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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Institutional Design And Economic Inequility: Socioeconomic Actors And Public Policy In Germany And The United States, Jennifer Hudson Dec 2014

Institutional Design And Economic Inequility: Socioeconomic Actors And Public Policy In Germany And The United States, Jennifer Hudson

HIM 1990-2015

In this thesis I conduct a comparative analysis of the influence of socioeconomic actors, business and labor, on public policy in Germany and the United States, specifically public policy that has an impact on economic inequality. The objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of how institutional constructs may determine the level of influence by different socioeconomic actors on public policy. In particular, I examine the link between institutional design and economic inequality, specifically the relative influence of business interests in varying types of capitalist economies and democratic systems, and assess those facets of institutional design that …


Libertarian, Liberal, And Socialist Concepts Of Disributive Justice, Daniel Kassebaum Dec 2014

Libertarian, Liberal, And Socialist Concepts Of Disributive Justice, Daniel Kassebaum

HIM 1990-2015

What makes for a just society constitutes one of the most intensely debated subject among political philosophers. There are many theorists striving to identify principles of justice and each believes his/hers theory to be the best. The literature on this subject is much too voluminous to be canvassed in its entirety here. I will, however, examine the stances and arguments of three key schools of thought shaping the modern discussion of social justice: libertarianism (particularly Robert Nozick and Milton and Rose Friedman), liberal egalitarianism (John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin), and socialism (Karl Marx and John Roemer). Each of these schools …


China And Central Asia's Transnational Concerns Require Multilateral Solutions, Blake Tobin Dec 2014

China And Central Asia's Transnational Concerns Require Multilateral Solutions, Blake Tobin

HIM 1990-2015

After seven decades of regional domination, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 put the whole continent in a state of political and economic uncertainty. The sudden absence of a strong, yet generally predictable hegemon initiated an intense debate centered on whether or not the rise of China posed a grave threat to the region or whether it would bring stability and cohesion to the region. After 23 years of observation, it is now safe to presume that China does not pose a military threat to the region. Simply because China does not have expansionist or aggressive political …


Structural Causes Of Social Conflict In Africa, Lucien Charland Aug 2014

Structural Causes Of Social Conflict In Africa, Lucien Charland

HIM 1990-2015

Social conflict, as opposed to armed conflict, has received less attention in the field of quantitative research. This paper investigates the structural causes of political violence in 35 African states using data from the Social Conflict in Africa dataset and the Beck and Katz panel corrected standard errors time series regression model. Theoretically, a closed political opportunity structure, combined with a weak state unable to provide public goods, should together produce high levels of social conflict. The independent variables attempt to operationalize these concepts from four different angles. In this analysis Access to Education and Infrastructure (AEI), Ethno Linguistic Fractionalization …


Central Asian Security: With A Focus On Kazakhstan, Marcus Bragg May 2014

Central Asian Security: With A Focus On Kazakhstan, Marcus Bragg

HIM 1990-2015

This work focuses on the influence of terror, extremism, trafficking and corruption on the regional security of Central Asia, with a particular emphasis on Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is regarded as the most stable and financially developed state in Central Asia, yet domestic and regional stability are threatened by the rise in extremism, narcotics trafficking, institutional corruption and acts of terrorism. The challenges of trafficking and extremism within the region originated from outside of Central Asia. Foreign organizations and ideologies are significant actors in progression of regional instability. Government response to these challenges can perpetuate or stymie the aforementioned threats to regional …


Debating Their Beliefs To Victory: How The Beliefs Of Presidential Candidates Transform The Rhetoric Used In Presidential Debates, Aubrey Marks May 2014

Debating Their Beliefs To Victory: How The Beliefs Of Presidential Candidates Transform The Rhetoric Used In Presidential Debates, Aubrey Marks

HIM 1990-2015

As presidential candidates rhetorically articulate their beliefs during presidential debates, they reveal a lot about their underlying ideological beliefs. These beliefs were examined through the lens of an established methodology called the Operational Code, which uses a program to decipher a candidate's beliefs through what they say in debate transcripts. In this study, the belief trends of the Operational Codes of all presidential candidates from 1976-2012 were examined through a rhetorical lens, and it was found that rhetoric was indeed the driving force for the apparent changes in Operational Code beliefs. These changes were examined on a greater level of …


Political Transition In A Post-Arab Spring Middle East: A Comparative Analysis Of Tunisia, Egypt, And Yemen, Dominic Martin May 2014

Political Transition In A Post-Arab Spring Middle East: A Comparative Analysis Of Tunisia, Egypt, And Yemen, Dominic Martin

HIM 1990-2015

The Arab Spring that began in Tunisia and spread throughout the Middle East shook the region. These populous movements unseated authoritarian rulers whose power and position were well entrenched, potentially setting numerous countries on a path towards democratization. This project seeks to explain why the democratic transitions within the countries of Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen have been largely unsuccessful. The large amounts of literature that flooded the academic forums through articles and books are analyzed, providing numerous explanations as to why these transitions have been unsuccessful such as polarization, deadlock, sectarianism, violence, and institutional conflict. This literature focuses on either …


The Effects Of Development On Policies In The Prevention Of International Human Trafficking, Christopher Szczerba May 2014

The Effects Of Development On Policies In The Prevention Of International Human Trafficking, Christopher Szczerba

HIM 1990-2015

Governments and leaders across the globe almost universally agree that human trafficking is a modern atrocity that has harshly negative effects for individuals, communities, entire states and the international community. Nevertheless, they are not in agreement on how best to investigate cases and provide aid to victims. Many states lack the resources to effectively create and implement policies. Governments must act to protect their citizens and people within their borders. Policies are necessary to correctly identify victims, investigate accusations, bring cases to trial and prevent vulnerable populations from becoming victimized through awareness. This thesis asserts that there is a link …


Deadly Premonition: Does Terrorist-Leader Psychology Influence Violence Lethality?, Clayton Besaw Jan 2014

Deadly Premonition: Does Terrorist-Leader Psychology Influence Violence Lethality?, Clayton Besaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to address a theoretical and empirical gap within terrorism studies, and more specially the study of terrorist-group lethality. This research updates a model of terrorist-group lethality by including terrorist-leader psychology as an individual-level variable in predicting terrorist-group lethality. Terrorist-leader statements were analyzed by using two novel coding schemes called Operational Code and Leadership Trait Analysis to create quantified measurements of leader cognitive beliefs and personality traits. The empirical portion of this study utilizes pooled cross-sectional time-series data within the framework of fixed effects and multi-level estimation models. The results find that terrorist-leader psychology, and more specifically Instrumental …


Economic Inequality And Democratic Representative Institutions Across Western Industrialized Democracies, Donald Plungis Jan 2014

Economic Inequality And Democratic Representative Institutions Across Western Industrialized Democracies, Donald Plungis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the effects of political representation on economic inequality across western industrialized democracies. I explore an explanation of increases in economic inequality as a consequence of less representative democratic institutions. Explaining economic inequality in this manner is a shift from to the Transatlantic Consensus that attributes increased economic inequality to globalization. I expect to find that more representative electoral and governments institutions will be associated with lower levels of economic inequality. The analysis takes place across twenty-three countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) over the past forty years using a cross-sectional longitudinal model. Variables …


Leadership Distrust, Need For Power, And The Initiation Of Militarized Interstate Disputes, Gary Smith Jan 2014

Leadership Distrust, Need For Power, And The Initiation Of Militarized Interstate Disputes, Gary Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Does a leader's psychology affect his/her likelihood of initiating a militarized interstate dispute? The study of leadership psychology has continuously found support for the central assumption that leaders matter in explaining a state's foreign policy behavior. However, many of these research projects have relied on small-sample case studies and experimental methods that have limited generalizability. In this paper, I use two variables drawn from the research program on leadership trait analysis (distrust and need for power) in a multivariate large-n study to explain the initiation of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). 1,601 cases are drawn from the Correlates of War MID …


The Effects Of State Leader Psychology On Civil War Lethality, Brandon Kelley Jan 2014

The Effects Of State Leader Psychology On Civil War Lethality, Brandon Kelley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Does a state leader's psychology influence lethality in civil wars? This thesis analyzes the aforementioned question during post-1945 civil wars. This particular subject, paying close attention to individual psychology at the state level, is gaining traction amongst scholars, though limited scholarly attention has addressed whether leader psychology is an indicator of conflict severity in terms of lethality. The psychology of the state leader in this thesis is assessed from leadership traits and operational code indices, specifically direction of strategy (I1) and interpretation of the nature of the political universe (P1). The data and cases used are pulled from datasets by …


Supranational Organizations And Legitimacy: How The 2008 Global Economic Crisis Has Affected Public Opinion On Membership In The Eu, Briana Vargas-Gonzalez Jan 2014

Supranational Organizations And Legitimacy: How The 2008 Global Economic Crisis Has Affected Public Opinion On Membership In The Eu, Briana Vargas-Gonzalez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines public opinion towards membership in the EU, before and after the 2008 global economic crisis, in the newest member states to join the institution in 2004 (the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) and 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania). Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989, socialist economies and communism maintained a citizenry that never experienced unemployment and that did not have a political voice. Because free-market economic policies and democratic values are new to these countries, public opinion regarding membership in a supranational organization that promotes and fosters …


The Modern Gender Gap In Partisanship And Ideology: A Cross-National Analysis, Tiffany Quick Jan 2014

The Modern Gender Gap In Partisanship And Ideology: A Cross-National Analysis, Tiffany Quick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis updates and expands upon the developmental theory of the gender gap in party and ideological identification originally posited by Norris and Inglehart (2000) to explain why women in advanced industrial nations are more likely to hold more leftist ideological identification than men. A comparative cross-national analysis using data from the World Values Survey (2004-2008) extends Norris and Inglehart's study, with an examination of the gender gap in advanced industrial, post-communist and developing nations. To further explore the nature of the gender gap in the United States, data from the American National Election Study (Cumulative File and 2012 cross-section) …


The Pre-Emptive Election: How The Mass Media Determine Winners And Losers In Presidential Primaries, 1988-2012, Joshua Stewart Jan 2014

The Pre-Emptive Election: How The Mass Media Determine Winners And Losers In Presidential Primaries, 1988-2012, Joshua Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The function of the mass media in the democratic process is crucial to an informed public and vital to a democratic system. One primary role of the media is that of gatekeeper between political candidates and the public. The influence the media has on the electorate is heightened during the primary process of presidential elections and even more so in the pre-primary season when a large majority of potential voters have yet to form opinions of candidates. The effects of the media in the pre-primary season of politics play out in significant relationships where media coverage results in measurable increases …


When Leaders Repress: A Study Of African States, Ashley (Timmerman) Wilkes Jan 2014

When Leaders Repress: A Study Of African States, Ashley (Timmerman) Wilkes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When do leaders choose state-sponsored repression as a response to certain threats to the state? Conventional wisdom states that authoritarian regimes will be more likely to use these repressive acts in order to maintain law and order, as well as to suppress the opposition. However, previous literature on the subject fails to recognize the effect of irregular civil wars on this decision, as well as the types of repression that will - or will not - be used against citizens. I analyze cross-sectional time series data in 46 African states between 1990 and 2010 on human rights violations and their …


Tea Time: A Comparative Analysis Of The Tea Party Caucus And House Republican Conference In The One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Stephen Phillips Jan 2014

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 …


Women And Economic Empowerment In The Eastern Mediterranean, Hanady Nabut Jan 2014

Women And Economic Empowerment In The Eastern Mediterranean, Hanady Nabut

HIM 1990-2015

The idea of women's economic empowerment in the developing world has been growing in momentum throughout the past decades. Today, it is a force that is dramatically redefining the concept of economic development and transforming the economic and political landscape of the Middle East. Women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are finding innovative ways to participate in the labor market. As a result, they are becoming agents of change in their political, economic, and social environments. However, despite the tremendous amount of growth that has realized throughout the years, women in MENA face significant hurdles to …


Uncovering The Sub-Text: Presidents' Emotional Expressions And Major Uses Of Force, Elias Assaf Jan 2014

Uncovering The Sub-Text: Presidents' Emotional Expressions And Major Uses Of Force, Elias Assaf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The global context of decision making continues to adapt in response to international threats. Political psychologists have therefore considered decision making processes regarding major uses of force a key area of interest. Although presidential personality has been widely studied as a mitigating factor in the decision making patterns leading to uses of force, traditional theories have not accounted for the emotions of individuals as they affect political actions and are used to frame public perception of the use of force. This thesis therefore measures expressed emotion and cognitive expressions in the form of expressed aggression, passivity, blame, praise, certainty, realism, …


Positive Political Outcomes From Feminist Islam In Afghanistan: Identifying Development Program Features That Raise The Status Of Women, Margaret Courtney Barnard Jan 2014

Positive Political Outcomes From Feminist Islam In Afghanistan: Identifying Development Program Features That Raise The Status Of Women, Margaret Courtney Barnard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Existing literature establishes a connection between elevating the status of women in less developed countries and positive political outcomes including: increased national stability, decreased likelihood of civil conflict, and international stability. In particular, the literature suggests that working within the dominant cultural framework of a country makes development projects more successful. This thesis expands upon these bodies of literature and examines the outcomes of the work of two major development agencies in Afghanistan, the UN and USAID in the area of women's education and healthcare. The thesis analyzes some specific characteristics that influence the effects of these programs in the …


Explaining State Crisis Behavior Using The Operational Code, William George Jan 2014

Explaining State Crisis Behavior Using The Operational Code, William George

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Does the operational code of a state's leadership have an effect on its behavior during foreign policy crises? Specifically, do states with more conflictual operational codes opt for a more conflictual response to crises, or do systemic and structural variables intervene to limit their significance? While the study of individual level psychology in international relations has been gaining momentum, the causal links between beliefs and behavior have yet to be solidified. This study used ordered logistic regression across three models to determine the effect of the operational code on state crisis behavior while controlling for key domestic and crisis dimension …


The Effects Of Divided Government On Women's Organizations' Political Activity In Developed Democracies, Alexandria Wilson Jan 2014

The Effects Of Divided Government On Women's Organizations' Political Activity In Developed Democracies, Alexandria Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between divided government and women's organizations' political activity. In the literature divided government is associated with political openness leading to a decline in the repression of alternative political views and increased organizational activity. In this thesis I hypothesize that divided government is related to increased participation in political activity by women's organizations. Political activity is expected to increase during periods of divided government due to increased opportunities to influence formal government as political parties and elected officials compete for public support. This study analyzes political activity by organizations associated with the women's movement in two …