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Direct Democracy And Political Engagement Of The Marginalized, Jeong Hyun Kim

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines direct democracy's implications for political equality by focusing on how it influences and modifies political attitudes and behaviors of marginalized groups. Using cases and data from Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States, I provide a comprehensive, global examination of how direct democratic institutions affect political participation, especially of political minority or marginalized groups.

In the first paper, I examine whether the practice of direct democracy supports women's political participation. I theorize that the use of direct democracy enhances women's sense of political efficacy, thereby promoting their participation in the political process. I test this argument by leveraging …

Coalitions And Incumbency Advantage In Mexico, Samuel Bonilla Licea

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Despite the multi-party feature of the federal electoral system in Mexico, local elections are essentially embedded in a bipartisan system. Literature has thus far assumed that democratic transitions will permeate from the national to the sub-national level. However, in Mexico, even a decade after the democratic transition occurred at the federal level, some states have lagged behind. Most of the work done on this topic, for the Mexican case, analyzes the problem at a macro level that ignores the dynamics of election at local districts, focusing mainly on the link between the federal congress and state governors. I argue that …

National Education Systems In The European Union, Edmund Staude

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The European community, under a variety of names, has been expanding both physically and in its areas of responsibility since the end of World War II. What began as an attmept for economic unity among sovereign states has evolved into a complex supranational organization. Education, traditionally part of the domestic domain of nations, has gradually emerged as a concern of the European Union as it endeavors to enhance its viability as an economic leader. This paper examines the growing trend twoard more specific EU education policy in light of the education systems and policies of England and Germany. It specifically …

A Marginal Returns Theory Of Politics, Carlos Costa

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

A great deal of contemporary social science rests on a basic, ``primitive'', principle that rational agents are motivated by a quest for marginal returns to investment of time, money, and other resources. In this manuscript we argue that an analogue fundamental principle guides much of modern political science, but has remained largely This manuscript sets out to unearth, reshape and polish this principle into what we term a marginal return theory of politics. We then apply this theory to the study of electioneering in Latin America, focusing on two main elements of vote seeking: the returns of specific votes and …

Electoral Systems And Intra-Party Candidate Selection Processes: Influences On Legislators' Behavior, Yael Shomer

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

How legislators behave and how cohesively parties act are influenced, to a great extent, by the institutional environment within which they operate. While most research has regarded each institution separately, this dissertation project seeks to theorize and to empirically examine the complex institutional context that affects legislators' behavior and representation styles. I specifically shed light on how electoral systems and intra-party candidate selection processes, separately and in combination, influence how much legislators emphasize their unique individualistic behaviors at the expense of their parties' collective unified reputations. I argue that electoral systems and candidate selection procedures conditionally structure the incentives and …

Give Me Your Engineers, Your Ph.D.S, Yearning To Fund My Welfare State. Fiscal Crises And High-Skilled Immigration Policies, Mariana Medina Garciadiego

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Points systems, immigration policies in which potential immigrants make an application to enter the country and then are selected on the basis of their skills, age, and occupation, have been proven to be more successful attracting high-skilled immigrants, but very few countries have implemented them. This is particularly paradoxical since high-skilled immigrants are more beneficial in fiscal terms: they are expected to pay more taxes than low skilled immgirants, and not depend heavily on government provided welfare. My core argument is that left of center governments in liberal welfare states implement points systems during a fiscal crisis as a mean …

The Ethics Of Forcible Democratization, David Speetzen

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Recent wars have led many to believe that the promotion of democracy cannot justify foreign intervention, but this is rash. A government's right to non-intervention should hinge on whether it adequately: 1) protects its subjects' human rights and: 2) represents their collective political will. I argue that when and where the international legal system's ability to enforce human rights matures and the social conditions for better representation emerge, the standards for adequate protection and representation should rise. Since democracy significantly augments both functions of government, eventually the right to non-intervention should depend on maintaining democratic institutions. Failure to do so …

Foreign Policy Mismanagement During American Presidential Transitions, Linda Schulte

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Despite vast literature on American foreign policy and presidential decision-making, little attention has been given to the problems associated with presidential transitions. The American presidential transition period is accompanied by three limitations that threaten the effectiveness of presidential authority. First, presidential authority is unclear in the ambiguity of the transition period. Second, new administrations struggle to incorporate overlapping initiatives and personnel into new policies and priorities. Third, inexperience can cripple a new administration in the first few months of a presidency. These limitations are illustrated by an analysis of two transitional foreign policy crises: the Bay of Pigs crisis overlapping …

Parties, Committees, And Rules In The U.S. House Of Representatives, Hong Min Park

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This dissertation project aims to build upon the literature of positive theories of legislative politics, and provide three more nuanced stories about various stages in the U.S. House of Representatives: rules making, committee composition, and floor voting. The chapter, Conditional Nature of Rules Changes, examines why the U.S. House of Representatives has changed its standing rules regarding the principle of majority rule and minority rights. I begin by taking a critical look at previous studies on this subject, after which I propose an alternative theory on the conditional nature of rules changes. The empirical findings reveal that different combinations of …

Bayesian Multilevel Analysis Of Binary Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data In Political Economy, Xun Pang

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In this dissertation project, I propose a Bayesian generalized linear multilevel model with pth order autoregressive errors: GLMM-AR(p)) for modeling inter-temporal dependence, con-temporary correlation, and heterogeneity of unbalanced binary Time- Series Cross-Sectional data. The model includes two unnested sources of clustering in the unit- and time-dimensions for analyzing heterogeneities and contemporal corre- lation which are salient in the era of globalization. Group-level variations are further explained with unit- and time-specific characteristics. For handling dynamics in pol- itics and political economy, I apply the autoregressive error specification to analyze serial correlation which may not be fully captured by the selected covariates. …

The Politics Of Constitutional Review: Evidence From The European Court Of Justice, Michael Malecki

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Judges who perform judicial review have the extraordinary power to strike down laws that do not conform to their own policy preferences. Their political independence is generally regarded as a normative good. In this work, I consider the microfoundations of judicial preferences and how those preferences interact with institutional independence to determine the policy impact of judicial review. The following argument is developed in the context of the Court of Justice of the European Union: European Court of Justice, or ECJ). Constitutional Courts generally and the ECJ in particular are considered "independent" when they enjoy discretion to act counter to …

Essays On The Role Of Law In Judicial Decision Making, Ryan Black

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Forty years ago C. Herman Prichett: 1969) observed that "[P]olitical scientists who have done so much to put the `political' in `political jurisprudence' need to emphasize that it is still `jurisprudence.'" In this dissertation project I seek to help correct this imbalance by providing three fresh approaches to understanding how legal factors influence the choices judges and justices make. Essay 1 focuses on the U.S. Supreme Court's agenda setting decisions. Drawing from the archival papers of Justice Harry A. Blackmun, I analyze the extent to which considerations such as legal conflict among the circuit courts motivate justices to deviate from …

Placing Federal District Courts In The Judicial Hierarchy, Christina Boyd

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Over forty years after Richardson and Vines: 1967) complained that federal courts have seldom been investigated as a system of interactions," the same problem continues to plague judicial scholarship, particularly concerning federal district courts. Viewed as the sum of its three essays, this dissertation project seeks to remedy this deficit. The project relies on the collection and coding of thousands of case dockets, opinions, and other court documents across multiple years: 2000-2006 for essay 1, 2000-2004 for essays 2 and 3), nearly 30 district courts, and numerous issues areas that together account for about 40 percent of federal district court …