LIGHTS ON, LIGHTS OUT: THE ELUSIVE PROMISE OF PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY AND ELECTRICITY PROVISION FOR THE RURAL POOR UNDER DECENTRALIZATION IN GHANA: 1992-2008
Author:
Naaborle Sackeyfio
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Political Science
Electricity is a ubiquitous element of modern life. While it is elusive for many in the developing world by all accounts Ghana has achieved a successful rate of electrification and outpaced many states in sub-Saharan Africa. As a country widely admired for its democratic governance, economic growth and relative stability, the benefits of ample sources of hydropower and other forms of electric energy have not accrued to the rural poor as the target population of decentralized electrification programs. Previously dismal electricity access prior to the early 1990s led to the pursuit of electrification initiatives to power the country more efficiently and equitably. Under a mantle of decentralized institutions-thought to produce optimal outcomes for public service delivery of goods like electricity and water, access for the rural poor has improved. Yet questions of how political decentralization and market oriented power sector reforms have structured electricity access for the rural poor remain under explored. Since the completion of this study, a 55% access rate substantially increased to 66%. This dissertation argues that though Ghana has made remarkable progress in electricity provision, the merits of decentralized electrification initiatives have yielded differential benefits for the rural poor who comprise a significant bulk of the country's population. I maintain that under a decentralized institutional framework, thought to be inherently ideal for societies in transition, successful service delivery of electricity reflects uneven outcomes for the rural poor evident in the political capture of local institutions charged with utility provision. This dissertation is significant because it focuses on electricity access as an inconspicuous but critical socio-economic component for large numbers of people in the developing African world. Virtually taken for granted in advanced, industrial and post industrial world, the quest for equitable, and affordable access in developing, emerging economies like Ghana in many ways represents a microcosm of the public-private battleground to reconstitute the state's role in the economy, through a neo-liberal agenda of electric power reforms.
Free Spaces, Collective Identity and Political Consciousness: Student Activism and Repression on West Java, 1920-1979
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Political Science
Whereas previous studies of the Indonesian student movement have been limited to studies of single episodes of activism of student protests, this work focuses on the narratives, and repertoires that, together with crucial external events of political and economic realignments created both pressures and opportunities that produced contentious identities of Indonesian student activism.
After Labourism: The Neoliberal Turn by Labor Parties and the Response by Trade Unions
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Program:
Political Science
Explanations for the embrace of pro-market policies by social democratic parties over the last thirty years have pointed to various factors, most commonly the globalization of production and finance, the shrinking of the blue-collar working class, and the rise of so-called postmaterialist politics. The dominant theme in the literature is the transformation of these parties under the pressure of the global capitalist economy, which forces social democratic governments to implement benefit cuts, deregulate markets, and commercialize and privatize the public sector. Such accounts are insufficient because they do not take three important factors into account. The first factor is the change in the class composition of the leadership and individual membership of social democratic parties, even in labor parties with trade union affiliations (New Zealand, Britain, Australia). These parties are increasingly dominated by the salariat--a stratum of intermediate executives and technicians, professionals and engineers, all of whom enjoy a high degree of economic security, job autonomy, and education. The second factor is the diminishing of the influence of the unions within the very parties that are supposed to be their political representatives. The third factor is the lack of a strategy by the unions to ensure that the party leadership must listen to them and take their interests into account when formulating policies. This may be due to a longstanding lack of interest by the unions in engaging in politics (New Zealand) or a passivity by the unions which resulted from many years of anti-union Conservative rule (Britain). In the case of Australia under Labor Party governance (1983-1996) the unions were sufficiently united, disciplined and strategically minded to ensure that a Labor Party government would integrate them into the making of policy. The evidence suggests that the centralized organization of union federations makes the union movement appear as a credible force to labor party leaderships, and that to be able to moderate how quickly and how drastically labor party governments can enact neoliberal policies the unions must be politically active within their historic parties and offer a coherent economic program years before the parties take office.
Rhetoric and the Politics of Necessity
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Program:
Political Science
This dissertation casts the concept of necessity as a rhetorical form that is commonly used to shape what appears politically possible. I argue that engaging necessity as rhetoric helps not only to conceptualize key political concepts, such as freedom, but to mediate some perennial problems in politics. To make this argument, I undertake two basic tasks. First, I catalog a series of different kinds of necessity arguments that appear across the history of Western political thought. To show necessity's centrality to canonical political theory, I examine the work of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Marx and Arendt. I then apply this analysis to three examples, each of which illuminates a different kind of political problem: Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War illustrates the role necessity plays in producing the appearance of inevitable war; John Marshall's opinion in McCulloch v. Maryland shows necessity as a problem in legal interpretation; finally, contests over the meaning of medical necessity in American health care debates illustrate problems inherent in the relationship between medicine and politics.
Biotechnology Regulation in the European Union and France: Un Dialogue des Sourds
Author:
Patricia Stapleton
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Political Science
Advisor:
Christa Altenstetter
In the early 1990s, France was at the forefront of agricultural biotechnology innovation and implementation. Yet, by the end of the decade, France had become one of the most vocal opponents among the European Union member states to genetically modified organisms and genetically modified food. France's continued resistance to implementing EU agricultural biotechnology legislation has created a regulatory impasse in this issue area. This study examines the triggering events that led to the reversal in the French position on GMOs, as well as explores the institutional development of the EU and French regulatory frameworks. Using a historical institutionalist approach, this work demonstrates that triggering events in the 1990s led to policy changes and institutional development in the fields of public health and food safety, both at the EU-level and within France. The main argument put forth in this dissertation is that the differences in the institutional evolution of the French regulatory framework for GMOs when compared to the evolution of the EU's regulatory framework has created the regulatory deadlock, which can be characterized as un dialogue des sourds between the EU and France. Furthermore, this impasse will continue to exist as long as the EU disregards the core concerns of anti-GMO sentiment in France.
THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD: HUMAN RIGHTS, POLITICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY VIA AFFECTIVE AND RATIONAL POLITICS
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Program:
Political Science
This study examines how Political Entrepreneurs in the United States Congress responded to human rights abuses in six countries during the 1970s and 1980s: Cambodia, El Salvador, South Africa, the Soviet Union, Taiwan, and Uganda. It presents a four-point model for approaching the study of United States human rights policy. The key element in all the cases is bonding social capital, also called affective politics. American policy towards the Soviet Union and Uganda both demonstrate the integration of international, transnational, and domestic politics. Taiwan receives special attention because U.S. Taiwan policy continues to exemplify the integration of international relations, transnational relations, and domestic politics.
Remittances and Political Liberalization
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Program:
Political Science
At present, this connection between remittances and political liberalization is based on sporadic observations and anecdotal evidence. I examine this relationship by carrying out a methodologically sophisticated analysis that combines game theoretic reasoning, a matching methods causal model, a Bayseian multilevel statistical analysis, and in-depth case studies of Mexico and Taiwan.
Sword versus Shield: The Impact of Democracy on Rivalry
Year of Dissertation:
2013
Program:
Political Science
The democratic peace deals with pairs of states that are least likely to fight. Rivalry scholarship deals with pairs of states that are most likely to fight. By putting the two phenomena together, one can examine the effects of democratization on the conflict behavior of states. Does democratization exacerbates existing tensions or mollify them? I argue that when a rivalry between a democracy and a non-democracy becomes jointly democratic, the rivalry as a whole deescalates. Since the institutional explanation of the democratic peace, unlike the case for the normative explanation, is power sensitive, I infer that the magnitude of de-escalation itself should be also conditioned by the relative power between the rival states. In so doing, I am in essence, applying the logic of the democratic peace to the domain of enduring rivalry.
Sustainable Development and the Urban Water Sector Reform in Dakar, Senegal: The Politics of Neoliberalism in a Developing Country
Author:
Sophie Theven de Gueleran
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Program:
Political Science
The 1996 urban water sector reform in Senegal is not the sustainable development success claimed by its proponents. Privatization and cost-recovery management resulted in poor water and sanitation services unaffordable to many, increased access inequalities, and accelerated water resource destruction. Dependent on profitmaking and users' ability to pay, service provision did not improve the satisfaction of basic water needs for all and the protection of water resources, nor reduce poverty and waterborne diseases.
"Free" Trade or "Fair" Trade? The Battle for the Rules of American Trade Policy from NAFTA to CAFTA (1991-2005)
Author:
Jean-Baptiste Velut
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Program:
Political Science
The 1990s marked the emergence of the "new politics of American trade." A large coalition of labor, environmental and consumer organizations fought to broaden the narrow economic scope of American trade policy and change the rules of globalization. More than fifteen years after their first legislative battle against the North American Free Trade Agreement, what is the legacy of their political mobilization? What factors constrained their progress? Drawing from interviews with political actors, lobbying materials from labor, environmental and business organizations, and congressional records, this dissertation analyzes the clash between "fair" and "free" traders in five major legislative battles from 1991 to 2005. It reveals that the "special relationship" between the business community and the executive branch was the key obstacle to the achievements of the "blue (collar)-green" alliance from the beginning to the end of the policy process. Not only did the private sector enjoy privileged access to the negotiations phase, but the president also assisted free trade coalitions in their lobbying efforts, allowing them to win most legislative battles.