Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines sectoral differences in the centrality of transnational corporations between 1983 and 1998, as indicated by networks of global interlocking directorates. Fortune Global 500 firms are first classified by economic activity. We then identify the interlocking directorates both within and across sectors to determine what type of company is most central at these two periods.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While elaborating a new theory of social class, Aage B. Sørensen (1996, 2000) argued that selective rent destruction is one source of the increase in earnings inequality witnessed in the 1980s and 1990s. In this article, we develop the rent destruction conjecture and then test two implications of it, analyzing yearly data from the Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Population Surveys. After demonstrating with alternative definitions of social class that the earnings of workers at the bottom of the class distribution have declined relative to the earnings of those at the top, we then show that the variance of wage premia associated with employment in alternative industries declined relatively more for the working class. Adopting the position from the economics literature that these industry wage premia are reasonable measures of industry rents, we conclude that the results support the rent destruction conjecture.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: While many view postcommunist nationalism as a return to primordial identities, the record of public protest in Czechoslovakia 1983 – 1992 reveals significant variation in national identity claims. The same political actors claimed different identities at different points in time. Collective claims on behalf of various nations -- Czech, Slovak, Czechoslovak, Moravian – rose and fell over the course of the decade. How the nation was defined varied and changed. I treat the nation as a “categorical relation” between a political community and others beyond its boundaries, its boundaries shaped by and shaping ongoing political interaction, among polity members, challengers, and external actors. Most public national identity claims are made in the course of routine institutional politics and support taken-for-granted boundaries of national citizenship. Occasionally, however, collective national identity claims are contentious, made in protest events that happen outside institutional channels, in demonstrations, rallies, and other public displays. Episodes of such claim making sometimes begin to transform accepted national boundaries. They create new “categorical pairs,” constituted by the nation and some other category. Recurrence and change in the categorical pairs articulated in protest events in Czechoslovakia from 1983 – 1992 tell a story about how nations are constructed. Importantly, such construction features common dynamics, across different national categories and regime types. This paper will specify how two causal mechanisms repeatedly figure in national identity politics: category formation and attribution of threat/opportunity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper addresses the question of why some states commit to regional efforts that, apparently, do not affect their national interests and do not have clear immediate rewards and beneficiaries. It builds up on a within-case analysis to inductively identify the mecahanisms that led Argetnina to exhibit a relatively more stable and consistent foreign policy in the political regional area of democracy promotion between 1983 and 2007.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this article, I use the Boolean method to explain outcomes of conflictual situations in Greece and Turkey (1983-2003). I argue that the making of confrontational policies is a complex phenomenon that does not lend itself to monocausal explanations. My analysis is based on a dataset which includes any crisis between majority Greeks or Turks with either their minorities or neighbors since 1983. The Boolean method allows for testing alternative hypotheses to illustrate whether they are qualitatively true or false, or whether they result in a large number of contradictions. In evaluating current theories, these contradictions suggest whether the theories under review need to be replaced, amended, or complemented with new ones. Among a number of potential theoretical frameworks, I select to test the diversionary theory of war and the security dilemma. These two theories stipulate sets of necessary conditions (variables) which can be operationalized and tested against data collected using retrieval databases (i.e. Lexis/Nexis and FBIS). In brief, my test demonstrates that there is some support for the two theories and that the two are not mutually exclusive. Using Charles Ragin’s probabilistic criteria to assess sufficiency, I conclude that the security dilemma and the diversionary theory are quasi-sufficient explanations of confrontational policies. A number of anomalous cases beg further examination and suggest the need for a complementary third perspective emphasizing ideational factors and learning experience.