Digital Commons Network^™

The Trump Effect: How Partisanship Shapes Perceptions Of The Fbi, Carly A. Watts

LSU Master's Theses

Following the 2016 presidential election, some Republicans viewed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as politically biased because the agency investigated the Trump campaign's possible collusion with the Russian government. Soon after, public opinion polling found that Republicans had diminishing levels of support for the agency. Using the 2020 ANES, I examine how partisanship affects perceptions of the FBI. I hypothesize that the relationship between partisanship and FBI evaluations is conditional on an individual's support for Donald Trump. The results from my analysis suggest that as support for Trump increases, the relationship between Republican partisan strength and FBI evaluations weakens.

Narrative Infidelity And White Resentment In The Rhetorical Mobilization Of The Anti-Crt Movement, Julien Burns

LSU Master's Theses

Beginning in the summer of 2020, an activist movement has arisen in opposition to Critical Race Theory (CRT). This movement has mobilized tens of thousands of Americans and passed policy curtailing the discussion of race in classrooms despite a lack of evidence that CRT has any meaningful presence in many of the public institutions targeted. This movement challenges logic-based conceptions of rhetorical persuasion and demands an alternative model. In this thesis, I propose that a narrative conception of rhetoric provides a framework for understanding how this movement is rational, despite the falsifiability of its foundation. Specifically, I respond to Walter …

Natural Lights & Natural Rights: The Problem Of The New Classical Natural Law Theory, Charles Neville Cacciatore

LSU Master's Theses

The present work examines the natural law jurisprudence of John Finnis. It argues that Finnis’s teaching is a genuinely new natural law theory. Finnis’s jurisprudence is not a re- presentation of the jurisprudence of St. Thomas Aquinas because its central element—a doctrine of natural rights—is a departure from Aquinas’s natural law teaching. In support of these claims, the present work relies upon the scholarship of Ernest L. Fortin, A.A. Following Fr. Fortin, it presents an understanding of the natural law that endorses a clear distinction between natural right and natural rights—between premodern political philosophy and modern political philosophy.

How "Lyingnewspapers" Made Huey Long The Ruler Of His State: A Model Of Press-Populist Dynamics, Christina A. Georgacopoulos

LSU Master's Theses

Huey Long’s use of the phrase “lyingnewspapers” to discredit negative publicity is commonly cited as evidence of his negative relationship with the mainstream press, but he did not always hold a hostile view toward newspapers. Before the press turned against him during his enemies' attempt to impeach him as governor in 1929, newspapers were one of his central tools for political advancement. He devised strategies to attract press attention and relied on newspapers to publicize himself and propagate his ideas more frequently and consistently than he used circulars or radio broadcasts, which are commonly attributed to his political success. As …

Examining Political Ambition: Competition And Leadership In Youth Activities, Ashley Staszak

LSU Master's Theses

Significant amounts of previous research focused on political ambition as a source of the gender gap in representation (Beyer and Bowden 1997; Pajares 2002; Fox 2010; Fox and Lawless 2014). This research looks to examine extracurricular activities (or after-school activities) and the effects they have on political ambition of girls as they grow up. Extracurricular activities provide girls access to competition, risk and female role models which can work to combat gender role socialization and other hindrances to running for political office. Using a survey of 300 undergraduate students at a large southern university, I measure the effect of extracurricular …

Andrew T. Hatcher: Press, Public Information & Perception For A Nation In Transition Historical Content Analysis On The First African American To Serve As A White House Associate Press Secretary, Nayita Wilson

LSU Master's Theses

Andrew T. Hatcher rose to one of the highest positions in U.S. government when he became the first African American to serve as associate White House press secretary in 1960 under the administration of President John F. Kennedy and during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. This is a historical content analysis that analyzes Hatcher’s role through primary sources, presidential archives, and select national, local, and minority newspapers.

The overarching purpose of this study was to ascertain Hatcher’s role as associate White House press secretary during civil rights. This study provides further insight into: 1) to what extent did …

Đổi Mới Diy: Tactical Ruralism And Tangible Modeling In The Mekong Delta, Phillip Fernberg

LSU Master's Theses

In recent years, the integrity of the Mekong Delta has been put at risk by a combination of environmental and institutional factors. Understanding that the degradation of the Delta would have far-reaching socioeconomic implications for both Vietnam and the Indochinese Peninsula, The World Bank has responded to the situation by implementing initiatives for climate-smart planning tools and improved water management practices throughout the lower Mekong basin. Seeing the potential for tangible modeling as a participatory planning tool, the Bank has hired a team of consultants from Louisiana State University to introduce a methodology called Tangible Landscape to its climate resilience …

Foreign Aid And Political Stability In Post-Colonial Africa: A Case Study Analysis, Justine Biettron

LSU Master's Theses

Is foreign aid helpful or harmful in African countries? Even though scholars have tried to answer this question for decades, it is still unclear if foreign aid has efficiently helped the African continent to overcome the challenges that arose with the end of Colonization. A priority for the African countries was to reorganize the institutions in order to reestablish autonomous and stable system of governance. An important amount of help for this reconstruction has come from external actors, that have been referred to in the literature as foreign aid. In this paper, I seek to test the relationship between the …

Local Vs. National: How Twitter Reflects News Coverage Of Colin Kaepernick Protests, Jared Paul Joseph

LSU Master's Theses

Local and national media dedicate different levels of coverage to issues depending on its relevancy to their audiences. This study uses news outlets’ social media activity to show that coverage discrepancies occurred with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest. Because his protest reached national headlines, Kaepernick suffered the same fate of many protesting athletes in the past. This study will show how national media carried his story to national headlines and framed his protest negatively. The findings show that local media were the least active among the three media levels, local, regional and national, in covering the Kaepernick …

Rebel Governance In Civil War: Variations In Rebel Governance - A Case Study Analysis., Harriet Ann Sellers

LSU Master's Theses

Insurgent groups vary in how they interact with civilians. Some insurgent groups perform government functions to further their political objectives during civil war, whilst other rebel groups use solely violent means. Why do some insurgent groups perform governance functions to further their political objectives, whilst others interact very little with the local population? I seek to explain the variation in rebel governance, which I argue is motivated by the objective of the insurgency. More specifically, I argue that secessionist insurgencies are more likely to implement governance structures than non-secessionist insurgent groups. Using an in-depth case study analysis, I found varying …

National Electoral Winners And Losers: Satisfaction With Democracy Predicated On Institutional Context, Casey Newman Knott

LSU Master's Theses

How does being an electoral winner or loser shape a citizen’s satisfaction with democracy? More importantly, how does the voter’s institutional context moderate this relationship? In this paper, I demonstrate that the institutional context of a democracy interacts with a citizen’s national- level electoral loser status to moderate the relationship between the individual’s status as a loser and her satisfaction with democracy in her country. I also explore the way winning and losing at different levels of representation interact to formulate satisfaction with democracy. Using cross-sectional survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems nested in 75 different country-election …

The Cross-National Determinants Of Legislative Party Switching, Cassie Millet Knott

LSU Master's Theses

Why do legislators switch parties? What accounts for variation in party switching across different countries? How do electoral rules impact legislative party switching behavior and how is this behavior impacted by changes to these rules? The first chapter of this study builds on the existing body of research on the determinants of legislative party switching. More specifically, I build on the extant theories which have identified vote-, office-, and policy-seeking as motivations of legislator behavior. I examine the strategic decision making of legislators in various institutional contexts and argue that such contexts create or modify incentives and constraints that condition …

Unlikely Allies: A Case Study On Cross Class Protest In Guatemala, Daniel B. Bollich

LSU Master's Theses

Cross-class mobilization in developing countries can be a powerful force for precipitating political change, but the literature on cross-class protest movements in developing countries has focused almost exclusively on democratization movements and has not dealt adequately with cross-class protest in other contexts. Additionally, the literature on protest movements typically focuses on the lower classes, while the upper classes are either ignored or assumed to be one-dimensional, uniform, self-interested actors who only protest when it is in their own best economic and political interest. These deficiencies in the literature have been illuminated by the massive protests that occurred in Guatemala in …

John Witherspoon And Reformed Orthodoxy: Reason, Revelation, And The American Founding, Stephen Michael Wolfe

LSU Master's Theses

There has been a revival of interest in the last couple of decades on two intersecting topics—the political theory and importance of the “forgotten” American founder and Reformed minister, John Witherspoon, and the natural theology and natural law in the Reformed theological tradition. Witherspoon, as president of Princeton, had much to say about natural theology and natural law, and many scholars have attempted to understand his relationship to Enlightenment thought and Christian orthodoxy, yet there has been no attempt by scholars to bring recent scholarship on Reformed theology to bear on our understanding of his thought. The dominant view in …

Electoral Determinants Of State Repression In Democracies, Tonya Kenny

LSU Master's Theses

One of the most consistent findings, to date, in the human rights literature asserts that democracy decreases the likelihood of state repression. Several studies have noted the pacifying effects of democratic norms, competitive elections, and institutional checks on the executive as aspects that make democracies less repressive. However, the basic dichotomous measures that are commonly used in the literature only capture the presence or absence of these democratic characteristics and cannot account for the variation that exists between countries within these democratic institutions. In this paper, I suggest that electoral outcomes resulting from variation in institutional choice may have certain …

Ethnic Political Parties And Civil Conflict, Erin Nicole El Koubi

LSU Master's Theses

The lack of consensus on the significance of ethnicity on civil conflict derives from the measures used, not from the concept’s lack of merit. Current measures, such as the ethno-linguistic fractionalization index (ELF), examine differences in demographics rather than how the diversity becomes politically relevant or when the diversity leads to conflict. By using Horowitz’s (1985) theory of ethnic voting and a measure for how closely a state’s political parties are aligned with ethnic groups, one can better assess how countries’ ethnic groups are politically organized and how this organization is associated with civil conflict. Using an original measure derived …

People’S Perception Of Free Trade And Economic Sophistication, Igor Kuznetsov

LSU Master's Theses

The question of which factors form people’s attitudes toward free trade has occupied scholars’ minds for no less than two decades. Many theories were suggested in an attempt to explain why some individuals strongly support protectionist policies while others prefer trade liberalization. These explanations range from classical economic models of factors of production to nationalism, the fear of foreign cultures, and gender differences. The contribution of this paper is that I combine economic and non-economic approaches, introducing the possibility that individuals may think from an economic perspective or draw on other considerations depending on what they know about economics. That …

The Political Theology Of Dietrich Bonhoeffer And The Ethical Problem Of Tyrannicide, Brian Kendall Watson

LSU Master's Theses

In this thesis, I explore the relationship between political theology and the ethical problem of tyrannicide in the life and works of German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Beginning with an examination of his theological views, I argue that Bonhoeffer’s Christo-centric worldview forms the basis of his subsequent ethical and political beliefs, as well as his motivation for participating in an assassination plot against Adolph Hitler. Bonhoeffer’s desire to connect his understanding of Jesus Christ to the entirety of human life leads him to develop an unsystematic theological approach to ethics and the relationship between church and government. Concluding with …

Between Beauty And Duty: Ethics And Judgment In Camus And Kant, Alex Donovan Cole

LSU Master's Theses

The ideas of Albert Camus and Immanuel Kant are not often thought of as sharing pronounced similarities. However, both thinkers are deeply concerned with role of aesthetics in moral, and subsequently, political life. According to each, taste is a faculty whereby one is able to develop the “moral insight” needed for the flourishing of a robust, thoughtful, ethical individual. Yet, both Camus and Kant utilize highly divergent methodologies in going about this. Camus prefers the artistic form and poetic language offered by the novel and Kant prefers the logical rigor of critical philosophical arguments. This thesis hopes to reveal that …

The Politics Of U.S. Government Debt Accumulation, Carlos Ignacio García Jiménez

LSU Master's Theses

The political factors influencing the observed patterns of federal government debt accumulation of The United States of America are investigated. Previous research has found that the political context may condition fiscal policy and macroeconomic fluctuations; however, it remains unclear as to what political components have effects on the government debt accumulation process, and how it is impacted by these factors. Thus, this research proposes a set of questions and hypotheses that aim to understand such process, and specifically how it may be affected by partisan control of political institutions, electoral considerations, Congressional ideology and political polarization, in conjunction with economic …

Eric Voegelin’S Quest To Resist Untruth And Restore The Roots Of Order, Montgomery Carl Erfourth

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis is an exploration of political reality as understood by Eric Voegelin. Voegelin employed the revolutionary concepts found in ancient Greek noetic and Christian pneumatic philosophy that describe political reality and the means to know it. This thesis begins with a biographical sketch of Voegelin, the historical milieu that inspired his resistance to “unreality” and terms and symbols he uses to identify the spiritual sickness he believes is destroying Western Civilization’s traditional basis of order. It then examines Voegelin’s theories of consciousness, philosophy, and science fundamental to understanding reality. Given the extensive nature and volume of his work, a …

"What Do Separate And Unequal Schools Look Like In The 21st Century? The Legacy Of State Sponsored Racial Segregation In The South", Jerel Williams

LSU Master's Theses

The vast majority of schools that have been subject to desegregation orders are located in the South. The official levels of state sponsored segregation by southern governments made the South unique. The South was a distinctive region when it came to racial brutality and resistance to racial integration. The American South is where the battle for school integration was fought with figures like George Wallace pledging segregation forever. What impact does the history of segregation have on southern schools today in relation to racial gaps in our education system? This analysis takes a look at the impact of historic state …

Where Do Transnational Terrorist Organizations Operate? : The Impact Of State Capacity And Civil Conflict, Rebecca Noto

LSU Master's Theses

Despite overlapping explanatory theories for the occurrence of terrorism and civil conflict, these two phenomena have largely been studied in isolation. This study addresses this gap in the conflict literature by investigating the influence of state capacity and civil conflict on the presence of a transnational terrorist organization’s base of operations. It is postulated that weak state capacity provides the opportunity to organize while civil conflict increases this opportunity via the transmission of information on and the reduction in the state’s capacity to prevent organization formation. This hypothesis is then tested by estimating a logistic regression analysis for the years …

Carl Schmitt's Radical Democracy: Schmitt, Hobbes And The Return To Political Identity, Ndifreke Ette

LSU Master's Theses

Scholarly treatments of the controversial German jurist Carl tend to be bipolar: His writings are either scrutinized for totalitarian leanings or his flirtations with Nazism excused as unfortunately opportunistic. One of the more fruitful points to begin an exploration of Schmitt’s thought is in his interpretation of Thomas Hobbes. Schmitt criticized Hobbes both for ignoring the historical backdrop to the Leviathan myth, and also for prefiguring liberalism with his distinction between conscience and obedience. In recruiting Hobbes, this paper suggests that though Schmitt’s concern about the technologization of politics through liberalism was paramount, it was in support of a radical …

How Level Of Globalization Affects Public Opinion Towards Globalization In Particular Nations, Nickolaus Bizzio

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to understand how the level of globalization affects the public opinion towards globalization. The reviewed literature traces the history of the most significant developments of the current global capital system as well as the public opinion literature which discusses relevant issues pertaining to the subject. Since globalization is highly correlated with modernization, much of the literature will involve examination of modernization as well as its critics. To test the presented hypotheses, Pew’s Global Attitudes Project Survey 2010 was used. The question used as the basis of the dependent variable asks if the respondent believes increasing business and …

Black-Woman Identity Centrality And Interference: An Examination Of Political Efficacy And Policy Attitudes, Alexandra Ghara

LSU Master's Theses

While much of the recent literature centers on a discussion of the “inner conflict” experienced by black women, political scientists have not measured this identity conflict or its political consequences. In this article I fill this gap in the literature by employing a black-woman identity interference scale (Settles 2006) to test whether black women experience particular difficulty aligning their racial and gender interests, and how identity conflict affects their political efficacy (internal political efficacy, external political efficacy, and group political efficacy) and policy attitudes. I find that while black women’s political efficacy is only affect by their race consciousness, their …

Gay-Marriage In 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, James Dunphy

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis looks at the factors that affected individual turnout and vote choice in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Regarding the outcome of the election, a point of dispute among scholars pertains to whether evangelical Christians played a meaningful role in helping re-elect then-President Bush to a second term in 2004. The gay-marriage issue played a prominent role in the presidential campaign, due in part to a ruling the Massachusetts Supreme Court rendered in November 2003 that legalized the marrying of same-sex couples within the state’s borders. The Court’s decision had a reverberating effect, particularly among evangelicals, and subsequently, it …

Threat, Violence, And Voters: Race And Context In The 2008 Presidential Election, Matthew Fowler

LSU Master's Theses

The 2008 Presidential Election brought into office the first African-American president in U.S. history. This paper analyzes variations in White support for Barack Obama based on a number of county-level contextual factors, which are hypothesized to influence aggregate White voter support for the Democratic candidate. Based on the well-known racial threat theory, this paper will explore how racial composition and income inequality effect White support for Barack Obama. Another key explanatory variable, violence, is thought to influence White voter support because of the preconceptions some of these voters hold about African-Americans. Violence helps shape the stereotypes White voters hold, and …

Foreign Aid's Impact On Economic Growth: Conditional On Accountable Institutions?, Anna Monique Castrillo

LSU Master's Theses

This paper studies the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean and determines whether this relationship is conditional on institutional quality, utilizing an index of accountability. I examine whether or not accountability structures rather than fiscal policies as used in Craig Burnside and David Dollar's 2000 article “Aid, Policies, and Growth” are a better determinant for overall economic growth. Using a database spanning 1996 to 2008, this paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth in 19 Latin American and Caribbean countries and seeks a clear definition of institutional quality. The findings …

An Empirical Contribution To Development Theory: A Covariance Structure Model For Development As Freedom, Carlos A. Rosas Lopez

LSU Master's Theses

This Thesis examines the empirical validity of Sen’s development theory. In his seminal work “Development as Freedom” Sen postulated a theoretical conceptualization of development which constitutes a paradigm shift towards a fundamental understanding of the determinants and causal relationships that explain development. A deconstruction of Sen’s development theory leads to five core tenets on which his theoretical conceptualization rests. These five pillars are translated onto testable hypothesis which are incorporated into a 2nd order recursive Covariance Structure Model (CSM) that allows scientific examination through hypothesis testing. Sen’s hypothesized core tenets are as follows: 1. Development is seen as an integrated …