of resources to citizens and control over the productive process, leading to qualitatively distinct market structures. As opposed to explanations of variation in service reform advancing explanations based on national or programmatic characteristics, she argues that common electoral dilemmas and fiscal constraints have opened a party-political struggle over how to redesign control over the process of production.

Alison Kaufman, Political Science: One Nation Among Many: Liang Qichao and China's Investigations into Foreign Polities, 1898-1920. This dissertation explores the growing belief of Chinese intellectuals during the late imperial and early Republican period (1880s-1920s) that China's future success was dependent not only on its own capabilities but on its ability to import and adapt political models from the West. As China continued to experience defeat at the hands of foreign nations, its leaders and intellectual elites struggled to transform it from a millennia-old absolutist imperial system, unable to withstand challenges from the West and Japan, into a modern, competitive nation that would prevail in the international arena. In so doing, Chinese intellectuals examined their country's political institutions and the moral and philosophical values that underlay those institutions, and many of them did so by analyzing the experiences of China's rival nations. This dissertation examines the thought of one of the most prominent scholars and statesmen of this period, Liang Qichao, as he interrogated the political successes and failures of Russia, Japan, Germany, the United States, and Britain. In particular, Ms. Kaufman analyzes his studies comparing constitutional systems, his interpretation of imported works of political theory, and his changing views of political morality. The literature on Liang Qichao in the U.S. and China is extensive, but few studies have explored in any detail his examination of foreign constitutions and statecraft and their impact on his thought; this dissertation seeks to close that gap.

Yoshiko Konishi, Anthropology: Women, Citizenship, and the Nation-State: An Analysis of Pronatalist Policies. This dissertation compares pronatalist policies and their impact on women in Tokyo and Singapore since the mid-1980s. Japan and Singapore have become anxious about sharply declining birthrates. In 2003, Japan's birthrate fell to a record low of 1.29 and Singapore's too a record low of 1.26. Both are tiny island countries with few natural resources except for the talents of their people. Declining birthrates cause problems with labor shortage and social welfare systems, and will affect national wellbeing as well as economic prosperity in the near future. This study will examine how pronatalist policies in Japan and Singapore shape women's perception of rights and obligations as citizens, of work, and of motherhood, and how women respond to these policies. It also seeks to explore how specific socio-cultural and politico-economic reasons in both countries influence state policy-making and create conditions for women to negotiate state policies. In so doing, this study will illuminate reasons behind the gap between official explanations of declining birthrates and women's everyday practices.

Geetha Murali, South and Southeast Asian Studies: Tracing the Signs: Voter Mobilization and the Functionality of Ideas in Tamil Nadu. In recent years, Tamil Nadu (India) has seen increased fluctuation and fragmentation in the political field. A political system that was dominated by two parties associated with opposing ideologies has transformed into a system wherein both major, centrist parties can no longer be clearly demarcated along ideological lines. More importantly, the recent emergence of certain casteist and theist parties and their growing, albeit erratic, success call for an examination of the definite shifts in voter preferences and perceptions of representation. Due to the introspective nature of many scholarly disciplines, the links between ideology and governance, although of crucial importance to an understanding of party systems, are many times left insufficiently explored. The sheer profusion of references to ideology in Tamil Nadu political literature and rhetoric makes it an inescapable category of analysis. In addition, Marxist scholars have generated rigorous debates surrounding the functionality of ideas, and Tamil Nadu politicians have systematically engaged with and adapted Marxist categories, making ideology a site of imperative exploration. This dissertation combines metaphysical and empirical reasoning in order to provide a nuanced study of Tamil Nadu politics and party dynamics. In particular, the study focuses on the role of political leaders and parties in articulating ideologies and the function of ideologies in dictating electoral choices. This investigation elucidates decision paradigms by which voters choose to vote strategically, expressively, or instrumentally and considers whether "ideological regression" has truly influenced voter practices in Tamil Nadu. A project of this nature would be incomplete without an examination of the manner in which political ideologies and the "signs" embedded within their discursive environments are actually perceived by the voting population. Therefore a cross-disciplinary approach, blending synchronic (i.e. a sample survey) and diachronic (i.e. a historical study of "Dravidianist symbols") methodologies, helps to theorize the role of ideology in electoral politics and identifies key factors that lead to the emergence of viable, particularist parties in the face of dominant political ideologies.

Michael Nelson, Political Science: African State Power: On the Influence of African States in the International Legal System. This dissertation addresses the question: why do African states sometimes wield influence in the international legal system and other times do not? While it is true that African state influence is generally weak, there are cases where African state actions have influenced the development of international law. Current approaches to influence tend to focus on activities within a single international organization. However, state strategies in influencing the development of international law often involve multiple international organizations. New rules relevant to the issue of Mad Cow Disease, for instance, involve decision-making by three international organizations, and important regional organizations such as the European Food Safety Authority. This dissertation makes the argument that how the international legal system is organized around an issue affects the opportunities and constraints states face when they seek to obtain outcomes in the international legal system. The dissertation explores the argument by substantively focusing on African state experiences in the areas of food safety, agricultural trade, intellectual property, and foreign investment. Legal analysis, in-depth interviews with participants in global governance, and secondary literature inform the study.

Tobias Schulze-Cleven, Political Science: The Politics of Creating "Labor Market Flexibility" in Europe: The United Kingdom, Germany, and Denmark Compared. Creating labor market flexibility has become a pervasive goal among the governments of rich democracies during the last three decades. Simultaneous changes in the three main institutional realms structuring modern welfare capitalism the industrial relations system, the set of labor market regulations and the welfare state have affected the lives of millions of workers. This dissertation analyzes the politics of labor market adjustment. In the process, it tracks the combinations of distinct dimensions of flexibility pursued by companies and societies in different national contexts. Among a set of alternative explanations for national variation during the last three decades, the dissertation stresses the importance of inherited institutional arrangements for social protection. This perspective leads Mr. Schulze-Cleven to question the dominant frame of associating the achievement of labor flexibility with the removal of social protections. In contrast, Mr. Schulze-Cleven stresses the need to analytically separate the form and the levelof social protection. The goal of increasing flexibility can clash with certain forms of social protection, but does not need to translate into reductions in the level of social protection. Those systems built around occupational status preservation tend to block measures that could increase labor market flexibility, while those offering universal provisions based on citizenship can help achieve flexibility in the labor market. If substantiated by further empirical analysis, these findings indicate that -- even in today's post-Keynesian world -- social protection does not have to be economically harmful.

Elizabeth Shapiro, ESPM: Issues of Equity in Market-Based Conservation: Payment for Environmental Service Projects in Southern Mexico. In the last ten years, market-based conservation schemes such as certification programs, pollution credits, and conservation easements have become the panacea of choice for the globe’s environmental woes. One of the newest of these schemes, Payment for Environmental Services (PES), attempts to harness the markets in urban areas and industrialized countries for ecosystem functions such as green house gas sequestration, biodiversity conservation, scenic beauty and watershed protection. Payments are then made to rural resource managers to employ management practices that conserve these specific ecosystem functions. PES programs have been touted by international conservation funders and policy makers alike for being more economically efficient, because they are market-based, and more equitable, because they will provide financial benefits to the poor rural communities in which they are implemented. But can the poor, who by definition are marginalized from the market, truly benefit from a market-based scheme? Ms. Shapiro’s dissertation research will analyze the impact of PES projects on six communities in southern Mexico. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, analysis will focus on the way in which inequalities in both the system of value assignment and the political and economic structure of the society in which they are implemented influences the likelihood that these marginalized communities will benefit from these market-based conservation programs.

Robin Turner, Political Science: States and Markets Revisited: Nature Tourism and the Local Political Economy in Botswana and South Africa. Ms. Turner's project examines how engagement in particular economic sectors affects contemporary rural politics and the nature of the interaction between actors in rural localities and actors from the central state.  This research aims to assess the extent to which understandings of African political dynamics, which were developed in the context of economies dominated by subsistence and export-oriented agriculture, fit contemporary political realities in rural areas engaged in nature tourism. Research focuses on two countries, Botswana and South Africa, in which tourism is economic important at the national level and nature tourism is an important component of the rural landscape. The project has two parts, a sectoral analysis of nature tourism in Botswana and South Africa and a comparative analysis of rural areas engaged in tourism with similar localities not engaged in tourism. This research will provide a basis for adjudicating between contrasting depictions of African rural local politics and evaluating whether and how engagement in nature tourism affects local politics.