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Full-Text Articles in American Politics

Critical Political Thinking: An Analysis Of Undergraduate Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills And Preferred Political Values, Labels, And Leadership Traits, Maya Mingo Dec 2021

Critical Political Thinking: An Analysis Of Undergraduate Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills And Preferred Political Values, Labels, And Leadership Traits, Maya Mingo

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study details the political values of students enrolled in an entry-level, multi-section educational psychology course at a large, southeastern United States university during the fall semester of 2017 (N = 167). Survey data were collected to identify the following: which political values and personality traits undergraduate students give the most priority when making political decisions, whether or not the political labels participants identified as most important to them are consistent with those common to their families, close friends, and childhood geographical regions, the quality of respondents’ self-reported label-value congruence, and the relation between the students’ critical thinking …


American Understandings Of U.S. Economic Inequality: Redistribution And Resistance, Jacklyn Stein Oct 2021

American Understandings Of U.S. Economic Inequality: Redistribution And Resistance, Jacklyn Stein

Doctoral Dissertations

Why has economic inequality in the U.S. continued to grow despite widespread and strong public opinion in favor of reducing it? In this dissertation, I argue that Americans are upset by current levels of economic inequality and support downward redistribution as a means to reduce it. At the same time, many have hesitations about or resistance to the mechanisms through which such redistribution might be carried out. This resistance, I found, varied across respondents’ class and race (and, to some extent, gender). Across groups, respondents’ desires for change were stymied by a social and political context of differential visibility that …


Latino Race Cards: Negative Racial Appeals In Contemporary Campaigns And The Bounds Of Racial Priming Theory, Rebecca Lisi Oct 2021

Latino Race Cards: Negative Racial Appeals In Contemporary Campaigns And The Bounds Of Racial Priming Theory, Rebecca Lisi

Doctoral Dissertations

The Implicit Explicit (IE) model of racial priming (Mendelberg 2001) continues to be the dominant theoretical model for understanding the impact of negative racial campaign appeals on white voter mobilization despite significant demographic change in the United States. The theoretical underpinnings of the IE model rest upon a norm of racial equality which emerged in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Given the specific racial and historical context in which this racial norm developed it is unclear whether the IE model can account for the impact of non-Black racial appeals on white voter mobilization. I apply the concept of …


Indebted: American Private Debt And Its Political Consequences, Giancarlo Andrew Gonzalez May 2021

Indebted: American Private Debt And Its Political Consequences, Giancarlo Andrew Gonzalez

Doctoral Dissertations

Private debt, also known as consumer debt, has been increasing exponentially over the past eighty years. Largely spurred by private and governmental action, the growth in consumer debt has allowed Americans to purchase services and commodities that they may not otherwise have been able to afford. However, research has also shown that debt has strong adverse effects on human social behavior. This is especially troublesome given how indebted Americans, and in particular poor and minority Americans, have become in recent years. Thus, I ask if the effects of debt extend to political activity as well as social behavior. In this …


Cyclones, Spectacles, And Citizenship: The Politicization Of Natural Disasters In The Us And Oman, Tyler Schuenemann Apr 2021

Cyclones, Spectacles, And Citizenship: The Politicization Of Natural Disasters In The Us And Oman, Tyler Schuenemann

Doctoral Dissertations

In the face of such complex, urgent threats of fires, floods, and increasingly powerful storms, many scholars warn that climate change puts us on the path to a technocratic, “rule of experts” for the sake of survival. Others warn that climate change will actually undermine the authority of governments, as they become increasingly unable to meet the basic needs of their citizens. In this dissertation, I draw from interviews, archival research, and ethnographic observations in the US and Oman to examine how power and historical context shape the way that these societies politicize natural disasters. These two countries have fundamental …