Placement Candidates

Primary Field: Political Theory
Secondary Fields: Comparative Politics and International Relations
PhD awarded 2010

What binds citizens together into a community? How are individuals transformed into citizens? My dissertation returns to the origins of liberal thought to examine these questions, particularly focusing on religion as the element that binds individuals. I examine John Locke's political theory, analyzing both the founding principles of the theory and its concluding institutional relationship between religion and the state. I conclude that, while he ultimately builds his argument on non-religious grounds, religion is an integral component of the Lockean state, countering human nature''s tendency toward self-interest. Locke's carefully designed argument resolves the problem of rights-based political systems by merging community interest with self-interest while being built on the foundation of individual consent.

Dissertation:"Creating Community: Locke's Secular Theory of the Non-Secular State"

Dissertation Committee Composition
John T. Scott (chair), Robert S. Taylor, Josephine T. Andrews

CV
E-mail: ebalzate [at] ucdavis [dot] edu

Primary Fields: American Politics and Methodology
PhD expected June 2012

My dissertation research uses expert informant data to study the interaction between voters and candidates in congressional elections. I demonstrate that previous research underestimates the effect of negative campaigning on individual voting choice because it ignores variation in the responsiveness of voters to campaigns in general. I also show that candidates' relative issues positions affect voters, even in elections characterized by low candidate visibility and large resource asymmetries. Because this research relies on expert informants to measure key candidate characteristics, I present an approach for collecting and applying informant data that minimizes the effects of error and bias.

Dissertation:“Candidates, Voters, and Campaign Tone in Congressional Elections”

Dissertation Committee Composition
Walter J. Stone (chair), Benjamin Highton, Robert Huckfeldt, and Bradford S. Jones

CV
E-mail: mbuttice [at] ucdavis [dot] edu

Primary Field: American Government
Secondary Field: Methodology
PhD expected June 2012

When political parties run advertisements on behalf of U.S. congressional candidates, the tone of the ads is more likely to be negative than those run by the candidates themselves. I analyze party contributions as a way to understand the relationship between parties and candidates. The patterns suggest parties can serve the interests of the candidates by protecting them from voter backlash associated with negative campaigning. This frees candidates to run more positive campaigns, distancing themselves from surrogates who attack their opponents. Meanwhile, the tone and amount of party spending suggests that parties are highly sensitive to the opportunities and threats of the electoral environment.

Dissertation:"Providing Cover: Party Advertising in U.S. Congressional Campaigns"

Dissertation Committee Composition
Walt Stone (chair), Ben Highton, James Adams, Erik Engstrom

CV
E-mail: njhadley [at] ucdavis [dot] edu

Primary Field: International Relations
Secondary Field: Comparative Politics
PhD awarded June 2011

My research agenda is driven by my interest in explaining great power interactions. More specifically, my dissertation explores the causes of anti-American soft balancing by powerful states and makes a theoretical contribution by testing and challenging the dominant theory of international relations. I argue that, contrary to the arguments presented in the literature, unilateralism and the pursuit of self- interest are weak predictors of soft balancing. That is, states will not necessarily oppose American unilateral actions and will not always soft-balance when doing so lies in their material self-interest. Instead, as my structured and focused comparison shows, soft balancing is most likely to occur when other states' national interests are violated by the United States in a manner that is perceived as predatory.

Dissertation:"Balancing Unipolarity"

Dissertation Committee Composition
Miroslav Nincic (chair), Larry Berman, Jeanette Money

CV
E-mail: mkucharski [at] ucdavis [dot] edu

Primary Field: American politics
Secondary Field: Political Methodology
PhD expected June 2012

Due to a number of endogeneity problems, understanding a citizen’s electoral behavior—or candidates’ appeals to voters—requires information about the citizen, their social relations, and the candidates. My dissertation examines this dynamic relationship by exploring the link between citizens’ and candidates’ issue preferences (i.e., issue positions) and priorities (i.e., the importance they attach to various issues). I find that citizens’ priorities infuence their selection of discussion partners and thus the composition of their social network. The preferences of discussion partners then serve to shape voters’ preferences. Moreover, these attitudes serve to shape the political context as issues that candidates discuss in their campaigns are strongly associated with voter priorities, nationally, but ignore priorities within the district. In contrast, the positions candidates take on issues are strongly associated with district priorities, but not national priorities.

Dissertation:"How voters' priorities shape--and are shaped by--the electoral context"

Dissertation Committee Composition
Robert Huckfeldt (chair), Amber Boydstun, Erik Engstrom, Walter Stone

CV
E-mail: mpietryka [at] ucdavis [dot] edu
Website: http://matthewpietryka.com/

Primary Field: Political Theory
PhD awarded June 2011

In the Renaissance and Enlightenment, political philosophers wrote about travel because it is a powerful way of searching for human nature. The individual might engage in "philosophical travel" via the Montaignean method, wherein the individual travels in order to experience an alienation that thereby enables him to parse out nature and custom in himself, or the Baconian method, wherein the traveler collects empirical data regarding human behavior throughout the world and may ultimately engage in a collective project to discover human nature through induction. My dissertation then examines these two methods as they manifest in The Tempest and Gulliver's Travels.

Dissertation:"Modern Man and the Itinerant Spirit"

Dissertation Committee Composition
John T. Scott (Chair), Robert S. Taylor, Daniel R. Brunstetter (UC Irvine)

CV
E-mail: gmpivetti [at] ucdavis [dot] edu

Primary Field: Political Theory
PhD expected June 2012

The main question that I tackle in my dissertation is investigating the intersection between theory and practice in the political works of Rousseau. I show that by understanding Rousseau on this dimension, one can obtain a clearer picture of his project and his particular contribution to political theory, namely, that rather than merely presenting a polemical critique to his contemporaries and to posterity, he in fact has a practical philosophy in his works. This approach combats the one-dimensional views of Rousseau stemming from a pessimist-idealist dichotomy one often sees in the secondary literature. I reconstruct a practical positive theory of political association that is organic and self-correcting, and for which forward progress is possible..

Dissertation:"What Can Be Done in Light of What Has Been Done: The Intersection of Theory and Practice in Rousseau"

Dissertation Committee Composition
John T. Scott (chair), Robert S. Taylor, Julia Simon (French)

CV
E-mail: sllprice [at] ucdavis [dot] edu
Website: www.saralprice.weebly.com

Primary Field: Political Theory
Secondary Field: American Politics
PhD expected June 2012

My research interests lie within classical and modern liberalism and, in particular, social contract theory. I’m interested in the following research questions: Can social contract theory be augmented to better address the concerns of who have been traditionally excluded? If so, what is required to make such an extension? Finally, are there cases in which social contract theory is simply ill equipped to consider the variety of individuals that exists in the liberal polity? In seeking to answer these questions, my broader goal is to better understand the nature and structure of social contract theories. My dissertation confronts the specific case of the social contract’s ability to address the concerns of people of minority sexual orientation.

Dissertation:"Sexual Orientation, the Social Contract, and Political Right"

Dissertation Committee Composition
John T. Scott (Co-Chair), Robert S. Taylor (Co-Chair), Amber E. Boydstun

CV
E-mail: rlreed [at] ucdavis [dot] edu
Website: www.ryanreedphd.com

Primary Field: Political Theory
PhD awarded June 2011

My dissertation investigates the psychological foundations of human sociability as they are treated in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and argues that Rousseau ultimately provides a pessimistic or tragic teaching concerning the nature and scope of human connectedness. In the course of making this argument, I identify three related but distinct forms of association - sexual love, friendship, and civil or political association - systematically examine how these associational types recur in Rousseau's work, and demonstrate that none of them, whether examined individually or together in sum, provide a satisfactory resolution to the problem of human dividedness that is located at the center of Rousseau's thought.

Dissertation:"Squaring the Social Circle: Tragedy and Human Connectedness in Rousseau"

Dissertation Committee Composition
John T. Scott (chair), Christopher J. Kelly (Boston College), Robert S. Taylor

CV
E-mail: jmwarner [at] ucdavis [dot] edu

Primary Field: International Relations
Secondary Field: Comparative Politics
PhD awarded June 2011

My research interests lie at the intersection of international relations and Middle East politics. In my dissertation, I examine the impact of perceptions of trust on the evolution of relations among Middle Eastern states who depend on the same international river basin for their vital water needs. I argue that even when two co-riparian states are predisposed to cooperate based on the mix of material constraints and opportunities they face, and the distribution of power between them, cooperation will not likely materialize in the absence of trust. Shared perceptions form a crucible that shapes how states define and interpret their interests in the management of shared water resources. Another distinctive contribution made by my dissertation is to disaggregate trust into two dimensions, each of which has vastly different implications for negotiating processes and for the depth and quality of potential cooperation over shared water resources. By systematically testing various propositions concerning the relationship between trust and conflict bargaining processes and outcomes, my research expands the existing state of knowledge regarding the conditions for successful international conflict management and conflict resolution.

Dissertation:"The Definition of the Situation and Negotiations over Freshwater Conflicts in the Middle East"

Dissertation Committee Composition
Miroslav Nincic (chair), Deborah Larson (UCLA), Larry Berman

CV
E-mail: miweiss [at] ucdavis [dot] edu