This dissertation explores governance in Pakistan through a study of the state-run electrical power sector. At both the micro and macro level, the Pakistani power sector provides a lens into the heart of the Pakistani state and its governance institutions. This ethnographic and …
"66" Result
Sort By:
In the past decade, Iranian architects have mobilized professional institutions—such as magazines, awards, professional bodies, and workshops—to transform their profession and to extend their exposure beyond Iran's tightly controlled borders. To do so, they established connectio…
Changing Chapultepec: Construction, Consumption, and Cultural Politics in a Mexico City Forest, 1934-1944 asks to whom does the forest belong? A study about how Chapultepec Forest in Mexico City became an emblematic space filled with didactic institutions, it argues that actors …
This thesis consists of three chapters. The first two chapters offer game theoretical models for different linkages between political parties and the citizens: programmatic linkage and clientelistic linkage. Empirical implications of these models are discussed using real world d…
Industrial cluster literature has traditionally focused on work-place upgrading, clusters' ability to promote firm productivity, economic growth, and benefits that firm owners can or will give to workers. However, even in growing, productive clusters, such a work-place focus lea…
This dissertation asks why authoritarian regimes are institutionalized in different ways and why they experience different outcomes. I have developed an elite conflict theory of authoritarianism and argue that how the distribution of power is institutionalized within a ruling co…
Why do states vary in their responses to the multifaceted competitive pressures of globalization? Why, in particular, do some states accept a measure of economic loss in exchange for cultural gain? How much autonomous control do they retain in the cultural domain? This dissertat…
The first essay of the dissertation assesses the relationship between foreign financial aid and recipients' aggregate investment. Plagued by a difficult endogeneity problem, the literature has grappled with identifying instrumental variables that are uncorrelated with economic a…
Who prevails when American political leaders and military officers disagree? This study develops and tests two explanations drawn from prominent streams of civil-military relations thought. Revised Structural (RS) theory argues that changes in political, military, and societal a…
I argue that party competition in legislative elections is partly a function of presidential elections. Previous research on spatial competition has assumed that parties are competing in parliamentary regimes, where the only election of concern for parties and voters is the legi…
This dissertation is about Uzbek national culture during the Soviet period through the mid-1990s. Based on 12 months of fieldwork, I conclude that Soviet understandings of culture remain hegemonic among Tashkent's cultural elites. This conclusion is puzzling, given that many Uzb…
I rectify a misconception in the growth literature that inequality is harmful for economic-growth (See Persson and Tabellini (1994)). 1 investigate the quantitative importance of intergenerational cooperation to economic growth, and show that the connection between income inequa…
The purpose of the study was to determine if, how, and to what degree the Niger Community Center and its Inter-organizational Relationships (IORs) elicited community participation in program decision making. The research used the qualitative methodology, specifically interviews,…
This dissertation explores new directions in economic theory based on field research in two Igbo villages in Nigeria (Umuluwe—representative of traditional Igbo villages and Obigbo—representative of suburban, more modern, Igbo villages). Results from Ultimatum and Dictator Games…
This thesis provides both theoretical and empirical evidence to identify why the effect of human capital on economic growth differs across countries. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical explanation of the weak effects of human capital on economic growth in a dynamic general equilib…
Current approaches to post-war state reconstruction are primarily dominated by the liberal peace thesis. These approaches tend to ignore the indigenous institutions, societal resources and cultural agencies of post-conflict societies, although such entities are rooted in the soc…
This thesis draws on an ethnographic research in Ghana to question mainstream views on decentralisation that local level institutions can be consciously crafted to enlist the participation of marginal actors in governance thereby leading to efficiency and equity in development. …
University Knowledge Commercialisation' (UKC) has come to be seen as a stimulant for developing economic performance. Regardless of the increasing body of literature in the UKC, it is revealed to be undertheorized, whilst existing theories are the result of inductive theorizing …
The research draws on an ethnographic research and explores the everyday practice of collective action in Ugbawka in Enugu State by using interviews and participant observation. The study reveals that smallholder collective action is not best fitted into formal institutional arr…