Browsing by Author "Stein, Robert M"
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Item Measuring the Costs of Voting and their Impacts(2018-08-10) Menger, Andrew; Stein, Robert MAlthough much literature in political science refers to the costs of voting, they have not been comprehensively studied. I develop a new theory of costs based on both the tasks needed to vote and their attendant individual-specific trade-offs. I then use an original survey to demonstrate that perceived task difficulty measures perform well for measuring these costs. Finally, I look at the impact of these costs on both validated voter turnout and intention to vote.Item Resilience Assessment of Electric Grids and Distributed Wind Generation under Hurricane Hazards(2015-04-21) Mensah, Akwasi Frimpong; Dueñas-Osorio, Leonardo; Padgett, Jamie E; Subramanian, Devika; Stein, Robert MModern society is increasingly dependent on high quality electricity for its economy, security, cultural life, public health, safety and governance. As such, ensuring the resilience of electric power systems against deliberate attacks and natural disasters is critical to the continuous function, particularly of urban cities. This thesis proposes an efficient for assessing the resilience of electric power systems under hurricane hazards. The thesis also explores the use of wind turbines as distributed generation to provide back-up electricity during hurricane-induced outages. The study develops computationally efficient models for evaluating outages in electric grids, while demonstrating their applicability through modeling a large real system subject to natural hazards, structural and system responses, and restoration processes. It employs a Bayesian networks approach and uses influence networks constructed via N-1 contingence Direct Current (DC) flow analyses to make the framework computationally tractable, time-efficient and amenable for real-time updating of information via data fusion in the future. The framework computes hurricane-induced customer outages in distributed 1 km2 blocks across the entire system, and simulates system restoration according to resource mobilization practices and sequences identified from historic events. The study uses the Harris County electric grid in Texas under Hurricane Ike in 2008 to illustrate the framework’s application. The framework yields system responses that are in agreement with observed outages, with a mean error of 15.4% in outages aggregated at the ZIP code level. Performance comparison of the proposed framework with two previously existing models shows that the model has a better prediction accuracy and requires a significantly lower computation time than the existing models. The model takes minute and half as compared to more than an hour required by the previous models to run 50 simulations. Having observed widespread outages in the electric power system, with some lasting several days or weeks before power restoration, the study also looked at the reliability of wind turbines to support their integration in the form of distributed generation in power systems. The study introduced a closed-form methodology for computing the system failure probabilities of wind turbines considering different failure event definitions. The methodology is enhanced to incorporate consequences such as downtimes and repair costs of individual component failures, and to determine the turbine unavailability or cost risks. It yields vital reliability information that could be readily used for planning maintenance and forecasting wind power outputs necessary for widespread distributed wind generation. Furthermore, the study examines the use of tuned liquid column dampers (TLCDs) to increase the reliability of wind turbines. Comparison of results for wind turbines with and without the damper shows that a baseline TLCD of 1% mass ratio significantly reduces the structural vibrations (by as much as 47%), and considerably decreases the unavailability probability of a turbine (by up to 8%). Armed with the resilience assessment model for power systems and the reliability analysis tools for wind turbines, the study also develops a probabilistic model for quantifying the impact of distributed wind generation (DWG) on an electric grid during hurricane-induced outage periods. The model incorporates energy adequacy assessment principles while accounting for the uncertainty in electricity demands and in power output due to variability in the wind resource, unavailability of DWG units owing to turbine failures, as well as component failures in the main utility system. An application of the model to Harris County’s power system equipped with turbines of total rated capacity of 1.8 GW shows that the DWG can provide back-up power to up to 85% of the customers in a distribution area which directly connects a DWG unit, while reducing the overall outages in the entire county by 8.5%. Thus, DWG can help improve the resilience of electric grids, support the rapid recovery of hurricane-affect communities and reduce economic losses associated with widespread and prolonged outages. In summary, the study provides computationally efficient tools for exploring a wide range of what-if scenarios in large real energy systems. The models can be readily adapted to consider other emerging technologies such as storage systems, vehicle grids, smart grids and micro grids in electric grid resilience assessments. Thus, they can support resilience-based decisions for hurricane preparedness and mitigation, and restoration strategies that could ensure rapid recovery of the systems. They support efforts in ensuring a reliable and a sustainable supply of electricity during normal conditions or in the immediate aftermath of hurricane events. The outage assessment model, for instance, is directly implemented in the City of Houston’s Storm Risk Calculator, an online tool that informs resident users about the local risks they face from an in-coming hurricane, and the city’s emergency managers in hurricane disaster management. 'Item The Right to Party (Resources): Political Party Networks and Candidate Success(2014-12-04) Kettler, Jaclyn J; Hamm, Keith E; Stein, Robert M; Duenas-Osorio, LeonardoHow does the structure of political party organizations impact candidates in elections and the legislature? How does the position of candidates within the party affect their success? To address these questions in my dissertation, I use social network analysis to study candidates’ relationships and the context around those relationships. I measure party networks with campaign finance transactions in seven states for the 2010 and 2012 state legislative elections. After a case study of Texas parties that establishes the validity of my approach, I compare the structure of party networks across states. Although I discover that these networks are relatively sparse in general, my results also reveal that parties in states with competitive legislative chambers tend to be more connected. Finally, I explore how the party structure influences candidates. By drawing upon Ronald S. Burt’s (1992, 2005) structural holes theory, I identify influential actors and examine how their network position impacts their success in legislatures. I find that influential candidates in the electoral party network are more likely to become a legislative leader in the following session, demonstrating an important link between electoral and legislative politics.Item The Social Context of Voting and Its Influences on Voting Beliefs and Behavior(2023-04-20) Jones, Colin J; Stein, Robert MConvenience voting reforms are designed to lower the costs of casting a ballot. However, voting reforms such as Election Day Vote Centers and Early Voting also allow voters to select where they would like to vote which also allows them to decide who they would like to cast a ballot alongside. This research examines the extent to which individuals prefer to vote with others who are demographically similar to themselves and how the social makeup of a polling place is an influential factor when voters are deciding which polling place to use. It then examines how voting at a more demographically similar voting location influences future behaviors such as whether the voter returns to the same polling place in the next election, chooses to cast a ballot via the same method, or intends on voting again in the next election. In addition to these behaviors this research studies how voter’s beliefs about the election such as their confidence in the outcome of the election, experience while voting, and belief about the frequency of voter fraud are influenced by the social context in which they cast their vote. Then I examine how winning or losing down ballot races influence a voter’s confidence that ballots were accurately counted in the most recent election and whether winning a higher number of down ballot races can ameliorate the effect of losing a Presidential election when it comes to having confidence in the results of an election. Results indicate that voters prefer to cast their ballot alongside other voters who are a similar race, age, and political party. However, voting at a polling place where they are a demographic outlier does not influence a person’s election confidence, beliefs about voter fraud, voting experience, likelihood of voting in the next election, or where and how they vote in subsequent elections. Finally, winning down ballot races does not impact voter confidence in the same way as the Presidential race.Item Win the Battleground to Win the Battle: Essays on Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and Interest Group Venue Shopping(2015-03-23) McNeese, Marvin R.; Stein, Robert M; Hamm, Keith E; Schuler, Douglas A; Alford, John R; Wilson, Rick KCampaign finance research examines how interest groups advocate for policy using money, while punctuated equilibrium theory focuses on their informational appeals. Yet all of this activity happens in the context of the multiple political venues of the U.S. government. This dissertation asks what independent affect do political venues have relative to one another on an interest group’s policy success, and whether interest groups strategically choose venues accordingly. The dissertation argues for a more precise definition of political venue as “single, autonomous a single, autonomous, political institution imbued with sufficient legal authority to direct the coercive power of government to distinguish between actors who are determine policy enactments from those who only influence them. It theorizes that the systematic variation in legal supremacy (i.e. authority), barriers to access, and information and bargaining costs (i.e. transaction costs) arrays U.S. political venues in an hierarchical order in terms of their utility to interest groups petitioning for their preferred policy alternatives. It uses a well-received dataset of interest group lobbying activity on a random set of issues at the Federal level from 1999-2002 to find support for its prediction that interest groups are most likely to petition the next higher venue when seeking to change the status quo policy. Tests on that same dataset reveal that the shift of policymaking to a higher political venue changes the outlook for policy success most and negatively for groups defending the status quo and otherwise makes it most likely that interest groups will win all or nothing of their preferred policies. The final analysis follows the debate on hydraulic fracturing through coverage in 20 national and regional newspapers from January 2007 through June 2013 to predict that a punctuated change in policy is not likely without the various stakeholders arriving at a grand compromise later codified by policymakers. This sets the stage for later analysis examining policymaking observed during the period can be explained by which political venues produced the enactment.