Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellows, 2008-2009

Sener Akturk, Political Science: A Theory of Ethnic Regime Change in Germany, Soviet Union/Russian Federation, and Turkey. My dissertation articulates a theory of ethnic regime change, based on a comparative political historical analysis of Germany, Soviet Union/Russian Federation, and Turkey, since the end of the Second World War. The reforms that I analyze as instances of ethnic regime change are, the citizenship reform in Germany in 2000, the abolishing of the ethnicity category in the internal passport in the Russian Federation in 1997, and the beginning of public broadcasting from the state television in five minority languages in Turkey in 2004. My dissertation, first, focuses on many failed attempts to reform state policies regarding the ethnic background of citizens in Germany, Soviet Union, and Turkey, from the 1950s until the 1990s, and investigates why these attempts at reform failed. In the second part of my investigation, I ask why and how successful reforms concerning ethnicity and nationality were implemented in Germany, Russia, and Turkey in 1997, 2000, and 2004, respectively. In approaching the question of ethnicity and nationality in theoretical and historical perspective, I develop a typology of ethnic regime types, defined through the dimensions of “membership” and “expression”. Ethnic regime types defined as such include mono-ethnic, multi-ethnic, and anti-ethnic, with Germany, Soviet Union/Russian Federation, and Turkey, respectively, exemplifying these three types. Mono-ethnic regimes restrict membership in the nation to one ethnic category only, and hence expression of citizenry defined as such also turns out to be mono-ethnic by definition. Both multi-ethnic and anti-ethnic regimes allow membership to multiple ethnic categories but they differ on the expression dimension. While multi-ethnic regimes allow for the official expression, codification, and institutionalization of ethnic differences ranging from ethnic federalism to measures of affirmative action, anti-ethnic regimes suppress the expression of ethnic differences. The reforms that I examine go to the heart of ethnicity regimes and indicate a significant change in these regimes away from the status quo ex ante. This project contributes empirically to the comparative political and historical study of ethnicity and nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey, while making a theoretical contribution to the study of ethnicity and nationalism in general.

Jordan Branch, Political Science: Cartography and Sovereignty in the Early Modern International System. The modern international system, the foundation of the discipline of international relations, was the contingent outcome of a transformation from medieval heteronomous organization among widely varying actors to modern anarchy among sovereign territorial states. While this systemic transition has been approached in a number of ways in political science and sociology, an important driver of systemic change has thus far been ignored. This dissertation examines the profound effect that the cartographic revolution had on the nature of sovereign authority in the international system, and thus on the development of modern states and the state system. The growth of map production and use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had direct effects on ideas about legitimate types of authority over space, which form the basis of an international system. In particular, mapping constrained the acceptable forms of authority down to one: exclusive sovereignty over territory, represented in the political cartography of clearly delineated territorial states. This change involved more than ideas, however, as political actors used the new cartographic tools and norms to implement territorial political authority on the ground. Through a careful examination of the historical development of modern cartography and its links to political ideas, behavior, and outcomes, this dissertation will contribute to the constructivist approach to systemic change in international politics. Thus, the study will yield implications for our understanding of today’s globalizing international system, including the possibility that new technologies may re-open the prospect of non-territorial sovereignty in the future.

Jonathan Chow, Political Science: Religion, Politics and Sex: Negotiating Catholic Morality and International Norms of Contraception and Population Management since Cairo. When international norms clash with seemingly immutable religious doctrines, can the conflict be resolved aside from an all-or-nothing victory? Mr. Chow's dissertation examines this question by studying one of the most bitterly contested issues facing the Roman Catholic Church: contraception. On the one hand, advocates of contraception as a human right argue that it is essential for economic development, women's empowerment and public health. Such advocates have successfully made their case in international forums as demonstrated by the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women and the UN Millennium Development Goals. On the other hand, the Catholic Church, which stands as the main opponent of contraception, steadfastly holds that it is immoral, leads to the deterioration of the family and the objectification of women and children, and opens the door to coercive population control policies. Building on constructivist theories of international relations, which examine how norms, identities and beliefs can influence interests (and vice-versa), Mr. Chow's dissertation studies how international organizations, politicians, clergy and local NGOs attempt to promote or alter norms regarding contraception to conform to their views. The dissertation first examines the development of the Church's anti-contraception doctrines and then studies the strategies that the Church has used to fight contraception in international population conferences. Through a detailed case study of population and reproductive health policy in the Philippines, Mr. Chow examines the strategies that actors on both sides of this entrenched debate use to advance their ideas, and how the local culture strongly affects the process of norm contestation. Finally, the dissertation draws from Catholic ecclesiology and moral theology in an effort to understand how religious ideas can evolve to fit changing social contexts without fundamentally compromising core religious beliefs. Here, Mr. Chow considers not just the debate over contraception but also doctrinal change more generally, and suggests possible strategies for progressing beyond the longstanding impasse over contraception. It is hoped that this study will lead to a better understanding of religious norms, how they change, and how actors can more effectively negotiate conflicting normative views.

Mike Dwyer, Energy and Resources Group: Orienting the resource landscape: Mapping and upland development in Lao PDR. As the specter of scarcity conjures the trope of the tropical landscape that is already at capacity, many sets of eyes are converging on the other landscapes of the global south: “upland” areas where project planners and policy-makers are trying to hitch historically-rooted problems of under-productivity to the horse of increasing global commodities demand. Mr. Dwyer’s dissertation research investigates the practices used to survey and create available land for agribusiness development in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. The phenomenon of “available land”, known to exist at macro scales but harder to find in practice, creates an opportunity to study three related questions that sit at the core of ongoing debates about property, resources and development: First, how are development options debated and made as nations attempt to transcend histories of colonialism and war? Second, what are the regional patterns and processes of resource and infrastructure development as the Cold War gives way to neoliberalism in mainland Southeast Asia? Third, how is the privatization of mapping reconstituting traditional forms and understandings of governmental practice in the mobilization of natural resources for export? Drawing on interview, discursive and ethnographic methods, Mr. Dwyer uses the building of a transnational highway in northwest Laos to construct a case study of epistemological triage – the process through which development practitioners use science, law and the urgencies of modernity to create and evaluate the geographic information that is “relevant” to the exigencies of development. As they walk the line between, on the one hand, development by dispossession and, on the other hand, political imperatives to respect recently-won land rights, local officials and foreign experts offer a glimpse into the tensions and possibilities of applied geographic information science as it relates to development activities in the illegible uplands of the global south.

Grahame Foreman, History: The Manchester School and the British Social Anthropology of Modernity. During the Cold War, British intellectuals began to reconsider the meaning of modernity under a new set of geopolitical conditions, including decolonization, US/Soviet hegemony, mass migration, and "Third World" development. One striking innovation was a turn to the study of modern society within the discipline of social anthropology—a shift which included the application of anthropological techniques to the study of Britain itself. I am researching the various strands of this development, with a primary focus on the Manchester School of social anthropologists. This group was led by Max Gluckman, and included, among many others, Victor Turner, Ronald Frankenberg, J. Clyde Mitchell, A. L. Epstein, Peter Worsley, and Abner Cohen. Pioneers in shifting the focus of social anthropology from "primitive society" to "the modern social situation," they applied a shared set of methods and questions to local situations in Zambia, the United Kingdom, India, Melanesia, Nigeria and Israel. The attempt to understand these situations as intrinsically "modern" led them to prioritize the study of social change, conflict and cohesion, and the relationship of local-level politics to global forces of colonialism and capitalism. Several of them were banned from various parts of the British Commonwealth as being politically subversive; yet they have themselves been criticized for lacking a sufficiently critical stance towards colonialism. Analysis of their lives and work therefore helps us to understand some of the limitations of social scientific discourse during the Cold War, raises serious questions about academic freedom in Britain at the time, and illustrates the personal, professional and intellectual stakes of theorizing modernity in an era of global ideological conflict.

Kristen Gray, Sociology: Disciplining States: The Global Polio Eradication Initiative and the Making of the Modern States. In 1988 the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). To date, the campaign has eliminated polio everywhere but Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This success is surprising for two reasons. First, it's surprising that the campaign has garnered the level of cooperation it has. The GPEI has successfully coordinated both with over 125 countries, from least to most developed and of all political stripes. Second, the GPEI has helped developing nations assemble reliable biomedical data, which is needed to carry out the two main tasks of the campaign: vaccinating virtually all children against polio and maintaining effective disease surveillance. Political sociologists highlight the importance of this sort of data: the state formation literature sees modern states' ability to monitor and directly contact their populations, whether for medical, economic or political reasons, as one of their most unique features. Furthermore, the development literature points to states' failure to develop good information about their populations in accounting for failures of development. In this dissertation, Gray addresses both of these puzzles in examining how the GPEI has influenced states' polio surveillance and vaccination practices. She draws on a dataset including all countries involved in the campaign as well as case-studies to add to our understanding of the extent and nature of international organizations' power and influence over states."

Barbara Haya, Energy and Resources Group: The Design of International Institutions to Support Climate Mitigation in the South: A Study of Wind and Biomass Energy Development in India. One of the most difficult issues to be resolved by the December 2009 deadline for negotiating a post-Kyoto Protocol climate change treaty is how substantial and effective financial support will be provided to incentivize low carbon development in major developing countries. To inform these decisions, this dissertation examines how the two main support mechanisms under current climate agreements—the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the Global Environmental Facility’s (GEF) climate change portfolio—are working in practice. Grounded in a study of wind and biomass power development in India, this study compares the effects of the CDM (a “market mechanism” that generates tradable carbon credits), the GEF (the largest of several centralized global funds), and key proposals for their expansion and replacement, with (1) the effects of a range of international and domestic efforts that have supported wind and biomass power technologies in India, and (2) current opportunities to advance these technologies in the changing, particular conditions of the Indian power sector. It asks in what ways and to what extent do the knowledge gaps between the global places where the CDM and the GEF are designed and governed, and the local places where their projects are carried out, explain why both institutions have done relatively little so far to lower emissions, and what this might mean for future agreements.

Veronica Herrera, Political Science: The Politics of Water and Sanitation Delivery in Latin America. In the last several decades, market reforms adopted by many developing countries also transformed national hydraulic policy throughout Latin America. Countries pushed to decentralize water and sanitation delivery services to the local level and promote cost-recovery for water utilities through either private participation or the creation of a leaner, more fiscally efficient public service. In Mexico, although service delivery remained largely under public management, these new utilities were to operate like modernized, private enterprises that received little state subsidies and promoted fiscal self-sufficiency. Under this context, water delivery would have to be promoted and legitimated as a commodity which had a market value dictating price increases, shut off of service for non-payment, and diminution of state subsidies.
My project examines these attempts to create local markets in service delivery throughout Mexico. I examine 9 publicly managed municipal water and sanitation deliveries in three Mexican states: Baja California, Mexico and Veracruz, and ask the following questions: 1) What factors have led to varying models of water and sanitation delivery markets across municipalities, and have these market creation attempts improved service delivery? 2) What role do Mexican states have in helping municipalities adopt federal level reforms and facilitating the modernization of water markets at the local level? How do these state level functions vary across states? At the state level, I construct a data set of institutional and legal hydraulic reforms across 32 states and use interview data to supplement case selection of three states that vary across degree of state reform that followed federal policy recommendations. At the municipal level, I interview 9 water and sanitation utilities and gather data on several dimensions of local market creation in water delivery: level of political interference in price setting, professionalization and personnel training, capacity for cost recovery, marketing strategies and capacity to legitimate water as a commodity for the public. My dissertation argues that the modernization and “marketization” of water and sanitation delivery reflected a larger policy program to promote neoliberal reforms in Mexico.

Penelope Gwynn Ismay, History: Trust Among Strangers: British Modernity Secured ‘by way of friendly society,’ 1780-1870. In Britain, the mutualities and obligations inherent in early modern relationships were often encapsulated by the term ‘friendly society.’ Trust was fostered and maintained through personal relationships among kin, friends, and neighbors. By the late 18th century the high rate of urbanization and population growth meant that individuals were increasingly forced to interact with strangers. Adam Smith celebrated this development arguing that in the commercial world, friendships were no longer necessary for economic interactions; a predictable self-interest would guide and constrain behavior. While few doubted the economic benefits of this new thinking, the social implications of what Smith approvingly called a ‘society of strangers’ left his contemporaries less sanguine. If the social obligations generating reciprocity and solidarity were replaced with an individualist, even if polite, indifference, what was going to hold society together? Who would care for the poor? How could these self-interested strangers be trusted? Friendly societies—where members pooled their money in order to help each other in time of need and enjoy each other’s fellowship in the meantime—were a very important part of how these peculiarly modern problems were solved. Ismay’s dissertation explores the historical work friendly societies did from 1780 to 1870. Specifically, it looks at how ritualized sociability transformed strangers into brothers; how inter-personal trust fostered in friendly societies was expanded to include impersonal trust of institutions and science; and how the relationships formed in friendly societies—across class, political and religious lines—were critical to the security and stability of British modernity.

Larisa Mann, Jurisprudence and Social Policy: Listening to law, getting law to listen: copyright and Jamaican musical practice. International trade organizations have focused on creative industries as engines of development, while assuming that compliance with copyright law is essential to that development. However, copyright law relies on culturally specific assumptions about the practice of creativity. This case study of the Jamaican music industry examines local practices in a copyright climate crafted to meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization. Jamaican musicians’ collaborative, repetitive and reference-based practices contrast with the individualistic and novelty-rewarding focus of WTO-style copyright, partly because Jamaican musical traditions and experience did not include local copyright enforcement until 1993. Given the divergence between law and musical practice, this project seeks an empirical basis for a useful and relevant legal framework for music-making in the interest of development. Along with revealing the dynamic relation between copyright law and local practice, this information will challenge the common legal framing of noncompliance with law as ignorance of its contours. Mapping musicians' engagement, resistance, and reinterpretation of copyright law concepts will reveal lived realities of copyright law, and will suggest how local practices could educate national and international copyright law into taking better account of them.

Benjamin Moodie, Sociology: Genres of Gender: Change and Continuity in French and American Gender Cultures From the 1950s to the Present. For centuries, observers as diverse as Voltaire, Montesquieu, David Hume, Alexis de Tocqueville and Edith Wharton have remarked upon differences in the ways men and women interact in France and the Anglo-American world. This dissertation compares changing cultural expectations of gender in France and the United States from the 1950s to the present. It pays particular attention to the interactions between the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and the pre-existing cultural frameworks that formed the context of the movement’s reception in both countries. The dissertation draws upon multiple sources, including cross-national datasets on public opinion, time use, and economic and demographic behavior; important feminist and anti-feminist manifestos in both countries; and interviews with contemporary activists. Most of all, however, the research involves an in-depth comparison of the content of the largest-circulation women’s magazines published in both countries between 1952 and 2007. The sample of magazine titles is stratified by the social class background of their readership and also includes the few avowedly feminist magazines which attained a mass circulation in both countries. This research aims to answer important questions about how culture coheres and endures or changes over time by comparing social change in two wealthy democracies which both have avowedly egalitarian political cultures but are distinguished by a history of different approaches to masculinity and femininity.

Noer Fauzi Rachman, Environmental Science, Policy and Management: The Resurgence of Land Reform Movements and Policy in Indonesia. My research will focus on the ways in which agrarian movements and land reform policy processes in Java Indonesia are mutually constituted in historically situated ways. Both are influenced and shaped in visible and invisible ways by domestic and transnational forces — policies, organizations, and movements. The ways Indonesian government bodies produce and implement the new land reform policy is not straight forward, but rather a site of contestation and negotiation. The land reform policy processes have been shaped by the ways in which agrarian movement organizations forge alliances inside and outside the country and articulate with pro-and anti-reform forces in civil society and the state. On the other hand, the actual forms that land reform policy processes take have transformed the working strategies of agrarian movements and their allies. These transformations are illustrated in the ways the National Land Agency and other government bodies include or exclude movement groups and ideas in policy formation, making, and implementation. The movements also change and are changed by the convergence of these multi-scaled forces.

Ely Ratner, Political Science: Reaping What You Sow: Democratic Transitions and Foreign Policy Realignment. Why do states realign their foreign policies? Mr. Ratner argues that democratic transitions are an important cause of foreign policy realignment with the United States, and furthermore, that the nature of that realignment is conditioned by whether the United States supported the previous non-democratic regime. American support, or lack thereof, for the ancien regime structures the domestic politics of democratic transitions. In the absence of previous US support, democratic transitions commonly lead to positive foreign policy realignment towards the United States. Conversely, when the United States supports non-democratic regimes, democratic transitions rarely produce positive realignment. Mr. Ratner uses an original data set of country-year dyads with the United States from 1950 to 2000. Employing Markov Transition regression models, I find that the interaction of democratic transition and previous US support is a powerful determinant of foreign policy realignment. This research has important implications for international relations theory and American foreign policy.

Erik R. Scott, History: Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora in the Soviet Union. Russians were certainly the predominant ethnic group in the Soviet Union, but Soviet society was characterized by the interaction of diverse ethnic groups drawn from across its vast territory. Migrating to Moscow from the Soviet periphery, these ethnic groups sought out niches and often performed specialized functions, giving the division of labor in Soviet urban society an ethnic dimension in both reality and in popular representations. Perhaps no group of ethnic outsiders was as central to Soviet life as were the Georgians, who at different periods in Soviet history emerged as prominent political figures or leading dissidents, state-sanctioned entertainers or illicit traders. The Georgian diaspora was a small but highly mobile and visible group, whose members had roots in the Georgian Socialist Republic yet traveled throughout the Soviet Union. Mr. Scott seeks to bring the character and practices of this group to light for the first time, looking at those specialized roles in which group members achieved remarkable prominence and examining how these evolving roles reflected broader developments in Soviet history. In so doing, his project will explore the multinational character of Soviet society by rewriting the history of the Soviet Union from the perspective of one of its most conspicuous ethnic minority groups. His research will focus on the experience of the Georgian diaspora in Moscow from 1917 through 1991. A multinational metropolis, Moscow was at once the seat of Soviet power and the prime destination for diverse ethnic groups throughout the Soviet empire.

Rachel Stern, Political Science: In Saftey’s Shadow: Suing Polluters in China. Environmental litigation occupies a narrow “zone of tolerance” in contemporary China. While environmental lawsuits often involve challenging the powerful, they are safer than other cases involving civil and political rights. This dissertation explores the shape, origins and consequences of this sliver of opportunity. Where does political opening come from without elections, liberalization or state weakness? How do people leverage it? How does the state try to control it? And how much does it matter? These are important questions, not only for local lawyers and plaintiffs, but for the Western foundations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) exporting a mode of legal action which relies on environmental litigation -- spearheaded by cause lawyers and legal aid centers -- to improve policy compliance, raise environmental consciousness and redress egregious violations of the law. Through in-depth interviews with lawyers, judges, plaintiffs, government officials and international NGO representatives, this project explores both how legal practices move across borders and what activist lawyers can accomplish under severe political constraints.

Christopher Sullivan, Sociology: Genetically Modified Ethnicity: The Changing Logic of Ethnic Classification in China. In the mid-1950s, a gathering of preeminent Chinese social scientists and Communist Party cadres was given the task of partitioning China’s diverse population into distinct ethnic categories using explicitly non-biological criteria. The result of this initial project was the assignment of Chinese residents into one of 56 ethnic groups. Yet less than 50 years later, the initiation of the Chinese Human Genome Project has spurred a flurry of medical, physical anthropological and genetic research on ethnicity in China, and potentially offered a new means of categorizing ethnic groups in China. This dissertation research project seeks to demonstrate how the changing logic of ethnic classification in China has resulted in new tensions in ethnic categorization and brought about new understandings of ethnicity in China. Mr. Sullivan explores the importance of these two ethnic classification projects in building and shaping the Chinese nation, and in shaping contemporary ethnic relations. Why was (and is) it necessary for the Chinese government to distinguish between who is and who is not Han Chinese? And why has there been a move towards justifying ethnic categorization in biological and genetic terms, and away from social science ones? His dissertation research project analyzes the complex relationships between racial and ethnic inequality, scientific practices of classification, and nation building through research of government documents, journal articles and archival records as well as through in-depth interviews with scientists who utilize ethnic categories in their research today.

Elizabeth Wenger, History: Matters of State, Matters of Consciousness: Censorship in Poland and the DDR under Stalin. Between 1945 and 1948, as the Soviet army, and with it an entire network of military censors, receded, new offices for civil censorship were set up in the fledgling Communist states of the Warsaw Pact. Outside of day-to-day political monitoring, one of the main goals of the censor was to create what amounted to a literary cannon that reflected the new Communist reality. This project was complicated by a political situation that required the new states to maintain the name, at least, of democracy. Clearly, the definition of a democratic state presented certain contradictions with the practice of governmental control over intellectual output. The censors, often underpaid and undereducated non-party members, struggled with this tension, and with warring ideas of exactly what kind of cannon they were meant to be creating. It is Ms. Wenger’s aim to compare their efforts in the GDR and Poland. Specifically, the dissertation will consider the restrictions placed on publications in literature and the humanities during the formative period of Stalinism. The paradox is that, while Poland had a censor’s office and East Germany officially had a free press, the German state restricted printing more harshly. By comparing the two, it is possible to move away from the uniformity of totalitarian narratives, and explore the significance of the state’s own understanding of its priorities and weaknesses. Such inquiries could open new perspectives on the state’s understanding of class, on the role of the intelligentsia, and on the gap between the façade of power and its inward fears.