Political Science Commons^™

Who Are You? The Relationship Between Language And Personality, Gwendolyn Cooley

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The relationship between language and personality is one that has been ruminated upon for decades, leading to a plethora of often contradictory scholarship. This project examines that relationship from an outsider perspective, utilizing both existing research and original questionnaire data to draw conclusions about how one's second language learning impacts personality.

The 2026 Fifa Men’S World Cup Games: Implications For Cross-Border Travel In Cascadia, Border Policy Research Institute At Western Washington University

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

The FIFA Men’s World Cup Games are coming to North America in 2026. The games will be held in 16 cities throughout North America, with Seattle hosting 6 games and Vancouver hosting 7, and undoubtedly selling out their respective stadium capacities. With the games being held in both Seattle and Vancouver, a mere 145 miles away from each other, many fans will be crossing the border between B.C. and Washington to attend events in both places. The Games present a rare opportunity to innovate and advance the cross-border travel experience in our region and build on past successes such as …

Jay Treaty And Indigenous Student Mobility Across The Canada-U.S. Border: A Focus On The Cascadia Region, Michael O'Shea

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

This Border Brief describes the latest developments in the use of the Jay Treaty for international tuition waivers at U.S. and Canadian higher education institutions. It is based on research conducted through surveys, interviews, and the author’s previous publications to illustrate opportunities for universities and policy makers to support Indigenous student mobility across the Canada-U.S. border by recognizing the sovereignty and self-determination of Indigenous Nations.

Teleworking Across The Border: Insights From Cascadia, Andrzej Jakubowski

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

The COVID-19 Pandemic, supported by the rapid improvements in digital communication tools, has accelerated profound changes in how work is performed as millions worldwide started working remotely. Washington State and British Columbia were among the states/provinces with the highest percentage of people teleworking in the United States and Canada, respectively, mainly due to the developed industries of high technology, including the IT sector. However, as digital solutions allow for working from anywhere, they also boosted the rise of international virtual labor migration (cross-border telework), making labor mobility an even more diverse phenomenon. What remains an open question is whether telework …

Strengthening Collaboration Between Washington State And British Columbia, Ginny Broadhurst, Laurie D. Trautman

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

There are a variety of benefits that arise from collaboration across the Canada-US border. In some sectors, the value of collaboration is measurable. For example, travel or trade volumes can be equated with specific economic benefits. This is the case with tourism and supply chain networks. There are traceable benefits associated with cross-border business integration and the development of a shared ‘innovation ecosystem’. However, how does one measure the value of having good relations with neighbors? Or the benefits that result from developing more resilient environmental and economic conditions that are created by joint responses to shared natural disasters? The …

Racism Within The Honors College, Zoe Pais

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Students of color have been advocating for a change within the Honors College for many years. Student leaders of the club Honors Students of Color Board or HSOCB collaborated with Faculty to release a climate survey in Spring of 2022. The purpose of the survey was to gather data on the differences in experiences of students within the honors program, primarily focusing on race. The results found that students of color are more likely to consider leaving Honors due to feeling isolated or unwelcome than white students. The results also found that students of color feel as though they need …

The Evolution Of Spanish Nationalism, Anna Sutherland

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The primary objective of this study is to discover how diversity and immigration affect Spanish nationalism and learn more about the contemporary Spanish mindset. The paper contains a literature review of researchers’ findings on the history of Spanish nationalism. In addition, data from the World Values Survey on Spain from 1996 and 2023 demonstrates a shift in societal values. Following is my hypothesis based on the research and data found. A methodology is included with information about the research process. Appendix A contains survey questions and Appendix B interview questions regarding topics including immigration, nationalism, personal identity, and values. The …

The Study Of Peace: Proposing And Designing A Peace Studies Class For Wwu, Clarice Ruhlin-Hicks

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This proposed course explores the field of peace studies, examining the state of peace and conflict in the world from the perspective of international relations and comparative politics. Is peace simply the absence of conflict? Are humans naturally drawn towards war? How do we achieve peace? Where has peace worked and where has it failed? What institutions or processes lead to or inhibit the establishment of peace? The course dives into conflict prevention, the erosion of peace, methods of conflict resolution and management, the issue of peacekeeping, and the process of peace building. Through group presentations, in-depth reading, and individual …

The Silenced Migrants, Alisa Nguyen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

I researched how the Ukrainian refugee crisis has highlighted cases of institutionalized racism all over the world and amplified the quiet part of many people's thinking. I focused on how BIPOC refugees were treated before this crisis, what has happened to them during this crisis, and how BIPOC refugees from Ukraine were treated by the world and Ukrainians.

[A supplementary file with slides is available below.)

Political Rhetoric: A Personal And Scientific Exploration, Joshua Mcneal

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An essay going over the existing Political Science and Communications research behind Political Rhetoric. Specifically: what political rhetoric is, by what mechanisms it works, and various examples of political rhetoric in practice (eg: populism, sacred rhetoric, classical rhetoric, etc.). Also a component at the beginning and end that ties the findings of this paper back philosophically to my honors education, personal realizations, and future goals.

Perceptions Of Political Knowledge, Political Participation, And Political Efficacy Among Western Washington University Students, Bryndis Danke

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The way people view political knowledge, political participation, and political efficacy impacts their interactions with politics. But how exactly do people define political knowledge and participation? Political science scholars are in the midst of discussions on how to broaden these definitions to include traditional forms of both (knowledge of political facts and participation in activities such as voting, campaigning, and protesting) as well as non-traditional forms (experiential knowledge and community activities). This paper examines the results of a survey of 196 university students and 5 student interviews to determine if these broader definitions are held by the general public. Additional …

Populist Nationalism In The Age Of Trump, Vernon D. Johnson, Chelsee Autry

Political Science Faculty Publications

This paper builds upon the arguments advanced by Johnson and Frombgen in “Race and the Emergence of Populist Nationalism in the United States” (2009). Johnson and Frombgen made three central arguments: that the US is two nations, not one; that racial attitudes are central to each national identity, and that social movements of a populist character have critically shaped each national identity. They then offered a typology of left and right national identities, each of which had been shaped by populist social movements. This paper seeks to revisit the two nations thesis in the era of Donald Trump on the …

Indian South Africans As A Middleman Minority: Historical And Contemporary Perspectives, Vernon D. Johnson

Political Science Faculty Publications

Beginning in the 1940s, a literature on middleman minorities emerged to demystify the intermediary economic niche that Jews had occupied in medieval Europe. They were viewed as ethnic entrepreneurs occupying the economic status gap. In the 1960s, scholars began to apply middleman minority theory to colonial societies and to American society. More recently, Coloureds in South Africa have been identified as a middleman minority of another type: semiprivileged proletarians occupying an economic status gap in labour between whites and Africans. A political status gap between whites and Africans, both seeking alliances to achieve hegemony, is also occupied by Coloureds. Among …

Is There A Future For Arrivecan At The Land Border?, Andrzej Jakubowski, Laurie D. Trautman

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the introduction of a number of restrictions as governments around the world sought to implement border management tools that could protect public health. One such example was the ArriveCAN app, introduced by the Government of Canada in November 2020. This advanced data submission tool aimed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring arrivals were vaccinated and by facilitating contact tracing. This Border Policy Brief provides a summary of the nearly two-year use of ArriveCAN as a border management tool during the pandemic. We consider its impact on passenger flows through the …

Gender Through Time And Culture, Kate Wick

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Gender has been viewed as fluid through time. Different identities existed in communities across the globe. How gender is viewed in a western mindset can affect our perceptions of the past. The gender binary that’s been applied so strongly today is an outdated European concept. This binary brings gender roles, which have their own assumptions tied to them. This paper will define many known terms surrounding gender, as well as contemporary gender identities. This will be a look into alternate identities in Native American communities, Native Hawaiians, the Philippines as well as in India, both pre-colonial and post-colonial. Other locations …

Adapting To Challenges: K-12 Education In The Time Of Covid, Connor Farrand

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

During the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the disruptions across society were both intense and varying along pre-existing structural and social lines of inequity, especially in the US. Research has shown that this pattern was particularly true in the context of K-12 education. To assess when, why, and how school districts and charter management organizations (CMOs) chose to adopt and execute new policies for the delivery of education during the pandemic, I review existing theories of organizational inertia and analyze four general characteristics of school districts/CMOs for their ability to predict districts’ likelihood of implementing new instructional delivery …

What Is Political Science? What A Disciplinary Archipelago Says About Political Scholarship And Academia As A Whole, Warren Burroughs

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

“‘Political Science’ is greatly in need of definition” (Smith, 1886, quoted in Sigelman, 2006). This statement is as true today as it was a century and a half ago when it was written in Political Science’s first independent journal’s first article. Throughout its history, the discipline’s purpose and objectives have been contested. A conflict between subdisciplines regarding approaches and desired research outcomes hinders the creation of a comprehensive disciplinary framework. Yet, division is inevitable given the objects of Political Science’s study – people and power. The discipline is having an identity crisis. To illustrate this, Political Science is compared to …

Don't Judge Me: Declining Judicial Independence In Hungary And Poland, Jonathan Freeberg

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

What can the Hungarian and Polish experiences teach us about the processes of decreasing judicial independence, and how does a decrease in judicial independence affect judicial trust and quality of governance? This paper process-traces the erosion of judicial independence in Hungary and Poland from 1989-2021, highlighting different mechanisms that lead to decreases in judicial autonomy. The cases show that formal reforms and informal changes to the membership of the judiciary are both effective at decreasing the independence of the judiciary. The data does not support that these changes lead to significant changes in judicial independence or quality of governance. The …

Travel In Southeast Asia, Adah Barenburg

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper provides a summary of tourism in Southeast Asia in general. Second, it goes over several tourism models around the world and how they impact communities in Southeast Asia. Third, it explains the context of the two countries (Vietnam and Thailand) that I will be living in for my study abroad trip in Spring of 2022. These case studies go into more detail about the COVID impact on tourism and human rights in the region. Fourth, goes into the model of the organization that I am taking my trip with, InPlace. Fifth, are some lingering questions that I have …

Voting Your (Home)Values: An Empirical Assessment Of Homeownership And Voting Patterns In Seattle, Carter Fredrick Morfitt

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In this paper, I draw on data from King County Elections and the U.S. Census Bureau's American Communities survey in an attempt to assess the predictions of the "homevoter hypothesis", which posits that homeowners tend to support policy measures that will boost their home values and oppose policy measures that could be perceived as a threat to their home values.

A Legacy Of Lies: Examining Donald Trump’S Record-Breaking Dishonesty, Sophie Sceats

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Donald Trump told a record number of lies while in office, and ended his term with an unprecedent attack on democracy carried out by his supporters. Presidential lying has a long history in the United States, and significant research has been done on intention, lie typology, and outcomes. Trump’s lies go beyond the existing literature, threatening norms of democracy and bordering on authoritarian behavior. My research examines the power of presidential rhetoric by analyzing a dataset of fact-checked tweets, with the intention of better understanding if and how Trump’s dishonesty violates democratic norms and its potential implications for political violence. …

Ecuador’S Amazon, Rights Of Nature, And The Dilemma Of The 2008 Constitution, Olivia Moore

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In 2008, Ecuador became the first nation in the world to recognize the rights of nature in its Constitution. Ecuador is also a country whose economy depends on the extraction of natural resources. Ecuador thus faces a dilemma, as the two goals of environmental preservation and environmental exploitation conflict with each other. This paper seeks to highlight these conflicting goals, and emphasize the role of Indigenous peoples in Ecuador's Amazon region in fighting for both their rights and the rights of nature.

Orthodoxy And Loyalty: An Exploration Of Electoral Volatility As Experienced By Religious Political Parties In Israel And The Netherlands, Bryant Donner

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Religious political parties have been mainstays of the Dutch and Israeli political scenes throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While each nation possesses exceptionally open and proportional party systems with high degrees of electoral volatility, the Netherlands’ remaining orthodox Protestant parties and Israel’s Haredi parties have weathered this volatility better than other parties have.

Using the Dutch Christian Union, the Dutch Reformed Political Party, the Israeli Shas, and the Israeli United Torah Judaism as examples of religious parties in the twenty-first century, this paper examines sociological and political dimensions on which religious parties of different political alignments and faiths and …

Cross Border Regional Planning: Insights From Cascadia, Francesco Cappellano, Kathrine Richardson, Laurie Trautman

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

This analysis focuses on different levels of Cross-Border Regional Planning (CBRP) processes in the Cascadia borderland. The region is home to the business-led initiative ‘Cascadia Innovation Corridor’ (CIC), designed to foster cross-border economic integration. The CIC strives to build a global innovation ecosystem in Cascadia, including a new high-speed train to connect Seattle and Vancouver. This paper focuses on the scope of the CIC as a CBRP case. The authors evaluate engagement of city governments and coherency between different planning scales to determine whether the CIC has been addressing the major challenges that may prevent tighter economicintegration in Cascadia. The …

Black Power Imagery As Resistive Memory-Making, Courtney Kruzan

Scholars Week

The “Four Black Panthers” is a photograph of Assata Shakur (middle left), Dhoruba bin-Wahad (far left), and two other unknown individuals (middle and far right) that was found attached to the essay Assata Shakur, Excluding the Nightmare After the Dream by bin-Wahad. “Four Black Panthers” is a part of a rich genre of Black Power Era imagery that attempts to portray the collective memory of Black communities and to articulate an alternative history that challenges the hegemonic narrative put-forth in the U.S. The narrative of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s is that peaceful, non-violence made the movement. Dr. …

"Contained: The Separation Wall In Palestine/Israel", Tyler Durbin

Scholars Week

Despite international legal consensus declaring the separation wall in Palestine/Israel as illegal, Israel has continued this geopolitical project unchallenged. Examining the judicial decisions of the International Court of Justice and Israel’s High Court of Justice on the wall, and their following political developments, reveals that Israel’s wall project was motivated by a political desire to protect illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories, confiscate Palestinian land, and constrict their movement and space. Analyzing the entirety of the wall through the lens of containment illuminates how the wall’s fracturing of Palestinian land created the material conditions, or the ‘facts on the ground’, …

Red Or Green? Gentrification In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Michael Patterson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

It is my goal to explore the policies that Albuquerque is implementing to expand into a major city, while also trying to protect low-income communities, especially low-income communities of color. I think it would also be important to discuss the increase in police surveillance in gentrifying neighborhoods. The influx of wealthier residents changes the social dynamics and expectations, which in turn leads to the criminalization of activities that were previously considered normal, such as loitering. This increased surveillance in gentrified areas can be seen by the city of Albuquerque’s push to “decrease the prevalence” of the homeless population in the …

Crisis State: Locating Populism's Conceptual Core, Noah Latsch

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The aim of this paper is two-fold. The first is to put forth a method for analyzing how populism functions as a discursive practice. I seek to formulate an understanding of populism that highlights the phenomenon’s three essential discursive features. I refer to these features as “the people”, “the elite”, and “the crisis”. The second aim of this paper is to expand on the contingent and socially constructed nature of “crisis”. I intend to show how populism is inextricably linked to the construction of “crisis” and how populists use crisis narratives to justify their undemocratic tactics and consolidations of power.

Sharp Power: How Foreign Election Interference Is Changing The Global Balance Of Power, Ethan Greene

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The term sharp power was coined in 2017 in order to describe what appeared to be a new form of covert influence by Russia, China, and other authoritarian states into the political systems of democracies. The increasing effectiveness of sharp power, due to advances in technology and the growing power of China and Russia, emphasizes a change to a more multipolar global balance of power. While the term sharp power ultimately does not describe new tactics, indeed information warfare already serves this purpose, it can help illuminate what global leadership will look like from authoritarian states in the near future. …

Covid-19 And The Us-Canada Border Report 1: Covid-19 And The Us-Canada Border: Retail Shopping Destinations For Canadians In Whatcom County, Border Policy Research Institute, Western Washington University

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

On February 29, 2020, the first death from COVID-19 occurred in Washington State. Over the weeks following, both Washington State and British Columbia implemented various efforts aimed at reducing the spread of the virus. On March 14th, B.C. announced closures of many businesses, made recommendations against non-essential travel, and implemented a voluntary two week self-quarantine on Canadians returning to Canada. Two weeks later, Washington issued a stay-at-home order which went into effect March 23rd. These state and provincial measures aimed at limiting mobility coincided with the bilateral decision by the U.S. and Canada to limit cross-border travel. These restrictions, which …