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Understanding Access To Essential Pharmaceuticals During A Public Health Crisis, Andrew Jessen Dec 2006

Understanding Access To Essential Pharmaceuticals During A Public Health Crisis, Andrew Jessen

Political Science Theses

Despite the benefits of antiretroviral therapy in treating HIV/AIDS, government responses have varied substantially, from provisions guaranteeing nearly universal access to insufficient provisions providing almost no access. This research seeks to specifically examine primary explanations, such as economic capacity, and emerging explanations, such as the role of electoral accountability and the presence of stigma, and the coordination between the epistemic community and political leadership as potential causes for the variance in the government provision. By controlling for state economic capacity, this research furthers the importance of examining other explanations for state response in light of a public health crisis. While …


Religion And Party Realignment: Are Catholics Realigning Into The Republican Party?, Patrick Lee Burns Dec 2006

Religion And Party Realignment: Are Catholics Realigning Into The Republican Party?, Patrick Lee Burns

Political Science Theses

This thesis examines the influence of religion on party realignment in the United States focusing on Catholic voting behavior. A statistical analysis utilizing bivariate analysis and logistical regressions examines if religion and party realignment is an ecumenical trend expanding beyond Evangelicals to Catholics. It measures scientifically the party trends of the Catholic voter. With data pooled from the National Election Studies from 1960 to 2004, it tests the hypothesis that church attending Catholics are realigning over time into the Republican Party both in vote choice and party identification, because of their pro-life position on abortion. The analysis shows that church …


Casualties, Polls, And The Iraq War, Jason Reifler, Christopher Gelpi Oct 2006

Casualties, Polls, And The Iraq War, Jason Reifler, Christopher Gelpi

Political Science Faculty Publications

In their article “Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq,” Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, and Jason Reifler attempt to flush out the relationship between public opinion and the use of force as it pertains to the Iraq war.1 The authors promote the following proposition: “Our thesis is that expectations of future success are the key determinants of public casualty tolerance. That is, the U.S. public can accept that the war is not yet won and will involve continued and even mounting costs, provided that events thus far are not convincing it that eventual success is impossible” (p. 24). …


Parties And Patronage: A Comparative Analysis Of The Indian Case, Charles Robert Hankla Aug 2006

Parties And Patronage: A Comparative Analysis Of The Indian Case, Charles Robert Hankla

Political Science Faculty Publications

What political factors influence the allocation of economic patronage in democracies? Answering this question is vital to improving our knowledge of how states and markets interact. In this paper, I argue that changing levels of party centralization can drive important changes in the allocation of state largess. When governing parties are centralized, national party leaders will control sources of patronage, targeting benefits to particularly influential regions and industries. By contrast, when governing parties are decentralized, influential sub-national party leaders will advocate for their constituents, allocating patronage evenly through a national logroll. I find evidence for these relationships by comparing India's …


Working, But Poor: A Study Of Georgia's Economic Self-Sufficiency Policies, Rosa B. Hayes Aug 2006

Working, But Poor: A Study Of Georgia's Economic Self-Sufficiency Policies, Rosa B. Hayes

Political Science Dissertations

The "work first" philosophy of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act sent millions of people into the labor force, many for the first time. The result was a dramatic increase in the number of workers whose earnings failed to pull them and their families out of poverty. Assistance in the form of childcare, transportation, medical coverage, and the Earned Income Tax Credit is beginning to receive attention as support mechanisms for people who do not earn adequate wages and receive little benefits from their employers. This study examines the effectiveness of Georgia's approach to providing work support programs …


Judicial Quality And The Supreme Court Nominating Process, Andrew O'Geen Aug 2006

Judicial Quality And The Supreme Court Nominating Process, Andrew O'Geen

Political Science Theses

In recent months, presidential appointments to the Supreme Court have become an increasingly salient issue with both the public and the press. The relevance of the topic makes it an inviting subject for political science research. When looking at the question of judicial quality, the problem that researchers have faced in the past is one of quantifying quality. This work seeks to expand on previous survey research done on the quality of individual justices. By using quality scores (Comiskey 2004) as a dependent variable, it is possible to analyze influences on the President’s nomination choice and their relative impacts on …


Caste And The Court: Examining Judicial Selection Bias On Bench Assignments On The Indian Supreme Court, Shyam Krishnan Sriram Jun 2006

Caste And The Court: Examining Judicial Selection Bias On Bench Assignments On The Indian Supreme Court, Shyam Krishnan Sriram

Political Science Theses

This paper is a study on the effect of caste on bench assignments on the Indian Supreme Court. The objective was to determine whether the Chief Justices have historically assigned associate justices to benches based on their individual castes – Brahmin or Non-Brahmin – in order to tilt the bias of the Court in either an elitist (Brahmin) direction or a non-elitist (Non-Brahmin) direction. Based on a probability analysis of panel assignments, I created a new model to determine the extant of castebased judicial selection bias on the Indian Supreme Court. Using a random sample of cases from 1950 to …


Ethnic Conflict, Electoral Systems, And Power Sharing In Divided Societies, Sara Ann Miller Jun 2006

Ethnic Conflict, Electoral Systems, And Power Sharing In Divided Societies, Sara Ann Miller

Political Science Theses

This paper investigates the relationship between ethnic conflict, electoral systems, and power sharing in ethnically divided societies. The cases of Guyana, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Mauritius, and Trinidad and Tobago are considered. Electoral systems are denoted based on presidential versus parliamentary system, and on proportional representation versus majoritarian/plurality. The paper concludes that, while electoral systems are important, other factors like the power distribution between ethnic groups, and ensuring a non-zero-sum game may be as important.


Foreign Policy And The Electoral Connection, John Aldrich, Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, Jason Reifler, Kristin Thompson Sharp Mar 2006

Foreign Policy And The Electoral Connection, John Aldrich, Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, Jason Reifler, Kristin Thompson Sharp

Political Science Faculty Publications

Public opinion is central to representation, democratic accountability, and decision making. Yet, the public was long believed to be relatively uninterested in foreign affairs, absent an immediate threat to safety and welfare. It had become conventional to say that "voting ends at water's edge." We start the examination of the scholarly understanding of the role of foreign affairs in public opinion and voting at that low point of view. Much subsequent development saw an increasing degree of holding and using of attitudes and beliefs about foreign affairs among the public. Moving in parallel with developments in political psychology, theoretical and …


Context Effects On Abortion Questions: Who Is Inconsistent, Carolyn S. Carlson Jan 2006

Context Effects On Abortion Questions: Who Is Inconsistent, Carolyn S. Carlson

Political Science Dissertations

Measuring public opinion on abortion is an ongoing concern for political scientists, mainly because the public does not always exhibit fixed attitudes on such topics. Most citizens express a centrist viewpoint between the pro choice and pro life extremes. These include a small group whose answers to abortion questions are so inconsistent that they give public officials an inaccurate measure of public opinion on this important issue. Inconsistent responses may result from context effects, such as the order in which the questions are asked or the way they are asked. Usually, researchers ask a battery of questions in which respondents …


The Impact Of Electoral Engineering On Nationalist Party Behavior In Post-War States, Cynthia M. Frank Jan 2006

The Impact Of Electoral Engineering On Nationalist Party Behavior In Post-War States, Cynthia M. Frank

Political Science Theses

To what extent can electoral engineering mitigate deadly intra-state conflict? This paper investigates the impact of electoral engineering on nationalist party behavior in highly-fragmented states. As nationalist parties have been instrumental in escalating inter-group tensions to large-scale hostilities, frameworks for conflict resolution frequently incorporate institutional mechanisms as a means of altering the incentives for conflict exploitation or for inter-group cooperation. Specifically, the paper investigates proportional representation (PR) and preferential systems. To test the impact of these systems, the study observes party engagement in cooperative or conflictual behavior during legislative campaigns in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and Croatia over …


High Tension Without War: Interpreting Taiwan Strait Relations From 1990 To 2005, Yang Cai Jan 2006

High Tension Without War: Interpreting Taiwan Strait Relations From 1990 To 2005, Yang Cai

Political Science Theses

This study interprets the puzzling absence of war among the US, China, and Taiwan from 1990 to 2005, when identity politics across the Taiwan Strait caused high tensions. The application of realist constructivism theory to this case would produce a prediction of war there resulting from conflicting identities, which produce irreconcilable conflicts of interests over territorial claims. However, the application of four other, relevant international relations theories explains this absence of war during this period. A zero-sum game of competing identities was replaced by a positive-game resulting from three liberal theories promoting inter-state cooperation: complex interdependence; state trading identities; and …


A View From The Top: International Politics, Norms And The Worldwide Growth Of Ngos, Kim D. Reimann Jan 2006

A View From The Top: International Politics, Norms And The Worldwide Growth Of Ngos, Kim D. Reimann

Political Science Faculty Publications

This article provides a "top-down" explanation for the rapid growth of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the postwar period, focusing on two aspects of political globalization. First, I argue that international political opportunities in the form of funding and political access have expanded enormously in the postwar period and provided a structural environment highly conducive to NGO growth. Secondly, I present a norm-based argument and trace the rise of a pro-NGO norm in the 1980s and 1990s among donor states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), which has actively promoted the spread of NGOs to non-Western countries. The article ends with a brief …


Party Strength And International Trade: A Cross National Analysis, Charles Robert Hankla Jan 2006

Party Strength And International Trade: A Cross National Analysis, Charles Robert Hankla

Political Science Faculty Publications

We know from observation that some democracies intervene deeply in their domestic economies while others adopt a more laissez faire approach. Can we explain these differences solely with ideology, or are other political influences also at work? I argue in this paper that elected leaders sometimes opt for hefty economic regulation purely to generate sources of patronage that can be used to maintain their political positions. Leaders are most tempted to take this approach, I contend, when their political parties are not stably linked to sources of electoral support. Unstably linked governing parties will tend to have very short time …


Party Linkages And Economic Policy: An Examination Of Indira Gandhi’S India, Charles R. Hankla Jan 2006

Party Linkages And Economic Policy: An Examination Of Indira Gandhi’S India, Charles R. Hankla

Political Science Faculty Publications

We know from observation that some democracies intervene deeply in their domestic economies while others adopt a more laissez faire approach. Can we explain these differences solely with ideology, or are other political influences also at work? I argue in this paper that elected leaders sometimes opt for hefty economic regulation purely to generate sources of patronage that can be used to maintain their political positions. Leaders are most tempted to take this approach, I contend, when their political parties are not stably linked to sources of electoral support. Unstably linked governing parties will tend to have very short time …


Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity And The War In Iraq", Jason Reifler, Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver Jan 2006

Success Matters: Casualty Sensitivity And The War In Iraq", Jason Reifler, Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver

Political Science Faculty Publications

In this article, we argue that the public will tolerate significant numbers of U.S. combat casualties under certain circumstances. To be sure, the public is not indifferent to the human costs of American foreign policy, but casualties have not by themselves driven public attitudes toward the Iraq war, and mounting casualties have not always produced a reduction in public support. The Iraq case suggests that under the right conditions, the public will continue to support military operations even when they come with a relatively high human cost. Our core argument is that the U.S. public’s tolerance for the human costs …


International Security Institutions: Rules, Tools, Schools, Or Fools?, John S. Duffield Jan 2006

International Security Institutions: Rules, Tools, Schools, Or Fools?, John S. Duffield

Political Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.