Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This explorative study of foreign deployments examines international and domestic factors that drive European governments either to deploy troops abroad or to abstain from a deployment. Since governments are restrained both by public opinion and conditions at the international systems level, those factors may exert a considerable influence on the governmental decision regarding troop deployments.
Being a part of foreign policy analysis, foreign deployments as a unit of analysis have only hesitantly moved to the focus of academic research, particularly deployments of European countries. The study compares 14 deployments between 2000 and 2006 and analyzes the respective engagements or non-engagements of the German, French, British, Spanish, Austrian and Polish armed forces. All cases will be analyzed with respect to international systems variables such as alliance membership and alliance alignment, state actor level variables such as professionalization of the armed forces and historical ties towards the leading nation, and individual level data such as public opinion.
The paper aims to explore the systemic, actor specific and individual conditions of European troop deployments abroad in order to develop a middle range theory that may predict whether a country will participate in future deployments or not.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In order to be (re)elected, what is the most effective distributive politics so as to increase the probability of a politician's being (re)elected and win a seat? When it comes to the party level, how would party organization target to win the majority of seats? Recent political economy literatures treat this question with theoretical models and generally suggest two different ideas; invest in core supportive districts vs. invest in swing districts. This study attempts to empirically test the theories, which is relatively underdeveloped in the field, using Korean election results and intergovernmental transfer. This study, unlike earlier studies of Korea on this subject focusing on the relationship between the outcomes from presidential elections and intergovernmental transfers, relates the intergovernmental transfer with the general election for the National Assembly. By combining general election result, I examine whether political parties of Korea invest more in the supportive or swing regions. The result confirms Cox and McCubbins’s core supporter theory. I explain this as a result of strong regional voting bloc and the third party threat in many districts.

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: My paper seeks to contextualize the journeys of two noteworthy art-forms and cultural movements. Both Hip-hop and Go-go surfaced in the early 1970s, with their appeal and success emerging out of major urban centers, the South Bronx, New York for Hip-hop and Washington D.C. for Go-go. Both art-forms emerged and proliferated during the tenures of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, whose administrations both severely cut school funding which specifically targeted “the arts,” in a deplorable effort to remedy economic recession and deindustrialization. In the absence of needed structural venues for artistic expression for young people in cities plagued by urban decay, miraculously yet indicative of the African-American experience, meaningful cultural aesthetics flourished. Young people resorted to creating new forms of music with minimal resources, reflecting their brilliance in the face of impoverished circumstances. The elements of Hip-hop required the usage cardboard, spray paint cans, building and subway surfaces, and their parents’ record players. Go-go relied on the ingenious rhythmic usage of pots, pans, trash cans and other household percussion items. Both Hip-hop and Go-go both employed the usage of the West African retention of “Call and Response.” The emergence of both art-forms is further rooted in the West Indies’ cultural tradition, transported to the US east coast through immigrant pioneers of the art.
Despite their significant similarities, the two genres are located in drastically different spaces today. Go-go has survived and thrived along-side hip-hop, yet remained regional within the Washington, D.C. area, juxtaposed to hip-hop’s world-wide growth. My paper will evaluate the significance of their distinctive journeys, addressing, “Why and How did Go-go remain only regional, untainted by the impulses of industry and commercialization, unlike its cohort hip-hop.” Finally, I will examine the significance of art and consumerism, as rap music and hip-hop culture created by African Americans, now consist of consumer bases that are significantly non-black; while Go-go is created by African Americans, yet reflects a consumer base that has always been and continues to be overwhelmingly African-American.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Benjamin I. Page and Dukhong Kim
“‘Go it Alone’ Won’t Go with the American Public”

Recent U.S. foreign policy has widely been seen as having a unilateralist, “go it alone” tendency. Three decades worth of national surveys by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, supplemented by other survey data gathered since the invasion of Iraq, indicate that large majorities of ordinary Americans prefer quite a different foreign policy: one that relies chiefly on cooperative, multilateral, and diplomatic methods.
Majorities of citizens favor cooperation and joint decision making with allies, especially European countries; having widespread diplomatic relations, even with official enemy states like Iran and Cuba; pursuing diplomatic methods (as well as, and perhaps in preference to, military methods) in the struggle against terrorism; and dealing even-handedly with Israel and the Palestinians, including establishing a Palestinian state. Most Americans hold the United Nations in very high esteem and favor strengthening it by a variety of means, including a standing UN peacekeeping force and a small direct tax on international transactions. Most favor a strong UN role in the reconstruction of Iraq. Most Americans back a number of international treaties and agreements that have been rejected by U.S. officials, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the treaty to ban land mines, the Kyoto agreement on global warming, and the International Criminal Court.
The public’s preferences for cooperative policies have generally been quite stable over time. They tend to fit together coherently in support of what can be called “global governance,” in which a network of international treaties and institutions are used to encourage the collective provision of global public goods. At the individual level, these preferences tend to reflect “purposive belief systems” in which people’s policy preferences are linked to logically related goals and perceptions of threats.
The concluding section of the paper asks how the foreign policy of a democratic country could get out of harmony with the wishes of its citizens. It suggests that the reasons may lie in non-democratic features of U.S. elections, including the crucial roles of political party activists and money givers; the relatively low salience of some of these foreign policy issues; the success of public officials’ rhetoric at persuading citizens that their wishes are not in fact being flouted; and the willingness of many citizens to acquiesce in policies they dislike, unless and until major negative results begin to appear.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The emergence of the mass market as an organizing concept for distinctions in urban space is investigated through newspapers’ reporting and promotion of early movie-going in Toronto, 1907-1916. Before turning to film-going, I theorize the role of the newspaper in orienting the city dweller to the very idea of urban living, the city’s rhythms, options, and spaces. Specific to the movies, I then trace the shift from journalism, primarily concerned with understanding the audience and its attraction to the novelty pastime, to promotion, in which constantly-changing film titles, stars, and studios could stand in for the everyday urban practice: A mass market had been institutionalized. In particular, the brief fad of serial films with accompanying stories in weekend newspapers perhaps marks the moment when a mass audience was first assumed, or at least the newspaper reader assumed the subject of the movie-going. Serial films provided an umbrella text to explicitly show how the variety of spaces, times, prices, and classes of audiences encompassed a common practice, a mass practice.