Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

International Economic Sanctions Outcome: The Influence Of Political Agreement, Mehmet Onder

Wayne State University Dissertations

Economic sanctions have been dubbed mainly as ineffective foreign policy tools by political scientists. Despite this, countries continue to use economic sanctions given their less intrusive and offensive nature compared to wars. Therefore, policy-makers have a high stake in learning the critical factors behind effective economic sanctions. Overall, it is understood that an effective sanctions episode compels one state to change its attitude or behavior on an issue, the target state, in line with what another state, sender state, desires. This has given rise to literature known as the determinants of economic sanctions in international political economy. This dissertation contributes …

The Role Of Periodic Conventions In Generating And Undermining Constitutional Loyalty, Kevin Gerald Lorentz

Wayne State University Dissertations

In the U.S., popular support is widespread for both the federal and state constitutional charters, although the former enjoys greater support than the latter. Such support is necessary for maintaining a constitution’s legitimacy; popular support for the laws ensures continued obedience to them. However, critics note that blind support, or excessive veneration, may have negative consequences, including saddling a political community with suboptimal institutions. Support must be balanced with the necessity of “periodic repairs,” allowing each generation to review the prior’s work. In modern parlance, critics advocate for periodic constitutional conventions, permitting constitutional revisions irrespective of tradition or presumed legal …

Framing The Debate: The Role Of Gender, Beneficiaries, And Cost In Paid Parental Leave Policy Support, Kimberly Anne Saks Mcmanaway

Wayne State University Dissertations

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women found that the lack of income security during pregnancy and childbearing “one of the major remaining gaps in the protection of workers against losses of income,” (American Women 1963, p. 27). Despite popular support for such a policy, the United States remains one of only three countries that does not have a such a policy (OECD, 2017). Commentators have argued that the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was successful due to the diverse coalition behind it which included feminist groups and conservative religious organizations alike. The …

Predicting The Probability Of Negotiation In Civil Conflicts: An Empirical Investigation Of Intrastate Conflicts Between 1989 And 2008, Ilker Kalin

Wayne State University Dissertations

Since the end of Cold War, more civil conflicts have been settled by negotiated settlements, as compared to previous eras. While the extant literature has offered various explanations of this trend by examining the costs and types of war, scholars’ primary focus has been on researching the determinants of conflict resolution. Yet, what brings the parties of civil conflicts to the negotiation table in the first place has remained largely unexplored. In particular, previous scholarship has failed to grasp negotiation as a process and costly choice in itself. This dissertation lays out the conditions paving the way for negotiations in …

Snowden Is (Not) A Whistleblower: An Analysis Of Ideographs And Anti-Democratic Rhetorical Strategies Within The U.S. Government’S Response To Edward Snowden, Joshua Guitar

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is a rhetorical criticism of the U.S. government’s response to Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed illegal and unethical surveillance tactics of the National Security Agency and U.S. government. Informed by contemporary theories of democracy, this synchronic ideographic analysis examines the rhetorical strategies of U.S. government officials following Snowden’s disclosures. This dissertation contends that in laboring to absolve themselves of culpability, U.S. officials obfuscated Snowden and operationalized as an ideograph. This reification provides methodological development to ideographic analysis as it demonstrates how a political figure can become a rhetorical abstraction used for ideological purposes. The rhetorical interplay between …

Place Over Politics: Power, Strategy, Terrain, And Regime Type In Interstate War Outcomes, 1816-2003, Connor Joseph Sprayberry Sutton

Wayne State University Dissertations

While the study of war occurrence is among the primary considerations of the field of international relations, only recently has attention turned towards the study of war outcomes. This attention is best represented by the democratic victory proposition, which suggests that democracies win the majority of their wars by virtue of being democratic. However, elements of this study are currently incipient. In turn, this dissertation generates a novel set of variables to measure the impact of terrain on war outcomes, including measures of spatial extent, topographic heterogeneity, and land cover heterogeneity. These metrics are generated for all 94 interstate wars …

Republicanism In America, Examples Of Self-Government From 1775 Through 1819, John Renard Girdwood

Wayne State University Dissertations

In my three empirical chapters, I provide documentation for my claims that (1) the people did petition the General Government, such as through petitions and resolutions of instruction and, (2) the national representatives did acknowledge and respectively act on the people’s political documents, with attention paid to the defense of republican self-government, during the decades before and after Ratification. The evidence suggests that Americans did peripheralize the General Government before and after Ratification because of a belief in the republican values of freedom, virtue, and equality.

Practically, political scientists researching political culture should consider the conceptualization and application of republican …

A Narrative Study Of Chaldean Refugees And The Myth Of Return: From Chaldean Babylon To The New World, Joseph James Byle

Wayne State University Dissertations

With the removal of Saddam following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, life for all Iraqis changed for the worse, especially for minorities such as Christians, including Chaldeans. Considering the powerful push factors that have compelled Chaldean Refugees in the Detroit area to leave Iraq, the idea of returning to the homeland would seem like a remote possibility, however, these Chaldeans present an intriguing case, due to the fact that they are among the indigenous people in Iraq. Do their deep rooted ties to the homeland contribute to a desire to return? This research examines this possibility through an in-depth …

Regional Power Politics: The Behavior And Motivations Of Regional Powers In Settings Of Conflict And Coalition, Cagla Mavruk Cavlak

Wayne State University Dissertations

After the Cold War, International Relations has seen a resurgence of interest in the study of regional powers. Scholars have been paying increasing attention to regional powers as important actors in world politics and studying their foreign policy, but few if any studies have discussed the behaviors of regional power comprehensively and comparatively. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of regional power foreign policy strategies and behaviors by analyzing them comprehensively and comparatively. Unlike previous studies on cooperation and conflict within regions, this study focuses on the reasons for the strategic tendencies and motivations of …

Issue Ownership And Framing Of Digital Privacy On Twitter, Ashik Shafi

Wayne State University Dissertations

The issue ownership theory states political parties tend to emphasize the issues they are perceived to own in a bid to gain an advantage in public opinion. Although tested on different established political issues and in mass communicational settings, the theory has not been adequately tested for new and evolving political issues and on social media. This study attempts to test issue ownership theory and examine episodic and thematic media framing in Twitter conversations of US senators regarding the issue of digital privacy. Combination of computerized and manual content analysis is used to download and analyze all US senators’ tweets …

The Political Determinants Of Food Security: Democracy, Decentralization, And Federalism, Catherine E. Schmitt-Sands

Wayne State University Dissertations

Food security is partially determined by politics. This dissertation examines three political determinants of food security: democracy, decentralization, and federalism. Each one is operationalized and tested quantitatively against food security using a dataset of all countries from 1990 to 2011, although each model employs a different subset of the dataset. Democracy is divided along two dimensions: political rights and civil liberties. Both are significant positive predictors of food security. Increases in civil liberties are more consistently and strongly associated with food security than increases in political rights.

Decentralization is assessed along three dimensions: fiscal, administrative, and political. Fiscal and administrative …

Defining The Republic, William Joseph Nichols

Wayne State University Dissertations

Abstract

DEFINING THE REPUBLIC

by

WILLIAM J. NICHOLS

December 2015

Advisor: Dr. Jeffrey Grynaviski

Major: Political Science (Political Theory)

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

The “Great Divergence” between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison is one of the most well-known events in the early history of the United States. Together, Hamilton and Madison wrote most of The Federalist, and each was pivotal in securing the acceptance of the Constitution in their state ratifying conventions. That within just a few years of the establishment of the new form of government each had worked so hard to achieve, they became bitter political enemies, is …

How Does Exposure To The Internet Affect Political Knowledge And Attitudes Among Rural Chinese?: A Field Experiment, Wenwen Shi

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Internet's political implications reach far beyond an advanced communication device in authoritarian regimes. The heated debate on the Internet's political potential in China is complicated by a lack of causal evidence demonstrated in the literature. Thus far, studies have only examined consequences of the rise of the Internet and the characteristics of netizens (wangmin), but they have failed to account for the possible transformative effect the Internet has on individual citizens. This study attempts to fill this gap by testing the impact of the Internet on rural Chinese villagers' political knowledge and political attitudes through a field experiment over …

Inter-Organizational Networks Among Intergovernmental Organizations In Peace Operations, Isil Akbulut

Wayne State University Dissertations

Notwithstanding the growing consensus on benefits associated with collaborations among intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) in peace operations, academic research has thus far neglected pressing questions of why and how IGOs collaborate within a network context in peace operations and how these inter-organizational collaborations among IGOs, IGO networks, might account for the success/failure of these operations. More specifically, this dissertation concentrates on how structural properties of IGO networks, such as the extensiveness of ties between network partners, and the cohesiveness of such networks, may account for peace operations’ performance in accomplishing their core goals: violence abatement, conflict containment and conflict settlement (Diehl …

The Refugee Convention And The Politics Of Domestic Rule Making In 44 Democracies: Where And How Do Institutions Matter?, Sean Christopher Anderson

Wayne State University Dissertations

I create a revealed preference decision model using markers of structural and ideational input factors informing the writing, passage, funding, and enforcement of domestic legislation in implementation of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol within 44 democratic states. Where are domestic rules responsible for observed displays of compliance, and where are outcomes attributable to structural factors that render the domestic rule-making process effectively irrelevant? Where the outcome of the rule-making process is predicted to matter, elites may use the content of these rules toward the goal of continued policy influence and electoral …

Modern-Day Judicial "Politics": An Analysis Of Federal District Court Decision Making In Contemporary, Politically Divisive Issue Areas, Kyla Kristine Stepp

Wayne State University Dissertations

Recent decisions regarding LGBT rights, reproductive rights, and racial and gender equality by U.S. District Courts have illuminated how these lower federal courts are increasingly becoming important policymakers in our political system. However, research to date has only scratched the surface on district court decision making in cases involving significant constitutional issues such as these. The substantial variation among judges (and among states/regions) in the decisions made and resulting policies indicates the existence of powerful, competing influences on district judges. I conduct a comprehensive analysis of many potential influences on district court judges, including individual ideology, personal characteristics, legal factors, …

Political Content And Political Behavior: Using Functional Theory To Test The Ability Of Political Content To Stimulate Political Interest, Ryan Stouffer

Wayne State University Dissertations

The health of the American democracy is up for debate. Digital natives will decide the future of this democracy. Fewer digital natives--those who have grown up with Internet access--are engaging in formal political participation, compared to their parents. Digital natives lack the information needed to participate. This study examined the effects of interactive political content on digital natives' political information efficacy (PIE) through an experiment. The results revealed a decrease in the participants' political confidence and a decrease in the likelihood they would vote. Exposure to political information harmed most digital natives' PIE and reinforced political attitudes in some. The …

Understanding The Behavior Of States As Their Nuclear Status Changes, Patty Zakaria

Wayne State University Dissertations

Can a state’s nuclear status influence its behavior in dyadic relationships? The present study examines the role played by nuclear status on the proliferating state’s level of hostility and cooperation towards other states in dyadic relationships. The study builds on the existing literature by looking at the behavior of states prior to becoming nuclear weapons states by strictly examining states with nuclear weapons development programs. This phase in the nuclear process is lacking in the current literature on nuclear weapons. Hostile behavior is measured based on the level of hostility in militarized disputes between states attempting to develop nuclear weapons …

Laughing Our Way To Stronger Democracy: Political Comedy's Potential To Equalize Political Interest And Political Knowledge In Community College Students, Lisa Lynne Lawrason

Wayne State University Dissertations

Political comedy is the one off-line news source – albeit soft news – that young adults access in higher rates than older adults. They are tuning into political comedy to be entertained, but while watching, they also get a healthy dose of politics. For otherwise apolitical young people, does exposure to politics in this format heighten their political interest? Does it make them more politically knowledgeable citizens? Through a 4-weeklong experiment, this study tests the effects of exposure to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on political interest and political knowledge in a sample of community college students in mid-Michigan. …

The Impact Of Voter Suppression Laws On African American Participation In Florida And North Carolina From 1988 To 2012, Anthony Lewis Daniels

Wayne State University Dissertations

A rich body of research presents conflicting accounts describing how contemporary voter suppression laws impact political participation. This study process traces the political development of North Carolina and Florida from 1988 to 2012 to assess four competing explanations of this process. This study compares three measures of participation that strongly support the discouraging voter hypothesis, which finds that voter suppression laws depress black participation.

This study finds that state officials in Florida adopted a much stricter voter suppression regime than those in North Carolina for the period under study. As a result, the two states developed differing levels of democratization. …

Inclusive Representation In Global Decision-Making Processses: Challenges Of Democracy, Sovereignty, And Liberatory Politics For Marginalized Groups, Laurel Dawn Sprague

Wayne State University Dissertations

This project proposes a framework for liberatory representation that institutionalizes processes to remove domination and meaningfully increasing respect and concern toward marginalized groups on issues that substantively affect them. It argues that decision-making processes that do not offer meaningful influence to those people who are most affected by particular decisions turn those who are supposed to be political equals into wards of dominant groups; essentially turning adults into political children. To meet ideals of political equality, liberatory processes for inclusive decision-making are required. The concept of political adulthood provides the foundation for an examination of current processes designed to bring …

Patriotism Among Muslim American Opinion Leaders, Reem Abou-Samra

Wayne State University Dissertations

A significant degree of public opinion research has been conducted on Muslim Americans, but very little has focused on their perceptions. This study explores how opinion leaders address the question of patriotism, Americanness, hyphenated identities, and the implications of such a discourse. The study is confined to Wayne County, MI, because of the significant role Muslim Americans have played in labor struggles, local culture, civil rights, and their visibility. This study is significant because ongoing issues have triggered media attention on Muslim Americans and questioned their patriotism and Americanness, such as the "Ground Zero Mosque" debate, the "anti-Sharia" bill proposals, …

Robust Regression Methods For Massively Decayed Intelligence Data, Akiva Joachim Lorenz

Wayne State University Dissertations

Homeland Security, sponsored by governmental initiatives, has become a vibrant academic research field. However, most efforts were placed with the recognition of threats (e.g. theory) and response options. Less effort was placed in the analysis of the collected data through statistical modeling. In a field that collects more than 20 terabyte of information per minute though diverse overt and covert means and indexes it for future research, understanding how different statistical models behave when it comes to massively decayed data is of vital importance.

Using Monte Carlo methods, three regression techniques (ordinary least squares, least-trimmed, and maximum likelihood) were tested …

Elections And Asset Pricing: The Politically Sensitive Equity Of Us Military Contractors, Matthew Mark Ross

Wayne State University Dissertations

I quantify the relationship between political uncertainty and equity volatility in the months around US elections from 1989-2012. The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data are employed to measure political uncertainty faced by military contractors, capitalizing on the unique monopsony-oligopoly business environment of these firms. I employ a GARCH (1,1) model with cross-sectionally correlated moments to produce daily firm-election volatility measures. Volatility increases 11% for local, 27% for midterm, and 43% for presidential elections. These measures demonstrate that all election categories: local, federal, presidential, and midterm exhibit differential effects on equity volatility. My results …

Truth And Reconciliation Commissions: The Road To Democracy And Rule Of Law?, Julie Ann Keil

Wayne State University Dissertations

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSIONS: THE ROAD TO DEMOCRACY AND RULE OF LAW?

by

JULIE A. KEIL

December 2014

Advisor: Dr. Sharon Lean

Major: Political Science

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Every year millions of dollars are spent on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) designed to bring about post-conflict resolutions in states through a formal process. This paper explores the major TRCs comparatively to assess the relationship between TRCs and the growth of democracy and rule of law in post conflict societies and compares that performance to a control group of states that experienced a conflict but did not conduct a TRC. …

Individual Differences In Pyschological Evaluations Of Electoral Risk: Furthering The Explanation Of The Gender Gap In Candidate Emergence, Jennie Sweet-Cushman

Wayne State University Dissertations

Despite decades of movement towards gender parity in other aspects of American society (e.g. education, business), women remain significantly underrepresented in the political realm. Electoral bias against women cannot be blamed; when women run, women win. However, women don't seek political office in high numbers. This project builds on previous examinations of the gender gap in political ambition by proposing that a contributing factor to the likelihood someone will seek political office is their perception of electoral risk. While there have been no studies of gender-based differences in psychological response to electoral risk, differences in risk assessment have been documented …

Provocation In The Political Theories Of Plato, Rousseau And Nietzsche, Aaron Martin

Wayne State University Dissertations

I devise a theoretical model that provides an interpretive framework to define and describe the concept of provocation as well as to analyze and explain the theoretical provocations in Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Nietzsche's works. I assess their works as well as a wide-ranging body of scholarship both on the concept and the theorists, to show that--despite Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche's many peculiarities both in terms of their lives and works--the three separate theoretical projects similarly use the conceptual language of provocation as an integral part of an overall rhetorical strategy to articulate their philosophical systems as ones of …

Election Reform: Does Early Voting Impact Turnout In Municipal Elections?, Gayle Alberda

Wayne State University Dissertations

Turnout in the United States is low, especially in municipal elections. Early voting laws, which have been adopted by over half of the states within the United States, offer voters a chance to cast a ballot over a longer period of time thereby lowering the cost of voting. Early voting includes no excuse absentee voting, in person early voting, and/or vote by mail elections. Many of the previous studies on early voting have focused on national or statewide elections. What has been largely understudied is the impact of early voting laws on voter turnout in municipal elections, where voter turnout …

The Rise Of The Social And The Change In The Political: A Consideration Of Arendt, Habermas, And Foucault, George Tyler

Wayne State University Dissertations

I explore parallels within the work of Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault. I examine the unexamined connections and commonalities among the works of these three preeminent political theorists with the aim of understanding our common, contemporary construction of "the political." Specifically, I examine the way that each of these theorists describes a condition wherein the very concept of "the political" has undergone significant changes. I demonstrate how these thinkers converge around the notion that what was once understood as "the political," has come to include concerns, modes of thought, and forms of action that were previously considered unpolitical. …

Absentee Soldier Voting In Civil War Law And Politics, David A. Collins

Wayne State University Dissertations

During the Civil War, twenty northern states changed their laws to permit absent soldiers to vote. Before enactment of these statutes, state laws had tethered balloting to the voter's community and required in-person participation by voters. Under the new laws, eligible voters - as long as they were soldiers - could cast ballots in distant military encampments, far from their neighbors and community leaders. This dissertation examines the legal conflicts that arose from this phenomenon and the political causes underlying it.

Legally, the laws represented an abrupt change, contrary to earlier scholarship viewing them as culminating a gradual process of …