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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

How The Social Context Of Bill Clinton's Childhood Shaped His Personality: Using Oral History Interviews Of His Childhood Peers And Relatives, Karen Sebold Aug 2008

How The Social Context Of Bill Clinton's Childhood Shaped His Personality: Using Oral History Interviews Of His Childhood Peers And Relatives, Karen Sebold

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since individual personality plays an important role in presidential decision-making (Barber, 1972), then understanding the setting that impacted the personality is an important component in any understanding of a president's personality. This study seeks to understand the setting that shaped the personality of William Jefferson Clinton. This case study was selected for two reasons: (1) there is a plethora of descriptive psycho-biographies of Clinton (Maraniss, 1995, Renshon 1996b, Post, 2006) and (2) there are oral history interviews from individuals who were part of Clinton's familial and childhood peer networks. The interviews used for this study are part of the Clinton …


Jimmy Carter's Foreign Policy: The Battle For Power And Principle, Frances M. Jacobson Jul 2008

Jimmy Carter's Foreign Policy: The Battle For Power And Principle, Frances M. Jacobson

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Evaluating the foreign policies of presidents while they are in office or shortly after their tenure ends can sometimes lead to conclusions that prove to be unsound in the future. The case of Harry Truman exemplifies this. When he left office in 1952 his approval rating was in the 20 percentile range. Yet, he set the tone and direction of United States foreign policy that led eventually to the successful conclusion of the Cold War. The foreign policy of President Jimmy Carter was also generally viewed as a failure by many scholars in the field, both during his time in …


Democratic Failure: Tracking The Ebb Of Democracy's Flow, 1800–2006, Sanja E. Sray Jan 2008

Democratic Failure: Tracking The Ebb Of Democracy's Flow, 1800–2006, Sanja E. Sray

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Scant attention has focused on the systematic study of democratic failure. This dissertation partially corrects this oversight. Tracing the roots of antidemocratic sentiment across the centuries, it first argues that the advance of institutions, fueled by underlying shifts in values and innovation in political philosophy, was key to freeing democracy from its bondage as a most disparaged form of governance. Focusing on the measurable aspects of these institutions, the study focuses on describing patterns of behavior when democracies fail. First, it shows that there have been clusters of democratic failure. These clusters, or counterwaves, find their roots in ancient antidemocratic …