Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review Of Wildland: The Making Of America’S Fury, William Droel

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Ambivalence, Legality, And Social Activism: How Daca Survived Donald J. Trump, Pamela V. Jaramillo

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

“I Am The Democratic Party”: The Role Of Washington Experience In Democratic Presidents’ Success, Coleman P. Mcjessy

Senior Theses and Projects

Upon his election to the presidency, Joseph R. Biden Jr. was the first Democratic President elected in a half century with extensive “Washington experience,” that is experience as a Senator, Congressman, or Cabinet Member. In doing so, he brought a different perspective to the White House, one that was familiar with the electoral, legislative, and organizational institutions that the leader of the Democratic party must manage. In addition, this experience has led Biden to be more trusting of the formal Democratic Party infrastructure and therefore more able to use it to support his goals. In comparison to former Presidents Clinton …

Abstract Immigration Policies Of The Obama And Trump Administrations Focused On Alien Arrests, Levino Lorenzo Johnson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractImmigration policy has been a growing concern for the United States, but it was unknown what differences had been experienced between President Trump and President Obama’s implemented immigration policies. Therefore, the purpose of this quantitative descriptive study was to determine if any statistically significant differences existed between the number of “criminal aliens” arrested for removal versus non-criminal aliens arrested with victimless crimes during the Obama and Trump administration. This cross-sectional study was guided by punctuated equilibrium theory and data were gathered by available public, archival data. The total number of documented/undocumented non-criminal alien arrests during the Obama Administration from January …

Revolution, Regime Change, And Rosewater: The United States’ Role In The Arab Spring, Grace Lewis

Capstone Showcase

This thesis seeks to determine which international relations theory best explains the United States involvement in the Arab Spring, and to ascertain if the goals set by those theories were met. Through the literature, I determine that two theories offer reasonable yet competing explanations of US involvement, and that these theories are first, defensive realism, and second, democratic peace theory. I employ the analytic method of pattern matching to compare each theory against the empirical record. In my analysis, I match empirical data from five affected countries to determine the strategic importance to the United States of the outcome of …

The Evolution Of United States - Central Asian Security Policy Post-9/11: Military, Terrorism, And Cyber-Security, Shamsuddin Karimi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rudyard Kipling once described and wrote about the Great Game as a way to outline 19^th century great power politics in the struggle for empire in Central Asia. While Kipling’s tale of spy-craft and espionage is fiction, the political philosophy behind the story has never lost relevance. The struggle for political dominance in Central Asia continued through the twentieth century in the Cold War as well as into twenty-first century after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Although the great power players may have changed over the past 120 years, the importance of Central Asia has not.

This …

Politics Of The Obesity Epidemic, Jacob Lyle

CMC Senior Theses

American society has long been obsessed with the issue of obesity. The turn of the 20th century broadly marked the beginning of America's current collective understanding of obesity. Throughout the century, the salience of the issue waxed and waned due to various factors. Around 2000, obesity became a major political issue. Media coverage of the issue exploded, and it became a hot topic for political debate. This paper looks to conduct a complete reckoning of the obesity epidemic that includes contextualizing the economic, cultural, and political factors that have shaped the issue throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Assessing President Obama’S Appointment Of Women To The Federal Appellate Courts, Laura Moyer

Faculty Scholarship

A major legacy of the Obama presidency was the mark he left on the federal courts with respect to increasing judicial diversity. In particular, President Obama’s appointments of women to the federal judiciary exceeded all previous presidents in terms of both absolute numbers and as a share of all judges; he also appointed a record-setting number of women of color to the lower federal courts. In this Article, I take an intersectional approach to exploring variation in the professional backgrounds, qualifications, and Senate confirmation experiences of Obama’s female appeals court appointees, comparing them with George W. Bush and Bill Clinton …

9/11 Then And Now: How The Performance Of Memorial Rhetoric By Presidents Changes To Construct Heroes, Kristen M. Grafton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is concerned with American presidential rhetoric at the cross-section of hero rhetoric and memorial address. It analyzes presidential memorialization of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 9/11 is arguably the most significant tragedy in recent American history. The purpose of this study is to identify the type of hero each president since 9/11 has attempted to construct of himself for the public and discuss the rationale behind that hero construction. To complete this objective, I analyze the second 9/11 memorial speech from the presidencies of Bush, Obama, and Trump for hero construction. A close reading examining the …

Obama, Trump, And Xi: Three South China Sea Strategies In The U.S.-China Battle For Global Hegemony, Adam Singer

CMC Senior Theses

The South China Sea is one of the world's largest regions of untapped resources and fisheries. Moreover, one-third of all global trade flows through its waters. Due to its rapid ascension to great power status, China has been able to aggressively expand into the region and both build new islands and lay claim to already existing ones. With no other countries capable of or willing to push back against Beijing, the United States stepped in.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the strategies undertaken by the Obama administration and the Trump administration in the face of China’s expansion …

Missing The Mark: Obama And Trump's Use Of Similar Communication Strategies, Chamberlain Harris

Political Science

This paper examines the traditional notion that President Obama and President Trump were polar opposites. It seeks to answer the questions of how are similar or different the Trump and Obama campaign communication strategies are and how these strategies have changed from campaigning to governing mode. The paper seeks to answer these questions by looking at six key communication strategies. These six communication strategies and explanations are known as the social media strategy, branding, engaging with the public, autonomy over the messaging, focus on personality, and rhetoric. This paper looked at the relationship between these strategies by first analyzing the …

Media And Public Opinion Effects On American Foreign Policy Under Bush, Obama, And Trump, Luke Mayer

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Variations In Media Framing Of U.S.-Cuba Policy, Anna Foster

Honors College

This thesis looks at the usage of media framing in regard to Obama’s and Trump’s U.S.-Cuban policy. It analyzes articles from the New York Times and the Miami Herald and how they used framing techniques to present Obama’s 2016 opening of relations with Cuba, and Trump’s 2017 change in policy. After reading through the articles, content analysis was used in order to quantify the trends found in the framing techniques used by both papers. The findings of this paper show two very different approaches to both policies, despite many similarities in the framing techniques used by the New York Times …

Motivated Reasoning And Viewers' Reactions To The First 2012 Presidential Debate, Jeffrey W. Jarman

Speaker & Gavel

General election presidential debates are highly argumentative encounters filled with evidence, argument, and refutation. While the candidates come to the debates armed with evidence and arguments in support of their positions, it is unclear how the audience interprets the information. This paper reports the findings from a study of the first presidential debate in 2012. Participants evaluated the strength of arguments made by Obama and Romney, as well as which candidate won each segment of the debate. The study confirms that viewers do not dispassionately evaluate the debate, but instead are driven by partisan interests that lead them to find …

What Went Wrong: Why The Us’S State-Building Efforts Failed In The War In Afghanistan, Jeffrey S. Witter

Political Science Honors Projects

The security situation has deteriorated rapidly in Afghanistan following the end of NATO’s combat mission in 2014. The Taliban has seized control of large swathes of the country, and many predict that the country will remain in a violent state of civil war for years to come. The time has come to critically examine some of the intellectual underpinnings of the war in order to understand why the US’s mission to bring about a peaceful and stable Afghanistan has failed. This project will answer the question “Why did state-building fail in Afghanistan?” I explore the divide between two intellectual schools …

Cómo Obama Ganó El 2012: Un Análisis Del Voto Latino (How Obama Won In 2012: Analyzing The Latino Vote), Ellen B. Rickes

Student Publications

Cada año, en promedio, durante su primer mandato, Barack Obama deportó a cuatrocientas mil personas. De hecho, la administración de Obama ha deportado el número de deportaciones más alto, cada año, en la historia de los EEUU. A pesar de esa política, Obama ganó el 67% del voto latino el 2008, y el 2012, gano el 71%. Este proyecto examina cómo Obama ganó el apoyo de tantos votantes latinos en la reelección, especialmente cuando se considera las deportaciones durante su primer mandato.

Barack Obama deported four hundred thousand people each year, on average, during his first term in office. In …

A Functional Analysis Of 2008 General Election Presidential Tv Spots, William L. Benoit, Mark Glantz

Speaker & Gavel

This study performed content analysis on the general election TV spots from Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign. There was no significant difference in function by incumbency, which is not surprising given that neither major party candidates was the sitting president or vice president. Unlike ads from previous years, these ads contained more attacks (65%) than acclaims (34%; and like earlier campaigns few defenses: 1%). These ads stressed policy (58%) more than character (42%). The Democratic candidate, as in previous elections, discussed policy more, and character less, than the Republican candidate. Both …

Culture, Rhetoric, And Voting: The Presidential Election Of 2012, Douglas M. Brattebo, Tom Lansford, Jack Covarrubias, Robert J. Pauly Jr.

University of Akron Press Publications

The presidential election of 2012, one of the most important in American history, was the product of complex and fast-moving changes—demographic, technological, and economic—surfacing in American society. Particularly prominent in the scholarly analyses in this volume (a companion volume to A Transformation in American National Politics: The Presidential Election of 2012) are: the psychology behind Barack Obama’s presidential leadership; the role of religious and cultural divisions in contemporary American politics; the rhetorical approaches of the two nominees; and trends in voting.

A Transformation In American National Politics: The 2012 Presidential Election, Douglas Brattebo, Tom Lansford, Jack Covarrubias

University of Akron Press Publications

The presidential election of 2012, one of the most important in American history, was the product of complex and fast-moving changes—demographic, technological, and economic—surfacing in American society. Particularly prominent in the scholarly analyses in this volume (a companion volume to Culture, Rhetoric, and Voting: The Presidential Election of 2012) are: the status of the two main political parties and their core constituencies; demographic forces and geographic trends; the strategies and tactics of the two campaigns; and the decisive impact of economic, domestic, and foreign policies.

The Power Of Ideas In Politics: Social Constructivism And Obama’S Foreign Policy In Iraq, Courtney Kayser

Political Analysis

No abstract provided.

Canadian Action For Zero Nuclear Weapons, Erika Simpson

Erika Simpson

No abstract provided.

Executive Prerogative: The Constitutionality And Future Implications Of President Barack Obama's 2014 Executive Order Regarding Immigration Law In The United States Of America, Christopher J. Rama

CMC Senior Theses

United States President Barack Obama issued an Executive order on November 20, 2014 to implement new law regarding the American immigration system and deportations. The system has long been skewed, and a polarizing issue among both the general public and of those involved in the United States government. Obama, by issuing this decree, created a law on his own due to congressional deadlock in creating and passing immigration reform legislation. However, the constitutionality of his decision to do so has now become highly debated, with many officials and academics across the country asserting their beliefs in his legal ability to …

Landslide: The "Obama Surge" And The Future Of California Politics, Corey Cook, David Latterman

Corey Cook

The 2008 presidential election in California resulted in a landslide of historic proportions. Barack Obama's victory, fueled as it was by 2.1 million first-time voters, seemingly portends a realignment in California. At the same time, outside the presidential election, the results in 2008 were well within the norms of California politics. Utilizing an original dataset, we unravel this conundrum by examining whether these "surge voters" were substantially different from habitual voters, whether they have stayed engaged in electoral politics, and what might that tell us about the future partisan and political alignment in California?

Post Obama: Discrimination Toward African Americans Remains A Major Problem In America, Mackenzie Carl

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper explores the issue of racial views within the United States, particularly after the election and reelection of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. The goal of this project is to determine if racial tension and resentment has either increased or decreased due to the election of a black President as well as determining if party identification is a predictor of racial resentment. By delving into the scholarly literature as well as looking into the public’s opinion, it is revealed that racial tension and resentment has actually increased within America, especially within the white population. Different forms of racism …

Leadership In African American Politics: The Role Of President Obama On The Issue Of Same-Sex Marriage, Kevin Christopher Faulk

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2008, African Americans overwhelmingly supported Senator Obama in his bid for the Presidency. Their supported averaged at 95% of African American voters. At the same time that Senator Obama was on the ballet, Prop 8 - legislation designed to amend California's Constitution to define marriage as between a man and woman - was passed with a large majority of African American support. Why did strong Democrats vote in favor of a law that most Democrats rejected? Previous research has concluded it was the role of the Black Church in African American politics that moves the community to a more …

Presidential Epideictic Rhetoric During Times Of Crisis: Barack Obama's "9/11" Moment, Michael Eisenstadt

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Epideictic or ceremonial rhetoric, in its most basic and essential function, praises or blames an object. Ceremonial speakers seek to articulate why those particular objects are worthy of honor or the reverse. In the unfortunate event of a national tragedy, citizens may be confused or troubled, presenting the need for clarification and reassurance. Often times, concrete political solutions do not satisfy these needs because they do not explain what has occurred in terms the public can understand and proceed from. Presidents often inject memories of the past into public address to define these troubling situations in ways that broad, national …

The September 12, 2012 Rose Garden Address: President Barack Obama’S “9/11” Moment, Michael Eisenstadt

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

Albert Einstein once said memory is deceiving given it is colored by the events of today. The old adage “history repeats itself” fails to illustrate the powerful capacity for memory to sustain and revise historical events. Presidents often inject memories of the past into public address to define troubling situations in ways that broad, national audiences can make sense of them. Barack Obama’s Rose Garden Address rejuvenates and exploits the public memory of September 11 in three ways: by (1) situating the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi as an extension of its timeline; (2) reaffirming the identity of …

Zero-Sum Politics As A Trust Dilemma? How Race And Gender Affect Trust In Obama’S And Clinton’S Representation Of Group Interests, Shayla Nunnally

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

- 103 - Zero-Sum Politics as a Trust Dilemma? How Race and Gender Affect Trust in Obama’s and Clinton’s Representation of Group Interests Shayla C. Nunnally University of Connecticut This analysis deploys multiple regression Models and uses embedded survey experiments from a 2007 national web-based survey to determine African American, Latino, and Caucasian Democrats’ trust in Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to represent racial, gender, and intersectional interests. Three hypotheses are tested to discern whether respondents’ trust varies based on their: 1) race trumping gender, 2) gender trumping race, and/or 3) intersectionality enhancing trust, when their race and gender mirror …

Tea Time: A Comparative Analysis Of The Tea Party Caucus And House Republican Conference In The One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Stephen Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Following the historic election of Barack Obama, the largest overhaul of the nation's health care system since the Great Society, and with the country still reeling from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, a group of disenchanted conservative Republicans and elected leaders wary of government policy gave rise to a new political movement - the Tea Party. Since taking the American political system by storm in 2010, considerable research has focused on the electoral consequences of the Tea Party. Using an original dataset and the American National Election Study, I study the Tea Party Caucus at the elite …

Where’S The Consultation? The War Powers Resolution And Libya, Eileen Burgin

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “President Barack Obama triggered a War Powers Resolution (WPR) controversy with his military response to the anti-government rebellion and civil war in Libya in 2011. Members of Congress seized upon the WPR, questioning whether the Obama administration had complied with the WPR’s requirements when the United States launched the initial Libyan Operation Odyssey Dawn (OOD) and subsequently participated in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Operation Unified Protector (OUP). Many legislators charged that President Obama had violated the WPR. Concerns centered on such issues as presidential reliance on the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council—rather than Congress—for authorization to act, …