2009 Ph.D. Placement Candidates
The Department is proud to have many excellent Ph.D. candidates on the academic market this year. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our job candidates, faculty members, the Graduate Coordiator on staff, or the Director of Graduate Studies. 
Mike Binder
American PoliticsDissertation Title: "Getting it Right? Confusion and Correct Voting in Direct Democracy"
Description: This research assesses the conditions that underlie how well voters can translate their preferences into votes in direct democracy. Furthermore, this analysis investigates any potential bias in voting errors and tests the role of confusion and cues in the voters’ ability to vote correctly.
The most important contribution this research is the gathering of data specifically designed to investigate the issue of correct voting. I designed and conducted four exit polls in the city of San Diego, California and created questions for an RDD survey in Washington State that were specifically constructed to test the link between voter preferences and vote choice on propositions. Combined with data from several California Field Poll surveys and multiple Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) surveys this dissertation presents the first comprehensive attempt to measure correct voting on ballot initiatives at the individual level across issues, states and time.
Committee: Thad Kousser (chair), Gary Jacobson, Zoli Hajnal, Amy Bridges, Shaun Bowler (UC Riverside), Stephen Nicholson (UC Merced), Theodore Groves (UCSD Economics)
Email: mbinder@ucsd.edu
Website: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~mbinder/
Craig M. Burnett
American Politics; Voting, Campaigns, and Elections; Political Psychology; Public Policy; State and Local PoliticsDissertation Title: Preference Construction and Voter Competency: Citizens as Policymakers in Representative and Direct Democracy
Description: My research examines how individuals make decisions when faced with competing alternatives. The first chapter of my dissertation challenges the standard economic model of voting by showing that voters develop their own preferences partly in response to the positions taken by the candidates. This means that, while candidates are chasing votes, voters are chasing candidates. In my second chapter, I present survey results demonstrating that voters know at least as much about politics as they know about everyday consumer and investment products. My findings suggest that scholars and pundits should be less concerned about the average citizen's ability to make competent decisions in the voting booth. In chapter three, I examine whether and how often voters use information shortcuts in direct democracy. The results call into question the conventional wisdom that voters use cues to overcome their knowledge deficiencies: voters who do know shortcuts relevant to particular ballot policy choices do not seem to make use of them in making their decisions. The fourth chapter of my dissertation explores whether individuals can learn enough about initiatives and referenda from the ballot to translate their policy preferences into votes. My analysis suggests that voters with no knowledge of the details of a ballot measure cast votes that are consistent with their stated policy preferences at least as often as both voters with full knowledge of the policy’s details and voters who know the position taken by a prominent cue-giver. Apart from my dissertation, I am conducting research that considers the causes and consequences of polarization in policy preferences and the structure of congressional co-sponsorship networks.
Committee: Gary C. Jacobson (Co-Chair), Mathew D. McCubbins (Co-Chair), Keith T. Poole, Marisa A. Abrajano, Daniel C. Hallin (Communication), Michael Schudson (Communication)
Email: cburnett@ucsd.edu
Website: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~cburnett/
Mark Culyba
International relations
Dissertation Title: Emergent bargaining behavior: strategic interstate bargaining as an n-player ABM
Description: This dissertation introduces an agent based model driven by the behavioral assumptions of the bargaining theory of war literature. The model is applied to explain why wars tend to cluster geographically and why democracies tend not to fight each other. Simulation results suggest new explanations for both of these phenomena. The emergence of regionally clustering conflict can be explained by the tendency of shifting power to motivate renegotiation when agents pay costs for projecting power and select their bargaining partners. The emergence of regions of democratic peace occurs when certain groups of agents share information more effectively than their competitors. The dissertation develops and validates these theories with statistical analysis of simulation results and case studies.
Committee: David Lake (chair), Branislav Slantchev, Miles Kahler, Darren Schreiber, Gerald Balzano
E-mail: mculyba@ucsd.edu
Ellen Moule
Dissertation Title: “The Political Equilibrium of Tax and Expenditure Limits”
Description: My research examines how the design of institutions and motivations of political actors affects policy implementation. Specifically, my dissertation explores the political and economic consequences of tax and expenditure limits (TELs) for state and local governments. TELs are proscriptions to curb the growth of government that peg taxing or spending to an explicit rule. These limits are most commonly passed through direct democracy. My dissertation analyzes the effectiveness of TELs using a principal-agent framework. I hypothesize that insufficient monitoring, incomplete contracts, and competing interests between principals (voters) and agents (elected officials) inhibits the effectiveness of these limits. Empirical tests using panel data confirms this hypothesis. Additionally, I look at how these limits affect the whole of state and local government activities, not just their intended purposes. Among my findings are that TELs increase state borrowing and assessments of charges and fees. This research has implications for a wider literature concerned with agency relations in local government and institutional design. Political circumvention of TELs implies that principals are rarely able to constrain their political agents solely through rules (or legislation), and suggest that a more effective strategy would be to empower principals with clearer lines of accountability.
Dissertation Committee: Mathew McCubbins (chair), Gary Cox, Gordon Hanson (Economics), Thad Kousser, and Craig McIntosh (Economics)
Email: emoule@ucsd.edu
Webpage: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~emoule
Susan Clark Muntean (Ph.D., Spring 2009)
American Politics, Political Economy, Political TheoryDissertation Title: A Political Theory of the Firm: Why Ownership Matters (Defended May 2009)
Description: I develop and test a new theory of corporate political strategy and behavior based upon ownership structure. I posit that firms with a principal owner structure will differ from firms with an independent management structure. To test this hypothesis, I analyze contributions to political parties, politicians, and political organizations. I find that principal owner firms are able to resolve collective action problems within the firm and innovate the most rapidly in response to campaign finance legislation. In addition, I find that ownership structure predicts which firms exhibit strong partisan preferences relative to their industry. Furthermore, ownership structure explains why some firms innovate in response to legal and political change, and are more likely to engage in philanthropic, partisan and ideological activities. These findings challenge much of the conventional wisdom regarding the political behavior of firms. Analytical methods applied in my research include causal modeling, pattern matching, econometrics, and case studies.
E-mail: susancm@ucsd.edu
Website: http://clarkmuntean.us
David Fisk (Ph.D., Spring 2007)
Comparative politics-Europe, comparative parliaments, political parties/party systemsDissertation Title: The Conflict of the Two: Examining the Determinants and Impact of Second Chamber Assertion
Description: The literature on legislatures often overlooks the policy influence of second chambers in parliamentary systems. This oversight is often justified by highlighting the weak (or suspensory) veto authority that most second chambers possess. That being said, governments are becoming increasingly reliant on the second chamber as a less partisan venue to revise and improve legislation. This is creating conflict, as second chamber influence is creeping into areas formerly dominated by governments. The dissertation looks at the decision to defeat government legislation and whether or not defeating government legislation impacts final policy outcomes by moving them closer to the position of the second chamber. I find that veto strength coupled with the government’s ability to shape preferences within the second chamber frame the decision to defeat government legislation and that defeats often result in policy concessions that shift final outcomes closer to their preferred policy position of the second chamber.
Committee: William Chandler (co-chair), Matthew Shugart (co-chair), Karen Ferree, Gary Jacobson, and Carlos Waisman (sociology).
E-mail: dfisk@ucsd.edu
Website: http://dfisk00.googlepages.com
Ricardo R. Gómez-Vilchis
Comparative politics and American Politics with an emphasis on presidential approval
Dissertation Title: Presidential Approval in Mexico (1989-2006), Determinants and Effects
Description: In my doctoral dissertation I examine presidential approval both as a dependent variable e.g. the determinants of presidential approval, and as an independent variable e.g. the effects of presidential approval. Using Mexico as a case study of emerging democracies with problems of corruption and crime, two main goals lead this research: (1) to examine for the first time in comparative politics how people’s perception of the responsiveness of the political system in addressing corruption and crime affects presidential approval, and (2) to analyze how presidential approval affects the Executive-Legislative relations regarding agreements that strengthen the Mexican transition.
Committee: Samuel Kernell (Chair), David Mares, Wayne A. Cornelius, Thad Kousser, Chris M. Woodruff and Carlos Waisman.
Email: rgomezvilchis@ucsd.edu
Joel W. Johnson
Comparative Politics, Comparative Elections and Campaign Finance, Latin American Politics
Dissertation Title: Electoral Institutions and Campaign Finance
Description: My research studies comparative electoral systems and their effects on political behavior and the finance of campaigns. My dissertation argues that the both the effects of campaign spending and the regulation of campaign finance are influenced in important ways by the electoral rules and institutions that govern the set of alternatives in competition for votes and the translation of votes to seats in legislative elections. The consequence is variation in the role and effects of campaign finance across democracies, which I support with three original studies: the most-thorough cross-national survey of campaign finance disclosure regulations to date, a statistical analysis of campaign income and spending using an original dataset of Chile’s legislative elections in 2005, and a sophisticated dyadic (candidate-to-candidate) estimation of the effects of campaign spending in Chile and Ireland. In addition to the dissertation, I am currently working on a cross-national study of electoral systems, intraparty electoral coordination, and the incumbency advantage.
Committee:Matthew Shugart (Chair), Gary Cox, Gary Jacobson, Richard Feinberg, Scott Desposato
Email: jwjohnson@ucsd.edu
Website: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~jwjohnso/
Kuniaki Nemoto
Comparative Politics; Party Politics; Electoral Systems; East Asia (Japan and Korea)
Dissertation Title: Committing to the Party: The Costs of Governance in East Asian Democracies
Description: My dissertation is intended to explore party discipline and its policy consequences in the context of East Asian democracies: Japan and South Korea. In explaining rank-and-file legislators' commitment to the party, I focus on the interactive game played by leaders and backbenchers. In doing this, I delve into the incentive structures that encourage and/or discourage individual legislators to commit to the party and how leaders react to these legislators. Such structures that tie legislators to the party systematically correspond to the three incentives of legislators: the capacities to mobilize votes, get their policies legislated, and promote their own careers. I argue that, in the East Asian context, where ideological cohesion is generally weak, the vote- and office-seeking incentives would be far more salient than in other developed democracies. Empirical chapters utilize original datasets on Japan and Korea to test my theory.
Committee: Stephan Haggard (Co-Chair), Ellis Krauss (Co-Chair), Matthew Shugart, Megumi Naoi, Carlos Waisman (Sociology)
E-mail: knemoto@ucsd.edu, knemoto1978@gmail.com
Website: http://knemoto1978.googlepages.com/
Jennifer M. Piscopo
Comparative Politics, Latin America
Dissertation Title: “Do Women Represent Women? Gender and Policy in Argentina and Mexico.”
Description: Jennifer’s dissertation tests the widespread belief that female leaders represent women, meaning that female legislators promote public policies that improve women’s wellbeing and rights. Using qualitative and quantitative data from Argentina, where women currently hold 40% of congressional seats, she analyzes three policymaking moments: setting agendas, changing policies, and implementing programs. Field interviews and original datasets demonstrate that female legislators act more frequently than male legislators to advance sexual health, end gender-based violence, and protect equal rights. She compares these findings to the Mexican case, where female legislators hold less than 30% of the seats. The Mexican Congress, unlike the Argentine, formalizes women’s representation through a Bicameral Commission on Gender and Equity. Since policy gains for women are comparable in both cases, institutional arrangements largely determine how and when female legislators represent women. Overall, electing women will have substantive and positive effects on governments’ welfare policies.
Committee: Peter H. Smith (Chair), Scott Desposato, Sebastian Saiegh, Christine Hünfeldt (History), Carlos Waisman (Sociology)
E-mail: jpiscopo@ucsd.edu
Samuel Seljan
International Relations, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Comparative Politics
Dissertation Title: Economic Interests and Security Policy Preferences in the United States
Description: My research addresses the claim that private economic interests affect whether or not states to go to war. For as common as this idea is in the scholarly literature and popular imagination, the evidence supporting it is surprisingly weak. My approach for evaluating it diverges from standard cross country comparisons and, instead, examines key links in the causal chain connecting individual economic interests and state behavior. My dissertation, in particular, focuses on U.S. foreign policy, with one chapter devoted to empirically testing each of the following links: (1) that the decision to go to war has distributional economic consequences that are predictable and substantial in magnitude, (2) that the expected distributional consequences of war affect the security policy preferences of individuals, (3) that the distributional consequences of war and preferences of individuals affect the security policy preferences of politicians, and (4) that the preferences of individuals and politicians affect the behavior of the U.S. government in international disputes.
Committee: David Lake (Chair), Peter Gourevitch, Gary Jacobson, Erik Gartzke, Richard Feinberg
E-mail: sseljan@ucsd.edu
Website: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~sseljan/
Stephen Weymouth
International Relations, Comparative Politics, Political Economy
Stephen's research examines the causes and consequences of institutional development in the context of global economic integration. His work appears in Comparative Political Studies (forthcoming), The Review of International Political Economy (forthcoming), and the IMF Staff Papers.
Dissertation: Competition Politics: A Political Economy of Business Regulation in Developing Countries
Description: As tariffs and other regulatory barriers have fallen, international political economy is moving toward a consideration of a host of behind-the-border obstacles to trade and investment, including the anticompetitive practices of incumbent businesses. My dissertation offers one of the first explanations of variation in competition policies, defined as the policies and institutions that the regulate the entry of firms---domestic and foreign---into an industry, among developing countries. I argue that the salient political cleavage pits insiders versus outsiders: a rent-preserving alliance of incumbent producers and affiliated labor opposes robust competition policies that erode its market dominance; a pro-competition coalition of consumers, unorganized workers, and entrepreneurs favors reform. A simple formal model illustrates that policymakers' commitment to competition policy depends on the incentives generated by political institutions, which influence the responsiveness of votes to economic competition.
I test the argument at several levels of analysis. First, I develop an original dataset measuring variation in competition (antitrust) agency design and independence in 129 developing countries covering the period 1975-2006. Another chapter uses firm-level survey data from over 12,000 companies in 80 countries to test the determinants of firms' lobbying influence. Finally, quantitative case studies from Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina employ an interrupted time series research design to identify how the government's commitment to competition policy reform affects industrial evolution.
Committee: Stephan Haggard (co-chair), Lawrence Broz (co-chair), Peter Gourevitch, Chris Woodruff, Jeff Frieden (Harvard University)
Email: sweymouth@ucsd.edu
Website: http://dss.ucsd.edu/~sweymouth/