A theory of alliance restructuring: the cases in East Asia, 1946 – 2000

Why do some allies restructure their existing alliance relationships which they once favored, but some do not? In what ways do allies restructure their alliances? Historically interstate military alliances change their original agreements more than they remain the same, and the average duration of bilateral alliances is less than a decade. Theoretically, previous works have paid great attention mostly to the formation and duration of alliances. Answers to the above basic questions have been largely indeterminate, despite the fact that when allies change their original agreements, it reshapes the behaviors of both allies and non-allies. This study argues that when a state grows more powerful relative to its neighbors and external powers; and experiences a domestic regime change, the state is likely to restructure its exiting alliance relationship. These external and internal changes since the alliance formation cause the state’s original preference on the arms-and-allies balance to shift, and the state has greater incentive to restructure the existing alliance by way of dealignment, expiration, or renewal. In order to test the argument, this study first provides the quantitative results by testing 142 post-WWII alliances formed from 1946 to 2000, and identifies the statistically significant and substantial effects of three factors, capabilities increase, regime change (democratization and authoritarianization), and government change (both leadership and supporting coalition change), on the state’s alliance restructuring. Then this study qualitatively tests the quantitative findings and traces the causal process through case studies for three U.S. alliances in East Asia (the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan). The Philippine alliance restructuring in 1992 is examined as a typical case demonstrating that the argument empirically works. Then this study investigates why South Korea did not restructure the alliance with the U.S. in the 1990s even though the external and internal factors suggest that it would restructure. Lastly, the U.S.-Japan alliance case in 2009-2010 is examined to assess the explanatory power of the argument beyond the data population. An alliance restructuring can significantly affect an individual state’s security positively or negatively, therefore state leaders must continue to pay a close attention to the management of alliances

A DYNAMIC HETEROGENEOUS MULTI-CORE ARCHITECTURE

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Understanding Deregulated Retail Electricity Markets in the Future: A Perspective from Machine Learning and Optimization

On top of Smart Grid technologies and new market mechanism design, the further deregulation of retail electricity market at distribution level will play a important role in promoting energy system transformation in a socioeconomic way. In today’s retail electricity market, customers have very limited ”energy choice,” or freedom to choose different types of energy services. Although the installation of distributed energy resources (DERs) has become prevalent in many regions, most customers and prosumers who have local energy generation and possible surplus can still only choose to trade with utility companies.They either purchase energy from or sell energy surplus back to the utilities directly while suffering from some price gap. The key to providing more energy trading freedom and open innovation in the retail electricity market is to develop new consumer-centric business models and possibly a localized energy trading platform. This dissertation is exactly pursuing these ideas and proposing a holistic localized electricity retail market to push the next-generation retail electricity market infrastructure to be a level playing field, where all customers have an equal opportunity to actively participate directly. This dissertation also studied and discussed opportunities of many emerging technologies, such as reinforcement learning and deep reinforcement learning, for intelligent energy system operation. Some improvement suggestion of the modeling framework and methodology are included as well.Ph.D.College of Engineering & Computer ScienceUniversity of Michigan-Dearbornhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145686/1/Tao Chen Final Dissertation.pdfDescription of Tao Chen Final Dissertation.pdf : Dissertatio

Making Autocrats Accountable: Interests, Priorities, and Cooperation for Regime Change

In nearly all authoritarian regimes, democratization finds significant societal support and a number of organized opposition groups struggle for regime change. In some cases—such as in Iran in 1979— opposition groups are able to cooperate with one another and bring down authoritarianism. In others—such as the Assad regime in Syria—groups are not able to cooperate, and the ruler remains in place. Studies that apply cooperation theory on regimes predict that shared grievances about the current government and common interests in changing the existing regime foster cooperation among challengers. Yet, evidence suggests the contrary. This study examines the conditions under which diverse challengers, despite persistent divergence in their ideological preferences, are able to achieve a level of long-term cooperation that can transform the status quo. It uses the case studies of the Ottoman transition to constitutional monarchy (1876–1908) and the French transition to constitutional monarchy (1814–1830), paired according to the least similar systems design, in combination with network theory. Using this methodology, this study analyzes the effect of preferences on ideological issues (how the new regime should look like) and on strategic issues (how regime change should be carried out) to explain temporal dynamics of cooperation for regime change among challengers. This study conducts historiographical and archival work to identify the relevant actors and relevant issue dimensions and track preferences on these issues over time. It applies these findings on longitudinal network models (known as temporal exponential random graph models) to measure the extent to which preference alignment on an issue dimension, strategic or ideological, bring challengers to cooperate. Also, this study introduces two concepts. The first concept is “de-prioritization,” the process whereby challengers postpone the resolution of certain ideological disagreements to form sustainable cooperation against the regime. The second concept is “preference revision,” the process whereby challengers pragmatically replace their strategic preferences with more effective ones in response to past failures and environmental changes. Together these concepts emphasize that challengers become more likely to cooperate for regime change if they converge on a particular strategy of transition and sideline their ideological differences (if any). Convergence of preferences on strategic issues and the de-prioritization of ideological disagreements (if any) prepares the rise of a coherent oppositional coalition that is capable of signaling unity and coherence, hence potential to overthrow the regime if necessary or extract considerable concessions form an oppositional coalition that is capable of signaling unity and coherence, hence potential to overthrow the regime if necessary or extract considerable concessions. Findings suggest that without preference-revision and de-prioritization, challengers remain divided and heterogeneous in their approach, at best achieving temporary gains that are later reversed in the course of authoritarian retrenchment. This study further shows that the oppositional coalition tends to form around a core actor who has been committed to effective strategies and attracts others (peripheral actors) who agree with the core on the strategies but not necessarily on the ideologies. The implication of these findings are twofold: By taking dynamics of cooperation among challengers into account, we can distinguish between the cases where the regime is strong enough and takes on challengers and those where the government is weak but surviving because opposition groups are unable to assume power. Also, there is a link between the rise of an oppositional coalition and the likelihood of regime change happening

How Leadership Occurs in a Loosely Coupled, Multi-Stakeholder System

As the world continues to evolve towards more collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders, challenging established hierarchies and systems, leadership is called upon and questioned. The purpose of this research was to understand the leadership phenomena in a loosely coupled, multi-stakeholder system. The researcher employed qualitative methods using grounded theory and gathered data through a series of in-depth interviews, ethnographic observations, personal leadership experiences and reflections, focus groups, and theoretical sampling. Constant comparative analysis produced four major categories of leadership phenomenon: the why, the what, the how, and the who. Grounded in the experience of research participants, the developed theory explains that acts of leadership happen at the system level, the core group level, the coalition of the willing level, and the founding members level (the “we”). A small group of people (the “who”) utilize the processes of influence (the “how”), self accountability (the “what”), and moral responsibility (the “why”) to carry out the purpose of the system and maintain the values of collaboration. The loosely coupled, multi-stakeholder system acts as a living organism that interacts with the external environment and internal resources to accomplish its purpose. The four dimensions of the system (the why, the what, the how, and the who) interplay and interact with each other in a dynamic, cyclical fashion where four levels of leadership are enacted by individual actors: taking responsibility, inviting to collaborate, forming and sustaining the “leadership” team, and balancing chaos and order

Losing Ground: An Ethnography Of Vulnerability And Climate Change In Shishmaref, Alaska

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2012This dissertation presents an ethnography of vulnerability in Shishmaref, Alaska. The village of Shishmaref, population 563, faces imminent threat from increasing erosion and flooding events -- linked to climatic changes and ecological shift -- making the relocation of residents off of the island necessary in the foreseeable future. In spite of ongoing conversations with government agencies since 1974, an organized relocation has yet to occur in Shishmaref. While ecological shift and anthropogenic climate change are no doubt occurring in and around the island, the literature on vulnerability and disaster predicts that social systems contribute at least as much as ecological circumstances to disaster scenarios. This research tests this theory and asks the question: what exactly is causing vulnerability in Shishmaref, Alaska? The resulting dissertation is an exploration of the ecological, historical, social and cultural influences that contribute to vulnerability and risk in Shishmaref. Unlike common representations of climate change and disaster that present the natural environment as a sole driver of risk, this research finds complex systems of decision-making, ideologies of development, and cultural assumptions about social life contribute to why Shishmaref residents are exposed to erosion and flooding and why government intervention and planning remains difficult

Urban governance reconsidered : assessing the roles of public-, private-, and third sector leaders in governing the modern city.

As central cities redefine themselves after decades of commercial abandonment, “urban renaissance” movements, white flight, and the gentrification of their central urban neighborhoods, are cities still governed by the political-business coalitions conceptualized by urban regime theorists, or have new players emerged? Further, as cities continue to evolve within the post-Fordist landscape, do extant theories of urban governance, themselves built upon decades-old observations, continue to provide adequate models for urban governance as it actually exists in cities today? This dissertation is a quantitative and qualitative examination of contemporary urban governance in the United States, and the roles of CDCs and anchor institutions in urban decision-making structures. Chapter One begins with a description of Dallas, Texas, and two of its central urban neighborhoods – Downtown Dallas, the city’s CBD that is currently undergoing a conversion to mixed-use development; and North Oak Cliff, a former streetcar suburb that has suffered from a half-century of political and economic neglect, but has recently seen its fortunes dramatically improve. Chapter Two retells the interconnected histories of theories of urban governance, the socioeconomic impacts of Fordism, its crisis, and post-Fordism, and the evolution of Dallas from a regional industrial hub to a major commercial center, while highlighting a number of reasons why current conceptualizations of urban governance may no longer fit with actual urban governance. Chapter Three details this study’s methods – first, the use of census data from 1980 to 2010, and second, a reputational analysis of 79 participants who showed themselves to be highly knowledgeable about Dallas’ contemporary decision-making structure. Chapters Four, Five, and Six detail this study’s key findings – first, that modern urban decision-making occurs within multiple interconnected levels (neighborhood and city); second, that the structure of urban decision-making is still critical in understanding the nature of which decisions get made (and which do not), as well as the range of responses for a given situation; third, that Dallas’ third-sector organizations (e.g. CDCs and anchor institutions) have been largely unable to meaningfully involve themselves in the politics of decision-making; and finally, that under the right blend of economic- and political pressures, structures of urban governance can change from one type to another. In the Dallas case, the decline of its business coalition, and the court-ordered breakup of its at-large city council resulted in a new structure of governance, or better put, a non-structure, wherein multiple competing agendas and resource pools have taken over the larger political discourse, and have largely prevented a unified vision for Dallas from emerging

Rethinking Breakups

Trust-busting is once again a subject of national attention. And the attention is well-deserved: unprecedented levels of corporate concentration, firm dominance, and inequality demand robust debate about how antitrust solutions can ensure that our economy works for everyone. One simple remedy to “bigness” has stolen the spotlight within that debate—“breaking up” big firms into smaller ones to decrease corporate power and lower prices. But calls to break up firms from Big Tech to Big Ag have focused on how breakups could benefit consumers and, in some cases, small businesses. Absent from these debates is how breakups benefit or harm the workers and labor markets affected by firm dismantling. This Article is the first to focus on how firm breakups—and antitrust enforcement and remedial design more generally—can and have significantly impacted workers’ countervailing power and earning potential. Firm structure matters for worker power. Dismantling dominant firms can result in more firms competing for workers’ services, which can lift worker wages. But it can also dismantle structures of worker power that have arisen to successfully counter dominant employers. A leading example, as this Article documents, is the devastating effect of the 1980s breakup of the Bell System on the Communications Workers of America, gutting union density within the telecommunications industry from 56 percent pre-breakup to 24 percent by 2001. Breakups, much like workplace “fissuring,” can decimate labor market institutions that advocate on workers’ behalf, but also have and can result in layoffs, increased obstacles for worker coordination, lower overall wage rates, and dramatic reductions in earned benefits, job security, and the quality of working conditions. The Article fills the gap in antitrust scholarship and policy debates that have ignored the effects of antitrust remedies on workers. It offers the first comprehensive scholarly treatment of these effects and argues that, for historical, theoretical, and empirical reasons, antitrust enforcers and scholars must attune their prescriptions and remedial mechanisms to ensure that antitrust remedies do not perpetuate the long history of antitrust law’s alternating hostility to or disregard for worker welfare. It begins by summarizing the debates around firm breakups and reveals their disregard for labor market competition and worker welfare. It then unearths case studies and social scientific analyses to assess the effects of breakups and offers a theoretical and empirical overview of when breaking up firms can benefit or harm labor market competition and workers’ countervailing power against dominant employers. It concludes by proposing alternative remedies to monopolization and corporate consolidation that better secure worker welfare

Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, nr 3

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