Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Racial Domination Through The Grey Areas: The Categorization Of Mixed-Race In The United States And Brazil, Arman Luczkow

Honors Papers

A historical comparison of mixed-race categories in the United States and Brazil, analyzing the influence of governments and political groups.

From Moral Panic To Permanent War: Rhetoric And The Road To Invading Iraq, Kai Philippe

Honors Papers

This thesis seeks to understand the conditions in the United States post-9/11 that enabled the Bush administration to pursue a wide-ranging and all-encompassing “War on Terror,” with substantial support from the general public. I am principally focused on two significant facets of the War on Terror: the invasion of Iraq and the establishment of a permanent security state (and the interrelated creation of a new state of exception). I ask why the George W. Bush administration was so successful in generating support for both the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and for policies that violated fundamental civil liberties; I argue …

The Abortion Burden: Examining Abortion Access, Undue Burden And Supreme Court Rulings In The United States, Tyler E. Sloan

Honors Papers

This thesis’s driving argument is that the Court’s shift from focusing on analyzing abortion cases with strict scrutiny to using the undue burden standard allows states to create legally permissible loopholes that restrict the fundamental right to abortion access. These provisions disproportionately affect low-income women, the majority of whom are women of color in the United States. Conservative state legislatures take drastic measures to prevent abortions from occurring since Roe still holds, but instead of stopping abortions altogether these policies simply make it difficult for the most vulnerable communities to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Recall the three most commonly cited reasons …

Community Power And Powerless Communities: Two Theories Of Urban Politics, Jonathan Pincus

Honors Papers

I will not attempt to illustrate this point through a comprehensive literature review of urban politics; such an enterprise would most likely yield more reams than results. Instead, I will examine the pro-growth bias of two prominent theories of urban politics; pluralism – as represented by Robert Dahl, Nelson Polsby, Edward C. Banfield and Raymond Wolfinger – and Paul E. Peterson’s most recent work City Limits. These two approaches share fundamental methodological and normative foundations that lead to an emphasis on process over outcomes in city politics.

This emphasis provides a justification for existing political and economic conditions by collapsing …

A Study Of The Propaganda Of The Anti-Saloon League Of America: A Typical Representative Of "The Pressure Group", George M. Winwood

Honors Papers

Democratic government implies that "the people shall rule." This means if it means anything, that public opinion shall found expression in law. The mechanism by which this takes place seems to me to be one of the basic problems of popular government. Democracy without organization is in conceivable and public opinion that is organized is likely to be evanescent and ineffective--a phantom. In a Greek city-state or in a New England town, the determination of the collective will upon a particular problem will occasion no great difficulty. But direct democracy falls down in the face of increasing numbers. The individual …