Digital Commons Network^™

U.S. Party Platforms And Their Response To Racial Issues, Megan Moylan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines the handling of racial issues in United States political party platforms from 1964 to 2016. The primary objective of this study is to analyze how the two major political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, have approached issues of race in their platforms.

To accomplish this, a content analysis was conducted on the platforms of both parties during this time period. Each reference to race in the platforms was categorized as either "acclaim," "defend," or "attack." "Acclaim" refers to statements that praise racial progress or advocate for policies that benefit marginalized communities. "Defend" refers to …

The Pardon Paradigm: The Presidential Pardons Of Donald J. Trump, Hlynur Saemundsson

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The presidential pardon power is an oft-overlooked political institution that seems to be perceived as being innocuous and irrelevant to larger political concerns. This research examines the pardons issued by President Donald J. Trump in an effort to evaluate whether they align with constitutional expectations regarding the use of this unrestricted presidential power. Dr. Jeffrey Crouch, a leading scholar on the subject, has demonstrated that the pardon power was intended to be used as a disinterested act of grace or an act in the public interest. A close survey of President Trump’s use of this power shows that many of …

The Persistence And Disproportionate Impact Of Felon Disenfranchisement, Rebecca Jaffe

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This paper seeks to understand the persistence of disenfranchisement policies and the disproportionate impact these policies have on marginalized groups of the American electorate, specifically black Americans. Felon disenfranchisement, or the restriction of voting rights for criminals convicted of felonies, has been a long-standing policy throughout the United States. Using public opinion data from the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS), this paper analyzes how certain characteristics, such as race, age, and political party identification, can influence opinions about democratic rights and whether criminals should lose theirs once convicted. The results of this analysis could help explain why disenfranchisement policies have …

Comparing Domestic Human Trafficking Policy Of States Party To The Palermo Protocol, Siera N. M. Himmerich

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Human Trafficking involves the various forms of coercion and force against millions of individuals all over the world into situations of unpaid labor, sexual exploitation, and organ sales. Attention to the phenomenon is relatively new and there is complexity both in how to address it and study it. When looking at human trafficking, issues of development, poverty, immigration, gender, international cooperation, social stigma, among others, are considered.

The purpose of this research paper is to compare and analyze local law interpretations of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations …

Corruption And Anti-Corruption Agencies: Assessing Peruvian Agencies' Effectiveness, Kia R. Del Solar

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Corruption has gained attention around the world as a prominent issue. This is because corruption has greatly affected several countries. Following the exploration of various definitions and types of corruption, this thesis focuses on two efforts to rein in “grand corruption”, also known as executive corruption. The thesis is informed by existing theories of corruption as well as anti-corruption agencies and then situates Peru’s experience with corruption in its theoretical context and its broader Latin American context. This work conducts a comparative analysis and follows a process-tracing approach to examine and evaluate Peru’s recent anti-corruption agencies and their effectiveness in …

How Political Violence Helps Explain Organized Crime: A Case Study Of Mexico's "War On Drugs", Alanna Fulk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines research from the disciplines of political science and criminal justice to develop a theory that explains geographic variation in violence related to organized crime. Large-scale organized crime violence exhibits characteristics of both ordinary crime violence and political violence, but these subjects are generally analyzed separately. However, as large-scale organized crime has become more prevalent and violent in recent years, most notably in Latin America, studies, including this one, have attempted to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to better explain trends in organized crime onset, termination and violence. This thesis argues that although the overall goal of organized …

Appropriate Adjective: Executive Authority And The Classification Of Enemy Combatants, Taraleigh Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Is the term enemy combatant an established legal category of persons under international law? Has the President exceeded his constitutional authority in classifying United States citizens who are suspected terrorists as enemy combatants? In 2018 a U.S. citizen was released after being held for 13 months as an enemy combatant. He was detained without being charged with a crime and without the ability to challenge the legality of his detention. This thesis serves two purposes. First, it will seek to trace the history of the term enemy combatant and highlight the evolution of its use by the executive branch. This …

Explaining Variance In Crime Rates Among Florida Counties, Philip M. Dispirito

Honors Undergraduate Theses

What explains the variance in crime rates among Florida counties? Bivariate regression found that clearance rate had a statistically significant negative relationship with crime rate, and that the following variables had a statistically significant positive association with crime rate: law enforcement funding, population density, Hispanic population percent, the percent of males in the 18-39 range, and the percent of immigrants. It seems probable that law enforcement funding is actually dependent on crime rate rather than causing increases in crime rate: counties with higher crime rates likely spend more money on law enforcement to combat crime. To deal with significant multicollinearity, …

Calibrating A System Dynamic Model Within An Integrative Framework To Test Foreign Policy Choices, Carlos Kavetsky

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Political science uses international relations (IR) theory to explain state-actor political behavior. Research suggests that this theoretical framework can inform a predictive model incorporating features of systems dynamics (SD) and agent based (AB) modeling. The Foreign Policy Model (ForPol) herein applies Alexander Y. Lubyansky's (2014) SD model for macro-political behavior to represent behaviors between real systems and mental models. While verifying and validating the resulting SD/AB/IR holistic model requires an extensive comprehensive research agenda, the present work will take a closer examination at input parameter calibration and conducting typical runs of the SD portion of the model as a first …

Determinants Of Terrorist Target Selection: A Quantitative Analysis, Taylor Haywood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Existing research on the subject of terrorism is vast, spanning causes of terrorism, the membership of terrorist groups, types of terrorist attacks, and more. One area of terrorism research, though, has received only limited consideration: terrorist target selection. What research does exist explains target selection almost exclusively as a function of ideology (Asal et al. 2009, 270 and 274; Drake 1998b, 54-56 and 58). However, such a limited causal focus obscures other possible, and probable, explanations of terrorist target selection. This paper proposes an alternative explanation of terrorist target selection that includes ideological and terrorist group capability variables, as well …

Politics And The Application Of Law: Crime Construction And Police Power, Komysha Hassan

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The shooting death of Michael Brown in June of 2014 by police in Ferguson, Missouri triggered massive public protests across the United States, calling attention to a wave of similar incidents thereafter, where unarmed black men have been killed at the hands of officers in a wide range of locales. The recent coverage has revealed the extent and dispersion of aggressive and, in many cases, fatal interactions between law enforcement and the public, particularly minorities. Actions by the Department of Justice and other state and local agencies have consistently focused on individual agencies and/or agents, as the cause of the …

What Impact Is Felony Disenfranchisement Having On Hispanics In Florida?, Angel E. Sanchez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research produces original empirical estimates of Hispanics in Florida’s Dept. of Corrections (FDOC) and uses those estimates to measure the impact felony disenfranchisement is having on Hispanics in Florida. Research institutions find that data on Hispanics in the criminal justice system, particularly in Florida, is either lacking or inaccurate. This research addresses this problem by applying an optimal surname list method using Census Bureau data and Bayes Theorem to produce an empirical estimate of Hispanics in FDOC’s data. Using the Hispanic rate derived from the empirical FDOC analysis, the rate of Hispanics in the disenfranchised population is estimated. The …

The Transformation And Demise Of Terrorist Organizations: Causes And Categories, Devyani M. Mehta

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In the recent years, the world has experienced devastating losses due to terrorist attacks. Research in the fields of causes of terrorism is abundant, but the amount of research on the end of terrorism does not equally measure up. This paper aims to add to the research focused on analyzing the factors which cause terrorist groups to transition away from violence.

This paper introduces an original categorization of the factors which generate this transition. Factors belong to two categories: internal --decisions made by the terrorist organization, and external--actions or features pertaining to organization outside of non-terrorist organizations. These factors will …

The United Nations: The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Zahra R. Syed

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The main objective of this research paper is to analyze the international effects the Syrian Conflict has had to the global community. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared this conflict to be the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Millions of Syrians have fled their home country to avoid unjust persecution and are looking to not only neighboring countries, but the European Union for assistance in resettlement.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, more than 220,000 people have been massacred, leaving fifty percent of the population in unrest due to home displacement. According …

Democracy On Trial: Examining Argentina's Response To The 1994 Terrorist Attack On The Amia Jewish Community Center In Buenos Aires, Amy Crawford

HIM 1990-2015

On July 18, 1994, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, was bombed in what has been called the worst terrorist attack on Argentina in history. The bombing killed an estimated 86 people and wounded over 200. The Argentine government began a judicial investigation and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Twenty years later, the case remains unresolved. The investigation has been marked by inefficiency and allegations of corruption. The recent, suspicious death of the lead prosecutor of the case has further called into question the legitimacy of Argentina’s government and justice system. …

Human Trafficking For Sexual Exploitation In Southeast Asia, Nodwarang Niamvanichkul

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study centers on the political aspects of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the human trafficking is a security studies concern because it is not only a social issue, but also a security threat. Just as with drug trafficking, human trafficking has security consequences. The study analyzed human trafficking issues in the following three countries in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. These three countries were chosen due to the high levels of human trafficking. In each of the chosen cases, there is an examination of human trafficking issues in terms of political structures, political policies, …

Political Participation And E-Petitioning An Analysis Of The Policy-Making Impact Of The Scottish Parliament's E-Petition System, Ross D. Cotton

HIM 1990-2015

Worldwide, representative democracies have been experiencing declining levels of voter turnout, lower membership levels in political parties, and apathy towards their respective political systems and their ability to influence the political process. E-democracy, and specifically E-petitioning, have been touted as a possible solution to this problem by scholars of electoral systems. In 1999, the Scottish Parliament reconvened for the first time in nearly three hundred years, and quickly set out to change the way politics were handled in Scotland by launching the world's first online E-petition system. Analyzing the Scottish Parliament's E-petition system, and assessing the extent to which it …

A Comparative Study Of Refugees And Idps, Laura Sanchez

HIM 1990-2015

There is a grave concern for the life, liberty and security of individuals who have been forced to leave their homes and have become dispersed within their native countries and throughout the Asian continent. These internally displaced persons and refugees are the subject of this study. Some of the themes that will be discussed include: civil war, human rights violations and the economy, since these are the problems affecting the populations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Myanmar. These case studies are of particular interest because Afghanistan is where most refugees come from, Myanmar has the longest-running military regime and Pakistan hosts …

Privacy, Surveillance And The State: A Comparison Of U.S. And British Privacy Rights, Angelina Lander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the effects of institutional structure on the privacy rights regimes in the United States and the United Kingdom, from 2000-2006. The goal of this research is to analyze how variation in the institutional arrangements across these two countries allowed for more or less protection of privacy rights for citizens. Domestic terrorist attacks during the time period represent a catalyst for changes in police and government surveillance activities. Veto points literature provides the framework for institutional comparison. The first part of the research provides a discussion of the historical evolution of privacy rights in both states, focusing on …