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Full-Text Articles in Political Science

The Punitive Laboratory Of Neoliberalism: A Cross-National Examination, Beth A. Fera Jun 2023

The Punitive Laboratory Of Neoliberalism: A Cross-National Examination, Beth A. Fera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A large body of research has been produced to explain global punitive trends in recent decades. Neoliberalism, an economic philosophy expressed by market deregulation, privatization, and the retrenchment of social supports, has been offered as an explanation for increases in cross-national punitiveness. According to neoliberal penality theory, neoliberalism has shifted principles guiding punishment practices and the treatment of offenders, which has resulted in harsher national responses to crime. However, many tenets of this theory have not yet been tested empirically. Drawing heavily on propositions from neoliberal penality, group-threat, and penal populism literature, this dissertation examines the relationship between economic shifts, …


The Moral Economy Of Ordinary Belarussians And A Critical Examination And Re-Evaluation Of The 2020 Post-Electoral Uprising, Geoffrey Blank Sep 2022

The Moral Economy Of Ordinary Belarussians And A Critical Examination And Re-Evaluation Of The 2020 Post-Electoral Uprising, Geoffrey Blank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study is three studies in one: First, a qualitative study of the moral economy of ordinary Belarussians based on E.P Thompson’s class-based economic conception of moral economy, as applied to complex socio-economic systems by Reinarman (1987). Second, a critical and broad examination and re-evaluation of the August 9, 2020 post-electoral uprising. And third, an examination of both the West’s hostility toward Belarus’ largely state-owned socially-oriented economic model (often considered market socialism) and toward President Lukashenka, and, of the West’s commitment to overthrowing President Lukashenka and Belarus’ largely state-owned socially-oriented economic model, through its sponsorship of color revolution, “democratization,” regime …


Class Based Contestations In Neoliberal France, Sam Goodson Jun 2020

Class Based Contestations In Neoliberal France, Sam Goodson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis documents the patterns of resistance taken up by the far left in France from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. Responding directly to the neoliberal reshaping of the French economy the groups that composed the far left diverged on terms of strategy, some holding fast to the class based contention of the previous decades, some jettisoning the language of class for one of identity and democratic inclusion. This project documents these changes and takes up the theoretical debates surrounding them, primarily the debates surrounding “post-Marxism.” It is an intervention on the enduring necessity of class struggle for …


From Neoliberalism To Socialism: Reimagining Socialism In Africa, Kiiru Gichuru Jan 2020

From Neoliberalism To Socialism: Reimagining Socialism In Africa, Kiiru Gichuru

Dissertations and Theses

Abstract. For many scholars, pundits, policy makers, and citizens alike, Africa’s persistent maldevelopment has continued to defy the usual International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and foreign aid prescriptions that are, at times, peddled as silver bullets to the African conundrum. Beginning in the late 1970s, loans from the IMF and World Bank required African governments to implement certain conditions that were supposed to address public sector mismanagement, illiberal trade policies, low foreign investment, and state development. These austerity measures were designed to usher in an era of financial growth that would enable Africa to join the ranks of developed …


Youth Voice And The Promise And Peril Of Affirmative Governmentality: An Analysis Of New York City’S Borough Student Advisory Councils, Hillary R. Donnell May 2019

Youth Voice And The Promise And Peril Of Affirmative Governmentality: An Analysis Of New York City’S Borough Student Advisory Councils, Hillary R. Donnell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study addresses civil society and the state’s shifting approach towards the incorporation of youth in governmental decision-making since the 1990s, and the recent ascendance of youth voice councils as a method of civic engagement. It uses the New York City Youth Leadership Council Initiative and the Borough Student Advisory Councils as case studies. Relying on the author’s ethnographic participant observation and youth-voice frameworks, the paper provides an analysis of the individual, organizational and systems level effects of the New York Department of Education’s BSAC program. Further, the paper discusses affirmative governmentality as a lens through which to critically examine …


A Politics Of Boundlessness, Fernando Orellana May 2019

A Politics Of Boundlessness, Fernando Orellana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Spirituality has nothing to do with politics. Nonetheless, there is a functional relationship between them. Although spirituality supposes a disposition against boundaries – of experience and consciousness – and politics appears to involve the definition of limits insofar as they enable political action and meaning, these two distinct dimensions of human existence are not in opposition to each other. Politics here can be characterized as a kind of vectorization: the inscription of a gesture – as a force with magnitude and direction – into an intelligible (political) matrix. When we talk about politicization, we are concerned with the investigation of …


Angelenos, Vivian Liang May 2018

Angelenos, Vivian Liang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of Los Angeles’s city myth on the lived realities of its minority populations. I assert that the abstract erasure of the city’s Mexican past is mirrored in the physical concealment and removal of its minority populations. This paper pays particular attention to the ways in which the city’s foundational myth is intertwined with both the racialization of Mexican-Americans in the early 20th century and the rising prominence of neoliberal urbanism in the latter half of the 20th century. The LAPD and city council’s racialization of Mexican-Americans as dangerous and undesirable …


Evangelizing Neoliberalism Through Megachurches In Latin America And The United States, William O. Collazo Jan 2018

Evangelizing Neoliberalism Through Megachurches In Latin America And The United States, William O. Collazo

Dissertations and Theses

The most prominent and influential feature of worldwide Evangelicalism, is the megachurch. In Latin America megachurches have proliferated and grown in political influence when they first came into contact with neoliberalism during Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. As Latin America's poor first migrated out of rural areas into Latin American cities, then north, to the United States, they have brought with them their religion. Increasingly, this religion is Protestant, evangelical, and for many, it is Pentecostalism. Misunderstood by the early literature on Pentecostalism, is the strain of neoliberalism that has become infused in the religion's most powerful institution - the megachurch. …


Enzo Traverso: Neoliberalism Is The Totalitarianism Of Our Times, Despina Lalaki Jan 2018

Enzo Traverso: Neoliberalism Is The Totalitarianism Of Our Times, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.


The Punishment Marketplace: Competing For Capitalized Power In Locally Controlled Immigration Enforcement, Daniel L. Stageman Oct 2017

The Punishment Marketplace: Competing For Capitalized Power In Locally Controlled Immigration Enforcement, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

Neoliberal economics play a significant role in US social organization, imposing market logics on public services and driving the cultural valorization of free market ideology. The neoliberal ‘project of inequality’ is upheld by an authoritarian system of punishment built around the social control of the underclass—among them unauthorized immigrants. This work lays out the theory of the punishment marketplace: a conceptualization of how US systems of punishment both enable the neoliberal project of inequality, and are themselves subject to market colonization. The theory describes the rescaling of federal authority to local centers of political power. Criminal justice policy activism by …


Mobilizing For Capitalism: How Islamic Civil Society Makes A Market Economy Possible In Turkey, Dean G. Schafer Jun 2016

Mobilizing For Capitalism: How Islamic Civil Society Makes A Market Economy Possible In Turkey, Dean G. Schafer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis asks how international actors – in this case, the IMF and World Bank – advance their neoliberal projects. Specifically, it looks at the local context. How do economic reforms pass from IMF policy into national law? Who does the IMF cooperate with? What strategies are used, and what makes them effective for enacting and legitimizing policy? It starts by looking at the history of political mobilization in Turkey after WWII, when it took its first IMF loan. Turkish political parties have commonly sought electoral success through populist economic policies built on patron-client relationships. However, economic populism is a …


Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury Jan 2015

Specters Of Kurdish Nationalism: Governmentality And Counterinsurgent Translation In Turkey, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

This essay examines translations of the Kurdish epic poem Mem û Zîn into Turkish, tracing the logics behind these state-sponsored translations and examining how acts of translation are also efforts to regulate, translate, and erase Kurdish subjectivities. I argue that the state instrumentalizes Mem û Zîn’s potent nationalist currency in order to disarm present and future claims of Kurdish national autonomy. Using translation as a counterinsurgent governmental tool, the state attempts to domesticate Kurdish nationalist discourses even as it reproduces them, thereby transforming Kurdish nationalism into a specter of itself. Attending to this specter, however, allows us to see how …


The Shadow Banking System In The United States, Bhakti Joshi Oct 2014

The Shadow Banking System In The United States, Bhakti Joshi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2008 the United States suffered a devastating economic collapse. Millions of Americans were unemployed; families lost their homes; and long time businesses were forced to shut down. These events put the United States into an economic depression so deep that the country has yet to fully recover. The crisis was not a natural disaster but varieties of private sector agents such as banks and hedge funds were responsible for its efficient cause. Even though the housing and stock bubbles were generated largely by market forces rather than by government policies, the US government policies and institutions also played a …


The Status Of Women Under Neoliberal Reform; A Test Of Two Theories, Donnett Lee Jan 2014

The Status Of Women Under Neoliberal Reform; A Test Of Two Theories, Donnett Lee

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.


Bodies And Landscapes Of Control In The Neoliberal City, Kerwin Kaye Jan 2005

Bodies And Landscapes Of Control In The Neoliberal City, Kerwin Kaye

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

With many still feeling the effects of a post-election depression, around forty people attended CLAGS's panel "Bodies and Landscapes of Control in the Neoliberal City" on November 16th. The panel sought to examine the concrete ways in which neoliberal policy re(shapes) the urban landscape and the relationship between these macroeconomic factors and the construction and deployment of erotic identities and experiences.