Gyung-Ho Jeong

Associate Professor

Research Classification

Research Interests

Social Organization and Political Systems
Congress
Foreign Policy
Immigration Policy
Legislative Politics
Public Choice
Trade Policy
US politics

Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs

 
 

Research Methodology

Bayesian statistics
Multilevel Models

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Master's students
Doctoral students
Any time / year round

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Graduate Student Supervision

Master's Student Supervision

Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.

Veto points, interest groups, and environmental policy instruments (2024)

Governments aiming to curb greenhouse gas emissions have several policy instruments at their disposal. This thesis explores why some governments rely more heavily on technology supports, such as renewables subsidies and feed-in-tariffs, over GHG taxes and emissions standards for the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions. While distributive effects and political salience are no doubt factors in instrument choice, it is important to pinpoint the conditions which operationalize those factors. The conditions which exacerbate the effects of interest group dynamics are veto points in the legislature presented by fractionalization and a narrow majority. This thesis argues governments will adopt more technology support to satisfy the demand for environmental policy over other instruments during periods of high fractionalization or low majority seat share because this instrument provides unique coalitional possibility and a higher level of consensus in the legislature. Brown industry, or high-emitters, are generally cost-bearers of policy and therefore strongly oppose any instruments which are meant to reduce emissions. The salience of greenhouse gas taxes leaves little room for interest group influence which declines with rising voter information. Technology supports on the other hand confer obvious and direct benefits to the green industry, increasing green lobbying activities which can counteract the influence of the brown industry. As such, governments will substitute subsidies and feed-in-tariff for punitive measures such as taxes and standards when fractionalization and low seat shares make achieving legislative majority difficult. This proposition is tested on data from European Union member countries from 1996 to 2020 using dynamic panel data models. Autoregressive models help to control for the path-dependency of environmental policy and to gauge the relative changes in policy levels experienced within each country. The results confirm that increasing fractionalization is correlated with increasing levels of technology support while lowering levels of emissions standards. Increasing margin of majority was observed to correlate with lower technology support and higher emissions standards. A short within-case study of the formation of the Green Investment Bank in the United Kingdom is also conducted to confirm the causal mechanism within the theory.

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A rogue consensus: a limit to US foreign policy polarization? (2019)

The leading prognosis of US foreign policymaking since the Vietnam War has been that ideology and partisanship have driven a wedge between American policymakers, causing them to have increasingly polarized foreign policy views and positions. The purpose of this study is to conduct a unique investigation of the effect of these factors in shaping foreign policymaking towards rogue states. In an attempt to test the limits of US polarization, this paper aims to investigate the patterns of legislative behavior towards rogue states in the US Senate from 1991 to 2017. This paper uses logistic and zero-inflated Poisson estimations on an original dataset to test the impact of ideology and partisanship on two areas of legislative behaviour: voting on legislation targeting rogue states and the sponsorship and cosponsorship of these bills. The former tests whether there exist differences in policy preferences towards rogues, while the latter tests whether there are differences in the level of engagement on the issue. The results of the paper reveal a surprisingly high degree of consensus among policymakers in their voting behaviour; most bills brought to a vote are passed with unanimous or almost-unanimous consensus. Meanwhile, an examination of the sponsorship and cosponsorship of these bills indicates that Republicans and conservatives are more active in proposing rogue-related legislation than Democrats and liberals. The results suggest that while partisanship and ideology may create differences in policy preferences on issues relating to rogue states, Republicans and conservatives are more active in crafting legislation. At the same time, their Democratic and liberal counterparts face few incentives to vote against them.

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