Other Political Science Commons^™

Vaccinate: Posters From The Covid-19 Pandemic, Aaron Sutherlen, Judy Diamond, Meghan Leadabrand, Julia Mcquillan, St Patrick Reid

Zea E-Books Collection

In 2022 we are living through a global pandemic, and vaccines are one of the most effective strategies for slowing the spread of infectious disease, minimizing symptoms, and lowering healthcare demands. In short, vaccines save lives and can reduce the risk of contagion from social interaction.

In the United States in late 2021, after the vaccines had been broadly available for almost a year, one in five adults still chose not to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Art can disrupt what is embedded in our minds and open us up to new perspectives and insights. We hope to offer access to …

Lost In Time And Lost In Space: Chronotopes In Thomas Pynchon’S Against The Day, Stephen Margavio

Poster Presentations

Honors thesis poster presentation.

In his 1937 essay “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin coins the term “chronotope” to discuss the inherently interconnected nature of time and space in narrative constructions. According to Bakhtin, there are a number of specific chronotopes (or space/time configurations) that help to define literary genres. Applying Bakhtin’s concepts to Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day (2006), this thesis examines how the idea of narrative space/time can clarify Pynchon’s use of genre to make socio-political commentary. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on Bakhtin’s “road chronotope,” …

The People Of The Pla 2.0, Roy Kamphausen Mr.

Monographs, Collaborative Studies, & IRPs

The 27th annual People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Conference—“The People in the PLA” 2.0—revisited a theme first explored at the 2006 conference but understudied since. This volume examines how the structure, education, training, and recruitment of PLA personnel have changed in the last decade and in the Xi Jinping era.

Structural changes in the PLA have centered around two poles: improving the warfighting readiness of the PLA and strengthening Communist Party of China (CPC) control of the PLA. Reforms to the political work system, the evolution of the Second Artillery into the Rocket Force, and expansion of the PLA’s foreign-based force …

When Equality Matters, John Thrasher

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Equality is at the heart of liberal, democratic political theory. Despite this, there is considerable disagreement about how we should understand equality in the context of liberal politics. Several different conceptions of equality (e.g., equality of opportunity, equality of welfare outcomes, and equality of basic rights) will recommend different and often conflicting policies and institutions. Further, we can expect, in democratic societies, that citizens will disagree on the correct conception of equality. This leads to the diversity problem of equality— there is no one conception of equality that will be acceptable to all citizens. This is compounded by the complexity …

In Defense Of Openness, Bas Van Der Vossen, Jason Brennan

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"The topic of global justice has long been a central concern within political philosophy and political theory, and there is no doubt that it will remain significant given the persistence of poverty on a massive scale and soaring global inequality. Yet, virtually every analysis in the vast literature of the subject seems ignorant of what developmental economists, both left and right, have to say about the issue. In Defense of Openness illuminates the problem by stressing that that there is overwhelming evidence that economic rights and freedom are necessary for development, and that global redistribution tends to hurt more than …

Civil Liberties And The Dual Legacy Of The Founding, John W. Compton

Political Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter will argue that the framers’ dual legacy in the area of civil liberties has cast a long historical shadow. Since the early republic, Americans have invoked constitutional civil liberties provisions to challenge customary forms of authority. Yet establishing the abstract legitimacy of one's claim – that it comports with a particular conception of religious liberty or the freedom of speech, for example – has typically been insufficient to prevail in the courts."

Libertarianism, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Libertarianism is a theory in political philosophy that strongly values individual freedom and is skeptical about the justified scope of government in our lives. Libertarians see individuals as sovereign, as people who have a right to control their bodies and work, who are free to decide how to interact with willing others, and who cannot be forced to do things against their will without very strong justification.

For some, the argument in support of this view hinges on the principle of self-ownership. To them, individual rights are morally foundational, the basic building blocks of their theory. Many others, however, take …

Debating Humanitarian Intervention: Should We Try To Save Strangers?, Fernando R. Tesón, Bas Van Der Vossen

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"When violence breaks out in a country, foreign governments face a difficult dilemma: should they intervene on behalf of the victims, or should they remain spectators? Each choice offers its own perils, and philosophers Fernando R. Tesón and Bas van der Vossen offer contrasting views of intervention by employing modern analytic philosophy, particularly just war theory. Tesón and van der Vossen refer to and weigh the consequences of past, present, and future interventions in Syria, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Lybia, Egypt, and more."

Withdrawal: Reassessing America's Final Years In Vietnam, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Withdrawal is a groundbreaking reassessment that tells a far different story of the Vietnam War. Daddis convincingly argues that the entire US effort in South Vietnam was incapable of reversing the downward trends of a complicated Vietnamese conflict that by 1968 had turned into a political-military stalemate. Despite a new articulation of strategy, Abrams's approach could not materially alter a war no longer vital to US national security or global dominance. Once the Nixon White House made the political decision to withdraw from Southeast Asia, Abrams's military strategy was unable to change either the course or outcome of a decades' …

The Nixon Administration And American Foreign Relations, Luke A. Nichter

Presidential Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Assessments of President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy continue to evolve as scholars tap new possibilities for research. Due to the long wait before national security records are declassified by the National Archives and made available to researchers and the public, only in recent decades has the excavation of the Nixon administration’s engagement with the world started to become well documented. As more records are released by the National Archives (including potentially 700 hours of Nixon’s secret White House tapes that remain closed), scholarly understanding of the Nixon presidency is likely to continue changing. Thus far, historians have pointed to four …

Are Hispanics Discriminated Against In The Us Criminal Justice System?, Maria A. Eijo De Tezanos Pinto

Graduate Research Posters

Recent publications have contributed to increase the perception among Hispanics of an unfair and unequal treatment of this community by the US Criminal Justice System. One of the major concerns was the claim that Hispanics are incarcerated before conviction nearly twice as often as Whites. Unfair treatment perception by the population reduces legitimacy of police and government, and thus, it is imperative to analyze these uninvestigated allegations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address said allegations of discrimination against Hispanics and analyze with updated and reliable statistics whether Hispanics are incarcerated before conviction more often than Whites. There …

The Calculus Of Consent, John Thrasher, Gerald Gaus

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy is a groundbreaking work in democratic theory. This chapter argues that it is of continued relevance today, due both to its methodological innovations and its use of those innovative techniques to solve the fundamental problem of democratic justification. In Calculus, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock fuse economic methods, political theory, and the normative project of showing how democratic institutions of a particular sort can be justified contractually, creating a unique form of democratic contractualism that came to be known as “Constitutional Political Economy” and the more general research program of “Public …

The Virtues Of Justice, John Thrasher, David Schmidtz

Philosophy Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This essay considers (and endorses) three complementary conceptions of justice as virtue. To the two senses of justice just mentioned-justice as a virtue of the soul and of the polis-we add a third that bridges these two. Virtue can be a kind of outreach rather than a kind of internal harmony, because we are talking about essentially social beings. The harmony that is this virtue's object is harmony with a community. Thus, a person who is just in this sense is disposed to respect (play within the rules of) institutions that command respect by virtue of actually working-that is, actually …

American Military Strategy In The Vietnam War, 1965– 1973, Gregory A. Daddis

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

For nearly a decade, American combat soldiers fought in South Vietnam to help sustain an independent, noncommunist nation in Southeast Asia. After U.S. troops departed in 1973, the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 prompted a lasting search to explain the United States’ first lost war. Historians of the conflict and participants alike have since critiqued the ways in which civilian policymakers and uniformed leaders applied—some argued misapplied—military power that led to such an undesirable political outcome. While some claimed U.S. politicians failed to commit their nation’s full military might to a limited war, others contended that most officers fundamentally …