Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Despite almost two decades of democratic deepening in Korea, the streets of Seoul are still filled with unionists chanting slogans while the evening news programs rarely go a day without some story on a labor strike. In contrast, union mobilization has become a seasonal event in Taiwan and labor issues seem to have become integrated into the formal political process. This variation of union activism in post-democratized Korea and Taiwan is the main question this paper seeks to explain.
This research asserts that political institutions created during the democratization process create incentives for the inclusion of unions into formal political channels. Greater institutional permissiveness combined with opportunities of union-party alliances moderate the mode of union mobilization by guiding unions to address the labor agenda through existing political channels (as in the case of Taiwanese unions). Unions alienated from political institutions, including electoral politics, are more likely to sustain radical mobilization strategies (as in the case of Korean unions).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Over the past twenty years, international organizations such as the World Bank have found themselves increasingly having to offer advice to countries attempting to recover from domestic armed conflict. In this sense, the World Bank has returned to its original function of serving as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In these post-conflict societies, World Bank assistance is intended to serve purposes ranging from the emergency provision of social services to the reconstruction and development of economic infrastructure to enabling economic reform. While the World Bank conducts its own evaluations of individual assistance programs, there has been no comprehensive evaluation of the success of these programs. In this paper, we utilize an original data set of World Bank post-conflict assistance programs to answer three closely related questions: (1) What explains why some countries receive World Bank post-conflict assistance? (2) Are such programs successful in fostering economic recovery? and (3) Why are some programs more successful than others?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Three competing hypotheses about an increase of female-headed households are 1) welfare incentive, 2) economic independence, 3) marriage market theory. However, these factors are based on experiences of European countries or the United States. Welfare incentive cannot explain the increase in female heads in Mexico due to the absence of welfare system for female-headed households. On the other hand, the fertility rate in Mexico has decreased rapidly during the last decades, while the U.S presents opposite trend. In this paper, I examine important aspects of an increase in female-headed households in urban Mexico 1987 to 2000, and revise the hypotheses concerning the factors contributing to the increase. I use a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition to test the possibility of new explanation for an increase of female-headed households, and find that fertility decline and increase of female employment explains a significant part of the increase of these households in urban Mexico.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Vietnam still remains associated with 'The Vietnam War', the worst of all wars since 1945 in terms of the number of battle deaths. But in the late 1980s, Vietnam went through a political transition, similar to the one China had gone through ten years earl

Publication Type: Paper/Poster Proposal
Abstract: In recent years, a series of National Issues Forums, or deliberative discussions, around the United States have been conducted about public issues. Critics of this approach tend to argue that for a nation the size of the United States, deliberative discussions can only reach a miniscule portion of the adult population. To study the dynamics of mass political discourse relevant to politics, they argue, one must rely on the more “scientific” methods like the random public opinion survey.

This approach also has its critics. Zahler (1992) notes how the survey method is itself an artificial “intrusion” into citizens’ lives that forces them to formulate and express opinions on issues upon which they may not have well-formed attitudes. Ginsberg argues further that public opinion surveys have changed from a means by which to measure public opinion to a means by which to manage public opinion (1985).

This paper responds by comparing the two approaches. It examines results from a series of deliberative discussions about the United States’ role in the world, held at four-year intervals from 1987 to 2002. It notes the changes in discussants’ opinions from pre- and post-discussion surveys. It then compares these changes to the differences in opinion on similar issues between citizens and opinion leaders in surveys done in the same years by Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. The results show that the deliberative discussants’ responses tend to move significantly towards the opinion leaders’ responses, and away from the citizens’ responses, on comparable questions from the pre- to post-discussion surveys. The report concludes by assessing the meaning of these findings for future deliberative discussions; it proposes that the deliberative process both empowers citizens and makes them more knowledgeable about the issues, even on such a “complex” topic as foreign affairs.