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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keeping Iran From The Bomb: The Obama Administration And The Puzzle Of The Iranian Nuclear Program, Kaitlin E. Marshall Jan 2014

Keeping Iran From The Bomb: The Obama Administration And The Puzzle Of The Iranian Nuclear Program, Kaitlin E. Marshall

Scripps Senior Theses

In November 2013, the Islamic Republic of Iran reached an interim agreement with six world powers, including the United States. After the agreement was implemented in January 2014, Iran froze uranium enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief from the United States. This was the first diplomatic exchange between the United States and Iran in over thirty years. Keeping Iran from the Bomb analyzes how each country’s respective domestic politics and stereotypes of the other have, until recently, impeded diplomacy between the two nations. This study examines American-Iranian relations during the hostage crisis, the Bush administration, and the Obama administration …


Structural Limits Of Liberal Neutrality: Understanding Problems For Sustainabiity, Madison R. Williams Jan 2014

Structural Limits Of Liberal Neutrality: Understanding Problems For Sustainabiity, Madison R. Williams

Scripps Senior Theses

Liberalism is a political philosophy that is “committed in the strongest possible way to individual rights, and, almost as a deduction from this, to a rigorously neutral state” (Walzer 99). It takes its “constitutive morality” to be a “theory of equality that requires official neutrality amongst theories of what is valuable in life” (Dworkin 203). For this reason, some theorists say Liberalism and the idea of environmental sustainability are not in conflict with one another. According to Mike Mills, because the commitment to neutrality means there is “no given set of policies associated” with Liberalism, any outcome is plausible (168). …


Rationalizing Voter Suppression: How North Carolina Justified The Nation's Strictest Voting Law, Megan C. Raymond Jan 2014

Rationalizing Voter Suppression: How North Carolina Justified The Nation's Strictest Voting Law, Megan C. Raymond

Scripps Senior Theses

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in instances of Republican-dominated state legislatures proposing changes to election law that some see as protecting electoral integrity and others understand as intended to suppress votes of traditionally Democratic constituencies. This thesis is a detailed collection of the rationales used to justify these changes, as examined through a case study of North Carolina’s enactment of the omnibus Voter Information Verification Act of 2013 (VIVA). By also including the arguments proffered during the legislative process by opponents of the law, and after evaluating the merits of the arguments on both sides, I …


Sex, Slaves, And Saviors: Domestic And Global Agendas In U.S. Anti-Trafficking Policy, Chelsea L. Thompson Jan 2014

Sex, Slaves, And Saviors: Domestic And Global Agendas In U.S. Anti-Trafficking Policy, Chelsea L. Thompson

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I problematize the United States’ response to the global phenomenon characterized as human trafficking. The framing of trafficking as policy issue takes place in the context of politicized claims about the nature and prevalence of trafficking, its relation to the sex industry, and the kind of response that is required. U.S. anti-trafficking policy was built and shaped in the context of fears about immigration, global labor, and the sex industry. As a result, trafficking has been used to justify oppressive domestic reactions such as border crackdown, scrutiny of immigrant and sex worker communities, and victim “protection” that …


Reconciliation And The Rule Of Law: The Changing Role Of International War Crimes Tribunals, Oriana H D Lavilla Jan 2014

Reconciliation And The Rule Of Law: The Changing Role Of International War Crimes Tribunals, Oriana H D Lavilla

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between international war crimes tribunals and peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. The aim of the present study was to examine how the role and function of international tribunals has changed since the establishment of the Nuremberg tribunal in the early years after World War II. Due to the evolving nature of international law and the international criminal legal system, international tribunals have become increasingly recognized as an integral component of peacebuilding processes in the aftermath of conflict. As the first international tribunal mandated to restore international peace and security, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former …


"Sea Water Fish In A Freshwater Pond:" An Institutional Approach To Understanding Cooperative Scarcity In The United States, Caroline E. Malone Jan 2014

"Sea Water Fish In A Freshwater Pond:" An Institutional Approach To Understanding Cooperative Scarcity In The United States, Caroline E. Malone

Scripps Senior Theses

There is remarkable cooperative organization scarcity in the United States. Particularly in the credit union and worker cooperative sectors, this scarcity is not satisfactorily explained by neo-classical economic models that assume competitive conditions and profit-maximizing organizations. This paper supplements the conventional economic understandings of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity with an institutional analysis. Mechanisms of coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional isomorphism developed in DiMaggio and Powell’s theory of organizational isomorphism are applied to provide greater understanding of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity in the US. It appears that these forces of isomorphism work in conjunction with one another, …


A Hope That’S Not So Hollow: How The Supreme Court’S Decisions In Windsor And Perry Alter The Political Environment In Which Marriage Equality Activism Operates, Emma Brillhart Jan 2014

A Hope That’S Not So Hollow: How The Supreme Court’S Decisions In Windsor And Perry Alter The Political Environment In Which Marriage Equality Activism Operates, Emma Brillhart

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis looks at the state of marriage equality activism in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 26, 2013 decisions in United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry. Some scholars, such as Gerald Rosenberg, argue that Supreme Court decisions can never affect “significant social change,” either directly or indirectly, while others argue that such decisions can be hugely important in directly affecting policy. My focus is on how activist organizations, which have a substantial track record of directly affecting policy, are influenced by changes to the political environment stemming from major Court decisions regarding social issues. After …


The Discrimination Of The Ethnic Chinese In Indonesia And Perceptions Of Nationality, Amanda Walujono Jan 2014

The Discrimination Of The Ethnic Chinese In Indonesia And Perceptions Of Nationality, Amanda Walujono

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the established literature is mostly political, economic, and social histories of modern Indonesia, my thesis will establish motivations behind the context of the discrimination of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia with particular attention on how it affects the perception of ethnic Chinese Indonesian’s nationality. Most of the times in the established literature, the history, motivations, and consequences behind the discrimination of the ethnic Chinese are briefly summarized or put in as an afterthought. Most of the present day established literature is focused on how the now-allowed Chinese imports are starting to influence Indonesian culture and how post-Suharto regimes have …


An Intersectional Approach To Environmental Political Theory: A Case Study On Modern Andean Bolivian Indigenous Forms Of Resistance And Communal Democracy In Relation To Water Rights, Julia E. Seward Jan 2014

An Intersectional Approach To Environmental Political Theory: A Case Study On Modern Andean Bolivian Indigenous Forms Of Resistance And Communal Democracy In Relation To Water Rights, Julia E. Seward

Scripps Senior Theses

Considers Bolivian Andean indigenous forms of democracy and resistance to neoliberal water privatization in Cochabamba. Incorporates environmental identity into the intersectional theoretical framework with principles rooted in Indigenous grass roots theory, Marxist critiques on capitalism, Latin American Neomarxist scholars, and Environmental Justice. Focuses on intersections of ethnicity, gender and class identities with environmental identity to understand the extent to which environmental injustices cannot be addressed in isolation from other sources of inequality.


Clinton Connected: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Portrayals Of Hillary Clinton On Online News Blogs During The 2008 Presidential Primaries, Jessica Gonchar Jan 2014

Clinton Connected: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Portrayals Of Hillary Clinton On Online News Blogs During The 2008 Presidential Primaries, Jessica Gonchar

Scripps Senior Theses

Hillary Clinton faced gendered discrimination by news media sources during her presidential campaign in 2008. However, there is almost no research concerning the ways Clinton was portrayed on political blogs. Because blogs typically attract consumers who have similar ideologies, this paper explores if Clinton faced more gender bias on conservative blogs than liberal blogs, utilizing two well-established political blogs. Specifically it looks at three biases that exist in traditional sources of news media: appearance-based discrimination, an emphasis on domesticity, and analyses of femininity. This paper found that, in general, bloggers on a conservative website presented more instances of gender bias …