Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Policy Implications Of Managing Biodiversity And Natural Resources Across International Boundaries, Dillon Brown

Dissertations

Fisheries Management under the best of scenarios is a complex action. It requires thoughtful consideration of resources that tend to be out of sight, widely distributed, highly variable both spatially and temporally, and present dramatic variation in life history and ecology. No one management approach has been developed which can effectively incorporate all these variables. Add to this the issue of transnational boundary movements of these resources, and one discovers that this complex issue needs to be addressed by multiple entities, agencies, and nations to have any chance of success.

This research set out to discover ways in which fisheries …

Black Americans At A Crossroads In American Politics: Electoral Participation, Protest, And Policy Change, Tenille-Rose Martin

Dissertations

This dissertation explores Black political participation in the United States. I argue there is a relationship between Black political participation and trust in government, political efficacy, group consciousness, linked fate, political knowledge, and desire to engage in social activism. This argument draws on research on political participation, group identity, and political behavior and attitudes within the Black community.

A mixed-method approach was used in the study. Data was collected from Blacks across the country via an original survey and interviews. The data analysis chapter determined some support for the theoretical framework, albeit aspects of the model were rejected. Results determined …

Maladies Of Public Administration: Factors That Exacerbate Corruption In Kenya, Moses Waithaka

Dissertations

This study examines factors that exacerbate corruption in Kenya, focusing on institutional weakness as a key factor that fosters corruption in government institutions. Thus, the study examines difficulty in accessing public services, lack of availability of the broadest and most straightforward access to information, and electoral manipulation -voter intimidation, and inability to remove elected leader through the ballot. The study uses Afrobarometer round 8 dataset collected between November and December 2019. This data set was collected under the guidance of the University of Nairobi Institute for Development Studies IDS. Additionally, the study considers a comprehensive literature review to assess and …

Agenda Setting On The Supreme Court Of The United States In 1960, 1977, And 1992, Jessica L. Curtis

Dissertations

This dissertation adds to Supreme Court of the United States agenda-setting research by exploring the following overarching research question: How does the Supreme Court of the United States decide which cases it will review? In addition, this study addresses three gaps in the agenda-setting research by considering types of petitions for writ of certiorari that are often ignored by other studies, analyzing the Court’s case-selection process as a two-step process, and studying the Court’s agenda-setting trends over time. To explore these gaps in the research, an original dataset was created by collecting data on a random sample of petitions for …

Determinants Of Police Department Change: An Institutional Theory Approach, Colby Dolly

Dissertations

This research examines the change in police practices after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Immediately after his death and throughout the following years, police departments in St. Louis County faced immense pressure to change. The pressure originated from numerous fronts, including the media, local community groups, and politicians. This research evaluates the change in policing using institutional theory with data from surveys and interviews of police chiefs. The findings indicate changes in policies after 2014. The most significant change occurred in departments strongly influenced by the mimetic dimension of institutional theory. The research adds to …

Revisiting The Economic Voter Hypothesis: Electoral Volatility And Economic Uncertainty In Latin America (1997-2018), Charles Tibedo

Dissertations

The large majority of studies concerning the “economic voter” have tended to follow specifications that assume retrospective, myopic, and sociotropic voter behavior. However, the magnitude of the economic effect and the conditions under which the effect is found have varied considerably across the entire body of research.

This study reframes the study of economic voting by focusing on variability in economic performance over the medium-term as a causal factor as opposed to specifying particular directions and levels of economic performance over the short-term as the necessary condition for retrospective and sociotropic voter behavior. Additionally, structural and institutional conditions associated with …

The Impact Of Democratically Elected Islamist Governments On The Implementation Of Foreign Policy: Cases Of Egypt, Morocco, And Tunisia, Taghreed Alsabeh

Dissertations

This dissertation aims to examine the foreign policy of elected Islamist parties in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia while in power and compare their foreign policy with non-Islamist parties from their respective countries. It seeks to answer the following questions: What is the role of democratically elected Islamist parties on the implementation of foreign policy? Does the foreign policy of Islamist parties differ from that of non-Islamist parties? Do Islamist parties apply their Islamist ideology to foreign policy? Finally, do Islamist parties in Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia share similar foreign policy approaches? The study concludes that the difference in foreign policy …

Facing The Mass Exodus: Reconsidering The Moral Responsibilities For And Obligations Toward Large Numbers Of Refugees In An Age Of Global Crises, Muhammet Ali Asil

Dissertations

The global refugee crisis has revealed an essential moral question regarding helping the forcibly displaced persons in protracted refugee crises: how do we determine if our community has done “enough” for a particular refugee group? Different answers have been provided to this question. This dissertation takes up this question from a normative standpoint. It develops an ethics-based burden-sharing model, that is, a “meaning-based model,” as a method to determine our political communities’ moral duties toward different refugee groups in various refugee crises. The model challenges the conventional wisdom by claiming that not every community has the same moral obligations toward …