Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellows, 1993-1994

Howard Allen, Sociology: Directed Culture: Theater, Society, and Politics in Interwar Soviet Russia. Recent studies of various facets of Soviet culture have demonstrated the great ingenuity of the Bolsheviks in creating new Soviet traditions. Mr. Allen's dissertation project begins with the thesis that control over cultural distribution far outweighed concern over cultural production for the nascent Soviet regime. With the shift from state sponsorship of theater in the immediate post-revolutionary period to state control of theater in the mid-1930s, however, the role of institutional mediators became primary.

Robert Bullock, Political Science: The Social Bases of the Developmental State: Agriculture and the Conservative Coalition in Postwar Japan. Focusing on agricultural politics, policy, and institutions, this dissertation analyzes agriculture's position as the main electoral base of long-term conservative rule in postwar Japan.

Leah Carroll, Sociology: Violent Democratization: The Effect of Political Reform on Rural Social Conflicts in Colombia. Throughout the past three decades Columbia's political life has been characterized by a formal but restrictive and centralized democracy and a chronic guerrilla war in the countryside. Ms. Carroll's research examines four key areas -- an oil-producing region, a coca-producing region, a banana-producing region, and a palm-oil-producing region -- as case studies of how national changes affect local regions contexts.

Laurie Freeman, Political Science: Press, State, and Society in Contemporary Japan. Is the Japanese press "one of the greatest institutional barriers to democracy in Japan," as some have argued? Or does it function much as the press does in other liberal democracies? Ms. Freeman's dissertation focuses on Japan's ubiquitous information cartels--the institutionalized rules and relationships guiding press behavior in Japan. She argues that Japan represents an extreme case of the "cartelization" of information, through the institutionalization of relationships and practices which in other countries are much less rule-bound.

Patrick Heller, Sociology: The Politics of Redistributive Development. The objective of the research project is to develop a thorough historical account of the Indian state of Kerala's unique trajectory of social and redistributive development and to identify the political and institutional factors that have contributed to its successful social transformation.

David Kang, Political Science: Transaction Costs and Bureaucratic Autonomy in Korea and the Philippines. Some scholars have argued that a strong autonomous state was a necessary precondition for development in East Asia. Yet why would a strong state pursue economic growth instead of devolving into rent-seeking and corruption? In this dissertation Mr. Kang develops a theory derived from the insights of the "new institutional economics." His dissertation compares South Korea and the Philippines during the 1970s, and argues that in general, agreements between political actors in South Korea were more credible than those in the Philippines.

Luisa Lambertini, Economics: Political Economy of the Accumulation of Large Public Debt. The Italian debt to GDP ratio has grown steadily since the early 1960s and it is currently over 100 percent. The dynamics of Italian public debt, however, are not the result of an overhang of debt due to a previous war effort or an uncommonly severe recession. Although cyclical factors have caused jumps in the debt ratio, it has never reverted to former levels, but in fact has risen even in more prosperous years. Ms. Lambertini's dissertation proposes a political approach to modeling the over-accumulation of public debt.

Rudra Sil, Political Science: Social Change, Corporate Groups, and the State in Late Industrialization: China, India, Japan, and Russia in the Twentieth Century. This dissertation is an attempt to reconcile studies of social change and cultural identity with studies of state-led development strategies. Mr. Sil is working toward a theoretical synthesis that rejects teleological or evolutionary assumptions but combines aspects of modernization theory, cultural theory, as well as state-centered theories of development. He will examine the cases of China, India, Japan, and Russia to identify whether and/or how state leaders of these nations sought to cope with the problem of subnational identities, and how effectively they designed a system to promote labor harmony at the level of enterprise.

Arun Swamy, Political Science: The People against the Poor: Autonomy through Competing Populisms in India. Is it possible for elected politicians, especially in developing countries, to win power without escalating social conflicts or compromising long-range developmental goals for short-term demands? Mr. Swamy seek to answer this question by developing a model of party competition in India. The competition between two essentially centrist visions of distributional justice has been at least as marked as more conventional left-right contests, both in the history of Western industrial democracies and in political contests especially in contemporary developing countries. Through a development of the Indian case, two critical factors are whether "Privilege Populists," who have a tendency to emerge around particular localized grievances, are able to unite and provide an effective challenge to established ruling groups to force them to sharpen their appeal; and whether it is possible for "Protection Populists" to open a gender gap in voting patterns by winning the votes of a relatively higher number of women on social security issues.