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Political Science

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Senior Independent Study Theses

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Democracy

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The Somewhere We Wish Were Nowhere: Dystopian Realities And (Un)Democratic Imaginaries, Benjamin B. Taylor Jan 2016

The Somewhere We Wish Were Nowhere: Dystopian Realities And (Un)Democratic Imaginaries, Benjamin B. Taylor

Senior Independent Study Theses

How do political practices influence mass culture? Conversely, how does mass culture influence political practice? This project addresses these questions by turning to the concepts of utopia and dystopia. Imagined utopic and dystopic visions express both the hopes and anxieties of the societies producing them. Dystopias also highlight the mechanisms of power that function within particular social orders. Through readings of Lois Lowry’s The Giver and Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I demonstrate how utopia and dystopia function and how we can respond to dystopic realities by theorizing solutions that are more conducive to the …


The Effects Of The Norm Of International Election Monitoring On Voters' Confidence Levels In Francophone West Africa's Presidential Elections 1990-2011, Lauren E. Gilliss Jan 2013

The Effects Of The Norm Of International Election Monitoring On Voters' Confidence Levels In Francophone West Africa's Presidential Elections 1990-2011, Lauren E. Gilliss

Senior Independent Study Theses

International election monitoring is a phenomenon that began to spread rapidly in the 1990s and has since become an essential element of elections in the developing world. This study assesses the relationship between the presence of international election monitors during presidential elections and levels of voters' confidence in the electoral process. Several questions guide the study: How did the norm of international election monitoring develop and how widely do governments adhere to this norm? Are citizens more confident in the efficacy and transparency of presidential elections when international monitors are present? I hypothesize that when governments adhere to the norm …