Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mill's Harm Principle: A Study In The Application Of 'On Liberty', Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

English philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill argued that people learn by choosing: this is how they become creative and productive individuals. For this reason, and because he felt that individuals are typically the most capable people to make their own choices, Mill was highly skeptical of restrictions on choice placed by a third party, such as the state.

Mill famously separated actions into two categories: (1) self-regarding actions that do not affect others; and (2) other-regarding actions that do affect, and may harm, others. In the former category he placed thought and discussion, tastes and pursuits, and association, …

Washington State Legislative Internship Capstone, Brooklyn Jennings

PPPA Paper Prize

This article reviews 10 weeks interning during the 2023 Washington State Legislative session. This review includes narrative, personal reflection, critique, and discussions of the author's future. There are layers of academic analysis mixed with informal reflections and observations.

Gender & Sexuality In New York Politics, Bianca M. Guerrero

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Public Administration And Jokes: We Need To Vent, Laila El Baradei

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Institute For Public Policy Statewide Poll - October 2021, Institute For Public Policy

Public Policy Poll Results

The Sacred Heart University Institute for Public Policy leveraged a digital methodology quantitative research approach to address the following areas of investigation:

• Thoughts on the quality of life in Connecticut
• Governor Ned Lamont’s job approval ratings
• Sentiments and habits around volunteerism and donating to charities
• Understanding of, and beliefs around, Critical Race Theory
• Voting plans for 2021 Connecticut Municipal elections
• Thoughts on COVID-19, mask mandates and distribution of the vaccine
• Changes in marijuana attitudes and usage after legalization
• Thoughts on school policies around transgender students
• Thoughts on incentives for energy-efficient natural gas heating
• Demographic profiles of respondents.

The Deregulation Deception, Cary Coglianese, Natasha Sarin, Stuart Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

President Donald Trump and members of his Administration repeatedly asserted that they had delivered substantial deregulation that fueled positive trends in the U.S. economy prior to the COVID pandemic. Drawing on an original analysis of data on federal regulation from across the Trump Administration’s four years, we show that the Trump Administration actually accomplished much less by way of deregulation than it repeatedly claimed—and much less than many commentators and scholars have believed. In addition, and also contrary to the Administration’s claims, overall economic trends in the pre-pandemic Trump years tended simply to follow economic trends that began years earlier. …

Predicting And Measuring Support For Populism, Jay Rumas

Senior Honors Projects

Through reading the most recent research and case examples, I have discovered that the conventional wisdom on how political actors appeal to voters is rather obsolete. I have done my best to establish a profile of the “populist voter” and predict which parties they may be inclined to support. Cas Mudde, an expert on populist movements, labels populism as the use of a narrative that constructs the struggle of “the people (the majority) vs “the elite'' for political purposes. It has neither a positive or negative connotation. Populist movements often appeal to those among groups that feel as though they …

The Solution To Plastic Pollution: A Dissection Of The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, Nadine M. Snyder

Student Publications

Ever since the development of plastic in the 1900s, it has become one of the most commonly used materials in the world. Its flexibility and durability allow it to be used in a wide variety of materials from clothing to packaging to toothbrushes. However, plastic’s durability has caused environmental damage as well, as plastic particles have been found in everything from waterways to human bodies. This paper explains the history and science of plastic production and examines studies on the environmental and public health impacts of plastics. It then examines various policies that have been enacted to control plastic pollution …

Veterans Program For Politics And Civic Engagement, J. Michael Haynie, David M. Van Slyke

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

The Veterans Program for Politics and Civic Engagement (VPPCE) is an intensive, non-partisan training program for veterans and military spouses with an interest in pursuing careers in politics. Launched in 2019, the program is a collaboration between Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) and the top-ranked Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The curriculum is tailored to help participants explore careers in politics, prepare them to run a campaign, and succeed thereafter. Most importantly, the program facilitates those who previously served in our nation’s defense to continue a second career in public service.

Health Is Political: Public Health Practitioners And Researchers Should Be Trained Accordingly, Claire Pendergrast

Population Health Research Brief Series

Policy has long been considered a core element of public health practice. The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear that public health practice and research exist within a political context that cannot be ignored.

Climate Change, Dan Etling

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Abstract

Climate change is a problem with no single solution. It has many parts, and, in this article, I break down each component of the wicked problem that is climate change. A shift in power and leadership bring change across the board, so what does the new president have planned for climate change? Anytime someone thinks of climate change, the immediate thought that comes to mind is the carbon footprint but how serious is that? If cars are the leading cause of carbon emissions, what’s the other option? Are we supposed to not drive places? Many people already know about …

Pandemic Response As Border Politics, Michael R. Kenwick, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally …

Policy Making In The Nevada Legislature: How Interest Groups Make The Difference, Madison Frazee

Student Research

This paper examines the structure of the Nevada legislature and how interest groups influence the policy making process. In particular, this paper aims to answer the questions of how interest groups are able to make a difference in the legislative process and how those groups are able to gain access to the political environment in the state. By understanding how interest groups advocate for certain policies, the best methods to engage citizens in the political process can be understood. By utilizing SB179 as the case study for this analysis, the processes of the legislature can be examined. Through moving to …

Politics In Academia: Positive Or Negative?, Laila El Baradei

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Latino Political Leadership In Massachusetts – 2019, Bianca Ortiz-Wythe, Christa M. Kelleher, Fabián Torres-Ardila, Gaston Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Center For Women In Politics And Public Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

There is very limited Latino presence in the State Senate, with one Latina State Senator in office; having five Latinos in the Senate would be proportionate to the statewide Latino population. Six Latinos serve in the 160-member House of Representatives; eighteen would be proportionate. There are no Latinos in the state’s congressional delegation.

City councilors and members of school committees account for 83% of all Latinos serving in key elected leadership positions. The top 20 cities and towns with the largest proportions of Latino residents in Massachusetts account for 57% of the Latino population in the state. Among these cities …

Latino Political Leadership In Massachusetts: 2019, Bianca Ortiz-Wythe, Christa M. Kelleher, Fabián Torres-Ardila

Gastón Institute Publications

There is very limited Latino presence in the State Senate, with one Latina State Senator in office; having five Latinos in the Senate would be proportionate to the statewide Latino population. Six Latinos serve in the 160-member House of Representatives; eighteen would be proportionate. There are no Latinos in the state’s congressional delegation.

City councilors and members of school committees account for 83% of all Latinos serving in key elected leadership positions. The top 20 cities and towns with the largest proportions of Latino residents in Massachusetts account for 57% of the Latino population in the state. Among these cities …

Egyptian And American Regime Disruptions And Interest In The Mpa And Mpp, Laila El Baradei

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Which Side Are You On?, Gina Mamone

Exhibit Panels

Which Side Are You On? is a new work by Gina Mamone, co-founder of the West Virginia-based art collective Queer Appalachia. Which Side Are You On? invokes the spirit of Zoe Leonard’s 1992 poem I Want a President, but speaks with the voice of 2018 rural America.

"I want a survivor for Governor. I want a Governor whose home has been raided by ICE. I want the child of a public school teacher for Governor, and I want someone who knows what days to hit what food pantries. I want a Governor who has had experience heating a home …

Thoughts And Prayers, Chloe Kardasopoulos

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Examining the symbolic Gun against its tangible counterpart illuminates abstract attachments of power and superiority this nation associates with the weapon. These elements loaded in the Gun transform the weapon into an object representative of American identity. Analyzing ideological commitments within the Gun guides a critical response to examine disproportionately increasing national gun violence against stagnant federal gun control. The ongoing gun debate must be analyzed in its entirety, beginning at its source - the Second Amendment. Scholars such as Gary Wills dissect the Second Amendment to extract its contextualized intent from modern writers’ manipulated interpretations. It is not the …

The Politics Of Disaster: The Great Singapore Flood Of 1954, Fiona Williamson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Singapore in the 1950s was a deeply divided society. Struggling to recover from the hardships ofthe Second World War and fighting an internal battle that the British government termed an‘emergency’, it was a time of hardship, tension, and anxiety. In the midst of this crisis, Singapore’sinhabitants continued to manage the natural elements of their climate and environment, especiallythe dangerous combination of heavy monsoonal rains, low-lying marshland, and tidal flooding.This article examines the circumstances surrounding a particularly severe episode of flooding thatoccurred in December 1954. It explores how the flood’s impact was exacerbated by humanexigencies, especially recent government resettlement plans and …

U.S. Presidential Leadership And Crisis Rhetoric, Robert Mccabe

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

My capstone project seeks to determine what are U.S. presidents attempting to accomplish in (or with) their speeches? This matters because presidential responses to crises can reflect how a president’s leadership abilities are perceived by the people he serves. This perception plays a large role in determining how much political strength the president has to accomplish his agenda. I address this research question by analyzing four different speeches: President Kennedy’s Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy’s Address on the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Bush’s National Cathedral Speech after the September 11th …

Japan National Energy Strategy: Energy Politics - Posc 370, Peter Wong

Political Science Student Papers and Posters

In this paper is my energy strategy for Japan, with the purpose to: provide broad strategic objectives, identify and explain the policies chosen, mobilization of political support as well as consideration of Japan’s energy resources. Additionally the paper considers economic and political feasibility, and theaters of conflict that may arise. The paper uses the knowledge and skills of looking at national energy politics and strategies learned in class.

Crimes That Changed Our World: Tragedy, Outrage, And Reform: Chapter One: 1911 Triangle Factory Fire: Building Safety Codes, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

This first chapter of the recently published book Crimes That Changed Our World: Tragedy, Outrage, and Reform, examines the process by which the tragic 1911 Triangle Factory Fire provoked enormous outrage that in turn created a local then national movement for workplace and building safety that ultimately became the foundation for today’s building safety codes. What is particularly interesting, however, is that the Triangle Fire was not the worst such tragedy in its day. Why should it be the one that ultimately triggers social progress?

The book has 21 chapters, each of which traces the tragedy-outrage-reform dynamic in a …

The Ecology Of Transparency Reloaded, Seth F. Kreimer

All Faculty Scholarship

As Justice Stewart famously observed, "[t]he Constitution itself is neither a Freedom of Information Act nor an Official Secrets Act." What the Constitution's text omits, the last two generations have embedded in "small c" constitutional law and practice in the form of the Freedom of Information Act and a series of overlapping governance reforms including Inspectors General, disclosure of political contributions, the State Department’s “Dissent Channel,” the National Archives Information Security Oversight Office, and the publication rights guaranteed by New York Times v. United States. These institutions constitute an ecology of transparency.

The late Justice Scalia argued that the …

Strict Liability's Criminogenic Effect, Paul H. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

It is easy to understand the apparent appeal of strict liability to policymakers and legal reformers seeking to reduce crime: if the criminal law can do away with its traditional culpability requirement, it can increase the likelihood of conviction and punishment of those who engage in prohibited conduct or bring about prohibited harm or evil. And such an increase in punishment rate can enhance the crime-control effectiveness of a system built upon general deterrence or incapacitation of the dangerous. Similar arguments support the use of criminal liability for regulatory offenses. Greater punishment rates suggest greater compliance.

But this analysis fails …

Common Core State Standards On Twitter: Public Sentiment And Opinion Leaders, Yinying Wang, David J. Fikis

Educational Policy Studies Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to examine the public opinion on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on Twitter. Using Twitter API, we collected the tweets containing the hashtags #CommonCore and #CCSS for 12 months from 2014 to 2015. A Common Core corpus was created by compiling all the collected 660,051 tweets. The results of sentiment analysis suggest Twitter users expressed overwhelmingly negative sentiment towards the CCSS in all 50 states. Five topic clusters were detected by cluster analysis of the hashtag co-occurrence network. We also found that most of the opinion leaders were those who expressed negative sentiment …

1911 Triangle Factory Fire — Building Safety Codes, Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

All Faculty Scholarship

Can a crime make our world better? Crimes are the worst of humanity’s wrongs but, oddly, they sometimes do more than anything else to improve our lives. As it turns out, it is often the outrageousness itself that does the work. Ordinary crimes are accepted as the background noise of our everyday existence but some crimes make people stop and take notice – because they are so outrageous, or so curious, or so heart-wrenching. These “trigger crimes” are the cases that this book is about.

They offer some incredible stories about how people, good and bad, change the world around …

How Civility Works, Keith Bybee

Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University

Is civility dead? Americans ask this question every election season, but their concern is hardly limited to political campaigns. Doubts about civility regularly arise in just about every aspect of American public life. Rudeness runs rampant. Our news media is saturated with aggressive bluster and vitriol. Our digital platforms teem with expressions of disrespect and trolls. Reflecting these conditions, surveys show that a significant majority of Americans believe we are living in an age of unusual anger and discord. Everywhere we look, there seems to be conflict and hostility, with shared respect and consideration nowhere to be found. In a …

Defending A Mixed Economy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Jacob S. Hacker's and Paul Pierson's very engaging book, American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget what Made America Prosper (2016).

Thawing Out: The Role Of The Arctic Council Service In A Melting Arctic, Taylor J. Enos

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

With the changing natural and political climate of the Arctic, conflicts over resource extraction and navigation will become inevitable. Empowering an intergovernmental institution like the Arctic Council Service may be the only solution. This paper analyzes the importance and history of the Arctic as a political environment, which is prone to abuse in the very near future at the hands of Russia and the United States.