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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Hanford Advisory Board: A Case Study In Democracy, Technology, And Representation, Alexander Sager, Alex Zakaras Nov 2012

The Hanford Advisory Board: A Case Study In Democracy, Technology, And Representation, Alexander Sager, Alex Zakaras

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highly technical policy decisions present daunting challenges for democracy. In order to hold public officials accountable, citizens must be able to see how policy decisions stand to affect their interests. If they are unable to do so, they can find themselves exposed to bureaucratic domination through the discretionary power of bureaucrats, scientists, or policy experts. One of the major tasks of empirically informed democratic theory is to analyze and evaluate practices and institutions that use public participation to try to render highly technical public decision-making more accountable to the public, and therefore more legitimate. This paper presents a case study …


Gender Inequality In Deliberative Participation, Christopher F. Karpowitz, Tali Mendelberg, Lee Shaker Aug 2012

Gender Inequality In Deliberative Participation, Christopher F. Karpowitz, Tali Mendelberg, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Can men and women have equal levels of voice and authority in deliberation or does deliberation exacerbate gender inequality? Does increasing women's descriptive representation in deliberation increase their voice and authority? We answer these questions and move beyond the debate by hypothesizing that the group's gender composition interacts with its decision rule to exacerbate or erase the inequalities. We test this hypothesis and various alternatives, using experimental data with many groups and links between individuals' attitudes and speech. We find a substantial gender gap in voice and authority, but as hypothesized, it disappears under unanimous rule and few women, or …


American Cuerpos, Devan Schwartz May 2012

American Cuerpos, Devan Schwartz

Dissertations and Theses

On election night 2008, a child is conceived by two Barack Obama campaign staffers--Daniel from Seattle, Anza from Honduras. American Cuerpos is a novel about the body and the body politic, about what it means to give birth through the eyes of both mother and father.


Public Participation In Emergency Management, Jason Alexander Rood Jan 2012

Public Participation In Emergency Management, Jason Alexander Rood

Dissertations and Theses

With disasters increasing in frequency and costs each year, this study seeks to explore ways greater public participation can assist emergency managers in their mission to keep communities safe. Specifically this study examines the policy process and administrative functions of emergency management to illuminated the benefits and hindrances involved in greater participation. This study conducted a qualitative analysis of governmental documents, disaster case studies, international research, as well as political science and administrative doctrines, to arrive at its conclusions. The results of this study reveal that the public is a largely untapped resource in the emergency management field. Engaging the …