Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Power, Subjectivity, And Life In Spain: A Continuation Of Elite Power, Matthew Mason

Master's Theses

On December 20, Spain will hold national elections to determine the new prime minister and national and local parliaments. These elections will be another crossroads in the long history of Spain. The elections come about in a political and social atmosphere of ‘change’ and ‘regeneration,’ marked by the rise of two new political parties, Podemos and Ciudanos. These parties are the new forces in the political scene in Spain. This atmosphere of change is the result of the 2008 economic crisis. The economic crisis of 2008 was not only an economic crisis in Spain, but it provoked a political and …

Re(Public)An Reasons: A Republican Theory Of Legitimacy And Justification, Christopher Mccammon

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There is a kind of power no one should have over anyone else, even if they don’t do anything with this power, or even if they only use this power for good. The republican tradition of political philosophy calls this kind of power domination. Here, I develop a theory of domination, and use this theory to advance our understanding of political legitimacy and justification.

My account of domination refines recent neo-republican attempts to identify dominating social power with the capacity to interfere arbitrarily with the choices of others. I argue that this capacity is not sufficient for domination. Instead, …

The Tragedy Of American Supremacy, Dante R. Toppo

CMC Senior Theses

Why has the United States, given its status as the sole remaining superpower following its Cold War victory, been unable to translate its preponderance of power into the outcomes it desires? The system established by the United States over the course of the Cold War does not effectively translate its power into influence in the post-Cold War world. In fact, the way US-Soviet competition shaped global affairs created systemic problems, weak and failing states, terrorism, autocracy and human rights abuse, that cannot be solved by the mechanisms of influence the US relied upon to win the Cold War. However, precisely …